The Spirit Engine 2 Review
Craig Stern (of Telepath RPG fame) reviews The Spirit Engine 2 at his new blog:

The Spirit Engine 2 review

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:34 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Indie Game Development: Fantasy Versus Reality
Okay - this would have been funny enough NOT knowing that every single one of these are based on true (ish) stories:

Lively Ivy - Indie Game Development: Fantasy Versus Reality

"Four years at university, and here I am drawing a dancing robot..."

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:33 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Win $100k to Develop Your Dream Indie Game!
Activision embraces indies.

Full rules and eligibility are still pending --- but you can find the general rules right here:

Activision Announces the 2010 Activision Independent Game Competition

Here's what it says:

This summer, one developer will win $100,000 to make their game development dreams a reality. The official entry form and eligibility requirements will be posted in a few weeks. In the meantime, this is what we’ll be looking for in submissions:

- A two-page summary of your proposed game. Please include three to five bullet-point elements or goals that you feel define your project (i.e. “open-world,” “puzzle-based,” “flying dragon combat”). Beyond that, you may structure these two pages as you see fit; creativity is encouraged.

- A video, no longer than five minutes, explaining and illustrating your game. Footage of your game in motion, character models, animatics – show your project and its elements however you feel would be most compelling.

- The official entry form, which will be posted here soon

- A non-disclosure agreement, which will be posted here soon

So get ready to send us your ideas either on your own or on a team.

Check back for more information in early March, and good luck!

Hmm... well, at first blush, it sounds pretty dang cool. Of course, there's a good chance you'd be surrendering all rights to the final game, etc. etc. etc. But that's no excuse for not checking it out when more details become known.

Labels: game development, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:36 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Six Reasons to Support Indie RPGs
Craig Stern of Sinister Design (maker of Telepath Psy Arena 2 and the in-development Telepath RPG: Servants of God) has six very good reasons to support indie RPGs.

The Top Six Reasons to Support Indie RPGs

Now, we can't say for sure about any of 'em, including the last (but otherwise good) point. The whole point of being an indie is to do things your own way, and some indies may choose to follow the Path of Least Intelligence following in the missteps of some Big Publishers. But for the most part - that's not an indie thing, and Craig's piece is dead-on.

These games give you a solid bang for your entertainment buck (or pound, or euro, or whatever). While I still love my big-budget mainstream RPGs, some of the most entertaining RPGs I have played over the last three years or so have actually come from these tiny indie studios, or the tiny mainstream studios.

There's something awesome happening here. I encourage you to take the time out to check it out.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Global Game Jam - Utah - Pics From the Creative Crucible
They had 48 hours to change the world...

This weekend was the 2010 Global Game Jam. All around the world, video game heroes - the real ones, not the ones made of pixels - holed themselves up for 48 hours to create video games - start to finish. The tight time constraints meant the games would necessarily be small, focused, and likely experimental to take advantage of a very limited array of mechanics and content.

I did not participate. But I did drop by to distract the participants and get some pictures at about the 24-hour point. The teams were often surrounded by half-empty containers of food and energy drinks. They had that wild all-nighter look to them. They were, in some cases, looking a little bit on the stressed and harried side. As they were at the halfway mark, they were generally at a very irritating part in game development: Nothing was fully WORKING yet, the wild dreams of the early hours were getting battered in the realities of schedule, and everyone seemed to be chewing on their own difficulties and challenges while acutely aware of the ticking of the clock.

But they were all working their butts off to try and do something --- cool. To be part of something awesome. And to create something great. Many of the game jammers were professionals, but they all embodied the indie spirit, and were making games for the love of games. They had no funding, no expectation of reward - but they sacrificed an entire weekend to make a game.

Here are snapshots of a tiny moment from some (most? all?) of the teams in their efforts this weekend at the Salt Lake location.

The Dust Bunnies team was having to make some major changes to their design when I showed up. They were hashing out some hard choices of what to salvage and how.


Maid In Russia is an adventure-style game of cold-war era espionage. And here it is in development:




The two-man (well, it was supposed to be 3-man) team of Silent Raid - a top-down - uh, space-sneaker game. You are infiltrating space pirates. Which means you are like a space ninja disguised as a space pirate. Or something.


The team behind Treausure Raiders included familiar faces from both Utah Indie Night and my former employer. These guys were making the gutsy move of making their game for the XBox 360 via XNA.



The Maid Man (later renamed "Free Towels," I understand) team - including many NinjaBee folks - divvy up the sandwiches for the closest thing that would count for a lunch break. No real "break" involved.


Mike Nielsen (who also does music for Frayed Knights and Apocalypse Cow) works on designing a level for Maid Man / Free Towels.


The team of Ant Thieves. It's a game about being a thief. And an ant. I think.



Some folks - like the organizers - played games in a support role rather than making games. I was glad to see Magic: The Gathering remains popular.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:35 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
How To Afford That $15 Indie Game
Heh - for your amusement:

How To Afford That $15 Indie Game

Applies fairly well to the $12, $13, $18, $20, $24, and even $25 indie games as well...

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:25 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Favorite Indie RPG of 2009?
Okay folks - today's post is a simple one: What was your favorite indie RPG of 2009, and why?

There were a LOT of contenders. I know I'm missing some:

Avernum 6 (Mac)
Geneforge 5 (Windows)
Knights of the Chalice
Aveyond: Lord of Twilight
Aveyond: Gates of Night
Legie
Battle of the Millennium
Cute Knight Kingdom
The Three Musketeers
Aztaka
Eternal Eden 2
Telepath Psy Arena 2 (Not entirely certain it qualifies as an RPG, but WTH)
Science Girls
Asguaard
Millennium 2 - Take Me Higher
Laxius Force 2
Dawn's Light
Eternal Twilight
Deadly Sin
3 Stars of Destiny
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Dark Souls - Kara's Quest
Whisper of a Rose
Spirited Heart (Not sure I'd call this an RPG, but again - why not?)
Bionic Heart (ditto)
Pioneering: Episode One

Okay, yeah, RPG Maker titles do take up a disproportionately large segment of the list. And must we mention But even so - that's a pretty significant list!

Some, but not all, of these games can be found at Rampant Games. Just to see what you might have missed. I've been slow trying to keep up with them all. Quite frankly, I can't. Not physically possible, especially not with a goal to play them all to completion (and for some of the more open-ended games, that's not a possibility, either).

But dang, isn't that an awesome problem to have? 2010 is already poised to be an indie RPG bonanza. But - returning to the past before moving towards the future, I again ask:

Which indie RPGs of 2009 rocked the hardest? Why?

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Indie RPG News

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:39 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
VVVVVV - Cooler Than Anticipated
Terry Cavenaugh's newest game, VVVVVV, is a simple, 8-bit-looking platformer with a small twist that really changes the gameplay around: Instead of jumping, you invert gravity.

I like it. It twists your brain, is quite challenging, yet a lot of fun nonetheless. The respawn points are (so far) pretty generous, too, which I like.

You can play the free demo online, which includes two levels:

VVVVVV 2-level Online Demo

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:52 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
New Age of Decadence Combat Demo
The new Age of Decadence combat demo is up.

I didn't post the previous one because I was out of town, distracted, and heard that it had enough problems to warrant a new release. And - well, that's done now:

Age of Decadence Combat Demo

If you are looking forward to Age of Decadence, I don't blame you. It's pretty hotly anticipated here at the Casa del Coyote, too. It has serious potential for awesomeness, which I actually expect to be realized.

But at the moment, I have combat envy.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Indie RPG News

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:47 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Indie™ Games - Just Like Homemade™!
Let's say you have one driven, talented seventeen-year-old laboring part-time on her laptop on a video game with a budget of almost nothing. Maybe she's using a copy of Game Maker Pro she purchased with money earned by asking if people wanted to super-size their orders. The game is weird and original. Our game developer then releases her game for free on the Internet.

Is our theoretical game developer an indie? Is his game indie? Of course. This is just about the epitome of indie.

On the flip side, we have Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Funded by a major publisher, with a huge budget and team, and the biggest video game launch (so far) in history, selling nearly 5 million copies in the first 24 hours across two platforms in two continents.

Indie? Not at all. This is the anti-indie. This game was produced by the very system that "indie" evolved to bypass.

While there is simply no way in the world our hypothetical indie is going to match the production values of the mainstream game, when you strip away the glitz there may actually more similarities than differences. Both games were created by talented, skilled, and driven people. Both games may provide equal amounts of "fun." Assuming our heroine creates a "deluxe," premium version for which she charges money, and she inks a deal with a publisher / distributor, both games could end up on neighboring shelves at Wal*Mart. Even "scope" may not much of a difference - as many indie games have much larger scope than their mainstream counterparts (*cough*DwarfFortress*cough*).

It gets more complicated if we go somewhere between these two extremes. What about a small company that gets a sizable budget from non-traditional investors? What about tiny "indie" publishers? What about an independent ("indie") studio that has gotten wealthy enough that they can run things exactly like a mainstream development project but without any publisher oversight? Or a mainstream "guns for hire" studio that moonlights as an indie?

I worked on the MMO game, Saga (an "MMORTS"), a few years ago. From my perspective, as part of a small studio, it wasn't indie. We had a smaller team by modern standards, sure, and a budget that was way too small to be a AAA mainstream game (but still bigger than most indie titles). But the publisher was a tiny new startup that received investment funding from outside the games biz. These guys were total outsiders, which pretty much defines "indie." But from down in the trenches in my studio, except for a closer working relationship, it was no different from taking marching orders from a major publisher.

Later, I found myself working on a tiny team funded by EA's Pogo. Most of the time, it "felt" closer to an indie development process. We had a shoestring budget and were focused exclusively on online distribution. We would be competing directly with pure "indie" titles. But in spite of embracing much of the "indie ethos," it was definitely not an indie game - a fact brought home when the project was canceled by the publisher just shy of alpha. (And a major regret on my end, because we thought it was a lot of fun and coming along great... but the publisher decided it just wasn't going to sell in the numbers they needed).

I'm really talking about two issues here. First of all, indie is a process, not a product. It's an "outsider" approach to bypass the mainstream game development industry which dominates the hobby. And indie is a spectrum with obviously indie on one end, obviously mainstream on the other, and a very broad nebulous zone in-between without anything even close to a clear-cut boundary between the two... as hard as I try to find one.

It's a little like food being labeled "homemade." Some lady making fresh pies for her family from scratch using apples taken from the trees in her backyard is unquestionably making homemade pies. As she scales up her operation to makes the pies for friends and neighbors, it's still homemade. But then she continues to scale up her process, with only minor modifications, to sell her pies at local grocery stores, and then on an even larger process. At what point in the evolution of her pie business do her pies cease to be "homemade?" As I'm putting a frozen pie I just bought from the supermarket in the oven to heat it up and serve to my family, am I still providing a homemade pie? Does it matter to my family?

For us, the gamers, it can be difficult to just look at a game and say "indie" or "not indie." I ran into this problem recently trying to classify the action-RPG Torchlight. In my view, it's not indie. But I had to look it up to find out. If they'd hidden their process completely from public view, I'd have no way of knowing. And the game dwells deep enough in the nebulous spectrum between indie and mainstream that people could very easily argue with me, even knowing the details, and label it as a full fledged "indie" title.

So if it makes no difference to the gamer, is the distinction at all important? It is to me, definitely. I guess I do support a double (or triple, or spectrum-wide-multiple) standard. I don't think a high school basketball team should have to make any apologies for not being an NBA team. And I really don't know that a high school basketball game is any less entertaining than an NBA game (especially when your neighbor or nephew is one of the players). Likewise, I don't think The Three Musketeers should have to make any apologies for not being Dragon Age: Origins. For that matter, I don't think Torchlight suffers much from the comparison, either. While they may be in three separate leagues in terms of production values and intensity of experience (as they should be), for pure entertainment value the difference isn't nearly as extreme.

My reasoning (justification?) is that emphasizing "indie" encourages players to filters out the glitz, shader effects, modeling of individual hair follicles, ten-minute pre-rendered cut-scenes, and famous voice actors. Admittedly, that's a lot to look past, and video games have always been at least somewhat about spectacle and technological pizazz. But if we can do that, suddenly discussing Cute Knight Kingdom in the same sentence as Fallout 3 doesn't sound ridiculous at all. Nor is comparing a little indie game favorably to a big-budget blockbuster.

That's where I am, most of the time. And where the rest of the hobby / industry seems to be going, at long last. The spectrum is broadening daily. "Indie" is going to become increasingly more difficult to define, especially for the consumer who doesn't really care to peek into the sausage factory to know anything more about how his game was made.

But that's okay. What's more important is that as the domination of the biz by a few companies weakens and indie games gain more "mainstream" acceptance, the old rules dictated by those same "industry power players" lose their influence on players. This includes the old criteria for judging the worth of a game, usually measured in terms of what bigger budgets could buy. You've seen the TV and magazine ads, you know what I'm talking about. While still important, they are secondary concerns for what really matters.

And what really matters? For me, it's still about having fun.

So have fun!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:57 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Torchlight 50% Off Until Monday
The downloadable and highly entertaining RPG Torchlight - by some of the creators of the Diablo series - is available for 50% off on Steam until Monday.

Go git it! If you are so inclined...

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:26 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Gamasutra's 10 Best Indie Games of 2009
For what it's worth:

Gamasutra's 10 Best Indie Games of 2009

It's not the list I would have made, though I didn't play all of the games there, either. I'd probably put AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!: A Reckless Disregard For Gravity in the #1 slot, for example.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:03 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Frayed Knights: 2:30 AM Ambushes
As usual, I started losing productivity after about 1:30 AM. And after 2:00 AM, I should have called it quits. But I didn't. Because I was ... almost done. I am just testing now, see?

Yeah, right. So now it's almost 2:30 and I find myself walking into an ambush, not remembering how I got here.

When I open my eyes (after just blinking for a moment... I'm sure), I find myself in the hobgoblin bunker. I realize I was in the middle of testing something, but for the life of me I cannot remember going through the entrance, fighting through two waves of attackers (I have a cheat key installed that auto-kills all enemies... it makes testing a bit faster) to get to the landing where I am now subjected to scripted arrow fire.

Vaguely I remember what I'm supposed to be doing. I've bypassed two guardrooms to get to the split-level chamber. At least I think I have. Since I've apparently been sleepwalking through the dungeon, I can't be certain. So what is supposed to happen is that two waves of reinforcements should arrive after this battle - not exactly an ambush, but a rough situation. Then, going back, I have to make sure that the rooms they vacated to reinforce / replace the archers are truly vacated.

I'm not entirely certain if this is going to play out to my liking. There is definitely an optimal path to try and ambush-the-ambushers, coming around from behind (after emptying out the guardrooms) to avoid the arrow fire and kill the archers. But aside from trial-and-error, I'm not sure how to telegraph this strategy to the player. It's not a make-or-break strategy - it's definitely a winnable combat regardless - but it does make things a bit easier.

Not that this occurs to me much at 2:30 - make that 2:35 - AM. This is about my sixth or seventh run-through tonight, and I'm more concerned about the fact that in the first guardroom - the one that rushes out to attack you instead of waiting for you to open their door - is still rushing to attack even though I killed them all in the previous room. not that a player would necessarily realize it's the same group... except I need to leave their door open. Yes. The guards need to open their doors when rushing out to reinforce the archers.

One more thing to put on the long, long list of Things To Do.

I make some changes to the script. Save. Run. Select start, which is currently hard-coded to load the Caverns of Anarchy. Wait through loading. You think load times suck as a player? Try being a developer and having to reload every single time you want to test a change. You folks who have scripted up Neverwinter Nights modules know exactly what I'm talking about.

Uh... where was I? I zoned out again. What time is it? 2:40 AM. Crap. I have to get up in less than five hours for work. Using the insta-victory cheat key I run through battle one, battle two, battle three with two sets of reinforcements... and then test the guardrooms (with doors still closed) - HAH! They are as dead as they should be. Nothing left to do but loot the empty rooms.

2:44 AM. Enough time to hopefully get four-and-a-half hours of sleep. Of course, when my head hits the pillow at 2:52, I still have visions of hobgoblin ambushes and gameplay concerns about the fairness of allowing hobgoblins to shoot at long range with impunity while the player must charge into melee range. Fortunately, sleep comes fast.

And the alarm clock goes off almost as fast, in subjective time. The day job beckons. Or, rather, demands. It's paying for this lifestyle, after all.

This is the life of a part-time indie game developer. Of this one, at least.

Labels: Frayed Knights, Geek Life, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
I Don't Care If You're Saving the World, You Still Have To Pay Me
Jeff Vogel explains why your own allies in RPGs still demand payment to train you in his games:

The Bottom Feeder: Why the People On Your Side Are Always Ripping You Off

This always kind of amused me in other games, too. Only a tiny bastion of humanity remains standing, but the weapon merchant still has to get his profit in. Sounds awful, but if you look at human history in times of disaster and war, the greatest historical inaccuracy is that he's not gouging you by insane levels. Those are the times that a loaf of bread may cost a diamond ring. Yeah, there are some great stories of people risking their lives to save each other. But those who risk their lives for profit usually charge a premium.

Anyway, it's an amusing article.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:38 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
The Golden Age of Indie
So we've got the Unity 3D engine free for indies --- the Unreal 3 engine now in the price range for indies --- a new version of Torque that looks pretty impressive (and still priced within the "professional" indie level of affordability), an upcoming less-restrictive license for Ogre 3D (still free), and a host of existing engine choices from the usual suspects.

While those who have trained with the more expensive commercial counterparts complain endlessly about their difficulty getting used to them, Blender 3D and The Gimp are outstanding content development tools that are absolutely free. Blender 3D is readying for its big 2.5 release very soon now.

We've got indie games on consoles. Downloadable games are becoming the norm. Indie MMOs are competing head-to-head for dollars with the big boys (at least all the ones not named World of Warcraft).

The latest copy of Game Developer magazine lists the fifty most influential people in the industry over the last year or so - and indie developers (and evangelists) made up a reasonable chunk of the list.

Indie games are being talked about by mainstream press. Not just the token mention in a list in half-page columns near the back of the magazine like they used to get, but real honest-to-goodness attention. Two or three years ago, an average gamer had no idea what an "indie game" was. Now, they might not have played one, but they've at least heard of them. This is significant.

It sounds to me like the Age of Indie has fully arrived! (Jussincase we hadn't figured that out in the last two or three years.)

So what is the Age of Indie? Heck if I know. It's up to the indies themselves to define it. But what's cool is that those guys defining it are the folks with gumption, skill, and the willingness to put in a lot of hard work. NOT just the folks with the big bucks or publisher contracts.

ANYBODY can make a game now. That's been true for a long time, but technology is becoming even less of a factor. And anybody can sell it. Yeah, marketing and selling a game is even harder than making it, in many ways. But it is happening. And web-based gaming --- I have no idea how far that rabbit hole will go!

I doubt indies will ever be in the same league as "the big boys" again, as they were when indie "shareware" shops hit their peak in the early-to-mid 90s. But I think the dividing line is going to get even blurrier. It's becoming more and more of a spectrum.

But the excuses are gone. Tools, training, support, opportunities, even console releases are now available within an indie's grasp. Gaming is now back in the hands of the gamers.

Take us to cool places, please.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:54 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Din's Curse - Screenshots Now Up
For those following Soldak's new indie role-playing game:

Din's Curse - First Screenshots

Yeah, it does look a bit like Depths of Peril and Kivi's Underworld. Are you at all surprised?

I'm excited about this one, personally. It sounds like its got more Depths of Peril-ish-ness to it.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:28 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Free Indie Game Today Only
Tale of Tales is offering the full version of their indie game and last year's IGF finalist, The Graveyard, for free - today only.

Tale of Tales: Visit The Graveyard Today - For Free!

As per its description on the website:

The Graveyard is a very short computer game designed by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with realtime poetry, with storytelling without words.

I haven't even played the demo version yet, so I can't offer any opinion. But hey, the price is right, so if you feel so inclined, today is the day to check it out.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:20 AM (Permalink) 12 comments links to this post

 
Cute Knight Kingdom Wallpaper
Wherein I just pass along a link to the source. 'Cuz I'm not embarrassed to be a fan of Cute Knight!

I Whine About Games: Cute Knight Kingdom Wallpaper

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:43 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Rampant Coyote on Knights of the Chalice
I have now played through the demo of Knights of the Chalice. Articles and interviews are cropping up all over the place on this one.

For good reason, in my opinion.

Graphically, it resembles some old 1990-era titles like Ultima VI and the Magic Candle III. The low-res graphics were no accident - the demo clocks in at under 7 megs in spite of a reasonable amount of content, simply because those small sprites don't take much room.

Most complaints registered about the game have concerned cosmetics and the interface. They aren't wrong. (Similar complaints have been levied against Frayed Knights, so I feel some kinship with the developer there...)

Complaints aside, I think it's a winner. I've not yet bought the full game - I'm on as much of a budget as anybody else here ;) - but it's on my "must buy" list. This one surprised me as much as Depths of Peril did a couple of years ago. Like Depths, I wasn't expecting too much of this one when I heard about it. And - well, color me impressed.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, the game uses a modified versions of the Open Gaming License for the 3.5 D20 rule system - which I am pretty dang familiar with. And it uses it in such a way that translates very well to tactical combat. The tactical combat is - in a word - awesome. Sure, I have my complaints. The enemy AI is sometimes a little too clever - such as when even a "stupid" monster knows to go after the mage first if possible. Maybe our little wizard shouldn't wear the robe decorated with a target in the future? But when I'm complaining about the AI being "too" clever (well, sometimes), you know I'm getting a little nitpicky.

The combats are challenging. You won't be hacking and slashing your way through 'em - at least not in the demo. Not only do you have to be pretty tactical with your positioning and spell use, but you also need to husband your resources a bit so that you not only survive this combat, but the next one you don't know anything about. In classic D&D style, you only recover spell points while resting (at a campfire, in this game), and so the whole resource-management between multiple combats thing is strongly in effect here.

Oh, and you'll have to deal with stuff like 5-foot moves (a free position adjustment you can take every round), attacks of opportunity, and so forth. The AI has to deal with it too. A nasty spider-like Aranachak has a number of spell-like abilities, and is constantly backing up a square each round to fireball, web, acid spray, and to heal itself. They know the tricks. It's not hard to imagine a devilish Dungeon Master on the other side of the screen, plotting out the moves to best screw over the players with otherwise "fair" fights.

There are daylight and weather cycles, and a plethora of monsters. Character special abilities seem to be a little lacking (or I've just not figgered 'em out yet), but the spell list seems pretty extensive and reasonably true to the source material. The non-combat decisions seem few but consequential - there are times when you are offered the choice of fighting or avoiding combat, and avoiding a fight just might be the best answer, particularly if the monster in question seems a little out of your league. (I'm happy to report that bargaining with a monster rather than fighting it entitled me to a sizeable experience point award as well - probably comparable to what I'd have received if I duked it out).

The full version of the game supposedly includes a campaign that can take your characters from 1st to 20th level - which is quite believable, considering the accelerated rate at which the characters receive experience points in the D20 system. I can easily envision multiple campaigns using this same underlying system (with an upgraded engine) being made in the future. Hey, I'm still happily playing 3.5 D&D in a 4.0 world in my pen-and-paper games, so I would probably keep buyin' 'em.

Cosmetically, yeah, there are some reasonable gripes, as I said before. The graphics resolution could be better, but that doesn't bug me too much. The interface seems kinda inconsistent and takes some getting used to. Besides being inconsistent and confusing, it doesn't ask for confirmation before letting you commit to actions. And, as people have been complaining about, the all-caps font is the worst of the Commodore 64 era experimental faux-script nonsense that looks lifted directly out of the original Temple of Apshai (but with drop-shadow pixels). There is another font used for the very impressive help menus, fortunately, making it a little easier to understand the massively detailed instructions and detailed information about the extensive implementation of the Open Gaming License rules.

While the game does have the retro look and resolution, it also has some nice, more modern effects, such as particle effects and transparencies (and better than a 255-color palette) to offer some counterpoint to the 20-year-old appearance. And there's the little fact that the short demo version (less than a 7 meg download) is beefier than most floppy-based distributions of two decades ago.

Once I get the time, I'll be picking up the full version of this one and I'll inevitably post some more thoughts. But from what I've seen thus far, I'm impressed. While far from perfect, it seems like another one to set on the stage and show to people as an example of what indies can do.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:51 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Why Indie Games Are Important.
Why do we keep arguing about the definition of "indie games?"

A lot of us groan every time someone (including ourselves) tries to tackle the whole "what is an indie game" question. I've tackled it myself here, here, and ... here, with pictures! Today GB Games tries to define indie, responding to Wolfire's Definition. It's trickier than it looks, and no matter how much we discuss it, we never come to a clear definition.

What most of us involved do know is that the media usually gets it wrong. And the publishers get it even more wrong. This last is perhaps deliberate --- if "indie" ever truly becomes cool, then I'd bet some big publishers will embrace the oxymoron and create their own in-house "indie" titles.

But no matter how often we discuss it, the poor gamers (and many game developers) are still left scratching their heads in confusion.

So I really try not to be too bugged by the topic as we continue to debate the definition of indie games. I think it's a worthy topic. I think the discussion helps all of us - especially those new to the party - understand it better.

And maybe I'm a minority of one on this, but I think understanding it really does matter. I think indie gaming is important. Important enough to keep trying to understand it better.

Let's go beyond games for a second. Let's talk about the advent of widespread digital distribution of media. Art, music, books, and - yes, and games. On the surface, it's no big deal. I mean, the whole thing about online distribution is simply that artists and creators now have the technology and means to create and distribute their works to a worldwide audience directly, bypassing the big middleman industries that capitalized on old-school technological limitations. So what?

I mean, all Johannes Gutenberg did was bypass those legions of monks, too, right?

Now, even considering that the descendants of his little invention have been used to produce uncountable metric tons of crap - far more than anything most of us would consider worthy material - few people would argue that this wasn't one of the most important inventions since the wheel, sliced bread, and whatever invention was the neatest thing before there was sliced bread to compare cool new inventions to. And I really do feel that the era of internet distribution of digital media is comparable in its importance.

Power to the people, and all that. Booyah!

What about games? Are games important? That question warrants a whole 'nother post, and better minds than mine have taken their crack at answering this question. In recent years in particular, and especially among indie games, it's been demonstrated how video games have the ability to educate, provoke thought, satirize, bring people together, spark discussion, and even relieve pain. They've even become important marketing vehicles (to some gamers' chagrin). Personally, I feel it has been made clear in my mind that games are no less important than any other "entertainment" medium.

So... yeah. I think that, as goofy as it sounds and as tedious as the arguments get for those of us who have been having 'em for years, I think indie games are important enough to warrant continued discussion and debate. Even continued attempts at definition. There's something very interesting and potentially pretty important happening here. So keep 'em comin'!

And remember to have fun!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:09 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Indie Blowout Sale on Steam This Weekend
Ye gods.

So - big sale this weekend on Steam. A ten-pack of popular indie games for $29.95, or a five-pack for $19.95. I don't have many of these, myself.

Among the games for sale are Blueberry Garden, The Path, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Braid, Everyday Shooter, World of Goo, Mr. Robot, Gish, Audiosurf, and Darwinia.

Now, I know Steam makes up for in volume what it squeezes to hell on profit margins, so ... this is probably not a horrible deal for the developers. But still, it's a great deal for the indie game player, so ... enjoy. $3 / pop on the 10-pack deal is really pretty unbelievable.

Big Steam Weekend Indie Game Sale

Enjoy.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:01 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
So Ya Wanna Be An Indie Developer?
Shamus Young's "Stolen Pixels" takes a poke at both the indie game scene, and game journalism's dubious relationship with indie gaming:

Stolen Pixels: So You Want to be an Indie Developer?

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:38 PM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Indie Game Makers: Don't Quit Your Day Job. Seriously.
Jeff Ward has done the research and run the numbers.

This probably won't put to rest the eternal question of, "How much money can I expect to make with this indie game I intend to make?" But it's a good reference point for when you answer, "not nearly enough."

Good thing I'm not in it for the money.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:32 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Game Night - Summer 2009
We had another of our quarterly Indie Game Nights tonight. Held at ITT Tech this time, the event was PACKED. We pretty much ran out of seats, but I'm not sure how many people that were there were simply ITT students who decided to be participants in the event just long enough to scarf down some of the pizza ITT provided. Hopefully they picked up some useful ideas and info in the process!

The night began with Chris Evans giving a presentation on making games for the iPhone. He provided a pretty good overview of the process, the numbers, and how much money iFart made early in the lifecycle of the iPhone. Unfortunately, the acoustics in the room we were in sucked, so those of us in the back couldn't hear him very well. Maybe we should all chip in for a cheap sound system (maybe a kid's karaoke machine) or something for next time.

I was sitting next to Herb and Dan Flower of Mythyn Interactive / LinkRealms, and Steve Taylor of NinjaBee. NinjaBee has just completed two games for the iPhone, including a version of Outpost Kaloki. Since I don't have an iPhone, he brought up the game on his and let me try it out. I was pretty impressed with how the game looked. One issue Steve brought up was that at Casual Connect a few days ago, they'd mentioned how something like 120 iPhone games PER DAY were being released now, and that's double what it was only three months ago. Any game appearing on the iPhone just disappears from the top of the app store very quickly. Even just shotgunning crappy titles won't work... everything gets buried under a deluge of competition in no time.

It seemed like quality was irrelevant in sales, and only games with very novel or controversial titles were actually making any money at all on the iPhone. Herb suggested something outrageous like "a game about crushing puppies." Steve responded that they'd brainstormed tons of similarly outrageous game ideas, and found that every one of their original, extreme ideas had already appeared on the iPhone - sometimes six times over. To prove his point, he immediately went to the App Store, did a search, and found a game about - wait for it - slaughtering puppies. Not exactly puppy-crushing, but a close enough match.

Crazy Stuff.

After the presentation, I got a chance to talk to a bunch of folks about their games. Some highlights:

Darkened Dreams 2 - by Curtis Mirci & Peter Anderson. The game is still looking a lot like it did last time, but the toolset keeps looking impressive. A lot of the work is "under the hood" right now in this one.

Tank General - I didn't get to play this one, as there was always someone else playing it. Best I could tell was that it was something of a Flash-based action / tactics wargame involving modern-ish ground warfare.

Cubix.Collect - This was a very simple but compelling game from Paul Milham. You control a 3D, line-drawn colored cube amidst a ton of other 3D, line-drawn colored cubes travelling across the screen. When your cube touches a cube of a similar color, it absorbs it and grows (and sometimes changes color). If it touches one of a different color, the other cube also dissappears but your cube also shrinks. If it shrinks too far, the game ends. As the game progresses, the other cubes change speed, direction (sometimes coming in multiple directions), and possibly other factors. The brilliant balance is that as you start losing, the game gets easier (since your cube shrinks and becomes easier to dodge non-color-matched cubes), and as you succeed it gets a little harder.

Radioactive Joe - By Carson Barlow, this was a game about a hick who becomes a hero. Or something like that. Unfortunately, it was running on a pretty slow computer. But it is kind of an action / adventure that he created as a capstone project for the game design program at ITT.

Kiten - by Josh Jones. This is a game about machine learning - the enemies respond and adapt to your style of play. In Flash, even. While it's far from polished or complete, it was interesting to play and see how the enemies change over time. You can check it out yourself at this link.

LinkRealms - While Dan and Herb weren't showing their game this time, I had a good chance to talk with them for a bit about how things have been progressing. They've been in a closed beta for a while, and it exposed a bunch of flaws in the game. In particularly, they are having trouble with retention. While they've got an incredibly cool, detailed, multiplayer world, they realized they needed some more long- and short-term gameplay to keep players engaged. This is the value of a real beta period, folks. So they are implementing some very intriguing stuff. They are definitely trying to do some things that are well outside the bounds dictated by the 800 pound gorilla, World of Warcraft. Breeding AI - with genetically exchanged systems of linked behavior "circuits" is one aspect they are exploring. As well as player-created - but not fully player-controlled - religions / cults. Sorta like a guild with some AI-controlled divine intervention and quest creation.

There was also a game being played on Wii controllers about dancing in a girl's talent show or something. I don't know what it was, but it was pretty popular - a bunch of gaming geek guys getting into making girls do fan kicks. And there was a game that involved (among other things) knocking over an evil (giant?) garden gnome. My brother Brian was there, showing some artwork for a new remake of an older 2D RPG they had developed a couple of years ago. There were some other folks who closed up shop before I was able to check out what they were working on, unfortunately. It was a busy (but awesome) night!

I also met a really incredible freelance 2D artist, Gabrielle Long, who has been looking for some indie gaming contracts and possibly a full-time position with a game company here in Utah. If you are an indie developer looking for someone to do indie-priced contract work of very high quality - especially (but not necessarily) if you are doing games with an anime / manga "look" to them - you should check out her portfolio and get into contact with her.

The discussions going on during the event seemed to me to be where much of the action was at (as usual), and I'm sure I missed out on some great ones. We really need to set up a Utah Indie mailing list so we can continue to swap thoughts during the three months between each meeting!

The Utah Indie Night continues to be well attended, and a great chance to network and share games, knowledge, experiences, ideas, and pizza. I had a blast.

UPDATE: Vazor (Josh Jones) has a report on the event here. Greg will hopefully have one up very soon as well for this month - watch for it at his blog. (And here it is: Utah Indie Night Summer 2009 Writeup)

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:04 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
How Indie Games Took On the World (and Won)
I am not sure if the article answers its proposed question, but it's an amusing read over at Games Radar:

"Guys like Dylan, like 2D Boy, Edmund McMillen and Vic Davis are changing gaming as we know it – evolving it into something new and endlessly diverse, made from love and wonder rather than commerce. And yet, at the same time we’re going backwards – this is a bigger, bolder return to the way games development once was, when tiny teams free of publisher interference were releasing some new slice of crazy wonder every week."

How Indie Games Took On the World (and Won) at Games Radar

I think the big take-away from this article is understanding just how impossible it is to categorize or characterize the indies, or define the One True Path to indie success. You have some claiming its a tight-knit community, obviously excluding all the other indies like Vic Davis who are completely separate from that "scene."

Indie is as indie does. Really, when we talk indie, we're talking about all the outliers from the traditional, mainstream, "one true way" of publishing and distributing games that has existed since the early / mid 80's - borrowed heavily from the music and print publishing industries. Trying to generalize a group that is defined as not being in a particular subset is gonna get tricky.

But it's cool to read about how many different approaches there are that have so far managed to work. The one troubling bit is the amount of dependence that seems to be growing on aggregators like Steam and Direct2Drive. Not that this is nearly as bad (so far) to developers as the physical media publication business, but it does give those channels a good deal of power to dictate terms.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Payin' the Indies
Reverend Anthony offers his Rev Rant about donating to indies for small games:



An excerpt:

"We're willing to pay $60 on the chance that a game will be good, so long as it's a big budget, mainstream title. I mean, we may have paid a demo of a game like Assassin's Creed, or whatever, but when we pay that 60 bucks, we're still gambling. We don't know that it will be good. But we'll pay it anyway, because 60 (dollars) is the norm... But we won't pay a dime - not a f***ng dime - for a game that we just finished playing, even if it was fantastic. "

There are actually three different points here, and while I agree with two of them, I think the third one stumbles into human nature problems that just won't be fixed no matter how vociferously one makes his appeal.

And I haven't played Assassin's Creed, so I can't speak on that one with any authority.

The first point is that we can and should be creative with how we compensate people for making us games. I agree. The one-size-fits-all shrink-wrapped boxed-display-packaged physical goods model is a relic of an era that isn't quite dead yet, but it's probably in its twilight years as far as software (and other media) is concerned. Maybe we should be more creative. Certainly bypassing the middlemen and the physical package is part of it - but maybe we can do better.

But that is currently running into problems with his second point, which is the actual pricing of these little indie games (particularly when compared to mainstream titles). It's weird and counter-intuitive, but oftentimes people will agonize and debate more over paying $10 or $20 for a small indi game than they will paying $50 or $60 for a mainstream game. Or maybe it has something to do with the formality of the games business. Do people feel weird giving their money to some dude out in Nebraska over the Internet, but feel better handing their credit card to some overweight clerk at Game Stop to process because it's more conventional and seems more like a "real" business?

Maybe it's an expectation thing. Here in the U.S., we're accustomed to paying as much or more for a 24 ounce cup of carbonated beverage (which is mostly ice) at a restaurant as we'd pay for a big ol' 2-liter bottle in the grocery store. (And yes, we mix metric and English measurements like that all the time, too.) Because it's at a restaurant, our pricing expectations get reset.

Maybe the problem is we're now all programmed to expect games to be $50 - $60. If a game doesn't cost that much, then we automatically assume it's an inferior game, and an inferior game just isn't worth our money. Or, on the flip side, maybe people still think that just because it's on the Internet, it should be free. Case closed. A lame, emotional, knee-jerk reaction with very little logic to back it up, but that's the way it goes. Maybe. Or maybe that's just me (and I've been happily buying games for a while, so I'd assume I'm a little more "deprogrammed" than your average gamer).

This, I think, can be addressed over time. It's just expectations that need to be reset. Rants like this one help.

The third point he brings up is paying for the game after you have played it.

Some things in our world work that way. In labor / service businesses, you are often billed for a project after it is done. Larger projects might involve milestone payments along the way. But sometimes collecting on those charges can be so difficult that it's spawned its own industry. Psychologically, people are hard-wired to trade for those things that they want, not things that they already have.

I don't know if any amount of ranting is going to change human nature here. Shareware authors back in the late 80's and 90's tried - and failed - repeatedly to get conversions to go up without resorting to crippling features. But apparently, appealing to basic goodness and responsibility of human nature only works on about 5% of your potential customer base.

The rest need to be bribed.

I think while it's good to make the appeal to people to donate (even after the fact) and pay for these tiny but fun indie games - if for no other reason than to remind people that these may be labors of love, but they are most definitely LABORS that deserve compensation as much as fixing someone's roof or car or performing magic tricks at a birthday party. But ultimately, I think the failure is on the developer side. A game developer has to have to have a plan in place in order to profit from those psycho hours that they work when they could have been relaxing and spending time with their family like normal human beings.

Which brings us back to the first point - creatively compensating developers. There are some really weird, interesting ideas out there that could be explored that haven't been. A street performer accepting donations might also accept requests from those who donate. Gabe Newell's idea of gamers being investors might have some merit, too. What about custom endings? Some of these ideas don't scale too well to selling thousands of copies (let alone millions that the mainstream shoots for), but they might scale just enough that they work for indies.

But the biggest thing we have to get over, I think, is the expectation that a game has to exhibit all the graphical glitziness and slickness of an expensive mainstream production to be worth our time and money. I'm not sure how that illusion got into place, and I know I've gotten way more value out of a $20 or $25 indie game than from a LOT of mainstream titles costing more than twice as much (will I ever finish Mass Effect?). Yet I still experience some irrational hesitation at times when it comes to indie games, though I prefer to chalk it up to the fact that I don't have enough time to finish all the games I have already bought...

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:02 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Indie is to Mainstream as Band is to Orchestra?
A few days ago Tadhg Kelly wrote a post at Gamasutra likening the difference between indies game makers and mainstream developers today to the relationship between small bands and orchestras.

As he explains:

"The games industry used to be a place for bands. In real terms a lot of the old indie studios like id, Bullfrog, Sensible Software and a thousand others were really just hothouse rooms with a few guys and girls working on their albums games and having a go.

"Nowadays the games industry is all about orchestras. A studio of 80 staff with production managers and milestones is not a band in which weird things happen, it's a symphony in which everyone has their music sheet and most are expected to play in time. It's a very thought-driven discipline sort of environment, with books on how to design, system architectures and serious tools. Which, if you're making big games, is probably necessary."

While the analogy breaks down in a lot of areas, it's a pretty good one.

The perception of small popular music bands being chaotic and wild is more a public image thing - most professional musicians (at least the successful ones) have a pretty serious discipline when it comes to their craft. Likewise, any serious commercial indie game that makes it to release isn't going to get there without a reasonable amount of professionalism and discipline on the part of the game makers. As a friend and former professional game developer used to say of his job, "It's not all fun and games. Sometimes its just games."

There's one other point I'd take issue with. Kelly writes, "So. Young game developers. Listen Up, for I have only one lesson teach: Form bands. Don't get swept up in orchestras. Bands are the only way to make your dreams happen. "

While I think there's less merit in it today than perhaps ten years ago, I still consider the education I received as a professional game developer invaluable. Today I might be more cautious, as the mainstream game development experience might also suck out a young game developer's love of games (and will to live) within the first year. And teach bad habits. But overall, I think having a couple of shipped projects under one's belt and up-close-and-personal exposure to how the professionals get it done is worth more than a thousand books and an equivalent number of classroom hours spent studying the subject.

In addition, there's a lot more to the mainstream games biz than the AAA XBox 360, PS3, and Wii games market. There's a lot of game development going on under the traditional model than that, and much of it consists of smaller teams working on lower-budget titles. Yeah, working on the next Barbie game might not be what you aspire to as a game developer, but it probably has more akin to the indie experience than working on the next Halo or Gears of War.

But yeah - with a few exceptions, the only reasonably sure way to make your own dream game happen is to go indie.

And while indies don't have the lock on innovation, it is amusing to see the changing of the times: the big game publishers are now starting to make their own clones of successful indie games... So which side is driving the industry now?

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:43 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Scars of War Interview
Hi folks. Posting from Bear Lake on a borrowed (yes, I asked permission) Internet connection. You probably saw this already, but Scars of War creator Gareth Fouche has been interviewed by GameBanshee - you can check out the interview here:

Scars of War Interview at GameBanshee

Scars of War is another "hardcore" indie RPG in development, which looks awesome. If only Gareth would quit swapping game engines... :)

In the interview, he explains his very realistic expectations of indie game engines, why he chose a more "gritty, mature" fantasy world, a lot of detail on the game mechanics, his partnership with Iron Tower Studios, and much more.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:26 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
More Video of Cliff Harris's Gratuitous Space Battles
Okay, Gratuitous Space Battles had BETTER freakin' rawk. Knowing Cliff, it will... But I love a game that promises "to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space games." And it vows to be a strategy game through-and-through: "These gratuitous space battles are not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet will need."

The gameplay sounds like it's all gonna happen in the preparation - you set up your fleets, build your ships, give them orders, and let them run.

No release date as yet. It looks like its getting close, though...

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Manifesto Games Shuts Doors
Manifesto Games, which opened not quite four years ago as an alternative portal for non-casual indie games, announced today that they are shutting down operations.

Play This Thing: Shuttering Manifesto

Bummer. Greg Costikyan cites a number of reasons why Manifesto never achieved critical mass, including a reluctance to participate on the part of some developers; failed marketing, failure to get sufficient investment capital, and of course the recession.

He notes that things are looking brighter for indies now than they did when they started, especially with inroads in the consoles, but also cautions: "In short, if a viable business ecosystem for independent games is to be established, it needs to be established on the basis of open systems and open markets, not proprietary channels. And that, I think, is inevitable; the whole history of the Internet shows that open systems and open channels rule."

Farewell Manifesto!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:01 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Recklessly Disregarding Gravity
AaaAaaAaaa - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (and I know I didn't use the right number of 'A's there, nor do I care) is an upcoming title from Dejobaan games. There's a pre-release available now with a few demo levels.

Get This Game.

It is one of the coolest, weirdest, most innovative yet FUN indie titles I've seen this year. Full of attitude and goofiness and really colorful 3D graphics. It's a game about - umm... jumping. Or falling. For miles. Through cities in the sky. And flipping off protesters on your way down - my favorite part.

And trying not to die.

While it may be a few months out yet from final release, if you order now you get $10 off the eventual full price of $25, plus they'll send you a 30-level version to tide you over in the meantime.

Labels: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:00 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Competing for Indie-Hood
Brent Fox of NinjaBee has taken a stab at defining "indie." Well, more like ranting about the use and misuse of the term. I don't think it will ever have a final, agreed-upon definition which can really be misused because ... well, that's just the nature of indie.

If you hang out in certain gaming forums long enough, you'll find Brent's analysis to be a subject that is all too familiar. There is often a bit of grousing over who is more indie than whom, and whether or not some company that isn't indie enough is trying to 'cash in' on the term that more rightly belongs to someone else:

NinjaBee: Indie Game Developer Definition

Now, I used to work there, so I may be biased. But I first ran into these guys when they were a "guns for hire" studio that had barely survived the last recession. They were down to a skeleton crew looking to go indie more out of desperation than anything else. Outpost Kaloki had been developed on their own dime, originally shopped around to publishers without success before they decided to take it indie in hopes of recouping some of their losses. It was self-funded, and self-published.

Brent, Lane, and Steve put their livelihoods on the line to try and live the dream and chart their own course in the games biz. And they've been extremely generous and supportive of the indie community for years. When people talk about the indie gaming spirit, I think of these guys just as readily as some dude in his parent's basement making free games that would have looked at home on the Atari VCS. Any definition of indie, in my mind, has to include them.

But I think it goes beyond a self-esteem or insecurity thing, as Brent suggests. Indie games must compete with each other as much as they must compete with mainstream titles. They must compete for recognition, awards, and - yes - sales. The difference in production quality between high-end and low-end indie games can be even larger than that of mainstream triple-A titles and the top indie offerings.

When you've spent the entry fee to submit your game to the IGF for consideration, and find your game has been beaten by a game which obviously cost 100x as much to make, some issues of fairness are going to get called into question. It's unavoidable.

While I resent it being used in this way (by myself as much as by others), to some degree the "indie" label is used to reset the expectations on the audience. Slap an "indie" label on a game with lower production values that would otherwise be met with nothing by contempt by gamers, and at least some fraction of the audience might be willing to give the game a second look and try to see past the lack of gloss and current-gen graphics. But when "indie" can apply to a game that cost a half-million dollars to make (and looks it), it leaves the bulk of indies out in the cold. Nobody wants to compete in a category where they are hopelessly outclassed.

So arguments about who is and isn't indie really revolve around attempts to level the playing field. I doubt there is a good answer. Limiting games by budget would be a ridiculous exercise. What's the difference between paying a professional artist thousands of dollars to create content for my game, and getting him into donating all his time for free? From the player's perspective, not a thing.

Ultimately - for me - it's about the games, not the labels. I think the little guys suffer more from lack of attention than anything else, which is why I try to evangelize the best of the indie games. There are a lot of overlooked gems out there. And I like hearing the stories of these guys who bring games to their audiences outside of the conventional routes - who are able to bypass the old middlemen and gatekeepers to get their visions and creations more directly into the hands of the players.

Beyond that, I try to stay disinterested in who might be "more indie" than whom. It doesn't really matter.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
XBox Live Community Games Now Becoming Indie Games
With the release of XNA Game Studio 3.1 (Microsoft's SDK used to make "cross-platform" games for the XBox 360, Windows, and ... uh, Zune), there was a tiny announcement at the end that XBox Live is renaming Community Games "Indie Games."

The hope, according to the announcement, is that the name change plus new features (like user ratings) will "increase understanding and discoverability of (creator's) games," and that they "believe this name better represents the independent spirit of XNA Game Studio gaming and creations."

So - uh, does this mean XBox Live Arcade is now "Not Indie Games?" Okay, granted, most of the games there have not been made by indies, but they still had a toe-hold there.

But aside from that - I don't really have a big problem with it. Aside from some pretty stupid apps that don't qualify as games anyway, for the most part its calling it like they see it. I mean, sadly, 95% of indie games really are crap - I just like to focus on what I consider the top 5%, and on my little niche of specialty. But that's both the blessing and the curse of indie games - there are no gatekeepers, so it's not my place (or anybody else's) to decide what is worthy and what is not. We can advise to provide limited filtering, but there's no impedements for anybody getting their game out to the public.

So... overall... I say, "cool."

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:02 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
RPG Design: Legends & Levels & Low Fantasy
Indie RPG Maker Gareth Fouche has an article about yet another way in which RPGs typically diverge from their source material. In this case, he tells the story of Perseus and Medusa, as retold in an RPG.

Blog of War: Legendary

In the first part, Perseus just shrugs off Medusa's petrifying gaze - the very legendary ability she is known for. 'Cause he can make his saving throw.

This is hardly the sole example of this kind of problem. I remember reading an article by a doctor who also happened to be a gamer on the subject of poisons, and how - Rasputin nothwithstanding - the whole saving throw to avoid the effects was a pretty far out there from anything resembling realism. And we already had the discussion about hit points and leveling recently.

And really, the original concept of the saving throw (as I understand it) was an abstraction to incorporate all kinds of elements - including blind luck - to avoid an effect. I always imagined that Piers Anthonys story of Bink in A Spell for Chameleon was inspired by a game of D&D. In the book, Bink's magical power is actually a very subtle yet powerful counter-magic which prevented him from coming to true harm via magic. Magical effects didn't actually fail when targeting him - instead, he was the beneficiary of amazing coincidence.

Likewise, Perseus fighting Medusa in D&D would not and should not be able to gaze directly at her and shrug off her petrifying gaze effect - rather, the saving throw represents his ability to avoid her gaze, maybe catching a glimpse of her shadow or hearing her very quiet breath an instant before he'd otherwise look up and get caught in her stony stare. The saving throw represents a thousand other factors and precautions that a veteran hero would take into consideration in a deadly battle that a tyro would not. So maybe in Bullfinch's version of the story, Perseus really does end up making three saving throws in a row against Medusa's gaze attack... but what really happened isn't so dramatic. It's just that the hero didn't make a critical error, while those who came before him had.

But in actual gameplay, players treat it as an immunity. A randomly ocurring immunity. We interpret it much as Gareth does. It's simpler, more dramatic, feeds the player's ego better, and requires less creativity. The dragon breathes its fearsome fire, and the player character just stands there and sucks it up for half-damage. Or something.

So the answer would seem to be to decrease the level of abstraction. This can add a great deal of tedium to a pen-and-paper game, but the numbers can be crunched instantly in a computer game. The problem is providing the feedback to the player. Sure, you can take into consideration what the character had for breakfast that morning, a learning experience from their childhood, the prevailing winds, and a million other factors into calculating the precise result that... uh, the hero didn't get turned to stone this round.

Alternately, you can take none of those factors into effect, and make it a purely deterministic effect based on the player's actions - which is what Gareth seems to be suggesting here. Now, I typically associate deterministic pass / fail aspects as artifacts of adventure games and action games rather than RPGs. Though I also love mashing genres together and shattering their boundaries, so this isn't a huge deal to me.

Gareth also brings up the whole concept of the "bigger, badder" monster showing up after the legendary uber-monster has been defeated or fails to be a challenge anymore. This is a problem that has kinda-sorta been with us since Beowulf, and certainly since they first started making sequels to books and movies, and is even more acute in role-playing games. You always have to escalate the stakes and the challenge. Role-playing games are peculiar in that you may have to escalate before the fact.

Several of Gareth's articles and approaches to fantasy seem to boil down to one consistent factor that he seems to be going after with Scars of War: Low Fantasy. As one of my favorite fantasy series growing up was Conan, I'm quite happy with that, especially as most RPGs seem to be fighting over "high fantasy" turf.

What I find fascinating, as a designer and long-time afficianado of not only RPGs but the actual design mechanics at their core, is how all of Gareth's public discussions over his design consistently reinforce this theme. He has a particular story to tell and worldview he wishes to simulate. Rather than just choose genericized off-the-shelf systems to form the underlying mechanics of the world, he seems to be carefully customizing each part to best serve his vision of the game.

I guess when you are making an indie game, you can afford to think of other things than just how to wow your audience with your graphics and technical artistry. It's kind of funny imagining how this sort of design would go over with a major publisher. "What? You mean you want less cool special effects for spells and stuff and and you will only want these uber-cool monsters our artists spent weeks of time making, rigging, and animating to only appear rarely? Are you crazy? How are we gonna sell this thing?"

Labels: Game Design, Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:04 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
That Feeling That You Are Inevitably Hosed...
Mike Rubin has a post today that will no doubt ring true to any developer - indie or not - who has ever struggled along with a project that has lasted beyond the initial "honeymoon period." There comes a time - several times in fact - when you take a step back, look at the project as a whole, and say to yourself:

"This game is utter crap! What the hell am I doing wasting my time with this?"

In fact, I've heard similar expressions of shock and horror by licensors or others who find themselves taking a peek inside the ol' sausage factory for the first time. I have heard many of the suit-types trying to explain to investors, license-holders, and others that games don't really begin to resemble games until just a couple of weeks before it goes into formal testing.

And sometimes, not even then. Yeah, I know that road...

Anyway, I don't know the answer to that one. There have been a couple of projects I've given up on too, as an indie (earlier in development, fortunately, as I recognized that they had issues with 'em). And there have been a couple of cases - even recently - with Frayed Knights where I've felt the same. Both a despondency that it will never be "good enough," and a feeling that there's just too freakin' much to do that I'll never finish it all.

All I can say is, Mike, I know at least one person who really wants to play the final, finished game. I dunno if that helps or not, but if not, here's something else to consider: You are local enough that if you give up, I can easily hunt you down and hurt you...

The Monk's Brew: One Thing He Forgot to Mention

Labels: Indie Evangelism, productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:05 PM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Best Letter of Resignation of All Time?
Found via GBGames:

A Message From a Game Developer to His Employer

"My princess is in another castle..." Hysterical, awesome, and yet just classy enough and topical for the audience that it's not likely to burn bridges. I love it.

Good luck, Farbs, on your indie journey!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:14 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Night - Spring 2009
Wow. Time flies. Doesn't seem like that long ago we had the last Utah Indie Night. Seriously. Has it been an entire quarter year already?

This time, the meeting was at NinjaBee again. Fortunately, Steve Taylor had let the restraining order against me lapse, so it was fun being at my old stomping grounds. Plus, Steve got to rib me repeatedly about having NOT finished and released Frayed Knights yet, which is not an unfair criticism. Why haven't I, anyway? Dang. I should quit writing this and get back to work...

But instead, I keep writing...

Anyway, the night began sans introductions with a pretty sizable group with Darius Ouderkirk offering a formal presentation on choosing an indie game project. As simple as it sounds, this was an awesome talk that would make a great chapter in a new book on the business of indie games. Simple yet profound. He discussed how to choose and scope an indie game project so that you will be more likely to FINISH and release your game. If only one in ten indie game developers followed this this advice, we'd probably have three times as many indie games out there today.

He tried to convince him to put the notes on his website. He promised he would, but then he ran away when I released him from the headlock, and I didn't see him again during the evening. I hear he showed his tower defense game, which I'd have liked to see, but since I was showing Frayed Knights I didn't get to see everything. But in his talk, he focused on three main points: Know yourself (your skills, limitations, and passions), know your audience, and finally know your project.

Funny, the kind of project you SHOULDN'T take on is a game like Frayed Knights. D'oh. I am so boned...

While several games were being demoed on the main floor, I only got a good look at Darkened Dreams 2 and Vespers 3D. Darkened Dreams 2 has morphed somewhat - rather than being an RPG with a really kick-but toolset, the focus is now on it being more of an awesome RPG construction kit with an RPG included. Curtis showed off the editors (now looking much cooler with Peter's finished art), and they are getting pretty sophisticated.

It also crashed a couple of times tonight - so it's not QUITE ready for prime time yet. But it's looking much nicer.

Vespers 3D... wow. First of all, I'm beginning to think Mike Rubin is at least borderline OCD, because this game he's making has a level of attention to detail that puts all of us to shame. How does he do that? I'll tell ya, when this game comes out, you'll want to play it just to wander around the lavishly detailed, beautiful world. The monks' abbey is ... freakin' unbelievable. And just when I think that the game can't get any better, he shows new stuff that makes it look even better. I'm pretty stunned.

And it's being done in plain ol' TGE.

An amusing conversation concerning this - and our own lack of releases - went along these lines:

Someone asked about the game, and Mike said it was based on an old, award-winning IF game. I said, "Well, it's old NOW; it wasn't old when you started."

Mike laughed and agreed. Then Steve said that Mike and I should have a contest to see who releases their game first. Steve said the loser should give the winner something readily available and cheap by that time, like an air-car or the cure to cancer.

A couple of minutes later, I asked about the games engine, and Mike noted that, like me, he's still using plain ol' (customized) TGE. "So we're both using pretty old, creaky tech," I commented to people glued to Mike's monitor looking at the amazing visuals. I wondered what I could do to make my visuals look half as good.

"Well, it's old now. It wasn't old and creaky when we STARTED!" Mike announced with a grin.

Touché.

Steve Taylor also showed a bit of their awesome and popular XBox 360 game, "A Kingdom for Keflings." I am totally his worst friend ever for not having bought this game yet. (I have hardly touched my XBox 360, but to play a song or three of Rock Band with friends, in three months!) It looks awesome. I said it looked like what Black & White wishes it had been - if only they'd gotten over what had sounded like a good idea after a couple of pints at the pub one night, and focused on what would have really been fun.

As for me, I demoed what I had of Mournhold for Frayed Knights. This proved somewhat challenging, because there's a lot of dialog in the first few minutes, and I felt really awkward demoing... well, stuff you read. It would have been more awkward if we'd had voice-overs, because the room was noisy and you could barely hear the game. So for the most part, I skipped through it, saying stuff like, "imagine funny dialog here..." and moving on. I got repeat chuckles every time I had Chloe cast "Power Word: Defenestrate," so I guess that one turned out okay. I need more spells like that.

Besides, it gave me the chance to conference with Xenovore over his work in progress, Mournhold Castle. While it needs texture work, and a lot of it is unfinished, it is coming along very impressively. This gave us a good excuse to get together face-to-face, go over some details, and make sure we had the same expectations. So we got work done at the indie night. Yet another valuable purpose for the evening.

As always, it was an awesome and inspirational time.

UPDATE: Greg Squire has a write-up on the event you can read here. And here's the first part of Darius's articles about choosing projects.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:00 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
The Wall Street Journal Discusses Indie Gaming
Wow.

When the whole indie games movement thing gets a full article about it in the Wall Street Journal, you know two things:

#1 - Indie gaming has arrived. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

#2 - Hell hath frozen over.

The Wall Street Journal: Boom or Bust? A New Business Model for Videogames?

Wow. Sherman, set the wayback machine to a mere four years ago, when dinosaurs thought they ruled earth:

The high cost of game development means that only the largest companies can afford to be in the business. While low-budget movies can occasionally become hits, "it is now impossible to 'Blair Witch' this business," said Jeff Brown, vice president for corporate communications at Electronic Arts, referring to the successful independent film.

Nifty.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:08 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Why Indie CRPGS?
My console (possibly) dying on me has probably helped my productivity a notch or two. But as an RPG addict, I find myself looking for something else to fill the need. I have a ton of unfinished (or in a couple of cases, practically unstarted) mainstream RPGs sitting around, but I'm finding what I am craving is to settle down for some nice indie RPG action in-between my own marathon development sessions.

Yes, the indie games are doing a better job of "scratching the RPG itch" than the mainstream games. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, coming from me. Don't get me wrong - I love my big-budget RPGs, too. But David frequently kicks Goliath's butt in the battle for my attention.

Let me explain.

Butt-Kicking for Indie RPG Goodness!

Lately, my drug of choice has been Blossomsoft's awesome Eternal Eden. It has a very different rhythm and feel to it. I'll stop short (this time) of calling it strictly unique - I'm sure you can dig around a bunch of old-school Japanese imports or whatnot to find the games that may or may not have helped inspire it. But it has a feel to it which stands in contrast to other games that use the same engine. It's almost like a puzzle game - not to the extent of DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale, but it definitely feels more structured. That might sound like a bad thing when you are talking about play, but it's not.

And is it weird that my anticipation is higher for Amaranth Games' upcoming Aveyond 3 than it is for the upcoming release of Final Fantasy XIII? I mean, okay, the last Final Fantasy installment didn't thrill me - so we could just blame it on my disappointment. But I had as much fun playing Aveyond and Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest as I have playing many a mainstream game. Mechanically, it's in a whole different country from Eternal Eden, in spite of having the same engine as a foundation. The storytelling is presented differently. These games have a different feel, a different flavor, and a unique, playful sense of humor.

And the list keeps getting larger. With even more cool stuff hopefully coming down the pipe. I have high expectations of Age of Decadence and The Broken Hourglass kicking copious amounts of butt when they finally arrive. (Ya hear me, Jason? I said 'when,' not 'if!'). Once upon a time, "indie RPG" was synonymous with "Spiderweb Software." But while Jeff Vogel & company continue to produce some quality indie titles at a blistering pace, the universe is expanding even faster.

I ain't complainin'.

Indie Evangelism

Now, I call myself an "indie evangelist," not really an "indie game reviewer" (unless I'm writing reviews for other sites). I don't really do reviews of indie games on this site for a couple of reasons.

First of all - there's the obvious conflict-of-interest issue. The purpose of reviews is to provide guidance for purchasing decisions. Ideally, you've got an unbiased, trusted source providing some kind of comparison and making a recommendation. Magazines and websites, which do have a vested interest in sales and / or advertising, get around that by paying said theoretically unbiased third-parties to provide said recommendations. While I'm happy to do guest posts here, that's not really the purpose of this site.

Secondly - and this is a biggie - I do have a bias, even if I have no vested interest in the sales of a particular game. There is so much to like in the indie scene - even going down to the specialized niche of RPGs and adventure games - that I really don't have time to bother ranting about all the crap that's out there. We all know (or should all know) that without external barriers to entry, pretty much ANYTHING can be released as an "indie game," and there's an awful lot of junk that gets put out there and foisted off in the name of "indie." Or something. Digging through it all is time consuming, and I'm not that good at it yet, either. I live on solicitations and recommendations by others, too. It's not a perfect system.

But the big ol' ultimate point to my rambling - assuming there really is one - is that there are a lot of really cool, awesome games that come through, too. Especially with RPGs. We're talking worlds born from the imaginations of people who might as well be your neighbors - the person down the street with a dream, a vision, and the gumption to take on the insanely difficult task (yes, even with a fully featured game engine as a foundation) to translate this world from their imagination to an interactive game.

That's what I like to talk about. That's what I like to share. In spite of imperfections, blemishes, and sometimes downright dull parts, there is a lot of gold to be panned from the indie river, and I want to crow about it. While I usually don't want to directly compare a mainstream game with a $20 million budget to an indie game with a budget of donated time and peanut butter sandwiches, but there are often aspects where the indie games would come out the winner. And I want to call attention to that fact.

Indie Also Means Individual

When I was in junior high, Dungeons & Dragons was all the rage. Non-geeky-types were even experimenting with it, because they'd heard all this scandalous, controversial rumors about it. You wouldn't have to do much to find yourself in a game run by a stranger. Different DMs (the people who ran the game) all held different ideas and approaches to the game. Some of them admittedly just plain sucked, and I still want a refund on those hours of my life I wasted. But many of them provided us with adventures that were just boatloads of fun. The worlds and adventures we shared are pretty much lost in another decade now; I don't know that their creators would accurately remember them now. But these amateur game designers / storytellers would run us through the paces in their imaginary landscapes made "real" by word and interaction, and we had a hell of a good time.

Indie computer RPGs capture this feeling for me. What they may lack in polish and production values, these games often more than make up for in enthusiasm and creativity. The rawness can be an asset, allowing them to explore areas that their more refined mainstream cousins just can't go. The personalities of their creators shine through, reflecting a level of individuality in imagination that often gets filtered out or only revealed in tiny pieces in larger games designed by committee and corporate decree.

Game journalists often wonder why there are so few "superstar" designers appearing today that we had in previous eras. Where are the new Richard Garriotts, Shigeru Miyamotos, Sid Meiers, Jon Van Caneghems, etc.? I suspect there are a lot of 'em out there, but we don't hear about them because they are buried in faceless design teams while their producer with an MBA handles the interviews. Or they are going to be found among the indies, producing consistently cool, interesting, and most importantly fun games that will more often than not be ignored by those very same journalists.

Partying in Places Angels Fear to Tread

I think we've come to realize that as budgets have increased on video games, so has risk aversion. While indies have smaller budgets, they still have to worry about gambling with the rent money when it comes to making games. Still, with fewer barriers to entry and nobody in the middle putting the breaks on ideas out of fear, indies do find themselves with more freedom to innovate and do something different than their mainstream counterparts. Many take advantage of this situation.

You may be sick of the praise I have heaped on Depths of Peril. But to me, this is a shining example of something else that makes indie games so freakin' cool. It boldly goes where no mainstream RPG would dare to go, and IMO kicked butt and took names. I don't believe this gutsy, risky, innovative design was rewarded with massive sales (unfortunately, this isn't unusual). But I love that Soldak Entertainment was able to leverage their low indie overhead into the ability to take these kinds of risks.

While not strictly an unheard of idea in the mainstream (if you consider Princess Maker anything remotely "mainstream"), I really loved how Hanako Games' Cute Knight also fused an old-school dungeon-crawling RPG concept with "sim"-like elements, and gave it a personality all of its own.

As a Matter of Fact, They Do Make 'Em Like They Used To....

And when someone says, "They don't make 'em like they used to," they obviously aren't thinking of indies like Basilisk Games, creators of the Eschalon series, or Spiderweb. Then again - while these games certainly resemble some of the classics we used to love in many ways, they also provide fresh takes on the possibilities there. This is something else the indies bring to the table. There are fields that have been left fallow too long, and mainstream publishers are loathe to come back and revisit them.

But I believe that there is not only a lot of life left in these older ideas, but that these can provide us with a jumping-off point for new evolutionary tracks in this area. We disgruntled old-school gamers aren't just complaining because we're stuck in 1992 (or 2000, for those new-school old-school types who were dazzled by the Baldur's Gate series and the like... ) But in my opinion, part of our grumbling stems from the glimpse we caught of what CRPGS could be back then. The industry made its march towards one horizon, and refused to look back. Bully for them, but now the indies are taking a step back, turning, and marching forward in new directions. Maybe not the most obviously profitable ones, but there is a lot of unexplored territory out there.

A Love Letter and a Plea

Indies have great things going for them. How can a mainstream games possibly compete with all this?

This is why I evangelize these games. There is a lot to love. RPGs, in particular, are considered to be among the most difficult kinds of games to create, and yet indies are jumping in with both feet and producing worlds for me to explore. They might not tell stories worthy of Shakespeare (or even Spielberg), and their worlds might not be as beautifully rendered as Fallout 3, but they provide solid entertainment, a great experience, and often push the envelope in different directions. They may not all rock. But my hat is off to them for doing what they do.

Now I'm going to close with a plea. As awesome as these games are, as much fun as they are, and as much as I evangelize their strengths, indie cRPGs could do better.

There is too often a tendency to stick too closely to the formula - to try and re-make old favorites from the SNES era or whatnot. Even within the bounds of the pretty plain-vanilla jRPG system found in stock RPG Maker, there is a lot of room not only for exploration of mechanics, or exploration of character, story, and theme. There have been several indie games that have done this, even within the confines of the RPG Maker engine, but just need to be teamed up with quality art, writing, and game design. Push the boundaries, experiment, and break out of the box a little more!

Designers, don't be afraid to put more of yourself in the game. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm not looking for something that resembles a big-studio production from yesteryear - I'm looking for something with a solid voice, a personality. That's what makes your game stand out. Don't hide it.

While I do advocate breaking away from the mainstream to chart your own course, don't ignore the lessons of game design learned by your cousins in the big business. They've collectively made more mistakes than you could make in a hundred lifetimes. You don't need to repeat them.

Finally - as a fan of indie games, I'm definitely very forgiving of lower production values, old-school technology, and cut corners. That's fine. But that's no excuse for a failure to polish and provide what level of professionalism you can put into your games. Get a group of friends together to help you find your spelling errors, your bugs, and all those weaker aspects of your game before you release it to the public. (Don't let the grammatical and spelling errors of this blog be your guide!) Even if it's a free release - put your best foot forward. If someone finds your game incomprehensible or unplayable in the first five minutes, they won't finish it.

When I first started playing computer games, the whole industry was, effectively, "indie." The games that inspired me and turned a niche hobby into a thriving industry were often created by tiny teams of developers - sometimes even a single person. While a lot of things have irrevocably changed - and much of it for the better - it's good to know that in some ways we're coming back full circle. And I'm thrilled to see my favorite genre - RPGs - getting so much attention and life poured into it from the indies.

For an RPG fan, times are looking good.

Now go have fun!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:45 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post