The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
On Indie Games & Developers
anable
North TexasRegistered User regular
North TexasRegistered User regular
I'm curious if anyone out there is a fan of indie games, the way I am. It seems like a lot of my last few video game purchases have been in the indie category more often than not. I know that part of it stems from a desire to support small time designers and programmers, a sort of grassroots attempt at supporting the video game culture. But I think there's more to it than that, though I don't know if I can pin it down. It seems like the indie scene has an energy that you don't see from bigger companies. I hate to use the word innovative, so I won't, but when I come across games like Blueberry Garden or Eufloria I can't help but compare them to AAA titles and feel like the indie scene doesn't get enough credit. Is this a legitimate concern or am I being too pretentious here? I know that occasionally we see something like Okami or Shadow of the Colossus come through the mainstream, but these are so few and far between they can barely be called mainstream. One the other hand, it seems like raising the bar on game design is a prerequite to getting into the IGF. So I'm curious to hear what the rest of the community thinks. Do indie games and developers get the credit they deserve?
anable on
0
Posts
To me, there are people who have a game in their head and want to get it out, so they release a game they wanted to make and they don't really care if tons of people love it or if it makes money.
Or there's people who want to make commercial games that happen to be small low-budget, unique and innovative things.
Does this distinction matter to anyone else? Is it worth adding to the discussion?
XBL Michael Spencer || Wii 6007 6812 1605 7315 || PSN MichaelSpencerJr || Steam Michael_Spencer || Ham NOØK
QRZ || My last known GPS coordinates: FindU or APRS.fi (Car antenna feed line busted -- no ham radio for me X__X )
They will eventually become more mainstream*, and thus games such as Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari will get the respect they deserve.
*Mainstream as in "Once EA owns everything and turns everything it touches into golden turds."
Geometry Wars. 'Nuff said.
Yeah, that's definitely a valid distinction. I think someone like Jason Rohrer makes games for a very different reason than the people at Introversion Software do. But the people in Jason Rohrer's camp are significantly fewer and far between. The closest I can even think of is Jeff Minter but he's still aiming to sell a product, even if it is to a very niche market.
Will they really, though? Remember, Capcom shut down the studio that produced Okami. Team ICO is doing well and can be considered the golden child exception. Namco found Katamari and then instantly proceeded to cash the fuck out of it.
Indie developers are free to make their games however they want rather than tailor it to suit a publisher's wishes, and that can sometimes (most assuredly not always though) be a wonderful thing.
The democracy of the indie scene is definitely what allows it to stand out. Lower entry barrier and less oversight means new, good ideas float to the top. But what makes those games stand out? Is it an innovation thing? Is it polish? Is it vision? I still have a hard time articulating why I find them better games.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Most indie games aren't "better" than main-stream higher budget games in my opinion, at least not over-all. From what I've played, I'd say the gameplay portion is usually more fun. Or at least tries to be, and some of that just goes to whether you enjoy the niche a particular game is trying to fill. I think this stems from the fact that most indie game developers are just that: very dedicated game developers. And so they try and make sure the game itself is as enjoyable as they can.
Their biggest downfall usually comes from production value. This is not always the case, but it often is. Visual and audio presentation is almost always leaps and bounds better coming from a larger developer with a publisher backing them. And I'm by no means saying that every game has to use the Cry-Engine or anything along those lines. But I have yet to see an indie game that wouldn't have benefited from having a higher budget to improve on the presentation.
That said, I rarely hold that against an indie game because it is what it is. If the developers had a larger budget, it likely came from someone else who would probably attempt to exert some control over the product which would likely have a negative overall impact.
I'm curious if you could give some examples on this. I usually don't find production value lacking (AaaAAaa comes to mind but that's about it). I think the two games I mentioned in the OP both are very well presented, both visually and the audio.
When the indie developers realise this, and instead focus on creating something unique, that's when magic happens. Or can happen, anyway. Sometimes you try to create something unique and just end up with girls getting raped in the woods.
Got a list running of games and general discussion.
The thing is, without money you either have to
(A) have very motivated artist(s) that are willing to work for free/promise of money later, or
(B) Sacrifice visual quality.
Our artist was a friend that was... well... less than motivated. We got in another friend to do the UI because it still wasn't even started well into development, and that came out okay... but there was only so much that second friend could do, and he didn't know how to do 3D models or character art... so when push came to shove, not having (A) necessitated (B).
We're hoping that the previously mentioned artist will become motivated for our next project, but looking for another artist just in case has thus far been vetoed to my great displeasure. (I don't want to see my friend get kicked out or anything... I would like to see one or more other artists join us though =( )
Add on top of that the fact that we couldn't afford to hire voice actors, and had to resort to using friends with no voice acting experience, and you got our game: which I think has a highly motivated game concept and a lot of depth of gameplay with various options and such, but lacks outward appearances of quality due to poor art and polish. If you want to see it, you can look it up online or check it out on WiiWare. Give it a shot, you'll see what I mean: the game itself is pretty fun (I think
The examples you showed, Anable, seem to be very art-driven: the most motivated person on those teams was more than likely the artist, and it shows. Some indie projects aren't terribly art-driven though, and end up with innovative game concepts but terrible presentation and production value as a result. (To go to a different example than my own experience, for a very long time Battle for Wesnoth was in a position where it had a fantastic and fun engine, but very poor graphics. They've come a long way since then, but it was a matter of convincing/finding/happening upon artists to join their cause)
There's also a few different categories of indie. I already mentioned one - the one that I feel our group falls into - but what kind of indie group it is can also vastly effect the ability for it to put out something polished.
* "bunch of guys who want to make games" (See the open source team for Battle of Wesnoth, or Medaverse Studios
* "Industry guys starting their own studio" (See 2DBoy) - These are people who were in the industry for some period of time, and thus have seen how the "big boys" do it first hand. With this knowledge (and possibly toolsets) in hand, they can build more polished products right off the bat. They still have to deal with (lack of) budget and other such problems, but will be more likely to produce a polished game because they've seen how its done, they've done it themselves, and they will generally be able to treat it more like a business than a group of friends who got together to make a game.
* "One guy who wants to make games" (See Thomas Biskup, creator of ADOM) - This has its own category because its potentially much harder than the other two categories. They're likely to make something highly experimental and heavily leaned toward whatever their specialty is... so if they're good at art but poor at programming, they might make an art-heavy game with minimal gameplay logic or complexity, or vice versa for those good at programming but not at art. If they give themselves enough time, they can make a masterpiece... but it will generally take significantly longer than any indie team of people, and may require a lot of personal sacrifice on the part of that person. All of the problems of the "bunch of guys" category (needing to learn a lot of hard lessons, etc...) except for the team drama because there is no team.
Those are probably the biggest categories in my opinion. Every individual person or group setting out to make a game will find unique challenges I imagine, but it seems that most companies whose stories you hear about run into at least the problems mentioned above if not more.
To an extent this is true, but not entirely. Introversion doesn't even have a real artist on their team which lead them to create minimalist, procedurally driven games. Blueberry Garden was created entirely by one guy. For the most part (though I won't say always), when you talk about people that lacked the funds to create their game, it's because they were chasing a AAA title style. The types of indie games I'm referring to don't need a giant budget because they aren't trying to create a big budget game.
It's not about chasing a AAA title and lacking funds in the indie world when a game turns out unpolished: it's because they didn't happen to have the right resources available. What funding can do is make those resources available by paying for them.
If you have people on your team who (either through experience, natural talent, or some combination) can find a way to make the game polished and artful, you will find that you don't need to have money to make it happen.
However, if you don't have that - or you have a drive to get to that point but lack the experience and skillset so far - you don't have to be shooting for a AAA game to fall short of having polish.
Look at Battle for Wesnoth again: I mean, they weren't shooting to make a AAA game. They were shooting to make an open source game that people could enjoy... but even with that lower bar, they lingered for years without the kind of art that they needed to give it that sense of polish. (Now, I personally would consider Wesnoth to be a AAA game because I love it so much... but from a more neutral perspective, I know that it's not.)
I don't know if that helps with the conversation, but hopefully it helps clarify what I mean a bit.
At least that's what draws me to them.
Indie games are like indie movies. The majority of mainstream games are "playable". The majority of indie games are not. A small percentage of indie games will become breakout hits that earn revenue:development cost ratios that would make any AAA developer green with envy.
How do you define personality? There have been loads of "quirky" mainstream releases over the years.
Well let me think of the games I've picked up lately that were indie and think about what I mean.
I would consider splosion man an Indie game of sorts. While the gameplay was simple and not all that innovative, and the visual presentation was pretty standard, I thought that the presentation of the game's body of entertainment was full of non-cliche's that helped it stand out. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it involves some footage that was pretty hilarious and honestly, when my friends and I hit it, we thought I had hit a red ring of death. I don't know if this counts as Indie though.
I think Indie games tend to go with fairly unpopular art styles as well. The games that sell often have a gritty realism to them that is meant to sell to a younger audience that yearns for mature titles. Plants vs. Zombies was a tower defense game that had an incredibly cartoony art style that was consistent and a humor that again, helped it stand out in comparison to other tower defense games.
I'm not quite sure what it is about these games. When I see gears of war, I say to myself that I've "seen that before." But when I look at something like And Yet It Moves, I go "woah, that's something I haven't seen before."
Basically, I suck at making a point.
And Portal, oh boy Portal. I understand your point - that Indie games must seek to be off-the-wall to get attention, but big release titles can still be pretty experimental.
The sad part about Prince of Persia is that it sold like an Indie game...
My game (see sig, incidentally, I think the biggest problem with indie games is that not enough people click of forum sigs then buy the game the sig links too, personally) would have benefited massively from more time for doing the UI and revising the graphics. Don't get me wrong, the three people I used were all great, produced brilliant work and they did more work than what I contracted them for, my in-game artist produced more frames of animation, my UI designer knocked through a few more iterations that I splashed out and the cartoonist who did the inter story comic book panels really knocked it out of the park, some truly fabulous stuff. But they would have all benefited from having another month to go round and revise and test and try out different things. Especially the UI where I tried to get too much done with too little space and not give enough attention to lots of little details. But that cost cash I simply didn't have to spend.
I think my game looks nice but with more money it could have looked better.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
This is true, but like I mentioned, while indie style games do occasionally break though, it's hardly the norm. Not the mention that Portal started as a college final and only then went on to get picked up by Valve (which is the only company that I can think of that consistently tries to be a AAA brand while trying to maintain the indie spirit).
I think perhaps my initial set of comments gave a false impression. While games like Eufloria do have a heavy emphasis on visual design, to say that these games stand up because of visual design only misses a bigger picture. They push gameplay in directions unexplored, or maybe just polish and idea until it shines (a la Everyday Shooter), but they don't live and die by their UI and sprites alone. I haven't played your game specifically so please don't take offense to this question, but with a bigger art budget, do you think your game would have made it into IGF?
I'm curious what drove you to be an indie developer. Why not just sign on with a bigger company? Was there a game you just had to make? I'd love to hear your motivations for taking on such a substantial task.
Going back to my original point, maybe this gets at the bigger picture a little better: perhaps what drives the indie scene so well is the limited budget. When you don't have infinite amounts of money and/or talent, it forces you to improvise in creative ways that still creates meaningful gameplay.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Perhaps the mainstream indie scene is the intersection between completing a project and retaining that independent spirit with fresh ideas.
To some extent I agree. Catering to the lowest common denominator makes financial sense, but doesn't make for groundbreaking game design. So does that get at the heart of it? Indie games have a panache because they aren't going for blockbuster sales? Is there some inverse proportion between the goal of making money and making a creative game? I don't know. Besides the few people like Jason Rorher, I think most indie developers do try to make money from their games so they can keep making games. And Valve proves both is possible.
I keep wanting to go back to the word vision (and not in the visual sense of the word). I feel like indie games have a more articulated vision than most mainstream games.
Pretty much, I wanted to create a specific game. Programming is pretty much just programming, I'd enjoy it no matter where I did it, but I specifically wanted to make a sensible soccer style rugby game. That's pretty niche you say? Yes, yes it is. The only good rugby game ever made is Johna Lomu rugby back in 1997, I wanted to produce a new rugby game that meshed the difficulty and flow of Johna Lomu with more advanced computer AI, team customisation and in-game strategies and the visual style (and thus grand overview) of Sensible Soccer.
But wait, you say, Penny and Paul's Adventures doesn't strike me as a rugby game in any way shape or form.
You're right.
I produced Penny and Paul because I thought that the rugby game had too many unknowns attached, I had enough money to do X months of development and I couldn't predict how long it would take to produce, I strongly suspected it would be more than X. I thought I'd produce Penny and Paul as a stop-gap/fund generator, get it selling on casual gaming portals and that would give me a (minimal) income stream to keep me going while working on the rugby game.
Didn't happen. The portals rejected me unanimously and my attempts at direct selling have been synonymous with failure. Who knows, maybe it isn't a very good game, I've had tens of thousands of plays of the demo and the conversion of those into sales has been, rather low, shall we say. I like it, I think it takes a classic puzzle idea and turns it up to the max, I think I've written some good dialogue & designed good levels, and I love the art style of both the comic panels and the in game art. Maybe this isn't coming across in the demo?
I've learnt loads from being an indie developer for a year, I've negotiated contracts, I've directed art, I've become a better programmer and become more discipline in my time management.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
This is slightly off topic, but have you had a chance to talk with Greg Costik from Manifesto Games? He's big into supporting indie developers and has a business model very unlike bigger casual game portals. Worth checking out if you haven't already.
Either way, thanks for the insight. I remember reading a postmortem on GDM for a casual game in which the creators said the same thing you did, they wanted to cash in on the casual scene so they could fund the project they really wanted to work on. Turns out that, while they did make a nice bit of revenue, they ended up chasing financial freedom and worked on several more casual games until the money from their first (and only) hit ran out. I'm not entirely sure what my point is. Just another perspective, I suppose.
I'd have still tried to produce Penny and Paul eventually, because as I said I like the concept, but my main focus would have been on the rugby game.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Sorry to point this out, but take a look at the Manifesto games site. Bit sad news really
I really like Indie games. They're refreshing and offer a change of pace that you usually don't get from the bigger budget games. I'm really digging Eufloria and Osmos atm. I guess you get a slower paced game from that PS3 safari game and that Wii diving game but I don't think they were big sellers either. That, and I don't have either of those consoles :P
Well damn.