Making Money Make Games – Part 2 (More History)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2014

Continued from Part 1… The 1980s Okay, this is the part of the story where I personally started paying attention and getting involved, if only as a consumer. At this point, especially as things were starting out the decade, there was still a huge question of what kind of industry “video games” were going to […]

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Making Money Making Games – Part 1 (History)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 9, 2014

I gave a presentation at BYU for their game development club a few weeks ago called “Making Money Making Games – a Historical Perspective.” I didn’t do my best job ever on it, and ran out of time for the “important stuff” at the end, so I kinda breezed through the end. So I thought […]

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The End of the “Casual Era?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 17, 2014

First things first: so-called “Casual Games?” Not going away. Ever. In fact, you could argue that thanks to mobile gaming, they are bigger than ever. WAY bigger. What are casual games? They are games preferred by “casual gamers” – the ones who don’t have the depth of interest or time commitment of the hardcore fans. They […]

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How to Not to Screw Yourself Over on the Internet

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 22, 2014

I’m going to take a one-day break on the horror-themed games to just comment on how indie game developers can avoid turning their own life into a personal horror story. Earlier this week the game Paranautical Activity, by indie studio Code Avarice, was finally released from early access to full release on Steam. This is a […]

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How Much Have I Been Scammed Out of My Game?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 2, 2014

I guess I should quit holding my breath for all those YouTube Let’s Play videos of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon now… Turns out the majority of them were scammers, and my cursory investigations (especially for foreign language accounts) wouldn’t have exposed ’em. How to Get Every Game on STEAM for Free Le Sigh. […]

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Ludum Dare October Challenge returns: Sell a game! Turn pro!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 30, 2014

The Ludum Dare October Challenge, started 4 years ago, has kicked off again. Your mission, instead of making a game, is (deceptively) simple: Sell a game. Make at least $1  (Or equivalent in other currencies) And thereby become a pro. The cool thing about this one is that there are very few rules. You don’t […]

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Big Indie-an vs. Little Indie-an

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 25, 2014

“Indie” has been a purposefully inclusive title. It designated those games or game developers that worked outside the standard gatekeepers, the big game publishing industry that dominated the scene only a few years ago. It was really a catch-all to cover everybody excluded from that system. Even then, there wasn’t a great hard-and-fast rule to […]

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Steam’s New Curation / Discovery Thingy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 24, 2014

If you are on Steam, chances are you’ve learned about their new Discover interface and the new curation stuff. I’ve not had much time to touch it yet, but it’s high on my priority list. The big question is… will it help people find the games they’d like to play. I’m not sure, and the […]

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Shocker: Unfinished Games to Remain Unfinished

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 23, 2014

I keep grumbling (I try to think positive and to avoid grumbling too much) about people being willing to pay more for a promise of a game than an actual, completed game. I’ve suspected that as we had some high-profile failures in Early Access and crowdfunding games, that this might be tempered somewhat. We’ve had […]

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The Indie World, Post-Minecraft

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 15, 2014

Unless we’re all victims of the most epic troll of gaming history – or the deal suddenly turns sour before the contracts are all signed (and it may be too late for that), it’s official – Minecraft and its studio Mojang are being sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. Which – is mind boggling. Utterly […]

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More Indie Bubble Popping Goodness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 29, 2014

This one from Cliffski, and I find his opinion is pretty much the same as mine: Will the indie games market crash and burn? Short answer: Yes, depending on your definition. Longer answer (my interpretation):  It’ll be the game developers crashing and burning, not so much the market. Solution: Go for your dreams, but don’t […]

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Maybe the dream job isn’t really dreamy… or even a job…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2014

I always want to post some things without commentary, but I can’t help but comment. In this case, an article by my friend Lars Doucet, developer for Defender’s Quest. And the guy who did Tourette’s Quest. Warning, this is another one of those, “back to reality” pieces. Follow Your Dreams!… Or Maybe Don’t… This could […]

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Indie Games and the Gold Rush Mentality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 21, 2014

In 1846, San Francisco was a tiny settlement of around 200 people. Then the California Gold Rush happened. The population exploded to 36,000 within six years.  Tons of people came to strike it rich. Some did. Most didn’t. Then a few years later, the whole thing petered out. The gold rush ended. Some people left. […]

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PuppyGames: The Customer as a Commodity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 19, 2014

Since I’m sleep-deprived and exhausted and haven’t had much time to spare to the blog with this Comic Con demo coming up, I’ll just link to a really good (and, no doubt, soon to be demonized) blog post by fellow indie Cas Prince: Because You’re Worthless: The Dark Side of Indie PR Because I have […]

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Games as Services: Will you never be allowed to own a game again?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 31, 2014

Ben Kuchura at Polygon ventures the opinion that – in light of a very obvious trend in the industry right now from certain major publishers / platform holders (particularly EA) – in the future, nobody will own video games anymore. It’ll all be a rental. Or at best, owning a license for indefinite access to […]

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Surviving the Glut as a Game Developer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 3, 2014

After yesterday’s epic-sized post, today’s will be a small one – because Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software says a lot of good stuff that doesn’t need much additional commentary. He’s way better at this than me, anyway, and has been through a couple of market cycles since before “indie” was even a term (back then, […]

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