Indie is to Mainstream as Band is to Orchestra?
A few days ago Tadhg Kelly wrote a post at Gamasutra likening the difference between indies game makers and mainstream developers today to the relationship between small bands and orchestras.

As he explains:

"The games industry used to be a place for bands. In real terms a lot of the old indie studios like id, Bullfrog, Sensible Software and a thousand others were really just hothouse rooms with a few guys and girls working on their albums games and having a go.

"Nowadays the games industry is all about orchestras. A studio of 80 staff with production managers and milestones is not a band in which weird things happen, it's a symphony in which everyone has their music sheet and most are expected to play in time. It's a very thought-driven discipline sort of environment, with books on how to design, system architectures and serious tools. Which, if you're making big games, is probably necessary."

While the analogy breaks down in a lot of areas, it's a pretty good one.

The perception of small popular music bands being chaotic and wild is more a public image thing - most professional musicians (at least the successful ones) have a pretty serious discipline when it comes to their craft. Likewise, any serious commercial indie game that makes it to release isn't going to get there without a reasonable amount of professionalism and discipline on the part of the game makers. As a friend and former professional game developer used to say of his job, "It's not all fun and games. Sometimes its just games."

There's one other point I'd take issue with. Kelly writes, "So. Young game developers. Listen Up, for I have only one lesson teach: Form bands. Don't get swept up in orchestras. Bands are the only way to make your dreams happen. "

While I think there's less merit in it today than perhaps ten years ago, I still consider the education I received as a professional game developer invaluable. Today I might be more cautious, as the mainstream game development experience might also suck out a young game developer's love of games (and will to live) within the first year. And teach bad habits. But overall, I think having a couple of shipped projects under one's belt and up-close-and-personal exposure to how the professionals get it done is worth more than a thousand books and an equivalent number of classroom hours spent studying the subject.

In addition, there's a lot more to the mainstream games biz than the AAA XBox 360, PS3, and Wii games market. There's a lot of game development going on under the traditional model than that, and much of it consists of smaller teams working on lower-budget titles. Yeah, working on the next Barbie game might not be what you aspire to as a game developer, but it probably has more akin to the indie experience than working on the next Halo or Gears of War.

But yeah - with a few exceptions, the only reasonably sure way to make your own dream game happen is to go indie.

And while indies don't have the lock on innovation, it is amusing to see the changing of the times: the big game publishers are now starting to make their own clones of successful indie games... So which side is driving the industry now?

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:43 AM (Permalink)