Indie By Choice?

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Jeff Tunnell   (Jun 25, 2006 at 14:38 GMT)

By choice. I'm not anti-publisher, but I am certainly anti-big corporation run by greedy CEO's that burn out their employees then cast them off like so much chaff. I don't know where the rock star thing comes from either, since I sure don't see that talked about. I compare game making to the music industry because of the size of teams that I think would make an ideal development group.

I find this post offensive. From my reading, you are lumping Indies into your own narrowly defined group of anti-publisher, rock stars that can't cut it in the real world. If I am reading this wrong, then I am sorry, but that's what I get out of it.

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

Aaron E   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:03 GMT)

By choice. For me, it's about having the freedom to pursue and develop the things I want. Even if I never make a fortune at this, I'm pursuing a longtime dream.

Ed Fear   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:07 GMT)

I apologise if you find this post offensive, Jeff, because that was certainly not my intent. Perhaps I should have worded it differently, but it was simply an attempt to generate some conversation. I don't think it would be a very hard to find ten, a hundred, maybe even a thousand indie developers who wear the 'indie' badge with pride. My question is: does everyone? Or, for some people, is it just circumstance?
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 15:08 GMT

Robert Stewart   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:23 GMT)

I would never work for a big game company... I hate making games for other people, I have done it before and I would rather pursue another career, such as Aviation. I do however like working on my own game with my own game design.

Mark Barner   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:28 GMT)

By choice. The two of us on our team are planning on releasing our game for free. We are basically making it for a few of us to play around with. If people play the game, that's better. We are not trying to be Game Rockstars or care to be one. We make our game the way we want to and for fun.

Joe Maruschak   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:35 GMT)

by choice. After the corporation shut down our division (Dynamix) in what seemed like an attempt to get a tax writeoff, I realized that job security in a 'big' shop is a myth. I wanted more control of my own destiny. I also saw that where the 'big' industry was going was not where I wanted to be.

I wanted (and still want) to work on more small, networked games that allow people to play and develop and maintain social connections with each other.

I am only anti establishment in that I think some of the development methodoligies in use in the big industry are antiquated and ineffective (and the endless hours of overtime being talked about in the quality of life discussions are a symptom of a system that is not working optimally).

I am out of the establishment because I realized that, at least in the short term, the games I want to work on are not the type of games presently being made (with Spore being a possible exception)

As for being a rockstar, I personally have no desire to be one. I just want to make good entertainment and not have to give up the rest of my life in order to do that.

I do want to work on some ideas that might not be 'proven', and accept that smaller cost of creation is tied to having that freedom. More resources = more risk.

My goal is to do more with less resources by developing differently, thus giving more freedom to allow me to do things that interest me.

Ed Fear   (Jun 25, 2006 at 15:36 GMT)

All interesting replies, thanks for sharing.

You may wonder why I'm asking, which would be a fair enough question. It's because I'm not an indie through choice, I'm an indie because it's either that or nothing right now. However, in my experience it's pretty rare to hear people say that, so this was meant to see if there were others similar to me (and because I was generally interested in the stance of the people in this community).

Also, incase anyone further misunderstands: I'm not trying to say indies are full of hot air, by the way. That'd be like shooting myself in the spine, after all.
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 15:38 GMT

Simon Love   (Jun 25, 2006 at 16:15 GMT)

Indie game development, for me, is the only possible way to experience what it means to truly craft a game.

Making video games as an indie is also a spiritual and profound life-changing experience for many. If you crave learning new things, Indie is the way to go : You need to have a fairly varied knowledge base to fully understand the capability of an engine and the way various tools interface with it. There's really no feeling in the world like drawing, scanning in, modelling and texturing an object, character or vehicle, and then putting it in-game. It makes you feel like god.

I totally get the rock star analogy...every time people ask me what I do in life, I answer Indie game dev. everybody reacts exactly like if I had said 'I am in a band'.

On the other hand, I think indie game devs have a very special form of contact with their audience, but not as a rock star, ego-driven womanizer who happens to play guitar. Usually, people seem to genuinely care about the progress and various doings of indie game companies. I guess that explains why their blogs (the indies) are often popular. You don't hear about sex-crazed groupies harrassing Indies or the paparazzi problem of indies.

On a side-note, I have nothing against marketing; it is, in fact, necessary to understand its inner workings in order to successfully get your game to your target audience. Being indie doesn't mean not making money.



Working in several large companies is cool and all, but to me if felt like I was working on an assembly line, just screwing my assigned screw, over and over again. We need Prince of Persia, Halo, Need for Speed, etc, but I think there is another immense section of the market, where real individuals buy games they WANT to play.

I guess you'll find individuals in this community that are always hungry for a challenge, multi-talented and self-taught. By choice by conviction. It is really inspiring to be part of this group of people who all work incredibly hard to reach their dreams.
Indie game dev is a REALLY tough ship to steer, but if you manage to make it out to sea...but it's the best feeling in the world!

So, Indie by choice.

edit : took my sweet time writing it, I had only read Jeff's reply.
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 16:18 GMT

Phil Carlisle   (Jun 25, 2006 at 17:22 GMT)

I do it because I've seen how the "industry" (and I dislike the distinction that many people make, it seems to relagate indie developers to the position of "not in the industry") works and I would rather at least have partial control of my own effort.

Essentially, I think the current method of developer->publisher is fundamentally broken and I'd rather not be a part of it.

Your statements kind of confuse me though, like there isnt an alternative to being an indie? I think there is, just go get a job?

I've made a concious decision that to produce games with any form of personality and which reflect my own personal views, I have to step up and make them myself. Its a complete fallacy that anyone in the commercial games sector gets to make thier "dream game". Most all of the time you are a drone working on the latest peicework for some publisher.

Personally, I'd rather work on my own creation. If that means I have to fund it and develop it myself, so be it. There is also the fact that the games I want to play are simply not mainstream in nature. I want games that dont really exist anymore. Games that fit a niche. In my case, I want short play-session networked games of various types. Thats what we develop for.

Todd Pickens   (Jun 25, 2006 at 17:35 GMT)

The simple answer is "by choice", but the full answer is that I came to it by chance and made a choice to stay for a number of reasons, much of which was the spirit of GG and their efforts to make possible the things we see coming to light in the Indi community today.

If ask, I now happily state that I am indi, but the more complex question of how or why rarely follow the first.

To wrap the whole story up in a nut shell, I came from the comic book industry to the game business and worked at a small family like developer for years. I loved my job and the people I work with. In my time there, we survived a couple of big recessions in the game industry. I watched many developer friends jump around the country trying to stay employed.

Eventually the company, for reasons I won't go into here, made a less than informed decision and brought on an individual with a very bad industry rep. who maneuvered himself into a position to take control of the company. The rest was down hill.

The icing on the cake for me was 150 hour work week for a poorly planned demo that went no where, and without a word of thanks for the effort. Within a year the whole team, save one relatively new member, left the studio.

The whole of it is a long and sorted story with a lot of good lessons to be learned, but this isn't the forum for it.

When I left, I had shoulder surgery, went through recovery and started looking for positions in the industry again. Along the way a friend introduced me to Torque and the community (thanks Cholly), and before long I made a decision to become a dedicated indi.

Jeffs "CEO's that burn out their employees then cast them off like so much chaff". And Joes "I realized that job security in a 'big' shop is a myth", could not be more accurate. I listened to those horror stories, and many others, for years, but never really appreciated the impact it had on the lives of those involved until I witnessed it firsthand.

I still have a number of friends and many of the "big" companies, and nothing has really changed, the horror stories of mismanagement and exploitation are all the same.

So hell yes I proudly proclaim myself an indi. I don't get the rock star thing either, but I think Jeffs comparison of development team size and the music biz is dead accurate.

And because I don't think it is said often enough, To everyone at GG, Thanks for making this possible.

Jay Barnson   (Jun 25, 2006 at 17:36 GMT)

Your post seems to try and drive a dichotomy that doesn't really exist. You make it sound like you have to be either a principle-driven rebel fighting the system, or simply a wannabe corporate drone who isn't yet "good enough" to attract the attention of the Borg mothership. I don't think you have to be either. I think very few indies fall into either category. At least not the indie professionals.

You are making the publishers out to be something much bigger than they really are. You suffer from a fundamental flaw in your logic that the big "establishment" publishers are what the indie mentality revolves around. It's not. It's not about being for or against big publishers. It's about being INDEPENDENT of them.

From my perspective, major publishers are at least partially IRRELEVANT in the indie mindset. The indie is going to make and sell his game REGARDLESS of publisher interest. If publishers ignore the game forever and ever... FINE. You'll make it and sell it and try to do well by it regardless. If a publisher turns around and makes an offer you can't refuse later... FINE! From the indie's perspective, publishers are commoditized.

But they aren't some big ol' boogieman or oppressive regime that must be taken down or anything. Yeah, we may take our digs at them from time to time about their business practices. I definitely think "the establishment" needs to reform - they've set some courses that I feel sacrifice long-term viability for short-term profits, and at times they've been more of an impediment to than a patron of creativity and originality for those who love the hobby and art of gaming. But they are businesses, and businesses do what makes business sense - and look what has happened recently. Microsoft, of all companies, has become a CHAMPION of indies recently with the XBLA. The wheels of change keep turning.

But since you were asking about our own stories:

I'm an indie by choice. I quit the videogame industry after six years of work as a game programmer to go "indie" before I knew there was an indie community. I decided to take a higher-paying job doing business apps and work on the games *I* wanted to make in my spare time.

I had no idea what I was doing, but as I discovered a real indie community out there, I asked a lot of questions and educated myself. Because I learned a lot about it, and had some real industry experience, I was asked by a small, "guns for hire" independent games studio in the local area for advice on self-publishing a title called "Outpost Kaloki." They'd always worked on a contract basis for publishers or other studios in the past, and they'd been trying to get this original title picked up for months with no success. They figured they'd just finish it and sell it as an indie to try and recoup SOME of their investment on it.

While the game was never a stellar success on the PC, it gained them a lot of attention (including attention from publishers), and helped land them a deal as a release title for the XBox 360 Live Arcade. Now they are still doing contract-based work (and probably have more work now as a result of their "going indie" than they would have otherwise), but releasing "indie," self-funded titles is now a part of their overall strategy.

They ended up hiring me a couple of months ago, offering to not only ALLOW me to continue working on my own games with my own company in my off-hours, but actively supporting me in that effort. I'd be hard-pressed to find another employer willing to do that :)

And so for my day job, I'm working on an arguably "indie" game (it's not being funded by a major publisher), and in my spare time I'm.... making indie games.

It's totally awesome. I love it. It think it is a stupidly hard way to make money sometimes. But it sure is exciting, cool, and a heck of a lot of fun.

So yeah. Indie by choice.

Edward F. Maurina III   (Jun 25, 2006 at 18:25 GMT)

By choice.

I currently work for a large corporation (non-game). I believe that I have the education, the skills, the ideas, and the drive to work for a large game development corporation if I were so inclined.

However, I am not so inclined.

In every large company/corporation/organization I have worked for, one is treated as a cog and called a 'resource' to one's face. There is little freedom or opportunity to innovate (especially in bad tech-times like now). The more one sticks out, the more one is pounded down.

I have been working slowly and steadily on creating my own opportunity to go fully indie. How wonderful for me, and for the many other budding Indies, that there should be a confluece of our will and desires with the opportunities provided by GarageGames via their game engines, the community they harbour, and all of their other contributions.

I am willing to embrace the possible hardship, the difficulties, and the risk. I choose to do this so that I might control my own destiny.

So, absolutely, I am 'Indie By Choice'.

Hall Of Worlds - For Gamers
EdM|GPGT
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 18:41 GMT

Jameson Bennett   (Jun 25, 2006 at 18:37 GMT)

Great question. You definitely touched a nerve.
I find mentioning 'I'm a game developer' to anyone to is a gamer gives you 'rock star' creds, or maybe 'geek star'. Like any tech, anyone who doesnt understand the innerworkings it seems a bit like magic.
I develop, like many, to see games I would rather play than the big-budget fodder that lines the retail shelves. I have been very disappointed at the lack of creative output by major western studios riding great IPs into the ground with iterations of the same idea, but with bigger badder weapons and a new rendering technology for your $60us. The movie industry spearheaded the model--including poor treatment of employees, hence the unionization-- and the video game industry has fallen right into that rut without the protection consolidated employee forces can provide. Thank God there is always room for a Blair Witch and the gaming industry is wide open for a similar approach.
How many 'indie developers' do you think are generally 'anti-establishment' by nature (meaning they make an effort to differentiate themselves from the established norm)? I would guess most considering the nature of discussion on most indie blogs. This is a good thing in my opinion, and will eventually bear fruit. Whether it will meet your taste is another matter.

Andy Schatz   (Jun 25, 2006 at 19:05 GMT)

I don't think there's anything wrong your original post at all. During Introversion's acceptance speech for Darwinia at the IGF, they claimed they wouldn't accept money from anyone because they didn't want publishers "fucking up their game". The entire auditorium, filled with indie and non-indie devs, erupted in a huge standing ovation. Yes, that tone is carried through much of indie (and non-indie, small developer) game development. You'll see it with Introversion, Positech (cliffsy, developer of Democracy and the upcoming Kudos is notoriously independent), I'll even spout that rhetoric some.

There certainly are a number of indies that don't have that tone, notably developers of many of the hottest portal games. I would even wager that *most* of the successful indies swallow any anti-publisher sentiment. If you are working as a full-time indie, it's a dangerous thing to piss off the people who might someday pay you.

The fact of the matter is, there are good publishers and there are bad ones. I had the best experience I've ever had with a publisher with MumboJumbo. I also liked Microsoft (until they dropped us unceremoniously, causing the shuttering of the company). I hated making games for EA, and Activision wasn't great either.

The publishing *establishment* sucks, though. Indies, though, don't worry so much about publishers as they do about distributors. The distribution establishment where developers give up the majority of their earnings for online "shelf-space" does look in many ways suspiciously like the publishing establishment, except without the creative bondage of the publishers. You have to pay for traffic, though, and the "try and buy" establishment values download traffic highest.

Selling games through try-and-buy requies either high download traffic, or laser-targeting of customers to achieve high conversion rates. As for right now, the download traffic portals are becoming entrenched, and I believe that developers are going to start to see less reward for their effort. I believe the success of my company, at least, will require that we focus on improving conversion rate, which means finding exactly the customers that will want to buy our games. This may involve forgoing the major portals intentionally.

As for whether I'm an indie by choice: absolutely. I worked 6 years in the commercial gaming world as a cog in a wheel on flops that were made flops because the publishers decided not to put any marketing money into them. I pulled frequent all-nighters, worked 75 hr work-weeks on average (sometimes topping 100 hrs), and never was able to rsie from developer into management, despite being the "rock star" at the various companies I was at. I was tired of being pigeonholed as an engineer, and I hated the giant team sizes (The last I was on was about 200 people at EA). So, yeah, I probably fit into the spirit of your original post. I am indie by choice. I like to wave that flag. I work out of my apartment off my own coin. Every game that I make is like taking a year's salary and putting it on a single horse. It's been a really wild ride, but I have utter confidence in my abilities and the abilities of the people I work with, and I believe we will be (and already are) richly rewarded for our risks and efforts.
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 19:06 GMT

Anton Bursch   (Jun 25, 2006 at 19:51 GMT)

I am an indie by circumstances.

The day I get a chance to work for the evil Empire, uncle Owen can kiss my ass goodbye!! Sorry, Aunt Beru, you were always nice to me. But uncle Owen is a peckerhead!! And one day I am going to grow up to be a Dark Lord of the Sith, just like my father before me! And like him, I'll come back here and shove that plow up uncle Owen's ass!

Sure... I will be a slave to my masters. But think of the power of the dark side! Oh baby! Sure I won't have any kind of a life beyond serving my masters, of whom there will be many many. And sure they inflict pain or death if I don't perform to their whims. But I get to choke people with my force powers from across the room! THAT is worth all of the misery. Sure, if I show any signs of humanity, I will be killed. Sure if I try to find a companion for life, they will be either left abadoned or switched for an assasin clone if I ever muck up anything.

But think of the cool black robes I'll get to wear! And most of all... I'll BE someone, I'll actually matter in the scheme of things. I'll have money and power and... whoa... who's the hot chick in the robe with the side buns? She's kinda cute. I wonder what she'd look like in a bronze bikini and chains? Obiwan? Does she mean old Ben? I guess I could see where being a 'good guy' could lead me. If not, I'll just go back to my back up plan working for the Empire. But she is pretty hot. Looks kinda familiar for some reason? Huh. I don't think she's wearing a bra though.

Ok, ok. Indie... by choice.

Episode VI: Yoda Returns

It has been four decades since Yoda fell into the shadows with the Balrog. Thought dead, the rebels continued their journey without the old green wizard until they were attacked...
Edited on Jun 25, 2006 19:55 GMT

Anton Bursch   (Jun 25, 2006 at 21:31 GMT)

Serious non-metaphorical response -

To me, being an indie is about making your own choices instead of only one choice: to take shit or quit. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to work for a giant company on some of the games franchises that I've played and loved. No questions. That wouldn't change that I'm still an indie and that my life and my future is in my own hands and if and when I want to do something I want to do... I will. PERIOD. THAT is the power of indie to me.

I work for a small indie company that is made of game industry vets who got fed up like the GarageGames guys and went on their own. It is a waking dream to work for this company. (I wanted to work for GarageGames but honestly I didn't have the portfolio or experience to work for them) But I am happy as can be working making games for a living and YES I am not making a ton of money but I'm making a living and I get to put my heart and soul and strength into my work and it COUNTS for something. I actually make a HUGE difference at my job. So, I make games AND I make a difference. And that feels really cool. And I wouldn't trade it for more money.

Now, if HumanHead, the makers of Rune, were making Rune2, and I was offered a chance to work on that game... and I didn't already have previous commitments to a project... HELLO WISCONSIN!!!!! (HumanHead is in Wisconsin) That's just about being a part of something you loved. Everyone probably has that game or movie or whatever that they'd love to be apart of if given the chance. But again, it's my choice. MY choice. And I wouldn't trade losing my choice to work on any game. And it's not because I have lost it before and won't lose it again... it's because I'm not a fool, I listen to wise counsel, I learn from people who have been thru it.

I'll always be grateful for what GarageGames has done for indie game developers. I would be one without them... but I am 100 times more confident and informed and farther along than I would have been without them.

I wasn't offended by your post. But I was a little concerned about this statement:

Quote:

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Now, it's huge - with massive mainstream coverage, opportunities like Xbox Live Arcade and the incredible tools available today it's probably fair to say it hasn't been this big since The Good Old Days.

---

It's not huge. There isn't massive mainstream coverage. Opportunities like XBLA are already long past. There are incredible tools, but there is also a long long wait for them. It's not as hard today as it was last time you posted by about an inch. I don't know why I am bothered by the impression that it's gotten easier to be an indie. It just does. Maybe because it's still hard ass work and having anyone say it's easy makes it seem like less of an accomplishment to finally get somewhere at it.

Indie by Choice. cue the Rohan Theme from LOTR:TTT.

Ed Fear   (Jun 26, 2006 at 01:38 GMT)

Thanks for your comments, everyone.

@Jay:
I'm sorry that you didn't read my original post properly, but you'll notice that at the end I ask three seperate questions re: indie by choice - do you want to be a rockstar, do you agree with the anti-establishment stance, do you do it to work on concepts that wouldn't be approved in a large corporation. The reason that they're all seperate questions, delimited by seperate question marks, is that I didn't want to imply that if one was true they all are.

Whether we like it or not, Introversion kind of act as the public face of indie gaming, because they are an easy focal point and they provide the radical statements that game journos love. If you don't agree with the rockstar thing, or the anti-establishment thing, fine. Great, in fact. But don't try and pretend that element doesn't exist, because it does, no matter how much you may want to shut your ears to it.

But anyway, it's really interesting to hear everyone's stories.
Edited on Jun 26, 2006 01:40 GMT

Michael Cozzolino   (Jun 26, 2006 at 13:19 GMT)

By choice. I still haven't finished anything. I'm working on a project with a team as well as my own thing. I really don't think I would want to work in the "big time". I work for a company for my "day job" that is a huge corporation. I see how it does business as well as other big companies. I really think there is a disconnect between these companies and there employees. There employees are treated more like a laiblity than an asset. Plus you don't necessarily get to work on a project you have any interest in. If some company is going to force me to work 7 days a week for 18 hours a day I sure would hope I loved what I was working on.

I see why a lot of the older big-time developers are getting burned out on the process. It's ridiculous. Between the long hours and the huge budgets. Who needs all of that pressure not to have a big hit. I would rather create something 200 people are die hard fans of than something that sells 200,000 copies and people toss in the garbage in a week.

As Jeff says "Don't quit your day job."

I realize that working for this corporation is a necessary evil in order to live and attempt to make my dream come true.

Jay Barnson   (Jun 26, 2006 at 17:45 GMT)

@Ed -

You summed up the paragraph of four questions with a question saying "Essentially: Are You Indie By Choice?" That implies that the previous questions were all part of one large question. And that made it sound as though you were expressing two extreme attitudes as though they were the only choice out there.

It's popular sport to mock the big publishers, especially when they get bitten on the butt by the very attitudes and practices that made us decide to leave & / or become indies in the first place. I think the rabid growth of indie game development over the last three or four years is one of many signs that the "establishment" is failing to meet the needs of customers or developers. One of my common explanations for why I left the games business was that, "I love making games, but I hate the games industry." It sucks.

But the day-to-day stuff I see in the blogs and forums I frequent tend to take a more pragmatic view towards publishers. The attitude isn't, "Let's bring down the system," so much as, "Ah, they can join me or they can get the hell out of my way."

Clint S. Brewer   (Jun 26, 2006 at 21:16 GMT)

"Do you wholeheartedly agree with the anti-establishment stance that gets paraded around endlessly?"

no, although you could be more specific. there are many and varied stances...


"Do you do this to work on concepts that couldn't possibly be done in today's marketing-driven industry?"

In the sense that it's _my_ concept, my world, my story, my game rules, my art done the way I want then yes I do. But in general, in the sense I think you ask the question, then no. I think people in the industry are very creative, motivated, and make plenty of inovations. If for no other reason just the shear volume of games getting made ensure some good variety and cool things. Dare I say more inovative than most "indie industry" games? I guess I do dare! :)

"Do you strive to be the new Gaming Rockstars?"

no, god no. substance over style always.


"Or is it more the case that you are an indie because of circumstance"
one domino hit another domino, and there I was. It was a combo of choice and circumstance. The time was right, I had the money, I had always wanted to do it so I set out to do it. I suppose that had I gotten a job at a bigger company it's very possible I might have been happy, I dont know. I've worked the longest in smaller companies. My ideal situation is a small team of maybe 3 or 5 people, making enough to get by comfortably and live a happy life, being creative, and bringing some joy into other people's lives. We would all live in a magical valley, get up and milk the miniature goats together while we cleaned the solar pannels to power our machines. We would take turns riding the bicycle that powered the build monkey machine and dance and dance and dance with all of our beautiful women while we bottled the next batch of beer under the clear stars....woah where was I? oh yes. both by choice and circumstance!

Maylock DeathTwister Stansbury   (Jun 27, 2006 at 11:54 GMT)

YES INDIE BY CHOICE!!!!
Wow you hit a nerve. I could post my bitch about the corporate world, but none of us would have the savvy or the know-how to deal with the other a'sssss that rip you off because you know computers. I have worked as a programmer/tech/instructor for close to 30 years and 70% of my friends are because I can fix their windows PC. The same when you work for someone. YES INDIE BY CHOICE!!!!!! We do music, art and lots of other stuff that people want us to do but don't want to pay for and we still continue to stay with the community. BUT indie is getting like the hippie culture, hey man let's trade, hey man give me some. or hey man do a brother a favor. Yea indies a bitch, but it's the only way. My associate Maylock and I have been writing music all of our lives and we know about the suck you dry for your talent and get nothing in return, so we have formed the Indie Music Society(R) and we are setting up a streaming internet radio station to stream the audio from that site. If you have the latest multi-media updates go to www.takilmafm.com to see the beginnings of this setup. Of course we have to make a living so we are already talking to music equiptment manufacturers for advertising, but cool advertising. No Record Companies (except verified indie labels, there's a book!!!) or talent agencies. Only musical equiptment, musical software and computer dedicated to music will be allowed.
I ramble. I am seriously considering a blog on the indiemusicsociety.com
Thanks GG for the indie spirit.

Alan H   (Jun 27, 2006 at 12:10 GMT)

I already work in the corporate world and make too much money to quit my day job to be able to justify starting over in a new career track on the bottom rung. Which is what would happen if I switched now since my 17 years in IT is mostly based in Network Admin and not in programming or multimedia.

So I plug away in my free time on my game ideas to hopefully make a few extra dinero.

As for the anti-establishment thing, that's for people who want to draw attention away from their own mediocrity. The anti becomes the establishment when it replaces the old guard. That's why "alternative" music is just relabeled "Mainstream" music. It replaced the old mainstream.

Shon Gale   (Jun 27, 2006 at 12:15 GMT)

Sorry about that but I was logged in as my business associate. People take offense here way too easy. Life is too short to be offended by someone else's view. In direct response to you Jeff, why take offense at questioning our environment. It this not healthy? Not to create a furor, but I don't post on GG much anymore after being called names by GG staff and associates and having my complaints treated like I am the a*hole. But when one is not sure of one's self, we defend!! So I would love to see more of a real community, rather than name calling and speaking of how offended I am and the like. Everyone's got a bitch and hopefully you didn't marry her.
Any hoo!!!!! I love GG and it's basic premise. Make GAMES and then make MORE GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joshua Dallman   (Jun 28, 2006 at 03:09 GMT)

Quote:

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Do you wholeheartedly agree with the anti-establishment stance that gets paraded around endlessly?

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I do agree with the anti-establishment stance, but wholeheartedly? No, that would be an extreme view that would leave no room for high quality corporate games as others have mentioned. There's room in the marketplace for a variety of vendors-of-fun.

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Do you do this to work on concepts that couldn't possibly be done in today's marketing-driven industry?

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Yes and no. SOME of my games, like my adult-targeted ballet zombie game, would never be made by the industry. But other games, like my more mainstream turtle-themed Scorch clone, might be. So yes and no.

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Do you strive to be the new Gaming Rockstars?

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Hell yeah! In the geekiest sense of the phrase "rockstar" of course. I remember being a kid and reading interviews with Zelda's creator, and Toe Jam & Earl's creators, and those guys were inspirations to me, I wanted to be like them, and it's hard to outgrow that, or better, why should you feel you have to? Your motives grow in depth and complexity - that's FAR from why you'd make games (!!!) - but one reason why? Sure, why not.

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Or is it more the case that you are an indie because of circumstance; because you don't work for a gaming company and you don't have access to the kind of resources you could really do with?

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I can see where some would take offense to this but I think that's just being insecure. It's like if you're a skateboarder who's unsigned, is it that you're not good enough to get signed or that you don't want to sell out? It sounds a little challenging, like a challenge asking if you're good enough or not. And maybe you hit a bit of a nerve because truthfully most indies aren't (including me). We're game industry castaways, rejects, and malcontents! I mean think about indie heritage, which is shareware. Most shareware game creators couldn't get jobs at game companies designing games. No way. Ditto for hobbyists/prosumers. But it sounds cooler if you say "yeah I'm indie cuz screw the man, man!" I think there's only an elite few that HAVE the choice whether to work in the industry or as an indie. If you don't have the choice, it doesn't mean you're forced to be indie, just that it becomes default whether you embrace indie-dom or not.

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Essentially: Are You Indie By Choice?

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Yes and no. IF I could get a job designing games - not testing them - AT a cool game company, whether that company was indie or not wouldn't matter if it was a cool place and cool people and the right everything. But, by "circumstance" (a stretch of the word's use) I can not get that job, if it even exists, so that is ONE reason I'm indie. The other reason is that games are a form of personal expression for me, and I couldn't express that as fully as another guy on a big team versus the head guy on a very very small team. And because of a million other good reasons to be indie (control IP, control work environment/hours, etc etc).

In the end I don't think there's any simple answers to your questions. There's a million of us out here and just as many reasons for making the choices or being in the places we are. And ultimately I think the question is irrelevant as long as you're making games and having kick ass fun doing it. If that's the case who cares if you're "indie" or not??

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