Industry Professional turns indie - seeks advice
by Jay Barnson · in General Discussion · 09/26/2003 (11:42 am) · 22 replies
After six years programming videogames for a living, I gave it up for a slightly higher-paying, theoretically more stable and less stressful (HAH!) programming position outside of gaming. Three years and three companies later, I've been chatting with friends who are still in the games industry, who help remind me about all the things I used to hate about the games industry, but all the things I used to love about writing games. It's fun again. So finally I decide to give it a go, complete a fairly easy project with a 3D engine I've been puttering around with for the last 2 years, and find out about this emerging indie movement and get involved.
I feel like a newbie all over again. I figure the best way to get over that is to plunge in and get all my mistakes made early. But I'd still like to hear advice and suggestions from those who have been down this road before me. I also had some questions that I haven't seen answered here or on other indie game development forums:
#1 - GG specific: Assuming one already has a game engine, a website to call home, and a business license... what advantage does publishing through Garage Games offer that another shareware hosting service (which takes a smaller percentage) does not?
#2 - It seems that the indie game "companies" mirror Hollywood in a pretty disturbing way - companies seem to form for the purpose of producing a single title. When the title is completed (or, more often, dropped), the company often dissolves. Is this typical, or just my perception? Or is it mainly the unsuccessful ones which do this?
#3 - It seems that 99% of the indie game projects out there get to a particular stage and then dissapear. The old 80/20 rule... "20% of the job takes 80% of the effort" may be at work here. But I was wondering if there really is such a high rate of failure in indie game development projects, and what people thought the leading causes of failure were.
#4 - Like everyone else, I'm curious about numbers of units sold. It sounds like most indie game titles are lucky to sell double digit numbers. Now I know there are a few break-away hits that buck the odds ("Bejeweled" comes to mind), but that's not what I'm interested in. The big boys play the hit game, and it's a dangerous gamble to pin a business on (even a part-time side-business). I'm more interested in the "working-class" indie games: The solid, well-done titles like the top contenders in the IGF, or titles like Marble Madness & Orbz.
#5 - What sort of target hardware are best to shoot for? While an indie doesn't have the budget to compete in a battle of looks & flash against the major publishers of the world, does making a game that can run on a 300 mhz celeron with a TNT-2 actually hurt potential sales because it is dismissed by gamers as not being "worthy?"
#6 - The folks who have successfully published titles through independent channels - are your games pretty much part-time ventures, or do you work on it full-time and do contract / part-time work to support your game development gig (or are you so successful you make a decent living doing indie games alone)?
#7 - For those seasoned vets of indie game development: Were there any blunders you made with the release of your first indie title(s) that you wish someone had warned you about? I'd love to hear any sort of cautionary war-stories.
#8 - Besides the GG crew, who else has made the move from professional, non-indie game development to the indie scene? What are your thoughts about the transition? Any rude awakenings?
#9 - I noticed that many of Garage Games' titles have online, multiplayer play on what looks like a common server. Is this a single server, or a matchmaking server of some kind? If so, does GG maintain this, or is this done by the individual studios?
#10 - There is no 10. Yet.
Well, that's a TON of questions. I look forward to hearing back on any of these, or any other bits of advice.
I feel like a newbie all over again. I figure the best way to get over that is to plunge in and get all my mistakes made early. But I'd still like to hear advice and suggestions from those who have been down this road before me. I also had some questions that I haven't seen answered here or on other indie game development forums:
#1 - GG specific: Assuming one already has a game engine, a website to call home, and a business license... what advantage does publishing through Garage Games offer that another shareware hosting service (which takes a smaller percentage) does not?
#2 - It seems that the indie game "companies" mirror Hollywood in a pretty disturbing way - companies seem to form for the purpose of producing a single title. When the title is completed (or, more often, dropped), the company often dissolves. Is this typical, or just my perception? Or is it mainly the unsuccessful ones which do this?
#3 - It seems that 99% of the indie game projects out there get to a particular stage and then dissapear. The old 80/20 rule... "20% of the job takes 80% of the effort" may be at work here. But I was wondering if there really is such a high rate of failure in indie game development projects, and what people thought the leading causes of failure were.
#4 - Like everyone else, I'm curious about numbers of units sold. It sounds like most indie game titles are lucky to sell double digit numbers. Now I know there are a few break-away hits that buck the odds ("Bejeweled" comes to mind), but that's not what I'm interested in. The big boys play the hit game, and it's a dangerous gamble to pin a business on (even a part-time side-business). I'm more interested in the "working-class" indie games: The solid, well-done titles like the top contenders in the IGF, or titles like Marble Madness & Orbz.
#5 - What sort of target hardware are best to shoot for? While an indie doesn't have the budget to compete in a battle of looks & flash against the major publishers of the world, does making a game that can run on a 300 mhz celeron with a TNT-2 actually hurt potential sales because it is dismissed by gamers as not being "worthy?"
#6 - The folks who have successfully published titles through independent channels - are your games pretty much part-time ventures, or do you work on it full-time and do contract / part-time work to support your game development gig (or are you so successful you make a decent living doing indie games alone)?
#7 - For those seasoned vets of indie game development: Were there any blunders you made with the release of your first indie title(s) that you wish someone had warned you about? I'd love to hear any sort of cautionary war-stories.
#8 - Besides the GG crew, who else has made the move from professional, non-indie game development to the indie scene? What are your thoughts about the transition? Any rude awakenings?
#9 - I noticed that many of Garage Games' titles have online, multiplayer play on what looks like a common server. Is this a single server, or a matchmaking server of some kind? If so, does GG maintain this, or is this done by the individual studios?
#10 - There is no 10. Yet.
Well, that's a TON of questions. I look forward to hearing back on any of these, or any other bits of advice.
About the author
Jay has been a mainstream and indie game developer for a... uh, long time. His professional start came in 1994 developing titles for the then-unknown and upcoming Sony Playstation. He runs Rampant Games and blogs at Tales of the Rampant Coyote.
#2
#5 Depends on the type of game. If you are not trying to compete with mainstream titles in popular genera such as FPS, RTS, and sports, you will probably do OK with less than cutting edge graphics. Starshatter runs fine on a TNT-2 card with a mid range Pentium 2, and I never get any grief about the graphics.
#7 Go talk to the guys at Dexterity.com
#8 Go talk to Brian Hook at Pyrogon.com
09/26/2003 (1:44 pm)
#2 More successful companies tend to produce a larger number of smaller games.#5 Depends on the type of game. If you are not trying to compete with mainstream titles in popular genera such as FPS, RTS, and sports, you will probably do OK with less than cutting edge graphics. Starshatter runs fine on a TNT-2 card with a mid range Pentium 2, and I never get any grief about the graphics.
#7 Go talk to the guys at Dexterity.com
#8 Go talk to Brian Hook at Pyrogon.com
#3
Short answers:
2. It is mainly the unsucessful 'companies' that do this.
3. People who are attempting projects beyond the scope of their abilites and resources.
4. I am not sure what I can and cannot say here. We are under NDA with a lot of this for legal reasons and because some of the channels are protective of this info. I will wait for GarageGames to make a some offical numbers statements when they feel it is appropriate. We are doign well, and are pleased with our sales.
5. no, we targeted that type of machine for ThinkTanks, ans it appears that a good number of the people who play are game are running Rage128s. It all depends on the type fop game though... if you are targeting a core audience, then the target might be different.
6.Full Time and getting by...
7. No big blunders.. lots and lots of little things to be aware of (tweaking the demo for higher conversion). We are still learning and see what works and what does not work.
8. We have. Thoughts? I now love my job. I am now poor. Kind of strange, but I am not making even close to what I used to make but I am 1000% happier. No rude awakenings, other than the business end of business is hard and time consuming.
9. For ThinkTanks, GarageGames maintains a master server that tells the clients where the game servers are. We have hosting of game servers in several locations (not at GarageGames).
09/26/2003 (2:25 pm)
Are you coming to the InideGamesCon? I could type up a long post to answer all your questions in a lot of detail, but I don't have the time right at this moment to do so, and it might be better to answer some of the questrions in person.Short answers:
2. It is mainly the unsucessful 'companies' that do this.
3. People who are attempting projects beyond the scope of their abilites and resources.
4. I am not sure what I can and cannot say here. We are under NDA with a lot of this for legal reasons and because some of the channels are protective of this info. I will wait for GarageGames to make a some offical numbers statements when they feel it is appropriate. We are doign well, and are pleased with our sales.
5. no, we targeted that type of machine for ThinkTanks, ans it appears that a good number of the people who play are game are running Rage128s. It all depends on the type fop game though... if you are targeting a core audience, then the target might be different.
6.Full Time and getting by...
7. No big blunders.. lots and lots of little things to be aware of (tweaking the demo for higher conversion). We are still learning and see what works and what does not work.
8. We have. Thoughts? I now love my job. I am now poor. Kind of strange, but I am not making even close to what I used to make but I am 1000% happier. No rude awakenings, other than the business end of business is hard and time consuming.
9. For ThinkTanks, GarageGames maintains a master server that tells the clients where the game servers are. We have hosting of game servers in several locations (not at GarageGames).
#4
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4633
I'm not sure quite how well our game performs on a low end machine as the slowest we have is a P2 400 with 32mb Geforce 2 and it runs with all detail on at 1024x768 32 bit (so long as the dunamic shadows are turned off) we also got it running well on a laptop with a 16mb S3 video card. I'm just hoping that we can get a business going that will pay enough to enable us both to work from home fulltime.
One question I have would be, Is Realone arcade worth persuing as well as Garage games? At this stage having just started and being 3 months old were anxious to get some results that will enable us to continue with further titles.
Heh Joe, I know what you mean. I'm really happy working on my game, but its hard on my wife as our household income has dropped from 100k to less than 50 and its tough juggling those bills when you have debts and need to count pennies to buy toilet roll :) But I enjoy making my game, and expect to be able to produce 2 fairly ambitious titles a year, and a couple of puzzlers in between :)
Keep an eye out for leadfoot productions, I'm hoping we will be sticking around :)
09/26/2003 (9:17 pm)
Heh, I'm another Commercial Developer thats going indie in part as a matter of convenience. The nearest developer is 70 miles away, and I spent 16 months of my last job doing a 200 mile daily commute, so when the developer I wasworking for ran out of funds I decided to make a go at indie game development. There are only two of us and in the last 3 months we have come up with what we hope will be a sucessfull indie game published by Garage games. There are a couple of screens on my plan at:http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4633
I'm not sure quite how well our game performs on a low end machine as the slowest we have is a P2 400 with 32mb Geforce 2 and it runs with all detail on at 1024x768 32 bit (so long as the dunamic shadows are turned off) we also got it running well on a laptop with a 16mb S3 video card. I'm just hoping that we can get a business going that will pay enough to enable us both to work from home fulltime.
One question I have would be, Is Realone arcade worth persuing as well as Garage games? At this stage having just started and being 3 months old were anxious to get some results that will enable us to continue with further titles.
Heh Joe, I know what you mean. I'm really happy working on my game, but its hard on my wife as our household income has dropped from 100k to less than 50 and its tough juggling those bills when you have debts and need to count pennies to buy toilet roll :) But I enjoy making my game, and expect to be able to produce 2 fairly ambitious titles a year, and a couple of puzzlers in between :)
Keep an eye out for leadfoot productions, I'm hoping we will be sticking around :)
#5
09/28/2003 (2:04 pm)
I wrote this in a thread a while ago, but it bears repeating. An indie developer and publisher here in town has survived for about ten years just making small games, like card, puzzle, and simple social games. They make a bunch of versions and some new games every year, and most of their customers are repeat ones coming back. It's the minesweeper/solitaire crowd. Making one big game a year like a larger studio is a big gamble.
#6
The key part of this is to have really good tools. I have to admire Garage Games for providing these for such an incredible price. I'm not using Torque for my current project, but I may in the future.
It does look like the card & puzzle game area has become pretty saturated lately. Maybe the success of Bejeweled caused that - but I can see why it's such prime territory for game developers. After all, that style of game isn't significantly improved by technology, so you can still make them like they've been made for the last 20 years - and with the same kind of budget and team size they had making them 20 years ago.
I appreciate all the advice in this thread. Please don't stop! Likewise, if there's anything I have to offer by way of advice or suggestions from my experience, please don't hesitate to ask. Dunno if I have any... I developed games professionally for six years, but I'm still kinda feeling like a fish out of water here :)
09/28/2003 (6:30 pm)
That's the thing that attracted me to the Indie movement --- I can't help but feel that the whole hit-driven business model of the big publishers is about like writing a business plan that includes regular trips to Las Vegas as a profit center. A couple of close industry friends of mine and I have been chatting about this for years now - how to make games CHEAPLY so they don't have to sell 500,000+ copies in order to be profitable.The key part of this is to have really good tools. I have to admire Garage Games for providing these for such an incredible price. I'm not using Torque for my current project, but I may in the future.
It does look like the card & puzzle game area has become pretty saturated lately. Maybe the success of Bejeweled caused that - but I can see why it's such prime territory for game developers. After all, that style of game isn't significantly improved by technology, so you can still make them like they've been made for the last 20 years - and with the same kind of budget and team size they had making them 20 years ago.
I appreciate all the advice in this thread. Please don't stop! Likewise, if there's anything I have to offer by way of advice or suggestions from my experience, please don't hesitate to ask. Dunno if I have any... I developed games professionally for six years, but I'm still kinda feeling like a fish out of water here :)
#7
If you look at my plan my current game thats now complete is quite nice and in a geenre that hasn't been done to much in realtime 3D. Whether it sells or not is anyones guess, I believe it will, but only with a lot of work on our part. It's hardly a cutting edge engine, it is based on DX7, is very stable and runs on a broad range of systems.
We are about to try a 233mhz pentium with 16mb video card and expect it to run ok at lower resolutions with the dynamic shadows turned off. Our game has auto profiling to determine whether your CPU can handle the shadows, but settings can be changed after the fact if the user feels the need to fiddle. we kept things like multitexturing to a minimum even though I would have liked to use lightmaps we drew the line at vertex colours and spherical environment maps.
I think tools are the key to producing a good looking and fun game that can be produced in a relatively short time. I was offered a 50% stake in the game to redo the graphics as GG had turned the title down previously on the poor quality of the artwork the previous version can be seen at www.dailydining.com
I am in som eways fortunate enough to have worked on some commercial titles and have some licenced software that I would otherwise not have been able to afford. With only 2 of us working on the game it helped keep the cost down. Actually I think the marketing and getting the demo out on the web may actually cost more financially than the development of the game did, allthough in man hours our game easily exceeded $20,000 in time. Whether we can get this back through sales is a question that can't ba answered but I think that with GG's help we will be in with a good chance.
Were about to start a puzzle game that will be primarily 2D but done in a 3D engine to give you more versatility in the effects department, but appart from eye candy it will be a 2D game. ZFor some reason 3D puzzler usually end up relying on a 3D gimmick and fall flat on their face for one reason or another. Allthough if anyone knows of any particularily good ones, I'd like to see them :)
09/28/2003 (7:14 pm)
:). Yeah It's hard to say whether the general puzzle market is saturated unless you play all the games and can't think of something new and fun that hasn't been done before. Being an Artist myself I am pretty excited about more ambitious projects but creating them for myself as much as for others. If you look at my plan my current game thats now complete is quite nice and in a geenre that hasn't been done to much in realtime 3D. Whether it sells or not is anyones guess, I believe it will, but only with a lot of work on our part. It's hardly a cutting edge engine, it is based on DX7, is very stable and runs on a broad range of systems.
We are about to try a 233mhz pentium with 16mb video card and expect it to run ok at lower resolutions with the dynamic shadows turned off. Our game has auto profiling to determine whether your CPU can handle the shadows, but settings can be changed after the fact if the user feels the need to fiddle. we kept things like multitexturing to a minimum even though I would have liked to use lightmaps we drew the line at vertex colours and spherical environment maps.
I think tools are the key to producing a good looking and fun game that can be produced in a relatively short time. I was offered a 50% stake in the game to redo the graphics as GG had turned the title down previously on the poor quality of the artwork the previous version can be seen at www.dailydining.com
I am in som eways fortunate enough to have worked on some commercial titles and have some licenced software that I would otherwise not have been able to afford. With only 2 of us working on the game it helped keep the cost down. Actually I think the marketing and getting the demo out on the web may actually cost more financially than the development of the game did, allthough in man hours our game easily exceeded $20,000 in time. Whether we can get this back through sales is a question that can't ba answered but I think that with GG's help we will be in with a good chance.
Were about to start a puzzle game that will be primarily 2D but done in a 3D engine to give you more versatility in the effects department, but appart from eye candy it will be a 2D game. ZFor some reason 3D puzzler usually end up relying on a 3D gimmick and fall flat on their face for one reason or another. Allthough if anyone knows of any particularily good ones, I'd like to see them :)
#8
It's not just making them cheaply. You have to be able to sell them cheaply as well.
09/29/2003 (3:15 pm)
Quote:how to make games CHEAPLY so they don't have to sell 500,000+ copies in order to be profitableI think you may have cause and effect reversed. Games don't have to sell a lot of copies because they cost so much to make. Games cost a lot to make because they need extremely high production values and tons of hype so that they will sell a lot of copies, because retailers are only interested in games that will sell a lot of copies in a short period of time. Shelf space is really expensive.
It's not just making them cheaply. You have to be able to sell them cheaply as well.
#9
One of the biggest hurdles in my finding a good project to work on (being a Artist) was finding a project with a good art path. The one I have now has a WYSIWYG viewer that rund from withing 3DSmax and allows you to see your assets rendered in realtime using the actual game engine. The editor we Use is WYSIWYG too and allows me to model both interiors and exteriors along with character studio, bones and vertex animation, setting up of lighting, different types of collision for players and camera from within 3dsmax too. The exporter also has a custom material type in max that supports the engine features directly including all brush/textures and blend mode flags.
This is really usefull as I can see my work as it looks in the engine without having to export to the game, I can see it rendered in the geme engine in max in seconds, but when I do export it its direct without any 3rd party tools to have to juggle through to get imperfect data that my engine may or may not understand.
09/29/2003 (4:22 pm)
Making a game cheaply is important too though. When you consider that a average game artist gets paid $50,000 being able to work quickly and efficiently with good tools is important. A quick and easy fully featured art path is really important in producing high production values. Customization and being able to modify your tools to fit tasks specific to your game is important to and overlooked by a lot of people making indie games today.One of the biggest hurdles in my finding a good project to work on (being a Artist) was finding a project with a good art path. The one I have now has a WYSIWYG viewer that rund from withing 3DSmax and allows you to see your assets rendered in realtime using the actual game engine. The editor we Use is WYSIWYG too and allows me to model both interiors and exteriors along with character studio, bones and vertex animation, setting up of lighting, different types of collision for players and camera from within 3dsmax too. The exporter also has a custom material type in max that supports the engine features directly including all brush/textures and blend mode flags.
This is really usefull as I can see my work as it looks in the engine without having to export to the game, I can see it rendered in the geme engine in max in seconds, but when I do export it its direct without any 3rd party tools to have to juggle through to get imperfect data that my engine may or may not understand.
#10
I think it's more publisher / development driven. The rising costs of game creation (hey, SOMEBODY'S got to create those millions of polygons your 3D card is capable of drawing per second!) means it takes a LOT of sales to break even, and most games don't make it. So you have a single hit title supporting several failed ones.
09/29/2003 (11:59 pm)
John, I'm afraid I just don't see the retailers driving those kinds of sales. Sure, they want product that moves quickly - but I don't see how that's why the large publishers aren't interested in titles that are unlikely to break the half-million sales mark. I'm not a retailer, but my best guess is they don't care what games or how many of each there are on the shelves - so long as they MOVE. If they got 300 new titles a week, but they could buy 4 copies each and be sure that all 4 copes would move, they'd be happy to do things that way. Likewise, if they only got 3 new games per week, could buy 400 copies each and sell through all of them, they'd be just as happy. It's just that there is no such thing as those kinds of guarantees.I think it's more publisher / development driven. The rising costs of game creation (hey, SOMEBODY'S got to create those millions of polygons your 3D card is capable of drawing per second!) means it takes a LOT of sales to break even, and most games don't make it. So you have a single hit title supporting several failed ones.
#11
Ya think? :) Target would not carry Canopy's "Atomic Mutant" game, period. It wasn't a movie or product tie-in. Though it was very happy to take their "Midnight Outlaw Illegal Street Drag" because of The Fast and the Furious. *sigh*
Developing a game, fulltime, using credit as your bankroll, and depending on it to sell is the razor's edge. I haven't felt like this in years, I am alive.
-J
09/30/2003 (2:35 am)
"I'm not a retailer, but my best guess is they don't care what games or how many of each there are on the shelves - so long as they MOVE. "Ya think? :) Target would not carry Canopy's "Atomic Mutant" game, period. It wasn't a movie or product tie-in. Though it was very happy to take their "Midnight Outlaw Illegal Street Drag" because of The Fast and the Furious. *sigh*
Developing a game, fulltime, using credit as your bankroll, and depending on it to sell is the razor's edge. I haven't felt like this in years, I am alive.
-J
#12
Try to avoid what I call 'the missing art syndrome'. This is a condition that afflects projects where the artists are at the mercy of a project lead who doesn't really have a clear vision for the game. This results in artwork that's produced in the beginning but gets the axe because the design changes midstream. This might be acceptable in the big-time industry setting but with no-budget indie projects you're asking people to sacrifice alot of personal hardwork to satisfy your own whim to make changes in the game.
You have to have a solid design doc that spells out exactly what you expect from your team members. Be mindful of those tasks that you assign various members. Allowing one member to overstep the work of another because you're afraid of saying no will only drive wedge through your team.
Lastly, before you begin make a resolve to complete the project. If you make this committment you should make your game small and easily attainable.
09/30/2003 (3:50 am)
Before you start down that road you should know what you want way in advance. Whichever engine you end up with make sure you familiarize yourself with its capabilities. I don't think you can do better than Torque plus you get the die-hard community support other engines don't have.Try to avoid what I call 'the missing art syndrome'. This is a condition that afflects projects where the artists are at the mercy of a project lead who doesn't really have a clear vision for the game. This results in artwork that's produced in the beginning but gets the axe because the design changes midstream. This might be acceptable in the big-time industry setting but with no-budget indie projects you're asking people to sacrifice alot of personal hardwork to satisfy your own whim to make changes in the game.
You have to have a solid design doc that spells out exactly what you expect from your team members. Be mindful of those tasks that you assign various members. Allowing one member to overstep the work of another because you're afraid of saying no will only drive wedge through your team.
Lastly, before you begin make a resolve to complete the project. If you make this committment you should make your game small and easily attainable.
#13
I think the one determining feature that made it not a terrible mistake was that the shadow system opened our eyes to a whole new way of thinking, and potimizing the bulding of our levels in order to make them more efficient and allowing us to almost double our visible geometry and still use CPU intensive dynamic shadows within a older DX7 engine.
It did mean that we missed our intended deadline by as much as a month, but on the other hand having no publisher meant we could afford to make this luxury. What made this work in the end was that there were only 2 of us with a fair amount of experience and deterination to finish what we had started. But when teams particularly larger teams are working on projects you need every bit of help you can get to keep the project going.
And to John, I am not sure that selling Indie games at retail is the best way to make a lot of money. Perhaps to boost the developers ego, but at the end of the day it is very hard to compete in a retail store when last years AAA titles are selling for as much as or perhaps less than your own. My local EB no longer has a budget shelf with games by small publishers, instead they expanded their range of cool looking plastic toys and PC peripherals shelf along with selling a few more Mac games and Used DVD movies.
I think Online is still the best way to go, keeping your teams small, your tools streamilined and getting the best return on royalties that you can. I noticed that you get a much smaller % for retail boxes and I really can't imagine the games leave the shelves in a hurry. Didn't egames report pretty big losses in the past quarter and require new funding (I think I read this on Gamasutra) or the Gamedaily newsletter recently.
09/30/2003 (7:31 am)
NR Bharathae, some good points. Particularly with an experienced team or ever changing engine and tools. Its so easy to have feature creep where a few months before completion you discover a cool new feature that allthough really super cool might not actually be that important to how the game plays. WE had a little bit of this in our game with the shadow system. Our initial game had simple projected bitmap shadows and we really loved the idea of Dynamic ones so we experimented for a weekend and decided to implement them in a 70% complete game with perhaps 3 weeks left to go.I think the one determining feature that made it not a terrible mistake was that the shadow system opened our eyes to a whole new way of thinking, and potimizing the bulding of our levels in order to make them more efficient and allowing us to almost double our visible geometry and still use CPU intensive dynamic shadows within a older DX7 engine.
It did mean that we missed our intended deadline by as much as a month, but on the other hand having no publisher meant we could afford to make this luxury. What made this work in the end was that there were only 2 of us with a fair amount of experience and deterination to finish what we had started. But when teams particularly larger teams are working on projects you need every bit of help you can get to keep the project going.
And to John, I am not sure that selling Indie games at retail is the best way to make a lot of money. Perhaps to boost the developers ego, but at the end of the day it is very hard to compete in a retail store when last years AAA titles are selling for as much as or perhaps less than your own. My local EB no longer has a budget shelf with games by small publishers, instead they expanded their range of cool looking plastic toys and PC peripherals shelf along with selling a few more Mac games and Used DVD movies.
I think Online is still the best way to go, keeping your teams small, your tools streamilined and getting the best return on royalties that you can. I noticed that you get a much smaller % for retail boxes and I really can't imagine the games leave the shelves in a hurry. Didn't egames report pretty big losses in the past quarter and require new funding (I think I read this on Gamasutra) or the Gamedaily newsletter recently.
#14
I'm not saying that it's not retailer driven - I'm just saying it's not ALL retailer driven. Retailers ARE in the driver's seat right now... games sell 10x or more if they make their way into Wal-Mart and Electronics Boutique, and the fight for shelf space is intense. That competition for space is helping to drive the problem... the winners win more, and the losers lose more. And that IS why PC games are getting squeezed out. But ultimately, it's not the retailers who live or die on whether not Fragmatic 4 sells 200,000 copies or 800,000 copies... they just don't want to clutter up their shelves with stock that moves too slowly.
I just see it as being more of a symptom & contributing factor than the cause.
So here's the next question: There's no question that online ordering is coming of age, with EBay, Amazon, and so forth all gaining status in the popular conscience. But brick & mortar retail is still going to be the king of the "impulse buys." So... will online ordering eventually surpass retail for non-perishables like software? If so, what has to happen first? And anyone have a crystal ball to tell us when this will happen?
09/30/2003 (8:06 am)
I should probably ammend my comments somewhat (it was late when I wrote that and wasn't thinking clearly).I'm not saying that it's not retailer driven - I'm just saying it's not ALL retailer driven. Retailers ARE in the driver's seat right now... games sell 10x or more if they make their way into Wal-Mart and Electronics Boutique, and the fight for shelf space is intense. That competition for space is helping to drive the problem... the winners win more, and the losers lose more. And that IS why PC games are getting squeezed out. But ultimately, it's not the retailers who live or die on whether not Fragmatic 4 sells 200,000 copies or 800,000 copies... they just don't want to clutter up their shelves with stock that moves too slowly.
I just see it as being more of a symptom & contributing factor than the cause.
So here's the next question: There's no question that online ordering is coming of age, with EBay, Amazon, and so forth all gaining status in the popular conscience. But brick & mortar retail is still going to be the king of the "impulse buys." So... will online ordering eventually surpass retail for non-perishables like software? If so, what has to happen first? And anyone have a crystal ball to tell us when this will happen?
#15
09/30/2003 (6:52 pm)
Aren't the monthly subscription/persistant world games a good hook for generating revenue? I'm not savy on the business end so I wouldn't know. But I've heard this is a good avenue to take.
#16
But I think the idea of a subscription-based non-massively-multiplayer gaming service is pretty cool - and possibly a great opportunity for indies. Of course, it is likely to LOSE money before it makes money, which is the downside of such a venture.
09/30/2003 (7:53 pm)
It's worked well for a handful of games (EQ, DAoC, UO, and I think AC), but I think most of the rest of them haven't really done that well.But I think the idea of a subscription-based non-massively-multiplayer gaming service is pretty cool - and possibly a great opportunity for indies. Of course, it is likely to LOSE money before it makes money, which is the downside of such a venture.
#17
09/30/2003 (9:16 pm)
Hmm, I think you need to be an establihsed and trusted developer if you want this kind of business format to succeed. But its an interesting idea if your team can stay dedicated and focused 100% in the product your making.
#18
09/30/2003 (9:32 pm)
I think it would take far more than a single team.
#19
One question I'll give you the quick answer to is:
#1 GarageGames isn't the best fit for all games or studios, but we offer visibility, PR, a solid grounding in building a brand that is independent and for those games that hit the fun quality mark we can also assist in getting a game into other online distribution channels. You own the IP and we work with you to promote and build community for your game.
09/30/2003 (10:33 pm)
Jay (great name by the way) you ask some great questions and actually some of our sessions at Indie Games Con are designed to have a dialog around these issues (not meant as a marketing plug, but some in depth discussions like this are easier face to face). One question I'll give you the quick answer to is:
#1 GarageGames isn't the best fit for all games or studios, but we offer visibility, PR, a solid grounding in building a brand that is independent and for those games that hit the fun quality mark we can also assist in getting a game into other online distribution channels. You own the IP and we work with you to promote and build community for your game.
#20
I noticed that Think Tanks was also released through Shockwave (And RealArcade?) Does GG have some sort of policy concerning online distribution? It seems like you are trying to be more than just one of many distribution points for titles.
I guess part of my question is what visibility and PR do you provide? I think I may have answered my own question - I've seen an article on Garage Games in Computer Gaming World and I believe in a couple of other news blurbs... but is there more, or does that prove sufficient? Does GG have contacts that your average indie developer not have access to? Does GG provide the eqivalent of the "box art" appearing on the home page?
Also, is GarageGames pushing for a particular brand identity? If so, what identifies this? It seems like there's an emphasis on 3D family-oriented games - which is cool - though Mutant Storm bucks the trend by being a fairly 2D-ish "shoot-em-up".
Thanks again for all the great answers and suggestions. Alas, the last couple of days I've been spending more time chasing memory leaks than really pushing my game to new levels, but ya does what ya can.
09/30/2003 (11:47 pm)
Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend the IGC this year - but I am tentatively planning on doing so next year. Though by that time I hope to have two titles out the door by whatever means.I noticed that Think Tanks was also released through Shockwave (And RealArcade?) Does GG have some sort of policy concerning online distribution? It seems like you are trying to be more than just one of many distribution points for titles.
I guess part of my question is what visibility and PR do you provide? I think I may have answered my own question - I've seen an article on Garage Games in Computer Gaming World and I believe in a couple of other news blurbs... but is there more, or does that prove sufficient? Does GG have contacts that your average indie developer not have access to? Does GG provide the eqivalent of the "box art" appearing on the home page?
Also, is GarageGames pushing for a particular brand identity? If so, what identifies this? It seems like there's an emphasis on 3D family-oriented games - which is cool - though Mutant Storm bucks the trend by being a fairly 2D-ish "shoot-em-up".
Thanks again for all the great answers and suggestions. Alas, the last couple of days I've been spending more time chasing memory leaks than really pushing my game to new levels, but ya does what ya can.
Torque 3D Owner Sebastien Bourgon
#2 - I know off hand that we will be working to produce additional titles. BraveTree while yet to produce another game title, has produced other works, although BraveTree is made up of 3 former Dynamix employees. 21-6 (Orbz) is still around as a group, as for future products I'm not sure about them.
#3 - I think its personal lives doing this to teams. It can be hard to do long term work on a project that will take alot of your time and yet pay nothing or very little. New jobs tend to get in the way of things, and so project members tend to leave.
#5 ThinkTanks runs at 10+fps w/ TNT cards and Pentium 2 400s. Clark Fagot has a nice .plan update on how he managed to optimize it to get it to that level. Personally I find that Torque is CPU Bound rather then Video card bound. I get nearly the same framerate in both 800x600 and 1024x768 on my ATI Radeon 9200.
#6 Wish I could answer this, but we haven't published anything :)
#7 Not a seasoned vet either :)
#8 BraveTree is also made up of former professional game developers.
#9 GarageGames maintains a common master server for published games and torque users to access.
#10. The Answer is Yes.