Indie or Death

#41 LOL you take cynicism to a new low. I salute you.

Though seriously, you need to channel that cynicism into a creative channel Nate. You can mouth off all you want but it really isn't going to do any good. If you want to rebel, create something I say. That's what I'm going to do... am doing, even. If that universe you've created is any good, if you can tell a good story through it, then damn, go ahead and build yourself a game.

--Paul

#42 Sorry Nate, that was very rude of me. Every piece of art has its value.

#43 Sorry Randall you misunderstood me at some points... so I edited the post a bit and go check it again.

#44 I am creating something, well a few things. When I scratched out those two drawings it was to make bumper stickers. I've already got a lot of content for a game and am working on it.
@Lee: That wasn't rude, I thought your comment was a little humorous. Don't worry about it, I wouldn't call it art, humor maybe but not art.

#45 I used to work at Stainless Software - makers of Carmageddon if anyone remembers that.

It was a truly aweseome place to work and felt very much like an indie outfit. The old boss there was an ageing hippie who's the best programmer I've ever known and he cared not a jot about "suit" stuff. He once threatened to sack me because I didn't want a toke on his joint whilst working on some horrible code!

That company is no more. We went down the pan due to a bad royalty deal. We were then rescued/bought out by Vis and put to work on an EA title. They pulled out as they didn't like our non-borg attitude and the company went flop again.

They tried a 3rd time (I bugged out by now and went over to try and compete (badly) with Randall) and were once again ruined by a publisher because they tried to not make derivative rubbish.

This has got to go full circle hasn't it? The silly thing is that if it does and 'proper' dev firms all die, then indie development will actually become the norm, ie mainstream

Amen to that! :)

#46 I'd like to point out that Paul "Applewood" Johnson was our first direct competitor on PocketPC (he briefly sheds light on this in his post). His game was a "Worms/Scorched Earth" clone, entitled "Battle Dwarves". At the time, neither of us knew about the others project until they were publicly announced within hours of each other on PocketGamer.org.

The friendly competition in the PocketPC industry is great. I haven't admitted this before, but Applewood made us sit up and take notice "that we weren't the ONLY Worms clone, and we might not be the FIRST to launch". So during that period, we did alot of changing.

Before either game launched, Battle Dwarves touted levels exceeding "1024x768" dimensions. At that time, our levels were a tiny 640x480. We quickly bumped them up to 948x545, which is still tiny compared to Battle Dwarves. Many more incremental changes were made in order to ensure we were a valid competitor (to put it bluntly, we were pretty lazy when there WASN'T any competition).

On numerous occasions, I have blatantly told people to try out Battle Dwarves and Worms World Party on PocketPC. Because each of those games offers something that Snails doesn't, and we can't be all things to all people. In fact, we have REFUSED to add in the Ninja Rope, simply because we felt that was something "special" to Worms... and believe me, that is the MOST requested feature.

I feel very lucky that I didn't have to follow Pauls path, in order to come to the realization of the harm done by Publishers and "proper" dev firms. But remember, this isn't restricted to our [gaming] industry- this is common throughout the entire entertainment industry, including literature.

Stan Lee (of Spider-Man fame) shows regret to how foolishly he handled his IPs and work in the early days. Much of it is well documented and shows his rigid belief that self-publication and self-syndication can work, and will very likely be the future.

#47 Hey, I remember Carmageddon. It used the DOOM engine, didn't it (or something like it...?)

We were worried about that one at first, since it was beating us to market (for the PC) by a few months. We were working on a game called "Twisted Metal" - which fortunately ended up being a big hit on the Playstation.

I really DID like the games industry in the early-mid 90's. Maybe it was because I was a neo, or maybe it was because it's changed since then (heck, it's probably changed a lot in the 3.5 years I've been out...). It was around that time that it changed and became Big Business.

Not that I necessarily have a problem with that. But you are talking about something which I still consider a creative endeavor. But you have it being heavily managed (sometimes micromanaged) by people who have traded creativity for risk-aversion, it's easy for the fun and creativity to get lost.

#48 @Randall: So, at least publication of BattleDwarves accomplished something then - it made your game even more successful! What I really wished I had done was take more note of your efforts and looked at mine more. BD was awfully rushed and all done on the cheap as my first PocketPC game. Your however looks positively resplendent. You deserve the success you're having with it and keep it up. Anytime you want to collaborate on a pc title, drop us a line....

@Jay: Doom engine woulda been better. Carmageddon 1 used BRender. The sequel still did also but I wrote a D3D driver for it so it could at least push a decent amount of polys. The graphics were never that hot tbh, but then again it's 'hook' was the physics engine that's still not been beaten to date. The guy who wrote that was a god. I remember Twisted Metal now you mention it too.

I think on balance, certainly true for my own case, that the mainstream games industry has become less and less fun to work in on a perfectly linear (downward) curve that started with a peak around Bullfrogs heyday. Glenn Corpes is still a revered man in this household!

#49 And yes, I know that a linear curve is actually a line! lol