The Death of Single-Player Games?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 6, 2012

Sounds like EA is patting itself on the back for eliminating single-player games from their publishing plans. Not that solo players will be completely left in the cold – I’m sure most of those games will retain some single–player modes. In some cases, the solo mode will even be the focus of the game.  But […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Mainstream Games - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Greenlight is a Go.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 31, 2012

I had this in an update yesterday, but I wanted to give it one more go: Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon  is on Steam Greenlight. Please vote for it, if you have a Steam account. Obviously, Greenlight is now up and running. And… I dunno. I’m apparently not the only one seeing it as […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Mainstream Games - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

A Message to a Young, Newbie Game Developer – Thirty Years Ago Today

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 28, 2012

I’m not sure of the official “ship date” for the Commodore 64, but it was pretty close to thirty years ago today. We had ours on pre-order for months, and it finally arrived on our doorstep in early September – after school had started, much to my chagrin. I’d anticipated spending a summer learning to […]

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

The Meaning of Indie. Again.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 23, 2012

If you focus on the history, the gist of what ‘indie’ means is pretty simple.  Once upon a time, the big, bad publishers had a pretty solid (but never total) lock on being a gatekeeper for customers. If you wanted to make games that had an audience, you almost had to go through them. Almost. […]

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Going Big When You Are Small

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2012

I’ve had a few discussions with friends over the last couple of weeks about RPG design, revisiting past ideas, etc.  Those inspired yesterday’s post. And today’s post. But what really drove something home was this RPG Codex interview with gaming legend Jon Van Caneghem, creator of the Might & Magic series and founder of New […]

Filed Under: Design, Indie Evangelism, Retro - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Competing Against the Past

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 21, 2012

One of the awesome things about indies is that they are capable of revisiting genres or game styles that have long been abandoned by the industry at large. Turn-based RPGs, adventure games, 2D platformers, shoot-em-ups, space combat sims, even flight sims… these game categories are nicely represented by indies nowadays after long dormant periods. This […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Indie Game Development: Words of Discouragement?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 17, 2012

This is a sad story indeed. There are a few lessons that could be drawn from this story. One might be that nice guys finish last. These guys tried to take a different path from how they saw “predatory” in-app purchases work. And as a result, they are now broke. So one could say that […]

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

The Ouya Kickstarter – Clearing $7 Million In Its Final Hours

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 7, 2012

The Ouya Kickstarter has been extremely interesting to watch. To be honest, I’m a little surprised by the amount of support that has come through for this tiny little “indie” game console. They’ve cut a deal with OnLive, bringing some “streaming play” for mainstream games to this little platform. There will be an Ouya part […]

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Games With Personality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2012

If you go to the main website for Rampant Games, you’ll see the slogan on the header: “Games with Personality.” I came up with that several years ago when I was trying to distinguish the value for indie games compared to their big-budget cousins. With so many mainstream games available for cheap in the ol’ […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Oh, Yeah – The OUYA!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2012

It’s a new kind of video game console. Now the fastest-funding Kickstarter yet. And on track to possibly become the highest-earning Kickstarter project. Though since most of the Kickstarter donations are actually more pre-orders for the console, this may not be quite as impressive as it sounds. But still… two million dollars in 24 hours […]

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Steam Greenlight: Crowd-Sourcing the Slush Pile

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2012

Valve just announced a game-changer for indies that will go live in a few weeks. Entitled Steam Greenlight, it appears to be an answer to the overwhelming number of indie games being submitted regularly for Steam release: Steam Greenlight So basically, we’re talking Valve crowd-sourcing their growing slush-pile. The theory is that the most popular […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Happy Indie Day

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 4, 2012

For the half or so of you who are in the United States – Happy Independence Day! For the rest of you, happy Wednesday! While here in the U.S. it’s a day of barbecues and fireworks (though hopefully, here in drought country during a fire season for the record books, this is all kept very […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Sixteen Indie Success Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2012

Mike Rose quotes Robert Boyd’s five steps to indie success at Gamasutra: 5 Ways to Be a Successful Indie Developer I don’t consider these to be all that controversial. The first one – don’t go it alone – is about the only one I’d raise a minor exception to, and that is primarily an implementation […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Survival RPGs and Dead State

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 21, 2012

A few years ago I started talking to friends about what I termed “survival RPGs.” There weren’t many, to my knowledge. I kinda put the Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis games in that category.  Though I haven’t played it, it sounds like Robinson’s Requiem would firmly belong there. Several roguelikes would probably fit, too. But […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Indie Game The Movie – Thoughts

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 19, 2012

I pre-ordered the Special Edition of Indie Game: The Movie some time ago. Unfortunately, I still ended up being one of the last people to see it. I wasn’t able to see it when it showed at the Sundance Film Festival here in Utah, and I guess there was some kind of exclusivity thing with […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

The Dead State Kickstarter Thing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2012

I’ve talked about Dead State several times here on this blog.  I’m pretty sick of the whole zombie thing, but I’m very excited about this RPG – which is billed as more of a post-holocaust survival RPG  where zombies are the primary environmental threat, but not so much an ‘enemy’. Anyway, I was excited for […]

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