GG Game Store Turns 50 Games Strong

Today the GarageGames Game Store just published its 50th game! With the recent open beta launch of the Great Game Experiment the timing couldn't be better. Together the two are a growing platform for empowering indies. That's exactly what's front and center in our game store: the best indie games!

All our games are from the people who made them. That means you. We are not a reseller or affiliate, we publish your game. If you are an indie developer and you want to sell games, make them and we will publish them.

If you have a game and stay exclusive to your site, you will get a fraction of the exposure. Personal game site sales increase, not decrease, when that game is published elsewhere. Add to that the fact that GarageGames has the best royalty rate for developers and you can't lose.

We are publishing more games than ever before, and we are also publishing more Torque made games than ever before. Both are increasing, and this is good for both Torque developers and all indie developers.

Developers frequently respond with surprise upon expressed interest in publishing their game. Word on the street is that we only publish Torque games. That has never been the case, Robot Battle was one of the first games published here (and remains incredibly popular). We publish great indie games no matter what the engine.

That's not to say Torque won't help, but not because we want to sell more Torques. From a publishing standpoint, Torque games are ideal because the agile portability of the codebase opens opportunites to take the game to other formats like consoles and arcade. It further opens the possibility of us continuing work on the game with the developer as co-developers, or taking it from Windows only to Mac. A custom engine will simply not have those opportunties. Further, Torque games come in with the fewest problems and get published with the highest confidence of technical reliability. Games on custom engines have given us QA headaches; we cannot put out technically shoddy games, and it's hard for developers to do full professional QA when they have shoestring resources. Torque will save you the headaches. I'm not the best impartial observer, but I lauded Torque when I was myself an indie and it's still the best thing out there.

I've encountered several developers whose first games were made using a custom engine because there was no TGB at the time. Now there is TGB, but new games are still in development and just starting to arrive more regularly. We used to wonder where all the games were. It was once a big deal when a new Torque game was published. Now it is routine, thanks in part to TGB.

With time we will no longer be thought of as a Torque game store. We are GarageGames afterall and not TorqueGames. GarageGames means indie games, i.e. garage developers. With time and more games, the idea should continue to root that if you make a quality independent game we have a loving home for it here.

I was once asked to name which games in the store I didn't like. I earnestly looked over the list but couldn't find one. Though the number of games is increasing, the quality is not diminishing. Maybe not every game will be for you, but that isn't the point. You don't enjoy every movie you try either because you have preferences. Other people may have opposite taste. There are games in our store for all preferences, and they are all special in some way.

Growth continues, but not with schlock. Some game sites are nothing but endless schlock, as if a thousand of something lame could equal one of something cool. That's not a long tail, that's a crap trail.

Some sites have games "published" that they aren't even hosting. Downloading and installing the game, you wouldn't know the "publisher" was carrying it because there's no branding. There's no branding because they're not really publishing it. All they're providing is a link from their site, then claiming the game as a title in their library. When we publish games, we host the game on our super-fast distributed connection at considerable cost to us, and the game gets the full backing of our marketing department. We don't pad our library with quick links to games we think are cool. Our games are actually published by us.

The industry is full of affiliate programs, resellers, custom branding. You'd be amazed how deep this goes, and who's doing it that you wouldn't guess. It's all too easy for game "publishers" to cherry pick games from other publishers (the big ones) and resell them without ever having contact with the developers. That's not publishing, it's reselling. The game looks like it's in their publishing library but it's not, it's just been transparently branded and you've been had. You will not find that with us.

Some game sites brag about the sheer number of games they have. But who else has all their games from the people who made them, raise your hand. That's hardcore. It takes a little more time, takes developing relationships, takes something you can't just click to get. It's part of what makes our game store offerings special.

Here's a story. One time I was pursuing a hot indie game from a fabled bedroom programmer that was the toast of the town. I contacted the developer and they wanted us to publish their game. However, the rights were exclusively in a big publisher's hands, and I was told to go through the publisher. I went to the publisher and was told to go to a distributor. I went to the distributor and was told to go to an affiliate. I didn't go to the affiliate. How many people have their hands in this little cookie jar of a tiny first-time indie game. Who is really making the money. Not the guys at the bottom. Not the developer.

Independent means being able to independently make decisions. The game was developed independently, but that is not the full lifetime of a game. Once the game meets its audience the real fun begins. Having signed over exclusivity before that happened, that person was no longer able to independently make decisions about the fate of their game. Such as allowing us to carry it, a simple enough thing. How indie still are they?

Another indie can't publish with us, or make any real decision, without the approval of their of the board of directors. How indie are they?

There's celebrity game designers that work for big game companies yet independently make decisions. They wouldn't be considered indie, yet how indie are they?

Take casual games. Go to all the casual game portals and check out the sea of games. Read casual game developer sites and articles about casual games. They make decisions based on market conditions, not game design. How indie are they? Yet ironically most of them actually are indie though they wouldn't identify as such as their indieness is a temporary ailment until they make their fortunes and incorporate or sell off or become a portal themselves.

Shareware games are all indie, but somehow the shareware culture has never been the same as indie culture, though some overlap exists. Reviewers comment that a bad or unfinished indie game "feels like shareware" in a disparaging tone. Indie games came from but surpass shareware. Yet including shareware games as indies doesn't quite fit.

What about an indie studio with funding from a not-so-indie company using a not-so-indie license. Is that legit indie?

What about an indie getting paid to create a game for a client -- is it much different than creating a game for an employer?

What is the cutoff for indie anyway? Two people are indie, ten could still be. What about a hundred? There could be a studio of a hundred that's still indie. Five hundred? It's a little fuzzy what the number is, but we have a feeling for it.

You can't put your finger on it, but you know it when we see it. Whatever indie means to you, I'm happy to say I'm seeing a lot more of it and hope to keep seeing more. The indie game community is larger and more vibrant than I ever thought.

We're looking for and publishing your indie games. This is the best place for indie developers to sell their games. You've heard it before, but now you can see it with your own eyes. Opportunity has never been greater. 50 games published: have one be yours.