Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Interview: Talkin’ PC Gaming and Frayed Knights

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 7, 2011

True PC Gaming has an interview with me where I talk about PC gaming and Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.

You can check it out here.

I don’t think Adam intended this,  and maybe I’m just overly sensitive to this, but I did find myself feeling a little defensive in the questions about digital distribution platforms. I don’t know if that came out in the interview, but in case it did, I wanted to clarify. I get a little bit of a vibe from the industry in general these days that digital distribution = the big portals. I used to bristle back when people equated indie games to casual games, too.

Not that I dislike the big portals (I still have a couple of games from Steam that I haven’t even played yet…), or that I had any problem with casual games (I enjoy them, too!).  The digital distribution services are taking a middleman role that is still needed, whereas the traditional publishing model is … well, not quite going the way of the dinosaur, but definitely … er, “losing steam” if you’ll pardon the pun…

But the thing with being indie for me is having the freedom to bypass the middleman or the “process” entirely. That’s the point. Sure, you can choose to have a publisher or distributor or whatever agent you wish to help you better serve your customers. I’m jumping through the hoops now to do just that (and doing a bit of waiting for responses…)

As an analogy, I don’t have a problem with Wal*Mart the way some people do. I shop there sometimes. But I do not want all the little stores to be replaced by Wal*Mart, either. Especially when they sell things that probably won’t ever be carried by a local Wal*Mart. The same goes for indie game distribution. The big portals and distributors are awesome and have a huge audience and sell things for an incredible discount, and to their credit do get some indie games that even *I* have never heard about. But I don’t want their dominance to be at the expense of the little guys selling quirky but awesome titles.

UPDATED: Wanted to clarify that this tangential rant wasn’t based on the interview.


Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Interviews - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



  • delve said,

    The difference between Walmart and digital game distribution is the Walmart demolishes smaller competitors by its very nature. The staples are cheaper at Walmart but it’s the staples that smaller shops rely on to pay the bills.

    That dynamic does not exist in games. There are no video game staples and even if you propose highly publicized AAA products as the analogue to bread and milk it’s clear that smaller online distributers don’t need them to pay the bills. I’m not really disagreeing with your statements just disassembling your analogy. Big online game retailers do not have the same place in their market that Walmart has in its market fortunately. There’s room for the indies.

  • meep said,

    So did we steal your daughters college fund? Or is it too early to tell?

    I realize you cant be be giving sales hard numbers. I’m just wondering if your expectations have been met, or disappointed.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    At this point, it looks like I won’t lose money on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon. Maybe even have a budget for the next one. 🙂 So yeah, so far my expectations have mostly been exceeded. I think a market still exists for this kind of game, and in spite of its shortcomings, Frayed Knights is serving a need. We just need more people to hear about it.

  • snyderer said,

    “I think a market still exists for this kind of game, and in spite of its shortcomings, Frayed Knights is serving a need. We just need to bring the UI to modern standards.”

    Fixed.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    Gotcha. Next game there will be only six special abilities per character, but they’ll all have custom hotkeys and cooldown timers. And bloom effects!

  • skavenhorde said,

    I really don’t get the complaints with the UI. After the temple and I learned what everything meant the UI was never a problem. It provided me with all the information I needed. If I wanted to cast a spell it only made sense to target that spell and I did have 3 hotkeys for my main spells/abilities. That was more than enough. If I needed to cast a different spell from those three it wasn’t that difficult to do. I mean, come on, push the “s” button, find your spell and target. How hard is that?

    I think when people say UI they just mean MOAR hotkeys. Everyone is so hot for hotkeys 😛

  • Eldiran said,

    Personally the only problem with the UI I can see is the fonts in the bottom area of the screen. Haven’t played the game yet, but they really stand out to me as ugly just from the previews. The fonts look like they belong in a spreadsheet rather than an RPG. Not to be harsh, but it might be something to keep in mind for next time.

    That said, they won’t keep me from getting this game — I plan on getting it once the queue of RPGs I need to play runs gets a little shorter.

    Really glad to hear you’re profiting though! It’s an inspiration to wannabe developers like me.

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