Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness
David Marsh wrote a very poorly-titled, but otherwise excellent, article at Gamasutra called, "Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness." The reason I feel it is poorly titled is because "paths" indicate separate, mutually exclusive options. These aren't. In fact, if you are serious about making an indie game, you would be well-served to follow most of these points of advice:
Gamasutra: Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness
My inane commentary:
1. Efficiency In Design - More game for less cost. Making a single-player exploration-based game like an RPG is stupid. Oh, wait. Oops.
2. Utilizing Free, Cheap, or Open Technology - Don't save your nickels for the Unreal III engine. You won't be able to take advantage of it anyway, and your game will look and play no better than one created in Ogre3D, C4, or Torque which costs less than 1/1000th as much.
3. Distribute Digitally - a pet peeve of mine. Some newb indie developers refuse to look out of the box, and are still about the "box deal." Not that digital distribution need be your only solution - but as an indie, anything else is icing on the cake.
4. Develop On Open Platforms - boy, if I had a dime for every time a prospective indie declared that they wanted to make a game for the XBox 360 or the DS, and sneered at making a game for the PC or (gasp!) the Mac... They just don't seem to get it when I tell them, "if you haven't created a game yet, you aren't gonna get it on the consoles." While that's not strictly true, it's close enough.
5. Collaboration - Ka-CHING! Yes, that's supposed to be the sound of cash. This can take place on so many levels, from trading services (which can save both companies money in terms of taxes), to cooperating on marketing efforts, to running affiliate sales deals,to sharing resources, or simply exchanging ideas and techniques.
6. Consider Less Traditional Monetization Methods - And ad-based revenue is quickly becoming traditional.
7. Redefine Success - I think we are at the point now where the break-even points for mainstream games are mock-worthy, anyway.
8. Use Alternate Sources of Funding - What? Begging for Vulture Capitalists and Publishers to take all your real assets to help you make payroll isn't the be-all, end-all?
9. Get Personal - This is actually the Big Idea for big companies nowadays, too. Small companies have no excuses to NOT do this.
Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:08 AM (Permalink)
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All of these sound good . . . except for #1.
For one thing, this is the only path that talks about what kind of game to make, rather than how to make a game. That's a red flag right there. The advice also leaves me with some questions: what's the difference in long term costs for supporting a multiplayer game vs. single player? Can a multiplayer game provide long tail revenue after the community has moved on? Assuming you release a wildly successful multiplayer game, how do you handle competing with yourself when you want to release a sequel?
I am a bit biased, because my research shows people are jerks. Still, this one comment sticks out as worse advice than the rest of them.
For one thing, this is the only path that talks about what kind of game to make, rather than how to make a game. That's a red flag right there. The advice also leaves me with some questions: what's the difference in long term costs for supporting a multiplayer game vs. single player? Can a multiplayer game provide long tail revenue after the community has moved on? Assuming you release a wildly successful multiplayer game, how do you handle competing with yourself when you want to release a sequel?
I am a bit biased, because my research shows people are jerks. Still, this one comment sticks out as worse advice than the rest of them.
Multiplayer was only one of the suggestions that he made to take advantage of efficiency of design. He also recommended procedural content, user-generated content, going non-photorealistic on your art, and exploring older game ideas with newer technology. He even cites Dwarf Fortress as a great example of his first "path" (which is a single-player game... and uses both procedural content AND goes about as far from photo-realism as you can ask).
"going non-photorealistic on your art"
I actually disagree with this one to an extent. I've found it far easier to acquire photos and make them into textures than it is to make good cartoon textures, for example. Everything has to be hand painted by people who know how to fake the lighting and suchlike versus using a camera, a handy wall and the clone tool in Photoshop.
Obviously, once you head into normal mapped and high detail model territory this balance changes, but it was one of the issues I thought about when starting SoW.
I actually disagree with this one to an extent. I've found it far easier to acquire photos and make them into textures than it is to make good cartoon textures, for example. Everything has to be hand painted by people who know how to fake the lighting and suchlike versus using a camera, a handy wall and the clone tool in Photoshop.
Obviously, once you head into normal mapped and high detail model territory this balance changes, but it was one of the issues I thought about when starting SoW.
Gotta back Gareth up on the "going non-photo-realistic"...
From personal experience it takes a hella lot more time to paint a texture from scratch AND make it look good!
Even with normal map generation, it's pretty straight up to create photo-realistic textures. There are tools galore to handle this. At the very least, most paint programs can take a photo and whip out a seamless texture in less than 5 seconds...
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From personal experience it takes a hella lot more time to paint a texture from scratch AND make it look good!
Even with normal map generation, it's pretty straight up to create photo-realistic textures. There are tools galore to handle this. At the very least, most paint programs can take a photo and whip out a seamless texture in less than 5 seconds...
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