I know, the indie term is a bit a thing of the past these days. Nobody really wants to fall into this category, meaning you are living at your parents, geeking out and developing stuff while hoping for a better future and “carrier”.
Sometimes gamedev feels like a big ocean..
Status for Independent Developers: It’s Complicated. Blurst put their Raptor Safari HD to sleep, Fez is still in play test mode, no news for a long time from the dudes –Jon Blow, 2DBoy, The Behemoth- who kind of started this trend of well crafted games back in 2005 2006.
It shows how hard it is to make games and a living out of it. It’s basically impossible to get a good game out without years of development, could the team be two people or two hundreds, it doesn’t matter it’s still complicated.
But enough with bad news, there’s some good. Really good.
First the Ska Studios aka James Silva case. I remember a blog post before he released his first XBLA game, The DishWasher:
“I live in a freezing apartment in upstate NY. Rent is $750 a month. I buy groceries at Wal-Mart. I buy clothes at Target. I drive a 1994 Honda Accord that was a hand-me-down from my sister. Yet, somehow, this happened:
“The guy that made this game is nuts.”
As the sole creator of the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game Dishwasher, Silva found himself the poster boy of Microsoft’s efforts to “democratize game development” at the Game Developers Conference. The Utica, NY independent gamemaker shared the stage with game design luminaries like Tomonobu Itagaki and Peter Molyneux at Microsoft’s GDC keynote.”
You would say that the dude was lucky. But the game was a huge success with a pretty big follow-up of players loving it. He then released a game that I wouldn’t have bet a dime on, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1 which sold an impressive 200,000 copies and was the biggest sale of the XBLA Indie Game channel in 2009. He’s currently working on two games for Microsoft. I like how he managed to get an audience and a big word of mouth with the music he made for his games. Reviews are good and players have fun.
Charlie Murder. Like Castle Crashers but with punks. Zombies. Unicorn. Lasers. Please?
Erik Svedang did Blueberry Garden, a peaceful and magic little game that you can find for a few bucks on Steam (yeah Mac users, you are so in the future that you’re happy to go back to 2004 to keep up with the rest of us). He just released Kometen.
Since when someone brought something that fresh in visuals?
I don’t know how much these games are successful but hell, the guy is 20 something, still a student and gets coverage of his nice creations as he was in the gamedev since 10 years. I think that’s awesome.
Interestingly enough, these one-man team made/started games for/with closed platforms (Xbox/Windows, iPhone).
But the most impressive thing is the Humble Indie Bundle story. A 80$ worth game pack download for which:
- You pay what you want.
- No middle-man: 100% of the money goes to the developers (minus merchant fees).
- No DRM: you do whatever you want with your copy.
- Your contribution supports a charity and the EFF.
In a week the bundle raised more than 1 million freaking dollars. A pack of stupid games!!! Most of them in 2D!!! Almost 400,000$ for Child’s Play and the EFF support. According to RPS, each developer made 100,000$+.
This is just fantastic. No TV. No ads, no billboards. No mass market. Just word of mouth, good products, geeks and gamers ready to do it because they know everything is perfect.
I really hope some other pack like this one will come up.
So, there’s hope.
Also, it seems like the game industry is missing $3 billion in revenue from you know, “old people”. It’s been years I want to make stuff for that market. Like the report said, “Baby Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — have much more disposable income than younger demographics, adding up to billions in potential revenue.”
There’s so much to do.