Utah Indie Game Night - Summer 2009
We had another of our quarterly Indie Game Nights tonight. Held at ITT Tech this time, the event was PACKED. We pretty much ran out of seats, but I'm not sure how many people that were there were simply ITT students who decided to be participants in the event just long enough to scarf down some of the pizza ITT provided. Hopefully they picked up some useful ideas and info in the process!

The night began with Chris Evans giving a presentation on making games for the iPhone. He provided a pretty good overview of the process, the numbers, and how much money iFart made early in the lifecycle of the iPhone. Unfortunately, the acoustics in the room we were in sucked, so those of us in the back couldn't hear him very well. Maybe we should all chip in for a cheap sound system (maybe a kid's karaoke machine) or something for next time.

I was sitting next to Herb and Dan Flower of Mythyn Interactive / LinkRealms, and Steve Taylor of NinjaBee. NinjaBee has just completed two games for the iPhone, including a version of Outpost Kaloki. Since I don't have an iPhone, he brought up the game on his and let me try it out. I was pretty impressed with how the game looked. One issue Steve brought up was that at Casual Connect a few days ago, they'd mentioned how something like 120 iPhone games PER DAY were being released now, and that's double what it was only three months ago. Any game appearing on the iPhone just disappears from the top of the app store very quickly. Even just shotgunning crappy titles won't work... everything gets buried under a deluge of competition in no time.

It seemed like quality was irrelevant in sales, and only games with very novel or controversial titles were actually making any money at all on the iPhone. Herb suggested something outrageous like "a game about crushing puppies." Steve responded that they'd brainstormed tons of similarly outrageous game ideas, and found that every one of their original, extreme ideas had already appeared on the iPhone - sometimes six times over. To prove his point, he immediately went to the App Store, did a search, and found a game about - wait for it - slaughtering puppies. Not exactly puppy-crushing, but a close enough match.

Crazy Stuff.

After the presentation, I got a chance to talk to a bunch of folks about their games. Some highlights:

Darkened Dreams 2 - by Curtis Mirci & Peter Anderson. The game is still looking a lot like it did last time, but the toolset keeps looking impressive. A lot of the work is "under the hood" right now in this one.

Tank General - I didn't get to play this one, as there was always someone else playing it. Best I could tell was that it was something of a Flash-based action / tactics wargame involving modern-ish ground warfare.

Cubix.Collect - This was a very simple but compelling game from Paul Milham. You control a 3D, line-drawn colored cube amidst a ton of other 3D, line-drawn colored cubes travelling across the screen. When your cube touches a cube of a similar color, it absorbs it and grows (and sometimes changes color). If it touches one of a different color, the other cube also dissappears but your cube also shrinks. If it shrinks too far, the game ends. As the game progresses, the other cubes change speed, direction (sometimes coming in multiple directions), and possibly other factors. The brilliant balance is that as you start losing, the game gets easier (since your cube shrinks and becomes easier to dodge non-color-matched cubes), and as you succeed it gets a little harder.

Radioactive Joe - By Carson Barlow, this was a game about a hick who becomes a hero. Or something like that. Unfortunately, it was running on a pretty slow computer. But it is kind of an action / adventure that he created as a capstone project for the game design program at ITT.

Kiten - by Josh Jones. This is a game about machine learning - the enemies respond and adapt to your style of play. In Flash, even. While it's far from polished or complete, it was interesting to play and see how the enemies change over time. You can check it out yourself at this link.

LinkRealms - While Dan and Herb weren't showing their game this time, I had a good chance to talk with them for a bit about how things have been progressing. They've been in a closed beta for a while, and it exposed a bunch of flaws in the game. In particularly, they are having trouble with retention. While they've got an incredibly cool, detailed, multiplayer world, they realized they needed some more long- and short-term gameplay to keep players engaged. This is the value of a real beta period, folks. So they are implementing some very intriguing stuff. They are definitely trying to do some things that are well outside the bounds dictated by the 800 pound gorilla, World of Warcraft. Breeding AI - with genetically exchanged systems of linked behavior "circuits" is one aspect they are exploring. As well as player-created - but not fully player-controlled - religions / cults. Sorta like a guild with some AI-controlled divine intervention and quest creation.

There was also a game being played on Wii controllers about dancing in a girl's talent show or something. I don't know what it was, but it was pretty popular - a bunch of gaming geek guys getting into making girls do fan kicks. And there was a game that involved (among other things) knocking over an evil (giant?) garden gnome. My brother Brian was there, showing some artwork for a new remake of an older 2D RPG they had developed a couple of years ago. There were some other folks who closed up shop before I was able to check out what they were working on, unfortunately. It was a busy (but awesome) night!

I also met a really incredible freelance 2D artist, Gabrielle Long, who has been looking for some indie gaming contracts and possibly a full-time position with a game company here in Utah. If you are an indie developer looking for someone to do indie-priced contract work of very high quality - especially (but not necessarily) if you are doing games with an anime / manga "look" to them - you should check out her portfolio and get into contact with her.

The discussions going on during the event seemed to me to be where much of the action was at (as usual), and I'm sure I missed out on some great ones. We really need to set up a Utah Indie mailing list so we can continue to swap thoughts during the three months between each meeting!

The Utah Indie Night continues to be well attended, and a great chance to network and share games, knowledge, experiences, ideas, and pizza. I had a blast.

UPDATE: Vazor (Josh Jones) has a report on the event here. Greg will hopefully have one up very soon as well for this month - watch for it at his blog. (And here it is: Utah Indie Night Summer 2009 Writeup)

Labels: Indie Evangelism

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