Utah Indie Game Night - Fall 2009
Best indie night ever? Maybe.

If it wasn't our best-attended night, it was pretty dang close. It was a huge group, and I had an awesome time. And came home energized, feeling like being an indie game developer was quite simply the coolest gig possible. It was a night full of FUN. And that's what games are about. Oh, they can be about a lot more, but they are primarily there for fun. And it seems like the indies are getting more empowered to create fun than ever.

So it started low key. I had an impromptu before-the-indie-night meeting with the Frayed Knights team. Or the ones who were willing to come. The meeting didn't go quite as planned - we meet face-to-face so infrequently (unfortunately), so there was a lot to cover. But since some of our team had never met each other before in person, it was good. But we mostly just looked over maps. We need to do this again somehow, sooner.

Succeeding in a Game-In-A-Day Project
Then we had a presentation by Steve Taylor of Wahoo / Ninjabee on making a Game In a Day. He spoke very quickly about a lot of things. I thought it was brilliant. And not just because he referenced my Game-In-A-Week project, Hackenslash. :) Steve is a convert to the Game-In-A-Day on a level well beyond me.

How much of a convert is he? These days, he actually has the entire studio make a game in a day as an exercise. Seriously. It's a team-building exercise on business hours. They put their "real," paying projects on hold and for the entire day, the job of the studio is to make a game in a day.

Why? Steve listed a pretty long list of benefits. Among them were the chance to experiment with new technologies or new production techniques. It's a chance to test some game design ideas quickly, developing a rapid prototype. He believes it really helps the team improve their skills - programmers, artists, designers, and even the managers. They go through the entire development lifecycle of a project in nine hours instead of twelve months. While the pressure is high and the time frame is extremely limited, the exact same issues come up in a one-day project as a one-year project.

And the ultimate fringe benefit, Steve pointed out, was discovering enough of a seed of awesomeness in your game-in-a-day that you feel you can turn it into a real commercial project. This is what they did with one Game-In-A-Day project, "Rome," (get it? It was built in a day...) which became their hit XBLA game A Kingdom for Keflings.

He went over the rules variations on various Game-in-a-Day competitions (such as they are), and why they were important, especially in shaking things up and getting people outside their comfort zone. He discussed strategies for having a successful GID project, and the types of things you can learn from both success and "failure." One thing he mentioned was the importance of having milestones *AND* fallback positions. Yes, even in a one-day project (or especially in a one-day project), having a milestone schedule is critical to keep progress going.

I think more game studios would do well to follow Wahoo's example here.

The Return of Archon!
After that, we broke for GAMES! Well, games and Chinese food from Panda Express (mmm.... orange chicken!) sponsored by indie developers React Games. Who I'd like to talk about a bit. They have the license to the classic game Archon. They just released two Archon games for the iPhone - Archon and Archon Conquest - and are currently working on a PC game entitled Archon Classic.

I'm gonna have more on this game in a later post. I normally just kinda browse the games at Indie Night, but I had a chance to play this one in a bit more depth. It was definitely one of the evening's highlights. They turned it into a tournament, with prizes. Great idea, and a great game.

More Games
I also saw a bunch of cool, rapidly-developed titles from various indies (and I apologize if I'm not associating titles with names properly). Greg Squire should have more of the details at some point today, but I ended up not taking notes and promptly forgetting the names of the indie studios after being shown their game. I suck.

I played a tic-tac-toe game on the Android phone using black and white (well, dark gray and light gray) stones. I saw side-scrolling zombie game with an amusing hand-drawn style which had only been in development for about two weeks. It was showing a lot of promise, with some very cute-gross animations. There was also a tentatively untitled tower defense game in Flash that was looking very sharp, and a couple more games on display that I only barely got to glance at with everything going on.

Daz Links

I met with representatives from Daz 3D and Mogware who are partnered together for something special called Daz Links which looks extremely promising. When coupled with a more agreeable license from Daz 3D, Daz Links can create a very simple-to-use pipeline to create usable reduced-poly-count, reduced-bone-count, single-texture models suitable for use in real-time 3D. They demonstrated by taking a female ranger character who clocked in at something like 125,000 polygons with her clothing, and generated a 2,000 poly count version with a very simple interface. With models and clothing packs ranging from as little as $12 on their site, this could be a significant source of cheap content for indies. With multiple levels of detail! All rigged for animation.

The results were still a little rough - but the tools aren't in beta yet, and are still very much under construction. The final result was probably not QUITE ready to drop into a game and play (except as stand-in art). As a developer, I might still have to go in and tweak a few polygons. And add hair - they warned that hair can be really resistant to decimation, and it's quite plausible that half the poly count could be eaten up by the hair.

So - were I to use the system - I'd probably want to make my characters bald, make multiple LODS, export them into Collada, import them into Blender, add hair and tweak the polygons, add mount points, and then export. Oh, and pray that I could preserve the animation data working with Blender. One day I will figure that last bit out.

So no - it's not a complete be-all, end-all, no-work-required solution for indie game content. But what is? I think it holds promise.

Conversations and Rumors
As usual, for me, the highlight was talking with other indies. It's fun to hear what they are doing, what approaches they are taking, what they've been working on, and their past experiences. Some tidbits that were shared or became apparent after comparing notes:

Josh Jones is working to bring the Global Game Jam local. This could be pretty excited. He also pinned me down to committing to at least be there if possible, if not to be a fer-real participant.

The iPhone is getting less exciting as a commercial game platform by itself. However, many indie game developers continue to see it as being a solid component of a multi-platform release plan. Many are breaking their games into multiple parts, and selling each part separately (to get around the iPhone fans' apparent allergic reaction to anything being priced at over a dollar. Why they are so willing to pay top-dollar for a phone but nothing for apps is confusing to me, but I'm not an iPhone owner).

Greg Squire and I had a nice conversation about the return of the adventure game to a level of prominence. Not that it was ever dead, or that it will ever occupy the same tier of popularity it enjoyed in the 80's and early 90's. But thanks to indies like Telltale Games and Wadget Eye Games, the genre does look like it has gotten a shot in the arm.

Flash remains a popular tool for indies. For obvious reasons. A lot of game developers - especially artists with limited coding skills - can really do some amazing things with Flash very quickly. I was impressed with how many games were getting rapidly prototyped and developed in Flash.

A lot of indies these days are also former game mainstream developers (many are refugees from a former employer of mine). The recession has really taken a bite out of the games biz, and some are responding by going indie - taking their skills on the road as indies. The era of the "big studio" may never come to an end, but it seems like an increasing number of game developers are realizing that there are a lot of opportunities out there beyond the traditional big-studio model.

Overall, it was an impressive night. I left feeling energized and thrilled to be a part of this community - even more so than usual. I dunno if indies are gonna change the world or anything like that - but I think, in our own tiny ways, we're making it a more fun place to live in.

UPDATE: Greg has a write-up with a lot of details that I missed. Check it out here!

Labels: Indie Game Night

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