What Do Indies Have In Common With Avis?
Since you guys were kind enough to buy some games from me recently (YOU ROCK!), I was recently able to afford a couple of content packs for game development. One was for prototyping a project that is currently in design phase - the Skeleton Pack from DrewFX. I'm going to go mention them by name to let them take responsibility. Well, actually to let HIM take responsibility, as it's mainly a one-man show of Andy Hawkins, plus some help from the GarageGames guys.

Now, I talked a while ago about why you should buy indie. Now, the indies are not the first companies that comes to mind when you think games (or, in this case, content packs). They are a little like Avis car rental - a company perpetually in second place in their business (though the indies typically trail the leader by a lot more than that). Avis decided to turn that disadvantage into a strength, with their motto, "We Try Harder."

With smaller businesses - at least the good ones - that's much more than a motto. It's a matter of survival. They can't afford gigantic marketing budgets, and they don't have a disposable customer base. They depend heavily on word-of-mouth --- which means they DO have to work harder to make sure every customer has a positive experience. Especially since one disgruntled customer is far more likely to express his displeasure than a happy customer is to express praise.

Late Saturday night, I took a break from working on Apocalypse Cow to play around with the skeleton pack. I discovered that something was just not quite right. It had a pretty cool reflection-map effect, but it wasn't a convincing skeleton. This was a problem solely with one model included with the pack - the other (a skeleton with attachment points for a gun rather than a sword) was just fine.

The source files were included with the pack, so I could have gone in and imported them into blender and spent a little bit of time figuring out the problem and trying to fix it. Assuming all the UV information came through the importer okay, it wouldn't have been too hard or even too time consuming. But since it wasn't a priority, and I didn't feel like messing with it, I just jotted off an email to DrewFX alerting them to the bug, and went to bed. It was 2:00 in the morning, after all.

I was very surprised to see an email in my mailbox a few hours later when I woke up. And another one that afternoon, after I'd sent a reply. I think Andy is on Australia time, which explains the early-morning response. But I was still very impressed with how quickly he got back to me. We exchanged emails for a couple of days as he worked to find and fix the bug for me. Finally, he discovered that the problem was not in his source files - it was only in the exported torque-compatible .dts file. He'd already fixed the problem, but the content pack had just had an old file in it.

He sent the fix to me (which worked perfectly), and told me a little about the upcoming enhancements he's been working on with the pack as a free upgrade. Including hints as to the 'surprise' freebie he's throwing in there, which sounds to me as being very much on the side of awesome. No, I'm not gonna spoil it. But if it works as good as it sounds, it's awesome.

Now, bear in mind that after GG took out it's take, Andy probably only made something around or slightly north of $20 from my purchase of his skeleton pack. That was NOT worth the time he invested in helping me out. Apparently this bug isn't not a big deal, as he received no other complaints --- though I'm sure he was embarassed about having that bug in his content pack. And it was certainly nothing that even I - a novice at 3D modeling - couldn't have created my own work-around for in probably less time than it took for him to find and fix the bug.

But, like Avis, he tries harder.

I compare that to a recent experience I had with ComCast trying to explain to their "guilty until proven innocent" customer "service" department that I didn't owe them a modem I'd never rented from them. That particular argument took FOUR MONTHS to resolve. And now I'm reluctant to ever go cable again. That story ended okay, at least, after I informed them that I'd be happy to produce the modem AFTER they produced a copy of the rental agreement signed by me with the make and serial number of the modem they claimed I owed.

So, yeah. I prefer working with the smaller shops. The indies. With a few exceptions, they really do seem to try harder.

(Vaguely) related Deep Thoughts:
* Benefits of Buying Indie
* Ten Commandments of Indie Game Developers
* The Indie Games Industry Is Growing
* Alternatives To Front-Loading Game Sales
* Paying the Bills Takes Priority
* Profit or Passion?

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:45 AM (Permalink)