Utah Indie Game Night - January 2010
So we had another quarterly Indie Game Night, this time at ITT Technical Institute.

Indie Game Night = Pizza, soda, presentations, networking, and Lots of Games. Although the pizza isn't necessarily a constant. We've had a Mexican food bar and Panda Express in the past, too.

Okay - this time we actually had two presentations. The night opened with Ontario Britton of Peppergum Games offering a presentation entitled, "What the iPhone Market Means to Your Development." This was a very entertaining, humorous look at how to successfully market an iPhone game. His point was that in spite of all the bellyaching about how crowded the iPhone market is, it's still quite possible to release a new game into the market which does fabulously well (and he's been doing it - as Peppermill has largely turned into an iPhone marketing company).

He explained that there are three "pillars" to successful iPhone game deployment:

1. A good, well-executed app, targeted for the iPhone audience
2. Polish. Lots of polish. iPhone customers expect and demand it.
3. Marketing. Good marketing.

On the last point, he talked about having a viral component to your game, use of advertising (lack of surprise here: Banner ads and other standard paid advertising methods doesn't do much and leads to few direct sales, though its indirect impact may be better), the enormous value of having a popular website review your game, knowing your demographic (hint: most iPhone customers are NOT teenagers), making a game rapidly that matches the constantly changing desires of the market, and so forth.

After that, there was a formal Daz Links presentation. This is a joint project between Daz 3D and local tools studio Mogware to convert the high-resolution Daz 3D Models into game-ready (or nearly game-ready) real-time models. With morphing, lots of polygon decimation options, tons of models and clothing options from Daz 3D, texture-combining down to a single, properly UV-mapped texture, and so forth --- there's a lot of potential here for the tools. On Daz 3D's part, they are going to be making an announcement at GDC time for indie-friendly licensing options on their models for use with Daz Links. Previously, as I understand it, they could be used to create content (movies, renders) but could not be distributed themselves. While I don't think I'm at liberty to discuss it, I can confirm that based on their current plans (which may very well change over the next couple of months), the price will be quite reasonable for budget-conscious indies. As in, well in-line with the other off-the-shelf content in the indie price range.



I'm supposed to have lunch with Brian Howell of Daz 3D, and I may have some more details then.

After the presentation (and pizza!), we had the game presentations. I can't discuss this too much, because I was showing Frayed Knights. Yes, I did get at least one comment along the lines of, "You are still working on that? Didn't you show that ages ago?" Le sigh. I suck. And Mike Rubin and Herb Flower weren't there for me to point fingers at to spread the pain, either.

Curtis and Peter were there showing off Siphon Spirit. He gave me a CD-ROM with the installation on it so I can check it out as soon as I can. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll talk about it here when I do.

We had a discussion about --- well, I can say it's a discussion about how badly I've failed, but really it was about how indie games really need to stay simple. Start simple, get simpler. We have too many games that have expanded to the point of No Longer Capable of Being Finished in a Reasonable Time. It is a lesson I, for one, have to keep learning.

The other big point of discussion was about the Global Game Jam this weekend. We have several teams competing, starting tonight. I intend to drop in tomorrow if I can to be a short distraction for people, but I'm not signed up to participate. I'm kinda already moderately booked for the weekend, but I want to support those guys who are taking the weekend to Do Something Awesome.

UPDATE: Corrected the name for Peppergum Games.

Labels: Indie Game Night

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