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

 
Eternal Eden
Indie is all about power to the people. Not in some kind of ranty Marxist way, but in a good ol' fashioned, free-market, homegrown kind of way. Indie is about lowering the barriers to entry so that anybody can get out there, do their thing, and try to find their audience, charge (or not charge) whatever they want. It means that anybody who believes they have an idea and talent can get out there and make it happen, rather than relying upon some middleman or bureaucrat gatekeeper to give them the go-ahead and dubious promises.

RPG Maker is one of several game creation toolsets that empower indie developers. It is hardly simple to use, nor does it unload the important creative burdens from a user's shoulders. But it's accessible for non-programmers and even non-artists (thanks to existing art, of sometimes questionable legality) to create full-fledged games, so long as they resemble 16-bit jRPGs. The advantage over other commercial products with similar capabilities (like Neverwinter Nights) is that game makers can distribute the complete game freely (without requiring other users to own the toolset), even commercially. And the toolset is cheap enough that even my daughter was able to buy a license with her allowance.

The consequence of this power and freedom is, unfortunately, a landscape littered with lame, incomplete, unoriginal, and ill-conceived games. When you get rid of the barriers, you also get rid of the filters. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

But the advantage is that there are some real rough diamonds out there, as well as some real gems of games to be found from very creative, talented people that we'd otherwise never have heard of, let alone enjoyed their creations.

Eternal Eden is definitely in the latter category - a polished indie gem. The custom artwork is exceptional (the creator also did some of the sprite work for the Aveyond games), and the gameplay and storytelling is very tight (at least from how far I have played, which is several hours in).

The basic storyline may ring somewhat familiar to folks who have attended Sunday School. The world of the principle characters, Noah and Downey, is a land of eternal youth, beauty, and plenty. A world without death. All their needs are provided for by the mysterious "Eden Tower." There is but one law that all the inhabitants must follow, left by their father who established this land: Do not eat the fruit of the tree at the top of the tower.

Can you guess what happens next?

You see, there's this friendly pie-making competition to win the favor of the Princess, who is about as old as Yoda but way prettier. And Downey really, really wants to win. And there's some fruit the Princess is sure to be surprised by...

Yeah. It doesn't end well.

But that's only the beginning. Now that disaster has struck, the princess is a monster, and the heroes find themselves in a parallel world to their own full of nastiness, it is up to them (and you) to fix things.

Eternal Eden is thick with storyline, as you can imagine. It also relies heavily upon puzzle and problem solving. These aren't Pathstorm-style brain-melters, but they do can prove pretty challenging. If you really hate games with lever puzzles and moving-objects-around puzzles, then you should probably stay away. But if you enjoy them, Eternal Eden has them in spades.

Another rare approach Eternal Eden adopts is to have a fixed set of encounters. While you can't be certain of exactly what you will encounter when you choose to enter combat, once you win an encounter, the enemy is gone. So far, I've not encountered any respawning. So the combats are fewer and further between, but usually pretty challenging.

You will want to explore every nook and cranny in the game world of Eternal Eden, because it is packed with hidden objects. I'm talking literally - almost every tucked-away corner or alcove has something hidden you can find and pick up. Usually it's a potion of some sort, which comes in very handy in the challenging combat encounters.

Unfortunately, there's no customization in leveling up, and the save-game points are scattered across the landscape, making you never quite sure of when and if you should push forward or retreat. Since monsters are finite and non-respawning, backtracking isn't very time-consuming or dangerous, but in some of the dungeons it can make it easy to forget where you were last.

The game is tightly balanced, very well polished, and very pretty. It exudes professionalism and attention to detail. And, most importantly, it is a lot of fun. If you are a fan of indie RPGs in the old 16-bit jRPG style, I must recommend downloading and at least giving it a go through the free trial period.

You can download it here at Rampant Games, if you feel so inclined. Or not, if you aren't.

Download Eternal Eden Free at Rampant Games

As usual - please post here if you've tried it and let us know what you thought. Just try not to post major spoilers (be vague if you have to). Or I may cry. And you really don't want to see a grown man cry, do you?

Labels: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:41 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Judith
Judith, by Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle, is.... ah... I'm not sure. A semi-interactive, 3D storybook?

It uses an old 3D raycasting engine (some of us remember when that was Hot Stuff) and deliberately simplistic graphics to convey a fairly creepy story. Or, rather, two interwoven stories - one creepy one, and another made creepy by the other.

It's a little confusing and could use some polish (especially at the end), but it's a compelling experiment that can be played to completion in about fifteen minutes.

Gameplay-wise, it's sort of the world's easiest 3D graphic adventure game. There are several times where the game even takes control away from the player, forcing the action. But the real focus - and what works here (mostly) - is the use of simple dialog, very basic visual icons, and a series of flashbacks to provide the narrative.

Here, the battle between gameplay and story is definitely won by story. The story isn't big or complex. But it was enough to keep me playing. At the end of the game, I still had more questions than answers. I think there's more that could be done here. But at the same time, the minimalist storytelling was kinda the point --- too much exposition would have made it worse.

So how would you improve upon this?

Anyway, you can check it out yourself here, available for Windows and OS 10.5 (plus source code for aspiring game developers):

Download Judith

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:44 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
What Do Indies Have to Rant About?
GDC has had game developer rants in the past. This year, they had an "indie game maker rant." This has been reported on in a couple of different places, including Destructoid, The Escapist, and TIGSource. Scorpia's provided her own secondhand commentary, though I suspect her condemnation is probably more due to the journalistic bias of the report she referenced than what actually transpired. Apparently, some journalists find a woman talking about how games should teach girls to masturbate FAR more interesting to report on than ... you know... real issues 'n stuff.

Since I wasn't there, I can't really comment on the rant, either, but I will ask: What do indies REALLY have to rant about?

I mean, okay, people love a good rant. Me too. I've gone off on similar subjects - like what really qualifies a game as "indie," or whether or not games are "art." I think there's a time and place. And I figure an hour at GDC is probably an appropriate time and place.

But if I might venture a personal opinion (what? Me? On my blog? Perish the thought!) - it is this:

An indie is a living embodiment of a rant against the status quo.

It's best to shout this out loud in your best rock-and-roll, screw-you voice.

Let's face it, the reason there are indie games at all - being made or played - is because players and game makers alike are not being adequately served by the industry. The "establishment" has failed us. As the establishment grows bigger and more dominant, its failure becomes more epic - and the more indies must appear in response. As Princess Leia said, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Although I think indies probably have more in common with Firefly's "Browncoats" than Star Wars' rebels. It's not a case of the indies trying to bring down the system, so much as the indies wanting the system to either cooperate or get the hell out of their way so they can do their own thing.

And that's what indies do. Or are supposed to do, anyway, in my idealized worldview. Instead of just whining and complaining about how things suck, they roll up their sleeves and get to work doing something about it. Their work is the greatest rant they could make.

And while money and fame doesn't usually follow such a path, there's no better way to give the finger to the industry that sucks than to bypass it, do your own thing, and then be very successful at it. And that's been happening. It has happened enough times by now that the industry - which once shunned and mocked indies and talked about how it would no longer be possible to "Blair Witch" the business in an era of big-money-dominated game making - is now embracing the indies and trying to make nice.

And that is why the whole idea of an "indie game maker rant" sounds a little superfluous to me. Again - I do it myself, and I don't begrudge the chance for the indies to express themselves in front of an audience that included industry-types and journalists. It's a good venue. But by my thinking - and even though it's still unclear to me exactly what transpired during his presentation - Petri Purho's capstone "rant" was the best of them all. While it sounds like it may have been staged, his "rant" was to make an indie game in the five minutes allotted. Whether he intended it this way or not, I think it provided an excellent commentary on the entire event.

Sure, there's plenty of room for indies to rant. Occasionally. But really - the verbal rants are just for show. Mostly, it's a bunch of hifalutin BS. Making and releasing a game is the best rant an indie gamer can make.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:59 AM (Permalink) 8 comments links to this post

 
Shared Experiences and Swapping Game Stories
It has now officially been a decade since I last went to GDC, which is now wrapping up in San Francisco. I do miss it. I used to tell my coworker, Kirk, that I thought it was always more inspirational than educational, but I always had a good time.

The part I enjoyed most about GDC was rarely the lectures (though they were often informative and fun). The best part for me was just getting together with other game developers, talking shop and talking about the games we love. The roundtables were a good structured way of accomplishing that, but the parties, the showroom floor, and (when they had them) the hospitality night activities were by far the best.

Rip on the mainstream game developers all you want (I do!), but in general, they love games and they have a lot to say about 'em.

Having the Utah Indie Night has definitely helped. While much less intense, it's nice to be able to get together four times a year to do exactly the same thing - chatting over pizza or Mexican food, talking shop, talking games, sharing experiences, and doing a little bit of dreaming together.

Last night I got to get together over dinner at the Asian Buffet with Mike Rimer and Butch Istook. Mike's a developer in the "Deadly Rooms of Death" game series, and the principle guy behind DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale. Butch lives in Oregon and was in town for the week, and Mike made arrangements for us all to have dinner and shoot the breeze. I've chatted with Mike a few times at the Utah Indie night, but it was my first time meeting Butch.

We talked for nearly two-and-a-half hours. I think we could have gone for another two-and-a-half hours, but I had to get back to work (yes, late nights the last couple of weeks). The subjects varied, including our own projects and business topics, but most of the time we were talking about games. Games we had in common, and games we didn't. Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, Kingdom of Loathing, Angband, Wizardry (particularly the original - Mike plowed through it at age seven!), Ultima III, Ultima VII, Unreal, Aveyond, Master of Magic, Oblivion, The Bard's Tale, and several others were all topics of discussion. Not the games themselves, so much, as aspects of them.

Curiously, the shared experiences of these games formed a vocabulary of sorts for us to talk about things, but it was also a major topic of conversation itself. It left me inspired and pondering (as these kinds of conversations always do), and feeling like sharing some thoughts on... shared experiences.

Back in the day, when I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons and it was actually - well, not exactly "cool," but everyone was trying it - there were a handful of modules (pre-written adventures) out, and most people had played them, but under different Dungeon Masters. As a result, you had an interesting situation where people had this shared experience - the canned adventure - but the details were so different that there was plenty to talk about. The core was the same, but the hows and the whys were completely different.

You get much of that same experience now if you are talking about a popular MMORPG (What? There's more than one?). And for certain single-player games, you still get that. We swapped stories of comparison.

But too often, single-player video games have such a tightly scripted narrative now that those "moments" and points of discussion get lost. Our illustrative example was Final Fantasy VII. "Oh, and then Aeris died." That whole thing plays out the same for every player. Aside from maybe reactions to it, there's really nothing to discuss. There were no decisions to be made, no variations to explore. She got Aeris-kabobbed while praying (meditating) every time at exactly the same place, and there was nothing you could do about it.

By comparison, our lunchtime games at SingleTrac of ATF Gold and Rainbow Six were followed by almost as much time spent talking about our just-completed games as it took to play them. We were all in the same game, but the experiences were a little different for each of us. That was the part that brought us together socially.

That's kinda where I would like to see indie RPGs go. Well, RPGs in general, but hey - we indies may as well take charge, right? But I'd like to see more of that balance between having something that forces a common experience (so randomly generated content doesn't work so well), yet is flexible enough that everyone's version of that encounter is different and memorable. That would need to go beyond simply a different choice of tactics to defeat a boss. Or which of the three possible endings you saw.

Some games have it. We've talked about it here. Richard Garriott even went on record at one point with the Ultima series by saying that he tries to make sure there is one solution guaranteed to work for any challenge or puzzle in his game, but he didn't rule out other approaches for creative players. These kinds of games are pretty goal-driven. This can lead to a scary, "ends justify the means" type of behavior... but isn't that what role-playing is all about? You choose your path through the game, and you accomplish the goals your own way. If you do it by being an evil jerk and extorting the money fom all the villagers rather than doing favors for them, so be it. Ideally, those actions will also have consequences.

That's a big part of the "exploration" that makes RPGs so fun. As is the opportunity it provides for players to swap stories about these common experiences.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:09 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
IGF 2009 Winners Announced
Another Independent Games Festival has come and gone. Winners can be found here:

IGF Winners Announced

And you can catch the awards footage here:

IGF Awards Footage

All I can say is that I'm really glad that You Have To Burn the Rope did NOT win the prize for Innovation. Not that I have a problem with the game itself - I thought it was cute little joke in (marginally) game form. But - it was just a cute little joke. I'm annoyed that it bumped something else out of a finalist slot.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:54 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Torque 3D Announces New Indie Licensing
A while ago, while listening to a book on tape about running a business (yes, I actually listen to those kinds of things - scary, isn't it?), I read about one technique one business owner used to massively increase his business revenue.

He fired his customers.

He went over his numbers, and realized that 20% of his customers consumed 80% of his time. They were "high maintenance." They consumed the greatest amount of his resources while providing the lowest level of revenue. So he called them all up, and politely referred them to his competitors. His competitors, who were maybe not doing as well as he, were thrilled to receive the new customers. Meanwhile, he freed up most of his time, which he then used to try and find new, higher-quality customers.

Sometimes it works. If you are in a mature enough industry, and you are really good at what you do, you can actually pull this off.

It seems to me that this is the strategy that GarageGames is taking now.

GarageGames appeared on the scene when "indie" wasn't even in folks' vocabulary. Scarily enough, that wasn't very long ago. As the story goes, a bunch of former Dynamix folks got together to buy their old engine - the one used to make Tribes 2 - back from their former overlords. They had a big hairy audacious goal of taking this full-on, hardcore, commercial game engine and distributing it to the masses. What sort of amazing things could be done when this much power got into the hands of the hobbyists, the mod-makers, and dreamers of the world? They could sell it for so little that any 14-year-old could buy it for the price of a couple of weekends of mowing lawns. Plus GarageGames could turn around and publish these awesome homebrewed games.

From my own speculation, the reality fell a little short of their expectations. From their perspective, they were providing an extremely powerful, commercial game engine for peanuts. From the perspective of a 14-year-old with a lawn-mowing job and a dream of making the next Halo, they'd just spent a ton of money on a codebase that was buggy, confusing, and poorly documented. What were they supposed to do with THIS????

Having worked in the video game business for several years, I feel this pretty much describes every in-house engine ever created. In fact, it describes quite a few third-party engines too. There's a big difference between that kind of software and what the average consumer expects to install on their PC. GarageGames spent years trying to bridge this gulf. I think that did a pretty admirable job overall, particularly with their later products. Though mucking about under the hood of their flagship engine has always been a pain in the butt for me.

I'm sure that, like the aforementioned business, there was a segment of the customer base that represented a significant chunk of time for the GG crew. The inexperienced hobbyist, tinkerer, or student demands a great deal more time than the quietly laboring professional, I'd imagine.

And so perhaps GarageGames is hoping to "fire" those "lower quality" customers with the next generation 3D game engine. The new licensing and pricing came out last week, and the new Torque 3D engine is being sold for ten times what the old "TGE" (or, prior to that, "V12") engine used to run for. In my opinion, a thousand bucks is a bit pricey for anybody who is not committed to commercial products. With that kind of skin in the game, you'll want a return on investment, and enough experience to be confident about obtaining it.

That, or you are richer than I am.

There is a cheaper option for the hobbyists, tinkerers, and students - a feature-crippled version with no source code (and limited customer support) is available for $250. That's back within the realm of reason for newbies - though unless the base engine is a heck of a lot more flexible than TGE ever was, I do not feel that this offers much potential.

But to sweeten the pot a bit more, they are discounting it now for pre-orders and existing TGEA owners now for the full-fledged "indie" license:

Read the Licensing Announcement Here

My thoughts? I've been a fan of the company for years, but more for what they were trying to do than on the merits of their engine or development efforts. Their formerly flagship product, the Torque Game Engine, has been the bane of my existence sometimes. It provides a lot of really cool features as part of the package, but sometimes working with it can be a nightmare. Documentation was always spotty, though they really improved things with their 2D engine, the Torque Game Builder.

And the company isn't the same company as the one that released TGE. Another company has a significant investment stake in them now. The leadership is a different crew, and this is an all-new engine (built upon existing tech, I'm sure, but they are really trying to bill it as being different and new). So I can't use their former products as a yardstick to measure them by, or their former corporate culture.

So, as far as I'm concerned, they are back to square one - new company, upcoming engine. And they have to compete with a buttload of 3D game engines now available. I can't say I'm thrilled with the pricing decision - as a customer, I have a tough time seeing a steep increase in cost as a positive thing, particularly when the benefits are unproven. I'll be the last one to say that a thousand bucks is "overpriced" for a reasonably state-of-the-art 3D game engine, but they aren't the only game in town. And I'm still slogging along with older tech because it works. Kinda. And should work on the older systems of my customer base.

I HOPE - but I'm in no position to judge - that this focus on sort of an "upscale indie" pricing means that this new engine is going to reach unprecedented levels of both functionality and ease-of-use for the new engine. And if it achieves this, I may mow a few extra lawns myself to pick up an indie license for the new engine. As far as I know, I could be saving myself hundreds of hours of effort and frustration by upgrading to it right now (well, when the beta is released), instead of continuing along with their creaky older tech.

I wish them the best, and I'm still a nominal fan of their 2D engine, but I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude towards this new engine. I don't think GarageGames' track record - both good and bad - has much bearing on the new technology. But - if you have faith in their plans and promises - and you are serious about creating commercial-grade indie 3D games - the pre-order discount is pretty compelling.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:43 AM (Permalink) 14 comments links to this post

 
Jeff Vogel: More On Indie RPG Sales
As promised, Jeff Vogel returns with more on making (and selling) his ever popular indie RPGs - specifically Geneforge 4.

An excerpt:

'And here's the sad truth. Suppose I spent a bunch of money, busted my hump, and wrote a game with graphics as good as, say, Eschalon. Then people who really care about graphics wouldn't look at my game and go, "Wow! He's really doing good now!" They'd go, "His graphics suck. They haven't improved at all." And then they'd go play Fallout 3.'

He follows up by saying, "And, once again, I make good money overall. So who knows? Maybe I'm onto something. After all, I'm more profitable than Electronic Arts right now."

He also talks about how he prices his games - why they cost $28 instead of $10. And the advantage of owning your own intellectual property (HUGE!!! New game developers, do not underestimate this!), and oodles of straight-talkin' goodness.

Now, I guess many gamers could not care less about what goes on to make these games. I'm kinda weird that way. Even before I became a professional game developer, I was hooked on "behind the scenes" views like this (often found in the pages of Computer Gaming World back in the early 90's). I guess not everyone likes to peek into the sausage factory to see how their food is made. But I'll keep sharing what I find for those weirdos like me who find the process almost as fascinating as the game itself.

Incidentally, I am also one of those strange people who actually listen to the DVD commentary track of my favorite movies, and Almost Famous is one of them... That might explain a lot.

Anyway, here you go:

The Bottom Feeder: How Many Games I Sell, Part Two

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:59 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Jeff Vogel Casts "Dispel Illusions" On Indie RPG Sales Numbers
I posted this earlier in the forums, but I figured I'd throw my commentary around. Spiderweb Software is perhaps the most well-known indie RPG developer out there, as Jeff Vogel has been at it since ... well, since people were still talking about Doom. That's a lot of experience, and a lot of market share. He's not the typical indie developer.

This week, he's gone out on a limb to post actual hard numbers about costs and sales for what he considers a pretty representative "average" game for his tiny company. He chose Geneforge 4, as it had numbers that were easily tracked, and represented a pretty average game for his company. Next week, he'll discuss it in more detail, but here's his report on the game:

"So Here's How Many Games I Sell" at The Bottom Feeder

I recommend reading it even if you have no intention of developing games. Unless you really, really don't want to peek inside the sausage factory for fear of losing your appetite.

I think if you have an image of indie game development as some kind of a miniature rock-star path - the equivalent of playing the club scene until you get "discovered" and start making millions - this might be a little damaging to your worldview.

The bottom line: The game cost $120,000 to make, including the cost of printing hint manuals, contractors for art, and a salary for three full-time employees (though not all three were working on this project specifically the whole time). That's pretty modest returns. Now, a year after the release of the PC port, the game has made about $117,000 back - including the sales of the hint book. So it's squeaking in at about $3000 short of breaking even.

It has sold less than 4,000 copies.

By comparison - a game selling less than 400,000 copies in the mainstream, triple-A game world is often considered a failure. But then, their budgets are often about 5x - 10x what Jeff has, and they probably make less profit per unit after considering the retailer's profit margin, the distribution costs, reproduction costs, etc.

Jeff notes that while he hasn't tracked piracy, he has plenty of anecdotal evidence that it is very high. Into the tens of thousands. Far more people play pirated versions of his games than pay for them. Which, unfortunately, seems to be pretty consistent across ALL games - indie or mainstream, DRMed or non-DRMed. Pirates are indiscriminate, and they outnumber honest people by a gigantic margin.

Dirtbags.

But in spite of all that - he's managed to make a sustainable business out of it. I'm sure he still makes a trickle of sales each month for the first three Avernum games. Building a sustainable business like this is a success all by itself.

And that's the really unsexy, non-rock-star thing about indie game development (well, mainstream development, too). It's a business. It's about building a business. It requires a lot of work and effort put into non-game-making stuff to make it a business. And oftentimes, it's a business that doesn't pay all that well.

I really appreciate Jeff's candor in presenting a solid data-point of reality to help people understand the industry and dispelling certain illusions. Here's hoping the indie RPG biz remains profitable enough that Jeff and the other folks at Spiderweb can keep making games for us to enjoy!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:52 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Joseph Liberman Takes the Helm of GameTunnel.com
I was wondering what would happen to long-time indie review site GameTunnel.com when Reflexive Entertainment, the employers of site founder Russell Carroll, were bought out by online retailing powerhouse Amazon.com.

Apparently, it was sold to Joseph Lieberman. Not the game-hatin' senator, but the indie game marketing guy, author of The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games. Joseph is a real smart guy with tons of passion for indie games. Oh, and he's a big RPG fan too --- indie, mainstream, and dice-and-paper. I chatted with him briefly about the change, and he's very excited about the potential for the site, and committed to offering much more regular content updates, reviews every week, and so forth.

Game Tunnel was one of the very first websites devoted to indie gaming. I am friends with Russell and appreciate the effort he put into the site and to promoting indie games. And I am friends with Joseph, who worked with me on Void War, and I have a great deal of respect for what he does and what he brings to the table.

I'm hopin' for the best for the new, improved GameTunnel.com. It may no longer be the only game in town as far as indie games are concerned, but I think we can use its voice again.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:44 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Old Jeff Vogel Had a Blog.... E I E I O....
Jeff Vogel, of Spiderweb Software, maker of retro indie RPGs, now has a blog. I hesitate to mention this, because it will probably prove to be far more entertaining than my own.

But in the interest of community service (the kind not ordered by the judge), here ya go:

The Bottom Feeder


(Hat tip to RPGWatch for the tip)

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:42 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Planewalker Games: Updates
Wow. Planewalker Games has been a little bit silent lately. I did get confirmation from Jason a few months ago that they were indeed cranking along on The Broken Hourglass, in spite of lack of updates on their website. Or probably BECAUSE of the lack of updates... they may be getting a lot more done than I have, with all my blog posting and Wizardry 8 playing.

Anyway, this week our patience has now been rewarded by not one but TWO updates to their website. The first is an in-character "letter" from the commander of the Market Precinct entitled, "Condition Report: Market Precinct." The second is a game design article about the revision to carrying capacity entitled, "Funny Things Happen (On the Way to a Videogame)."

Sometimes a little communication is all it takes. Actually, coincidentally, that's going to one of the topics discussed in tomorrow's Frayed Knights update. Stay tuned!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:52 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
LoFi RPG: The Linear RPG
This was one of the entries into RPGDX's "LoFi" Indie RPG Jam. Not only is it a brilliant deconstruction of the fundamentals of RPG gameplay, it's actually mildly fun and interesting to play through. Once or twice. If you boil most of the details out, this is what you get:

The Linear RPG (SophieHoulden)

Thanks to I Whine About Games for the heads up. And to RPGDX for organizing the Jam.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:30 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Special Deal For Eschalon: Book 1
Eschalon: Book 2 is now deep in development, and generating a tremendous amount of press for an indie game.

The era of the indie RPG is here, guys. :)

But the original, Eschalon: Book 1, is still getting plenty of love! First off, the developer just upgraded to version 1.05. All new downloads will be of this upgraded version - there's no stand-alone patch (yet).

Furthermore, Basilisk Games is having a sale on the original! If you haven't played the game yet, between now and March 15th, you can get it for 20% off with a special "online" coupon - a code from Rampant Games and Basilisk Games.

To get your copy at the special discount, go to the game webpage here:

Eschalon Book 1 at Rampant Games

Click "Buy Now" (or bypass the above steps by just go directly to the purchase page. You know you want to...)

Up near the top of the page, as you place your order, there is a box labeled "Coupon Code (Optional)" Fill it in with the following secret code: (SHHH! It's a secret! Don't tell anybody... at least don't tell anybody unworthy or anything...)

BOOK1RAMP

Got it? Cut and paste that into the space, and recalculate the price. Finish up your order, and you should get the confirmation email shortly with instructions and your registration key to enjoy the full version.

Anyway, enjoy! And thanks for supporting indie RPGS!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:33 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Indie Games Business Suckage
Mike Rubin over at The Monk's Brew has a little bit of an analysis and commentary on the indie games business as viewed through the success (or lack thereof, depending upon what you are looking at) of Mousechief's Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble. The game was a critical success, but has failed to break even.

The details of the core issue can be found in this thread. They were depending upon portals to help sell their game, but due to a controversial scene in the game - which had passed their internal QA without comment - the game was quickly pulled from sale. BFG had received too many complaints, I assume.

My biggest complaint was the description of the girl kissing her smoking gun. I think, "OW! Burned lips!"

I expect this will have a chilling effect on any developers wanting to make a game with anything close to "grown up" content with hopes of getting on casual portals. The message here is that no, the casual-centric portals don't want anything even approaching controversial. Even though the median-member of their audience is old enough could be the mother of the median-aged hardcore gamer, anything inappropriate for a 12-year-old is verboten.

Although I believe Cute Knight did pretty well on the portals, and I don't know if anybody complained about the implied prostitution in that one. Hanako, do you want to weigh in, here? And to be fair, not all portals are created equal. Manifesto Games, in particular, seems to embrace controversial material - but as far as I can tell, they have yet to find their audience.

Anyway, bottom line - as Rubin notes - the game is having trouble recouping its relatively moderate development expense, in spite of its critical acclaim. Although I should mention that assuming $20 per game profit on the part of a developer is a bit off. Portals rarely offer even 50% of the retail price to the developer (and often play with the retail price), and even e-commerce providers like Plimus and BMT (which I use here at Rampant Games) demand anywhere from 10% - 20%. Then there's affiliate commissions. So really, you are probably closer figuring an average of $10 / copy.

Anyway, enough of my rambling - Rubes is more eloquent:

(Indie) Business Is Business at The Monk's Brew.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:07 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
The Fifteen Different Types of Indie Games
In his recent article, The Evolution of Indie, Andy Schatz presents a look back on the world of indie games from a developer's perspective, as we saw it progress over last several years. It's much easier to see now, with hindsight, the direction things were going back in 2004. But it's still hard to see exactly where we're going to be in a few years.

But where are we now?

Andy indicates that the indie audience (yes, we have an audience now!) is beginning to actually form expectations these days. The audience expects indie games to be cheap (under $30). And... well, cool.

Cool?

Uh-oh. We're doomed.

Indie games have progressed along several different evolutionary branches over the last several years. For those unfamiliar with indie games, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the different types of indie games out there. I won't attempt to categorize these by game genre. Indie games cover far too broad of a territory for that. Mainstream games try hard to fit in easily marketable boxes, while indie games as a whole are all over the board and frequently violate boundaries. That's why I love 'em.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't some broad categories that might cover most of indie's target audience or development style. Indie games are made for a lot of different reasons, for a lot of different (but usually underserved) audiences. For the beginner trying to make sense of the question, "What is an indie game?", here are fifteen of the many different faces of indie:

#1 - Casual games: These aren't necessarily "indie" anymore. Back in the 90's and the earlier part of this decade, this was once almost exclusively the domain of indies. It was an area where small-budget teams could still put together a game and make it profitable. Until the big boys smelled money. It's gotten a lot more competitive recently, and not every casual game developer is indie.

#2 - Online Web-Based Games: Yes, you know 'em, you love 'em, and you've probably spent WAY too many hours playing them. Usually created in Flash, with a healthy helping of tons of amateur productions, you could waste your whole life playing these games. It is a wonderful refuge for the hobbyist.

#3 - Really Weird, Experimental, and/or Retro ... Stuff: The stuff that TIGSource is really into. And, to be honest, I am too... sometimes... If there's a game released for free that looks like a SNES title where you control the main character's middle finger, or an insanely slick and devilishly difficult shoot-em-up done entirely in shades of blue, this would be the place.

#4 - Commercial Console Indie Games: Small, flashy, hardcore console games. Most of the XBLA games for the XBox 360 would fall under this category, although it's getting into really fuzzy territory now that publishers (and, of course, Microsoft) are getting involved. Games by The Behemoth or NinjaBee go here. These indies are generally larger, more professional, and better-funded than most. But many also put second mortgages on their homes, lived on beans, and begged family members for investment capital to turn their dreams into reality, which to me sounds as indie as anybody.

#5 - "Serious Games": Those games that educate, inform, influence, train, and ... well, spread propaganda. Again, many might not be strictly defined as "indie," other than the fact they were made without the approval or support (or, usually, knowledge) of any of the mainstream industry.

#6 - "Alternative Core" Games: This is my favorite category. These are the kinds of games that would appeal to the "core" gamer, but address niches that are no longer served by the mainstream industry. Like space combat games, turn-based stategy games, certain kinds of RPGs, and adventure games. Or these are really unique takes on conventional "mainstream" genres. Like Depths of Peril's gutsy move to mix strategy and a dynamic world into a conventional action-RPG.

#7 - Mobile Games: Smaller games for phones and other handheld devices. Not always indie, but of a small-enough budget that usually only indie-level developers can afford to give it a go.

#8 - Retro Hardware Games: Games for obsolete machines. Like one of our community here making a game for the TI-99/4A. And a lot of folks making games for the old Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Gameboy, and obscure Japanese consoles. I really don't know what makes these developers tick, other than it being a pretty cool itch to scratch.

#9 - Indie MMOs: Low-budget "Massively Mutliplayer Online" games which seem to be everywhere these days. My daughters play some. These range from silly little HTML or Flash-based games (like Kingdom of Loathing - one of my favorites) all the way to major 3D clients and games developed by teams with an actual, you know.... budget.

#10 - Interactive Fiction: The text-based children of Zork. Nowadays, most of these are smaller titles created for competitions which focus more on... well, interactive storytelling... than the heavy puzzle-solving of the old days.

#11 - The Mods: The sometimes massive conversions of mainstream, commercial games to fit the needs and desires of talented fans. Fan mods can have a major transformative effect and bring new life to an old game, keeping it popular long past its usual lifecycle. What modded games may lose in terms of consistency and quality, they often make up for in scope and improved depth.

#12 - Advergaming: Small games (some of which would otherwise fit in category #2) designed specifically to push a product or service. I'm not positive these are classified as indie, but they are made without the support of any mainstream publisher or distributor, so I guess they count.

#13 - The Unfinished Hobbyist Projects: where there are all these alpha versions of games that show promise, but haven't been maintained or updated in years. I'd say more than 95% of "indie" projects fall into this category. Making games is HARD, and a lot of first-time game developers lose steam after the surge of awesome has worn off. Unfortunately, most of these aren't very playable, but there are some "perpetual alpha" projects out there which are very playable and very fun.

#14 - The Soul-To-Sell Offers: Indie games created primarily to land some kind of contract with a publisher or major studio. The developers may use it to showcase their talents to a prospective employer - as is often the case with game-school projects. Or the developers may be trying to get the game "picked up" by a studio. You don't hear much of these, because they aren't usually marketed (at least not well) to customers. They are more to showcase an idea to someone upstream. Believe it or not, that's how the hit game Outpost Kaloki came into being. The not-so-indie best-seller Portal got its start this way as the indie student project Narbacular Drop.

#15 - Retro Remakes: Re-envisioning of classic mainstream games using modern technology, or games that are clearly the "spiritual descendants" of a classic. Oftentimes these games start out as the former, and then after either a cease-and-desist order or a realization that they might actually like to make a few bucks for their hundreds of hours of labor. Then the project morphs into the latter.

#16 - Every Freakin' Other Thing: Hah, I snuck a sixteenth "non-category" in to my fifteen categories. While this is a lame catch-all category cop-out, indies are famous for breaking rules and molds. Many indies deliberately try to defy categorization. So this one is for them.

Of course, indies being who they are, they tend to resist being stuck conveniently in any one category. These categories overlap and curl into each other like a big ball of wibbley-wobbley, gamey-wamey... stuff. You could have a casual, serious, web-based game easily enough. In fact, I've played a few.

But the point is this: A lot of people concentrate on what indie gaming is. But really, indie gaming is really defined by the small subset of what it isn't. Indie is that "everything else" category of games created all kinds of ways, for all kinds of audiences, at all kinds of budgets. As Andy suggests - we've got categories of indie that are becoming their own thin, and may not even be considered "indie" anymore. They are growing up. The whole idea of what constitutes a "video game" is changing, and indie developers remain in the front of that revolution.

These are great times to be a gamer.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:02 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Night - Winter 2009 - and Indie Lessons
We had another Utah Indie Game Developer meet last week. Due to my (finally solved!) Internet problems, I wasn't able to comment on it the next day as I usually do.

Fortunately, some others did, so I'll link to them.

This time, the meeting was at ITT Tech. The meetings always have a very different flavor depending upon whether they are at ITT or Wahoo (NinjaBee) studios, just because of the space. The ITT meetings tend to lend themselves better for formal presentations (as they are usually in classrooms). This time we were in sort of the central hall / meeting room, which was less crowded, a little noiser, but more useful for giving informal game presentations. ITT is closer to my house, which is an added benefit for me. :) But because they are so busy right now (recessions tend to cause much higher school enrollment), it's been tougher to schedule rooms there in the evenings. But they are always outstanding hosts (as are the Wahoo / NinjaBee crew), and very supportive of the indie game development scene here in Utah.

The night opened up with Josh Jones presenting a post-mortem of his "mini-monthly" experiment. All last year, he worked on creating a new game every month, using Flash. This stemmed from a New Years' resolution to become a better game developer. The mini-monthly experiment honed his design skills, his production skills, and undoubtedly his Flash skills. He's posted his post-mortem notes (and his games) on his website:

The Mini-Monthly Experiment Post-Mortem

I took a bunch of notes, but the stuff on his website is better.

He had a lot of sub-lessons learned for each of his lessons, and some were repeated frequently. If I were to distill some of his best points down from all of his lessons of indie development into the key elements (and add my own spin on things), they'd be:

#1 - Time Management
Working within the constraints of month-long, part-time projects (often while in crunch mode at the Day Job - he worked at the same game company I did last year) really tests your ability to put the right amount of time into each aspect of the game - design, development, and testing / polishing. And leaving time for other activities - like actually playing games. Learning how to juggle these to produce a finished game of sufficient quality by the deadline is challenging. He didn't always succeed, but he learned a lot.

#2 - Design and Scoping
He noted several times that he fell victim to "over-design" - spending too much time in design and not having enough time for production (a problem with one project which prevented it from being completed). In addition, designing for the proper scope, deadline, and budget was challenging. It's easy to fall victim to "feature creep," and adding new ideas until you run out of time.

#3 - Motivation
Motivation is hard, especially for an indie when you really don't have much hope of finding a pot of gold at the end of your game production rainbow. While working on your own game and really cool ideas is fun and all (in principle), you will have to find your own ways of motivating yourself through the less-fun parts (which is pretty much everything after the initial surge of activity).

He also talked about why the mini-monthly projects were so useful as an indie project. More than anything else, they provided a hard deadline and forced him to treat them as real projects rather than interminable time-sinks for puttering and tinkering with.

After that, people got to show off the games. And talk about the problems facing mainstream studios in the local area (as many of the indies were former employees of a particular company that is being sued by the Department of Labor...) We also got the scuttlebutt from an employee of Disney about the two Disney studios having layoffs (which were both relatively small, and rather generous) and being merged together.

The games themselves - due to my tardiness, I'll just point you to Greg Squire's outstanding write-up:

Greg Squire's Write-Up On Utah Indie Night - Winter 2009

Of particular note to me was the OUTSTANDING look of the now-beta indie MMORPG Link Realms. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what indie can be:



Link Realms went beta on January 1, and shortly thereafter became FLOODED with beta testers. Great for stress-testing, not so great for general beta bugs they are trying to find and fix right now, so they've had to put new beta test applicants on a waiting list. This one has the potential to be HUGE. Maybe not World of Warcraft huge, but still huge by most other measures.

A 2D side-scrolling MMORPG was also being shown, entitled Smote. It's still in early development, but functional and playable.

Curtis Mirci showed off his game, Darkened Dreams 2 (which has been mentioned here in the past). Most of the effort so far has gone into the tools, which are REALLY freakin' sweet and will be shipping (by my understanding) with the game. These are fairly comprehensive, and even include scripting (via LUA). These were a little further along than when he showed them in these videos on his website:

Darkened Dreams 2 Video Blogs

The original version of the game (running under Java - not nearly as exciting) can be found here. The new one is running under XNA and looks a lot more interesting. It's still pretty rough and early, but with the tools up and running, things should hopefully progress quickly.

A student project 2D shooter entitled "Galactic Winds" looked like a lot of fun. Inspired by 80's-era side-scrolling space shooters, it included the ability to upgrade (and downgrade) your ship in mid-mission. Downgrading wouldn't get you back as many points as you spent to upgrade, but I could see that technique being used to customize your ship as you prepare to fight different bosses.

Zombie Town - or, as author Darius Ouderkirk described it, "Zombie Tower Defense," was running using TGB as the core engine. It was running into some technical / framerate issues, though that could probably be explained by it having something like a quadrillion zombies on-screen at one time with collision turned on all of them. This one has a lot of potential. I mean, tower defense against hordes of zombies! How perfect is that?

Tank Rage Arena was a game using a custom 3D engine built by creator Nick Terry using DirectX. It's principally a multiplayer tank-combat game. In.... maze-like arenas. I guess rage is involved somewhere. But it looks very nice, and like a lot of fun. He'd made some rapid changes over the last few weeks to add AI tanks so he could demo the game for indie night. The AI tanks weren't too smart, but they did help show what the game was about.

I had some awesome discussions with some very cool people on the sidelines - some of it even indie-game related - and I thank them for putting up with the loudmouth Coyote in their conversations. They provided me with plenty of scuttlebutt and food for thought. And probably blog topics.

I left the night, as usual, feeling pretty inspired and a little humbled. There are some DANG talented indie game developers here in Utah.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Indie RPG News

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

 
Psycho Game Developers To Make YOUR Game?
Speaking of the whole "Game In A Week" thing, some developers who I think are certifiable (but very cool) have taken on a very unusual challenge. From the Black Triangles website:

"The basic idea is that given a well fleshed out GDD (that's game design document) a programmer (or two or ten) are given 40 hours each to do as much of the game as possible. These are not contiguous hours, but 40 working hours ( a full work week ). Whenever they program, they run a timer, when all the programmers have used up all their time they release the game open source to the community.

"This is an exercise for everyone involved. It teaches designers how to scope their ideas, MMO designs are immediately discarded, as are anything with the phrase "Like Oblivion". Programmers are taught time management, how to solve problems quickly, it emulates a microcosm (fancy wordage ftw) of the actual gaming industry. And best of all everyone involved gets the chance to give back to the game development community that has helped them so much this far. It's a great exercise, it's a heckuva lot of fun, and best of all you see results quickly. So what are you waiting for?

"Send your design documents to: 40HourGame (at) BlackTriangles (dot) com"

Now, they don't say how they are gonna open source the resulting game. But if they open up the license so that anybody could take it and see if they can turn it into a commercial project, no (major) strings attached (though I'd consider credit, at the very least, to be obligatory whether or not they demand it), this would be an AWESOME way for an aspiring game developer / game designer / game producer to get a project jump-started. If nothing else, you could see what it takes to get a game idea from concept to playable prototype.

This will no doubt be an eye-opening experience for all involved.

But a big hint: Make sure your submitted GDD is both concise and original. If I were them, I probably wouldn't jump on a Mario clone idea with much alacrity. Give 'em something small but worthy of sinking their teeth into.

All submissions are due by the end of the weekend, so get cracking!!!!!

You can check out details at Black Triangles or at GameDev.net.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:42 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Age of Decadence Interview
Rock Paper Shotgun didn't learn their lesson last time. Or maybe they did. Vince Weller, the very indie dude in charge of making Age of Decadence, has another interview up where he talks about - of all things - actually roleplaying in a roleplaying game.

Now, his view of roleplaying might not quite jibe perfectly with that of some players, but I like it. Particularly as a fan of "rogue" type characters who are treated in most RPGs as a poor-man's fighter who can pick pockets. Woot.

Anyway, it's a short one, but packed.

Vince Weller Interview at RPS

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:26 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Game Tunnel Indie Games of the Year
I guess I must have been pretty dang distracted last month, as I didn't mention this yet:

Game Tunnel completed its game of the year awards - and indie RPGs were indeed substantial enough to be worth a category this time. Not quite as plentiful as last year, but they still had a good showing.

First of all, we have the Indie RPG of the Year award. Solid showings from all five games mentioned - although Savage 2 kinda surprised me. Kivi's Underworld and Avernum 5 placed in the top five - which were not a surprise at all. Mount & Blade scored second place, and the top honor goes to The Spirit Engine 2. Actually, not too big of a surprise there, either, though I suspected their positions might be reversed.

Secondly, we have the Top Ten Indie Games of the Year. The biggest surprise here is that the media darling of indies (not that there's anything wrong with that - kudos to introversion for figuring out how to do indie marketing right), Multiwinia, only placed number ten. World of Goo took the top spot, but the number 2 and 3 slots were filled by indie RPGs The Spirit Engine 2 and Mount & Blade, respectively. Cool!

Anyway, please visit Game Tunnel and read what they have to say about some of the best indie games to come out last year.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:06 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
New Steve Meretsky / Greg Costikyan Game Hits the Web
Greg Costikyan (Paranoia, Star Wars, and Toon RPGs, Evolution) AND Steve Meretsky (Planetfall, Superhero League of Hoboken, Spellcasting 101) have just released an online game. It's a social networking game called "Nightfall - Bloodlines." It involves vampires.

The trick? It's on MySpace (a Facebook version is forthcoming). I don't have a MySpace account, so I can't tell you about it, but the screenshot included actions like "Seduce and Tap a Goth." Points for amusement factor.

You can read Greg's commentary here:

Play This Thing: Nightfall - Bloodlines

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:55 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Wall Street Journal on Indie Games
Wow. Suddenly being an indie gamer feels... sorta mainstream.

Joysticks and Easy Riders: The indie game movement echoes the personal cinema of the 1970s

My biggest amusement came from the quote from EA VP Robert Nashak. He states, "As new platforms emerge, it'll be indie game teams that take advantage of them."

This stands in stark contrast with the comment by another EA VP, Jeff Brown, who stated in 2005 that the cost of developing for the then-upcoming consoles was such that "It is now impossible to 'Blair Witch' this business."

What a difference three-and-a-half years can make.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:33 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Nethergate Quick Look
Scorpia's got a quick look at Spiderweb's revamped Nethergate: Resurrection.

Unfortunately, her take is not humongously favorable:

What makes Nethergate different is the semi-historical setting of Britain during the Roman occupation, along with the ability to play as either Romans or Celts. Of course, there’s still plenty of fantasy, with faerie folk and fomorians running around, plus magic.

I’ve been through the demo portion as each side a few times now, but really can’t get into the game to where I’d buy it. Maybe it’s because Romans/Celts aren’t all that different.

You can read the full article here:

Nethergate Quick Look at Scorpia's Gaming Lair

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:03 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Fourteen Indie 3D Space Combat Games - And More!
I was eight years old when Star Wars hit the theaters. It was a mind-blowing experience for an entire generation. It was perhaps no accident that space combat themed video games were all the rage for the next decade, letting us pretend to be Luke Skywalker for a quarter. The ones that I loved the most were the first-person perspective 3D games, often using vector-based graphics systems that hurtled wire-frame bad guys at players. From Star Fire to the Star Wars arcade games, I was hooked. On the computer, we got some incredible games like Elite, and Star Raiders.

The big ones for me came out in the early 90's. Wing Commander was almost pure wish fulfillment, and was the game that made me seriously consider a career in game development. X-Wing (and later, Tie Fighter) once again brought back the Star Wars magic. Frontier, aka Elite 2, brought the space-trading game home with an incredible universe. Later, games like Wing Commander Privateer, Freespace, Freelancer, and the X series have kept the magic alive.

Sadly, the space combat or space trading game is something of a disappearing breed in mainstream games. Maybe George Lucas ruined it for us with his Star Wars prequel movies. Or maybe we're just not as inspired by space exploration as we were during the age of the space race and moon landings. And maybe it's just because graphics are good enough now that game developers don't need to stick us out in space to give us a believable first-person fighting experience anymore.

But the indies are keeping the dream alive. When I first released my own 3D space combat game, Void War, I was stunned by how much competition I was facing. And it has continued - both in commercial indie pursuits and freeware projects. When I get a hankering to enjoy a shoot-out in space, I do not have to depend upon my dusty collection of old favorites. There are plenty of great indie space combat games - new and old - worthy of attention.

While I still favor RPGs on this blog, I know many readers here have tastes as eclectic as my own --- so I'm going to share. Here are a dozen indie 3D indie space combat games for your womp-rat shooting pleasure.

Starshatter - The Gathering Storm
I remember Milo, the lead developer on this indie project, describing it to me as the "Falcon 4.0 of Space Combat games." There are a number of games here that would practically qualify as simulators but for their science fiction nature. Starshatter is definitely in the "simulator" category.

Starshatter provides you with the experience of flying both small fighters and big starships, and includes a dynamic campaign. And it includes more hardcore space physics as the default model, though it can be configured for the simpler arcade-style controls familiar to other Wing Commander vets. Both space-based and atmospheric-based flight is permitted. This is a hardcore space combat game for armchair pilots who loved X-Wing but craved something a bit deeper. Oh, and it has modding tools, too.

You can check out the free demo at the Starshatter Website.

Cellblock Squadrons
Super Furious Software's take on the space combat genre was to focus completely on the equivalent of boss battles - flying with a squadron of tiny fighters against big battleships.

Lots of big battleships.

There are five different fighter types to choose from, and a storyline based around the concept that you (and your squad-mates) are actually criminals, prisoners fighting against impossible odds to earn your freedom.

Venture the Void
A cartoony space-combat related single- and multi-player game (public games can have up to hundreds of players) that "refuses to take itself too seriously," it looks to have some monster-bashing and dynamic universe creation.

Evochron Renegades
This is a free-form, open-ended game by the makers of the Star Wraith series. It not only includes a vast universe with a huge number of activities that go far beyond fighting and trading, but also multiplayer modes. It also features a dynamic economy, exploration of planets in atmospheric flying and fighting, and a more realistic Newtonian physics model.

Arvoch Conflict
Another title from indie space combat veterans Star Wraith 3D Games, Arvoch Conflict is a "Squad Based" space combat title that includes a touch of real-time strategy and resource management into the more traditional space combat "simulator." Commanding the other ships in your squadron is as integral to success as your own piloting ability. And just like Evochron Renegades, it features multiplayer gameplay and atmospheric flight.

Universal Combat: Special Edition
Derek Smart, has had a much-storied history in the games biz since the early 90's as sort of an "angry indie." Universal Combat was intended to be a next-generation Battlecruiser 3000, somewhat streamlined, broadened, and more action-oriented for more mainstream audiences, but still sporting a level of detail that screams, "hardcore" (and "high learning curve.") And it has a scope that indies are just not supposed to be able to tackle - including multiplayer gameplay. The Special Edition includes the content from the original release, Universal Combat Gold, and the sequel, Universal Combat: A World Apart.

Dark Horizon
This is kind of a murky area as to whether Russian studio Quazar Interactive is actually 'indie' or not. But you'd be hard pressed to call Dark Horizon a mainstream title. And you'd be just as hard pressed to find out how you are supposed to download and buy the dang thing (hint: GamersGate). Key features include the ability to switch between two different combat modes, and the ability to create upgrades to your ship from salvaged resources.

Void War
Like I could delve into this subject without plugging my multiplayer space combat game! Blending arcade-style action with Newtonian physics, humor, and "special abilities" (and pick-ups) for each ship, Void War is more of an attempt to apply 3D, first-person action to old-school games like Spacewar!, Asteroids, and Star Control. It's less hardcore and more arcadey (particularly with pick-ups scattered across the space arenas) - though the Newtonian-esque physics still gives people fits.

It's now available at a reduced price, too.

FREE Games
All of these indie games are available at an attractive price that will let you stretch your gaming budget, and most of the ones listed here have demo versions you that can play for free. But there are a few games with full free versions available. These may be open-source projects (or using unlicensed content from popular film and TV shows or other games), "living" community projects in flux, or older / discontinued titles that have been made freeware.

Vega Strike
Vega Strike is kind of an open-source space-combat / trading engine, as well as pretty huge game in this genre. There are tons of mods for the it, including a remake of Wing Commander: Privateer called Privateer: Gemini Gold. Vega Strike is freaking huge, clocking in at nearly a half-gig download, and has the level of polish (or lack thereof) that reflects the non-final version of this community project. It may be years before it goes final, but it's playable now. And hey - it's free!

Star Wraith IV: Reviction
This is an older game in Star Wraith 3D Games' collection, which has since been released as freeware. You can definitely see the Wing Commander inspiration here, as well as note the evolutionary difference between this one and the later games.

Babylon 5: I've Found Her
Another quality freebie, taking place in one of the coolest science-fiction universes to grace television. I believe this game used the Freespace engine (which was released into Open Source many years ago) as a foundation, and built an entire story and multiple campaigns into it based on the Babylon 5 series. Perhaps its just the slick engine its built upon, but Babylon 5: I've Found Her contains a much higher level of polish than you'd expect from a freeware game.

Flight Commander
Flight Commander is described very simply as, "A space combat simulator in the style of Wing Commander." It also borrows a few assets from the Wing Commander games. It is designed to be very mod-friendly, so other Wing Commander fans could create their own continued sagas in that universe.

Coming Soon
Some of these games are older than others, but there are a couple here that are not yet out. They may never even see the light of day, but I sure hope so. If you needed any more proof that space combat is alive and well in

Naumachia: Space Warfare
Described as a fast-pace blend of RTS and space combat (with Newtonian Physics!), Naumachia promises to allow the player to build and fly fighters, dropships, and even capital ships. A popular choice. As you can see in the video, it also looks freaking awesome.



Blackstar
This is an upcoming anime-looking MMO featuring both space and ground-based combat. It definitely has a style all of its own, and should be worthy of keeping an eye on.

Bonus Games
These don't count, because they don't quite fit as being "indie 3D space combat games." But they are worthy of mention here for reason that it's my blog and I'll post whatever I want. :)

Flatspace 2
It's like any number of these deep, 3D space combat & trading games, able to match feature-for-feature with some of the others... except it's 2D, with a top-down perspective.

Allegiance
Touted by one reviewer as "The Best Game Nobody Played" (Hey, I bought and played it! What does that make me?), Allegiance has since been released by Microsoft as open source software, and is supported by its community. Not exactly indie to begin with, but I guess it's an adopted indie title.

Discovery Mod for Freelancer
I don't really want to get started on mods - we could be here all month! But I've been playing this one for Freelancer. While there are a couple of issues, it really turns an already awesome game into an awesome game with much longer legs, adding over 150 new or upgraded models of ships, 68 new systems (I think that's like... double the original count... or more), lots of new equipment, "roleplaying" options for roleplaying multiplayer servers, battleship-killing missions, and a lot more. The downside (if you consider it a downside) is that the enemy AI now know how to use their shield batteries and nanobots to repair themselves in mid-combat. This makes battles a lot longer and a lot harder.

Whew! Well, there you go. That's a lot of games. And - I must confess - I haven't played them all. And some I haven't played in a while. And this doesn't represent close to all the indie space combat sims out there - especially not the ones still in development. Or mods. But hopefully this provides a smattering to get you started if you crave for the "good ol' days" of the "Wing Commander Era."

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:08 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Interview: Indinera Falls of Aldorlea Games
Rampant Games recently (like, uh, yesterday) added Aldorlea Games' flagship commercial RPG, Laxius Force, to our line-up of great indie roleplaying games. It was a combination of a great indie title, and designer / producer Indinera Falls doing some great promotion work. I was surprised to find that while this was his first commercial-grade project, it was far from his first RPG. Indinera is a prolific and seasoned veteran from the trenches of freeware development using RPG Maker.

I managed to corner him (which was quite a challenge, since I'm in Utah and he's out in France) and ask him some questions about Laxius Force, previous and coming games, and his perspective as an indie game developer. I especially enjoyed his perspective as a hobbyist turned pro.

Rampant Coyote: Let's start at the top with an introduction! Who is Indinera Falls? What games have inspired you? If you had a fire-breathing monkey, what would you name it?

Indinera: Hi, I'm known as my nickname Indinera Falls and I am an indie developer of old-school RPG. My productions focus on detailed characters and great replay value along with strong storylines. As a result of many years of developing games I'm also the webmaster of two websites, LaxiusForce.com which is the official site for my latest trilogy (first part out now!) and aldorlea.com where I promote my own work and other games in the RPG and Adventure genre.

I have been particularly inspired by two distinct eras and style: the 16-bits console RPG (Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire etc.) and the mid' 90 era of PC RPG (Might & Magic 6, Daggerfall etc.). My own games are at the crossroads of those two styles. I take great inspiration from the "Golden Age" of gaming and I've never forgotten this period when games had fascination gameplay and enthralling stories. Now I am able to bring the essence and strength of those types of games to my new creations.

I never had a fire-breathing monkey but I remember, long ago, trying to catch the notorious three-headed monkey of Monkey Island.

Rampant Coyote: So what got you started making indie RPGs? What was the inspiration for the Laxius series? And what came first, Aldorlea Games, or Laxius Power?

Indinera: I'd always been interested in making RPGs. I used to create them on sheets of paper, drawing the characters and the battlefield in a tactical style like Shining Force. My family and friends would play them and drive my ambition even more, so this passion has been there a long time.

When I discovered what great tools there to make your own RPG, I immediately jumped on the chance. For me, it was such a fantastic find and with my drive and perseverance along with my love of storytelling it set me off on a journey I have thoroughly enjoyed.

The Laxius series is obviously inspired from my own tastes: I like games to be challenging, exciting, full of secrets and unexpected events. Games that flow too constantly tend to bore me.

As it happens, Laxius Power came way before Aldorlea Games having been created in 2001 while Aldorlea Games was set up in 2008 as the publishing house of Laxius Force, my latest game.

Rampant Coyote: Laxius Force is actually your sixth RPG. What have you learned from your previous Laxius games, and your non-Laxius title, Blades of Heaven?

Indinera: I've learned a lot of things. I always want to push my skill levels in making games, I'm driven to improve each time on what I believe are already great games. My many years experience now in game making are shown in the maps, stories, events and all other aspects. Game making isn't something that should stand still or stagnate and I have enjoyed the continual push to give the players a great game experience.

Rampant Coyote: How long did it take you to create Laxius Force, and how many people were involved in its development besides yourself?

Indinera: Laxius Force took about two years and involved the skilled Zeriab as a scripter and talented Vince as an artist. Both these people are very helpful, great at what they do and great members of a team to work with. Although Part 1 has been released two other parts are also going into production and much work during the 2 years was on building the basis and structure for the following episodes to come.

It is only fair to also mention Karks who is my sole, and outstanding, beta tester of the newly released game.

Rampant Coyote: So what can you tell us about the story in Laxius Force? And how do you make a story with something like 15 different characters work in an RPG?

Indinera: Laxius Force is a story of passion, danger and adventure. You are following the tale of a young couple, Random and Sarah. These characters are heroes of the past, resting now after after the trials and heartaches of past confrontations and dangers. The tale starts as you join them in their days of quiet happiness, but that does not last long - they decide to go back into civilization, little knowing how their paths and that of evil are once again about to meet and how they are heading towards become entangled with the acts of the most dangerous and dark secret cult organization around.

I believe you can introduce as many characters as you want as long as you actually take the time to properly introduce them and that they have their place in the story. Each character must have an history, a reason to join, and something that needs to be said. With a detailed story it's not really a problem of making them fit, it's more about making them all memorable and enabling the player to connect with them.

I believe Laxius Force develops unique characters that are far from the usual RPG clichés of how they should be.

Rampant Coyote: Do you plot out the story for several games in advance, or do you start fresh with each game and try to decide where to take the world and the characters next?

Indinera: For the Laxius saga the story was plotted out since the very start of creation in 2001. Originally it existed in a total of nine parts and with each game release the story unfolds and I am a step closer to sharing the extent of the tale with the player.

This story has been part of my life for many years now and so I am never slowed down wondering what to do next. I know what is to come and I know what I aim to achieve in each game release.

Rampant Coyote: What do you think makes Laxius Force stand out as a game?

Indinera: Laxius Force has many strengths - the unique characters, the detail of the plot and overall depth of the game. It's one of the longest games out there, and one of the richest as well - it is full of secret places, items, characters. Huge efforts were made to hide many things making exploration and detailed play so very rewarding.

Rampant Coyote: So what's next in the series? I understand you already working on the sequel, and have a third one planned. What should players who enjoyed Laxius Force expect from the next games?

Indinera: They should expect all that they liked, plus even more features, twists, secrets and A LOT of plot development. The war against the Order takes on a new dimension in part 2, and faces of evil never seen in the saga before will be introduced. Also Laxius Force Part 2 will be introducing Luciana and her party - Luci is one of the players' favorite characters of the past episodes so her introduction will bring anticipation and the game will be a lot of fun!

Rampant Coyote: Are there any secrets or "goodies" you'd like to reveal here for players to find in Laxius Force?

Indinera: Well...

Maybe you will get to play characters you hadn't expected to..I'm not going to tell you who! Old friends may be there to be found, new and interesting characters are there for you to see how they develop add that to over 500 Easter Eggs where only a hand full of people know all and you will see there is an entire game of secrets and goodies - just pay attentions and explore!

Rampant Coyote: What are the biggest challenges you've had to overcome developing indie role-playing games?

Indinera: The polishing and debugging of games are always the hardest parts. Both happen at the end of the development and you are usually exhausted yet keen to get the game out to the players - so you need to be thorough and keep going. Debugging isn't the most exciting of tasks and it is very repetitive but it is a very important stage to get the game ready for play.

Rampant Coyote: Do you have any pther wisdom would you impart to other prospective indie RPG designers?

Indinera: I think it's important to know your story from beginning to end, work on your game daily even if you don't feel like it and stay focused on it. I would recommend that you try and make a game that you personally like as that is the best way to transmit your passion to others who have the same.

Also, keep in mind the latest stages of development are the hardest, both mentally and physically, but should not be rushed.

Rampant Coyote: Any final thoughts?

Indinera: Just to thank you for this interview and giving me interesting questions to respond to. I hope people reading have enjoyed it and just to remind that as well as the games we have a fantastic community at LaxiusForce.org so please visit us, you will be made welcome!

Enjoyed the article? Be sure and download Laxius Force and give the free demo a try:

Download Laxius Force

Have fun!

(Vaguely) related interviews with other indie RPG developers:
* Amanda Fitch of Amaranth Games
* Georgina Bensley of Hanako Games
* Jason Compton of Planewalker Games
* Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:03 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Nine Things To Know About Being Indie
Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games has just published a great article "What Every Indie Needs to Know," or "Nine Things I Wish I Knew (Before I Went Indie and Made Two Hit Games).”

What Every Indie Needs to Know

This is another one of those articles I'd put on a "must read" list for anybody who asks the question (and you know you are out there... :) ) "I'd love make indie games and sell them online, but how do I start?"

It has little to discuss concerning the craft of game-making (other than a few hints about making a good demo), but a nice bunch of suggestions concerning the business aspects of being an indie - from developing business contacts to marketing to statistics on sales to working with publishers and distributors.

While the scant paragraphs on this subject is hardly enough to fully prepare a beginning indie game developer for the challenges that lay ahead, it is useful to get some idea of what is out there and to get a general idea of where the roads will lead and what to expect.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:42 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Game Night - Fall 2008
Once again, the time came for another indie game night. And once again, our numbers were completely unpredictable. Last time, we had an excess of pizza when we were done, and this time we ran out. It's almost like you can gauge indie night by pizza consumption. Poor Lane, hosting the party on behalf of NinjaBee, never knows exactly how much pizza to order, but there are so many of us now that he has to order in advance.

Well, that's got nothing to do with indie games, really, though I imagine there are tons of indie games that could be made about pizza. I guess the point is we had a great turn-out. We had around 30 or more people show up, which I think exceeded our numbers from last time.

Once again, I felt like I viewed indie night through some sort of tunnel vision. We had a presentation on the Unity game engine, which was actually a lot more interesting than I'd expected. I'm not ready to move over to it for my own development or anything, but I like to keep up with what is happening on the inexpensive game engine front, yet I find myself continually pressed for time to try and keep up and evaluate. It was great to have somebody else provide an overview and answer questions.

He also showed us the steller Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, which anybody who has played it knows is full of oodles of indie goodness. It was built with the Unity engine.

Some students from ITT Tech who I have chatted with at earlier events were there showing their capstone project - an RPG using the new RPG Maker VX engine. I apologize to them here for not remembering the name of the RPG in development. What's cool about it is that the adventuring party you play is of... questionable morality. Not a nice bunch. People in town are all supposed to be capable of being pickpocketed, and being hounded by the law for getting caught in your misdeeds is all part of the game.

Where that takes the story, I don't know yet. But it sounds like an interesting start. The game - at least the "pilot" version of it (sound familiar?) is supposed to be done next month.

I also got the chance to see NInjaBee's new Wii game, Boingz. It looked extremely cool, and is very close to release.

Beyond that, the big chance for me was to chat with other indies and see how things were going - not to mention visit briefly with some friends at NinjaBee. One strange feeling I got from this meeting was that I don't feel quite as in tune with the "indie community" as I was, say, a year ago. No doubt my schedule and the growth of said "community" play a major role in this feeling.

One conversation we had last night involved the extreme growth in low-end Flash games. I was told that with the new built-in ability to provide cheap ad revenue in Flash games, there's been surge in low-quality flash games and applications as inexperienced developers attempt to "cash in." This means that quality games are harder to find through the crap. That's the double-edged sword of indie-dom, I guess.

I was also informed by Greg that Mike Smith's Caster was entered into the IGF competition. Mike is, unfortunately, no longer a local, but I wish him the best of luck with his game!

We also had a couple of 3D artists show up, who were immediately pounced upon by we "dime-a-dozen" programmers. Hopefully we'll be able to find some interesting collaboration opportunities there.

Anyway, as usual, it was a great night. Well, *I* had a great time. I don't know if anyone on the other side of my conversations can say the same, but I appreciate them humoring me.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:48 AM (Permalink) 7 comments links to this post

 
Reflexive Acquired By Amazon
Hmmm.... Pick what you think to be the most appropriate song by Queen:

Another One Bites the Dust... or We Are the Champions.

Reflexive Entertainment, indie game developer and publisher / online portal of both casual and somewhat less casual indie titles, has been acquired by online sales giant Amazon.com.

Reflexive Announces Acquisition by Amazon

My personal take? I'm cautiously optimistic. First of all, they were not acquired by an existing game publishing giant, or another casual portal. Secondly, Amazon has been kind of a maverick themselves, thus increasing the chance that Reflexive is going to keep doing what they have been doing unchanged, and allowing them to remain "indie." Well, as indie as you get when you are owned by a giant like Amazon. And thirdly - Amazon leads the world in online sales. This is perhaps *the* distribution partner for Reflexive, as well as for the developers with whom they work.

It also provides some indication (to me) of the advances indie games are making. This is a Big Deal. So I wish the guys at Reflexive plenty of luck and profit from their new overlords at Amazon, and hope that this will work out really well for them. Congratulations, Reflexive!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:31 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Persona 3 FES - and Indie RPGs
I have done a bad thing.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:16 PM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
AOIA Rampant Coyote Interview, Part II
Looks like part 2 of the Alley of Infinite Angles interview with me is up. With a commentary! We really got more into biz aspects on this side. It sounds like I left Sun-ha a little bit wanting... perhaps because I didn't feel strongly that there were any real answers to his questions. In fact, I'm really interested in what other answers you guys come up with.

Anyway, here's Part II of my interview at the Alley of Infinite Angles.

And here's Sun-ha Hong's commentary.

I felt I was pretty upbeat about things. That's conscious. But I'm the first to admit that I don't see a "golden age of indie" anywhere on the horizon. The indies aren't going to be rising up and overthrowing the yoke of the big business overlords anytime soon. Feel free to sing "Won't Get Fooled Again" at this point.

You could say that indies are everything that the entrenched "institution" isn't, defining indie game developers by the mainstream. Except that isn't true, either. There are indies that treat approach the business side of making their own games exactly like the mainstream - with the exception of finding their own financing for their game. Indies are pretty much just about doing it their own way, and the mainstream dominance is simply just one more obstacle.

As to the question of why there isn't some kind of centralized "hub" of indie games - there really have been several that have been attempted, from portals to review sites to webrings to The Great Games Experiment. Every few months, someone proposes another one. Indies being who we are, we tend not to agree on details, and many of these projects die in infancy or just never quite hit the level of penetration they need. Trying to do anything like this requires some standardization and prioritization that is not beneficial to all indies, and will never seem fair to everybody.

What it really comes down to is that indies - the real indies - have that whole "independent spirit" thing going for them and don't want to be ever have their success chained down by something they have no control over. They may cooperate with these projects, but they won't make concessions to them. Why should they? They have their own businesses to run, and their own games to make.

That being said - there are also a lot of indies who are constantly looking for better ways to cooperate. I've noticed that many of the more successful indies out there seem happy to help out others... within reason. I'm on a few forums where the old vets are constantly batting ideas back and forth about how we can better pool our resources to improve things for everyone.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:24 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Another Interview With The Rampant Coyote - Part I
The Alley of Infinite Angles has part I of an interview with me about... uh... indie stuff. It's actually in two parts - part 2 will be arriving shortly. We talk a lot about the indie side of the gaming industry and how it relates to mainstream 'n stuff.

I don't know why you'd want to hear more about me and my shouting from the ol' soapbox, but in case you are that kind of masochist, feel free to check it out:

Interview With Yours Truly at Alley of Infinite Angles, Part 1

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:42 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Interview with Nick Tipping of Moonpod
Here's the last of the semi-formal interviews I had with mainstream game developers who had "gone rogue" to become full-time indie game developers. This time, it's with Nick Tipping of Moonpod. Nick is another indie who is both a driven game developer and a great supporter of the indie game development community. If you have played Moonpod's games, in particular their latest RPG-esque Mr. Robot, you already know that they quality sets the bar pretty high for indie games. Darn them.

Rampant Coyote: So where did you work and what did you work on prior to going indie?

Nick Tipping: Mark and I were both at Gremlin Interactive, Infogrammes and Rage Games Ltd. We worked on a number of PC and Playstation projects: N2O and the Actua sports series mainly. The last mainstream game we worked on was Gun Metal for the Xbox.

Rampant Coyote: What propelled you out of the door of that cushy mainstream game development job to join the ranks of the self-employed?

Nick Tipping: We'd toyed with the idea for some months but when almost every major studio in Sheffield closed at the same time we decided it was time to give it a go. Severance pay and racking up huge debt on multiple credit cards saw us to the end of out first project at Moonpod. :)


Rampant Coyote: Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise when you worked on your first game(s)? Any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Nick Tipping: Only really having to learn open source libraries because we couldn't afford any of the middleware we'd been using in mainstream development. With our first game we made a lot of design mistakes because we'd been developing console-centric titles for so long. Starscape didn't even have mouse support for the menus when we first released it although we added that in an update.


Rampant Coyote: What have been your your biggest struggles / challenges / disappointments as an indie?

Nick Tipping: Marketing and running our company was something we had to jump in at the deep end with. We're still learning things now, after 5 years of being in business. Things we thought would be invaluable turned out to be useless; Mr. Robot and Starscape got incredible reviews in magazines, but even the smallest website review has a much bigger impact than a magazine.


Rampant Coyote: Do you still prefer being an indie over your mainstream game job?If so, why? If not, why haven't you returned to mainstream, big-budget, big-studio development? At the end of the day, why are you an indie?

Nick Tipping: At Moonpod it was more about artistic expression than money but sadly there's always a base level of income you need to maintain to support that ideal. We essentially love making games so if we had to return to mainstream development we'd be fine with that. Ideally we'll keep Moonpod going though and maybe even get to the point where we can hire some staff. We'd love to respond to some of the ideas our customers have sent our way. Essentially we want to keep doing what we've been doing but always reaching to create a better, more fulfilling experience for those who play our games.


Rampant Coyote: What other differences between mainstream and indie game development have you noticed?

Nick Tipping: There's a surprising amount of freedom available to you as an indie developer but time is still your greatest asset and with indie dev there's little time available and more tasks biting into it. Like maintaining a website and running a business. Not to mention customer support.

Rampant Coyote: Okay, that's about all I had. Is there anything else you want to add?

Nick Tipping: Only to add that indies live and die by word of mouth so if you find an indie game you like then tell everyone you know!!!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:30 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
The Indie Way to Win Customers and Defeat Piracy
Cliff Harris recently tried to open up a real dialog with pirates (I guess we are still calling them douche-bags here on this blog), and just published his results from this experience. His question to the pirates was, "Why do you pirate video games?" He received a flood of emails, many of which were pretty candid.

He explains the top reasons, and notes that the top responses involved quality issues, DRM, and game pricing. A lot mentioned that it is just easier to steal games (I'm sure most didn't use that word) than it is to buy them. Several complain that the demos were too short and didn't provide an adequate picture of the game. A very few actually cited weird political beliefs that they are somehow entitled to the hard work of others, or that they rip off games just because they can.

You can read his full report here:

Cliff Harris: Talking to Pirates

My take:

A lot of this smacks of justification, in my mind. I think the simple answer for 95% of piracy is simply because it is too freaking easy. With something like BitTorrent, it is ridiculously easy... and tempting... to simply type in the name of a game you've discovered that looks remotely interesting, and... if it is popular enough to have some feeds... viola. You are set within a few hours, or even just a few minutes for a smaller game. It doesn't take much for those small feelings of guilt to be suppressed.

I think Cliff's response is going to make his games better and hopefully sell better in the end, even if not a single pirate digs out a wallet and actually forks over a credit card number for his next game. The latest DRM shenanigans by mainstream companies lead a terrible taste in my mouth. And the issues of quality were particularly interesting - he said relatively few complained of graphics or "triple-A" production values, but most complained that the games were overly derivative, had gameplay issues, or simply grew boring too quickly beyond what was showcased in the demo. Those are quality issues that are within the grasp of any and all indies.

But I don't know that this is going to address the core problem with people ripping off software. I keep coming back around to Stardock's model, of producing constant updates that are more convenient to obtain legitimately than to pirate. I keep coming back to a point about business I have heard multiple times --- that business is about relationships. Pirates, almost by definition, have either no relationship with you as a game-seller, or a hostile one. Good games, and a good customer focus, can do a lot to build relationships between a company and a customer. Just look at how people respond to, say, Blizzard - or Stardock - as opposed to EA.

I think this is potentially something indies can do even better. After all, one of the advantages indies have is a direct relationship with their customers. And I think by opening up this dialog - and by being genuine about it, and trying to implement changes based on this feedback - has done a great deal to help build those relationships and goodwill. This is exactly how an indie should approach things, IMO.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:58 AM (Permalink) 11 comments links to this post

 
Pocketwatch Games' Andy Schatz Talks Indie Game Development
Continuing with the series of original interviews / questionnaires I gave to former mainstream game developers who have since "gone indie," today brings us Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games. Andy goes through his history of going from mainstream to indie on his Pocketwatch Games History page, so I'll just refer you there. In a nutshell, he used to work for mainstream video game companies Presto Studios and TKO. While at the latter studio, he was working on Goldeneye: Rogue Agent for EA during the height of the era documented by the industry-shaking EA_Spouse article. And he was miserable. After completing the game, he quit, and TKO floundered thereafter. Not that there was necessarily a causal relationship there. He was fortunate to receive some solid success with his first indie game, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa. And now he's made indie games his full-time career.

So here's what Andy had to say about his transition and experiences going from mainstream video game developer to a full-time indie.


Rampant Coyote: In your case, you were fed up with your job and decided to quit. What made you decide to become self-employed as an indie game developer rather than seek out another position elsewhere in the industry?

Andy Schatz: I had the same thought a ton of other developers have had: I can do it faster, I can do it better, I can get real credit for my work. That's probably a fantasy for most developers, but the only way to find out if it's true for you is to put yourself to the test. Who hasn't thought to themselves that they've got the next Sims or GTA or Zelda in them?

It's also worth noting that no one ever got rich off a salary.


Rampant Coyote: Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise?

Andy Schatz: Perhaps it's naïve to say, but three years ago I thought that with the rise of digital distribution, developers were going to grab some of the power back from publishers. But we've seen pretty clearly in both the casual game market and digital distribution on consoles that the publishing/distribution racket wasn't going to let us get away with that. The future does not look as bright for developers as it did three years ago, and the blame lies squarely with BigFish, Microsoft, and other major digital distributors. These giants have found ways to corral the audience, squeeze developers, and rip off our most creative pioneers.


Rampant Coyote: So what lessons did you have to learn once you became a career indie?

Andy Schatz: Interacting with the community is an essential piece of being an indie developer. As an indie, you require the help of business contacts, advisors, contractors, and press. I had to learn to interact constructively with everyone. The lesson I learned is to always put things in context of "what can I do for you?" rather than "what can you do for me?"


Rampant Coyote: Being an indie obviously isn't all fame, glory, and money. What have been your your biggest challenges or disappointments as an indie?

Andy Schatz: My second title, Venture Arctic, was a huge leap from its predecessor, Venture Africa. It was more beautiful, more interesting, and more expansive. But despite receiving critical acclaim, it hasn't connected with as large an audience. It's very disappointing to have a title that you really care about underperform with customers.


Rampant Coyote: What are the biggest differences between indie game development and mainstream game development?

Andy Schatz: The obvious one is that as a professional indie, you've got to all the business side of things yourself. You can't just bring home the bacon, you've got to raise the pig and kill it yourself.

The less obvious one is that it's much harder to stay organized and motivated at times. Sometimes it's incredibly easy, but at others, you can slip into the doldrums and let a week go by without much to show for it.


Rampant Coyote: At the end of the day, why do you stick with being an indie?

Andy Schatz: I support myself and I'm perpetually only one game away from being a millionaire gaming rock star. Why would I quit now?


I'd like to thank Andy for providing such an entertaining and insightful look into the world of full-time indie game development.

(Vaguely) related interesting words from other people:
* "Going Rogue" at the Escapist
* NinjaBee's Steve Taylor on Indie Game Development
* Interview: Cliff "Kudos" Harris on Being an Indie Game Developer
* Depths of Peril Creator Steven Peeler Speaks Up on Going Indie
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:26 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
NinjaBee's Steve Taylor On Indie Game Development
I have interviewed Steve Taylor before, but in this case I wanted to ask him directly about the joys and frustrations of indie game development as opposed to traditional mainstream game development. This interview was originally done to gather information for the article, "Going Rogue," for The Escapist.

Steve's company, Wahoo Studios (AKA NinjaBee), is a little unusual in that it combines self-funded "indie" titles with contract work from publishers. Their independently produced titles include the space tycoon game Outpost Kaloki, the XBox 360 version Outpost Kaloki X, the tactics game Band of Bugs, Cloning Clyde, and the upcoming A Kingdom for Keflings. Steve was also my boss for a little over a year, but the restraining order he placed on me has expired since then, so I was able to ask him these questions:


Rampant Coyote: Okay, keeping it simple. What rocks about indie game development? Why would anyone choose to do this?

Steve Taylor: Fundamentally, creative control! The ability to do something off the beaten path, and do it your own way. The ability to succeed and fail on your own merit and nobody else's.


Rampant Coyote: Cool. So... what sucks about indie game development?

Steve Taylor: What sucks is that everything I said in my first answer is not exactly true. If you want to reach a large audience with your game, the concept of complete creative freedom with Indie games is a myth. Portals and other distributions services impose their own rules and limitations. Supposedly-indie-friendly distribution options like Steam and Instant Action still have subjective gatekeepers, and they're the ones who decide if your game is good enough and if it's even the kind of game they're looking for. And if you want your game to make money, you have to consider what will sell, and this means adapting your pure creative vision to match the real world. Besides all of that, do you really have the resources to achieve your ultimate creative vision? There's just no such thing as complete creative control for the developer, in practical terms.


Rampant Coyote: As you crossed over to the dark side - indie game development - what surprises did you encounter?

Steve Taylor: Initially, since we had no idea what we were doing, we expected that making a good game would naturally lead to instant riches and glory. The surprise was that getting involved with portals and getting the word out there about your game is not as simple as it looks.


Rampant Coyote: Since you continue to work on contract titles, have your indie efforts colored interaction or relationship with publishers?

Steve Taylor: Our indie experiences have affected our work with publishers in two really interesting ways that I've been thinking a lot about lately:

Having successfully funded and released some games on our own, we've gotten some attention that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Some potential clients have recognized our ability to do high quality work in the downloadable game space, and this has led to a lot of discussion about work-for-hire projects and in a few cases has meant actual contracts. With our company partly dependent on contract jobs, we live under the constant stress of trying to line up that next gig, and having people come to us because of what we've done on our own is a pretty big win.

We assumed this would mean our potential partners would trust us to make something great on our own terms. After all, that's why they hired us, right? Unfortunately, contract work seems to be business as usual. When somebody else pays for the game, they expect to design it and control its creation, regardless of the circumstances that brought you together. This sometimes makes contract work a bit more painful than it has been in the past.


Rampant Coyote: What other differences have you noticed between indie and traditional mainstream contract work?

Steve Taylor: The thing is, I still believe traditional work for hire is valid and rewarding and has some major upsides. Sure, the taste we got of doing things our own way makes contract work feel a little more like slave labor. But with a contract project for a big publisher, there are resources we'd never have otherwise, marketing effort we'd never be able to muster up, and contributions from a ton of talented individuals outside our dev team. In the end there's the potential for a much better product than we could do on our own. And the experience educates us, improves our skills and tech, and builds our reputation. If only we could somehow have all of that *and* get to pick what color hair our characters have, life would be sweet.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Interviews, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:48 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Can I Get An AMEN?
Preach on, Tycho!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:27 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Interview: Cliff "Kudos" Harris on Being an Indie Game Developer
Cliff Harris, of Positech Games, is the author of Democracy, Kudos, Kudos Rock Legend, and several other titles. Cliff is known for being an outspoken indie game developer, commonly found railing against "common wisdom," including the usual belief that success depends upon going through major game portals, and that downloadable games must address a specific audience to do well. Cliff has charted his own course, but he's also managed to make it work. He's been half-jokingly referred to as a "poster child" for indie success.

But aside from this, he devotes a great deal of time offering advice and sharing his own knowledge with other members of the indie game development community, even to the point of sharing the most secret of data, actual sales numbers. All too often, his advice is sadly ignored because of its contrarian nature, but its hard to find another indie who has been more active in helping others in the community. This is an email interview I had with him while working on the article "Going Rogue" for The Escapist. Many of the juiciest parts of this interview were included in the article, but Cliff had a lot to say which I didn't have room to include. I hope you'll find as entertaining and useful as I did. Here's Cliff Harris on "going indie":

Rampant Coyote: Can you tell me about your mainstream game development experience and career?

Cliff Harris: I tried writing games in 1981, aged 11, eventually I started making and selling them online in 1997 as a hobby, but I never made enough money to live off it, so I ended up in mainstream dev, working at Elixir Studios and then at Lionhead while the indie games sales built up. I was the AI guy and general games coder for 'the Movies' at Lionhead (for the PC). The X-box game I worked on for years at Elixir got canned...


Rampant Coyote: What propelled you out of the door of that cushy mainstream game development job to join the ranks of the self-employed?

Cliff Harris: One reason was money, my games made (part-time) as much as my salary did, so it made sense, and also I was fed up with the way games companies are run. The long hours culture, the complete chaos, and the fact that obviously I was a frustrated designer working purely as a coder. I had been self-employed before, as an IT contractor and a boatbuilder, and I think I just have the DNA that makes me a better lone gunmen than someone elses employee. I'm very outspoken and probably a bit of a volatile employee. Plus I had a juicy contract with Maxis to tide me over the first difficult few months, so I knew I wasn't about to starve.


Rampant Coyote: I assume you left the mainstream gig feeling like you had a handle on What it would take to make games on your own. Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise? Were there any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Cliff Harris: I'd done it before but badly, so I had already learned from those mistakes. One thing I had to learn was decent PR and publicity. When you work for some big name company, journalists get on planes and get bought to your desk to see cool stuff. That doesn't happen any more :( I had to learn how to get my name out there and promote my games, rather than just making what I thought was cool and hoping people would discover them. I was luckier than most in that money was already coming in, so I could relax a bit and just develop games.


Rampant Coyote: What have been your your biggest struggles / challenges / disappointments as an indie?

Cliff Harris: My biggest struggle is working alone from home. Especially when sales are good, because there is little incentive to do any work. Nobody cares if I'm at my desk or in the pub, and nobody cares if I'm working or playing games, or surfing the web. Staying motivated on your own is really hard, and it's tough having nobody to talk to all day, every day. That's the hardest thing about being an indie.

All the other problems, money, contracts, programming, are pretty trivial in comparison. I'm sure some of the hardcore semi-autistic programmer geeks love it, but I'm a bit more chatty than most.


Rampant Coyote: Do you still prefer being an indie over your mainstream game job? What keeps you going as an indie?

Cliff Harris: I'm definitely happier as an indie because I like succeeding or failing on my terms. Working with other people is a nightmare. I can't ever see me taking a normal salary ever again. once you get used to being your own boss, the idea of someone telling you what to do all day seems juvenile, like being a schoolboy again. I can't imagine working for three years on one game again either, or being detached from the business side of things. Sitting at a desk working for someone else, on someone else's idea, with no idea how much money it makes, just seems ridiculous. If I needed a full-time job again, I'd try and get into marketing or some other area of programming, rather than go back to 'triple a' gaming.


Rampant Coyote: Steven Peeler mentioned that one of his frustrations as an indie involved piracy. You've expressed similar views in the past. Do you have any perspective on this as an indie that you'd like to share?

Cliff Harris: The thing that really bugs me about pirates is that some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of 'sticking it to the man' and being 'anti-DRM and anti-big corporations', and then despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway.

I can understand people who have no money, or even just people who are morally corrupt who think stealing is okay, but the ones that drive me mad are the idiots that lecture me about my 'outdated business model', like they are some sort of kindergarten Bill Gates, or the ones who tell me I'm some corporate shill because my games aren't free. Almost as bad are the ones who insist I should be happy that people are playing my games, and doing it for the love of it. Such people are normally living in mom's basement with no rent to pay.


Rampant Coyote: What else could you tell me about the difference between mainstream and indie video game development?

Cliff Harris: Indie devs can take risks. No way would Lionhead or Elixir have made Democracy or Kudos, they both seem a bit too 'off-message' in terms of what people think gamers want. Democracy would have had a pointless 3D engine shoe-horned into it, and Kudos would never have got away with being turn-based. But I think it's those limitations that force people to make interesting games. World of Goo will be cool *because* of it's 2Dness, not despite it. Because we don't have the option of doing a HDR-lighting bump-mapped high-poly shader-driven 3D world, it means indie games actually look different to the stuff everyone else is making. Plus, because our dev budgets are smaller, we can support niches like turn based strategy, serious games or kids games.

One of the best benefits of indie gaming is the direct connection between developer and gamer. I literally take 90% of the sale price of my games sold direct. That's way better than handing lots of cash to some middle-man who doesn't even play games.

It also means I can talk direct to my customers, implement their suggestions, help them out and support them without lawyers in the way. If someone asks how part of the game works, I can post a direct reply as the designer, or even share some source code to illustrate it. That's very rare in big retail gaming.


Rampant Coyote: Thank you, Cliff!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:43 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Depths of Peril Creator Steven Peeler Speaks Out On Going Indie
Now that my article on mainstream developers going indie for The Escapist is out, I thought I'd share more of the interview responses I got while preparing it. These guys had a lot of great things to say, and a ton of interesting quotes and valuable information were left on the cutting room floor.

Today, I share insights I received from Steven Peeler, creator of my favorite RPG of last year, Depths of Peril.

Rampant Coyote: Before going indie, how long were you in the mainstream industry, and what industry companies / titles / platforms did you work on?

Steven Peeler: Before starting up Soldak, I worked at Ritual Entertainment for a little over six years and primarily created games for the PC. Most of my time at Ritual was spent working on Elite Force 2, Heavy Metal: FAKK2, Blair Witch 3, and some unannounced/unreleased games. I also made minor contributions to Sin, Condition Zero, Counter Strike XBox, and Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre.

Rampant Coyote: What propelled you out of the door of that cushy mainstream game development job to join the ranks of the self-employed?

Steven Peeler: I actually get asked this a lot. I left for a lot of reasons, so my answer each time is different depending on who is asking and my mood. Here’s just a few of the reasons: I really wanted to work on an RPG and Ritual only made shooters, there were some annoying politics going on that was really frustrating, I disagreed with the direction the company was taking, I was really tired of pushy publishers, and I just wanted to do my own thing.

Rampant Coyote: I assume you left the mainstream gig feeling like you had a handle on What it would take to make games on your own. Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise? Were there any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Steven Peeler: Yeah, I would say I felt I had a good handle on creating a game on my own.

This didn’t exactly surprise me, but there are a lot of non-game things you must do as an indie like setting up your business, taxes, creating a website, marketing, taxes, interacting with your customers, and more taxes. Did I mention taxes?

One thing that did surprise me is how hard it is too find good artists and level designers that actually have free time. I guess in retrospect this really shouldn’t have surprised me. Most of the people I find either aren’t very good, are already crunching (working more than full time) at a game company, or can’t/won’t work for royalties.

Another thing I have learned the hard way, RPGs are complex beasts especially when you go and add things like a dynamic world and opposing factions.

Rampant Coyote: What have been your biggest struggles / challenges / disappointments as an indie?

Steven Peeler: The biggest struggle has simply been to get enough attention so that we can make enough sales to continue. We’ve already created an innovative, fun game, but getting the world to notice that is harder, possibly even harder than making the game in the first place.

Personally my biggest disappointment is how much piracy that goes on in the PC market. Since we are a small developer, that has a hard time getting attention, you would think we would have very little piracy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. It’s depressing how many sites are pirating Depths of Peril. What’s even worse is that after working on the game for almost 3 years, some #$%^ posts a crack on some pirate site, and the forum users thank him. I even saw one pirate site that was getting donations. Sigh, ok, enough on piracy, it’s depressing even typing this.

Rampant Coyote: Do you still prefer being an indie over your mainstream game job? If so, why? If not, why haven't you returned to mainstream, big-budget, big-studio development? At the end of the day, why are you an indie?

Steven Peeler: Overall, I enjoy being an indie more. The mainstream game job paid way better however. Hopefully that will change in the long run though.

It’s great to be able to do whatever I want to do. I never would have been able to create Depths of Peril in the mainstream. Nor would I have been allowed to bring Depths of Peril to the Mac market. I don’t have a boss. My commute is now about 10 seconds to get across the room. I no longer have to go to meetings. I no longer have to deal with publishers trying to withhold payments to get their way. I no longer have producers with an art background telling me, as the lead programmer, how to fix a technical problem. And this list could go on for a long time.

This isn’t to say I would never get back into the mainstream industry. If it ever happens, I would just be pickier about who I would go work for.

Rampant Coyote: Any other comments you want to make about the difference between mainstream & indie development?

In the mainstream industry, no one would have let me create Depths of Peril or bring it to the Mac. This is the big difference between being an indie and working in the mainstream. As an indie, I have the freedom to try new things and I don’t have to have proof that it will be a financial success.

One of the other big differences is, as an indie, I work directly for the gamers. I sell directly to gamers through our website and I talk directly to gamers through our forums.

At a mainstream developer, you directly make games for publishers. Obviously, ultimately you want to please the gamers. However, you pitch your game idea or prototype to publishers. The publisher is the one that decides whether or not your game gets made. The publisher pays you. Most developers never make any money except what the publisher gives them. So like I said, at a mainstream developer, most of the time, you are making games for publishers, not the gamers.

Rampant Coyote: And is there anything else you want to add?

Steven Peeler: I think I’ve gotten in my fill. :)

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:34 AM (Permalink) 8 comments links to this post

 
Mainstream Game Devs Goin' Indie!
Since I didn't get home from work until after 2 AM this morning (something that will probably be repeated today), I'm just gonna direct you to a new article at The Escapist by someone you know about some people you might have heard of:

Going Rogue at The Escapist

Enjoy!

Due to space requirements, I was only able to include some bits and pieces of interviews in the article. I'll have to throw some "cutting room floor" stuff onto the blog this week if you are interested in more that these guys had to say about going from being mainstream, "big studio" game developers and going off on their own to become indies.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:32 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Night, Summer 2008
Tonight we held the quarterly Utah Indie Game Developer's Meet (that's not an official title or anything...) at the offices of Wahoo / NinjaBee. Lane ordered extra pizza this time for the meeting, because - apparently - last time they ran out. The time I missed. This time, there were fewer people there than usual ("only" a little over 20 people), and I was offering a presentation. Should this be telling me something?

Tonight was a little different in that we had a formal presentation. Well, as formal as we ever get, at least. We were supposed to have two presentations - I had one on marketing for indies, and someone else who had to cancel was going to present a little discussion on developing with the Unity engine. It was just me, and I went overtime. I think I'll re-do the presentation as a blog post or two so I can bore even more people with it. I think it was entitled, "Marketing for Indies Who Know Squat About Marketing," with a subtitle of "10 Quick and Dirty Tips To Help Sell Your Game." I was trying to take 90 seconds per tip, but it was closer to 3 minutes each. Maybe I should have had only 5 tips.

Live and learn. Some people told me they really enjoyed it, and some folks even took notes. So I guess I didn't put everyone to sleep.

After that, we had the game demos and the informal discussions. ALWAYS a good time! Dan & Herb Flower and Paul Witte were there showing of LinkRealms, which I understand is about to undergo a name change. Except they haven't quite figured out the new name yet. They've also done some massive overhaul of how the player-created "realms" are organized.

Daniel Orcutt, representing Gabob.com, was demoing their newest game, "Now Boarding." It's sort of a comedic airline tycoon game, and is available as a PC download (Mac version coming soon). It looks really, really cool. I was impressed. It's definitely not a hardcore tycoon game, and should appeal to more casual audiences. It's currently at a special price for launch of only $14.99.

Josh Jones had three flash games he was showing off. The first game, "Mudsling," was.... weird. It was a physics-based game that using what I'd consider hyperactive mud balls. The balls would stick, vibrate, and move each other around. It's a two-player game where the goal is to create (or delete) mud balls to get as many balls as possible on your side of a playfield by the end of the game. Careful application of mud can cause an entire stack of sticky, vibrating mud to creep from one side of the playfield to the other. His second game, which I think was called "Tarijump" or something like that (I'll correct it later if I got it wrong), which was a short puzzle / adventure game where you could collect items, and then jump near them to change them.

The third of Josh's games was called "Fate" (Not the same as the the WildTangent RPG) and consisted of four mini-games. The first was a side-shooter. The second was sort of an RPG-esque thing where you were in a ship fighting sea monsters (and... uh, mermaids). The third was an incomplete text / story creation game a la Madlibs. And the fourth was a puzzle game. What was interesting is that the game would measure and monitor how you played these games - what you did, how long you played, where you clicked, where you focused your attention, etc. At the end, it would then tell you what kind of a gamer you are based upon your responses to the games.

And then we had the discussions. I spoke at length with Joseph Gonzalez of The Media Mogul blog, Josh, Greg, Herb, and others about all kinds of topics from marketing, going indie, frustrations with mainstream game development, I.P. management, hiring and managing contractors, developing in Torque and other game development tools, running an indie game website, and just how much the industry is changing right now. In some ways, the discussions and networking always feels like the "meat" of the indie nights for me, though it's the part usually only shared by different groups of 3-5 people at a time. Which means everybody has a little different "Indie Night" from me.

And ... speaking of which... I found that Joseph has blogged about the Utah Indie Night too, and so I recommend visiting that site for more insight as to what goes on at these secret, smoke-filled indie meetings. And as usual, Greg Squire has offered his recap of indie night.

Most of all, my take-away from these meetings was a feeling of inspiration and excitement for the indie side of the video game industry.

Previous Utah Indie Night Posts:
* Utah Indie Night, Winter 2008
* Utah Indie Night, Fall 2007
* Utah Indie Night, Summer 2007
* Utah Indie Night, Spring 2007
* Utah Indie Game Dev Night, Fall 2006
* Utah Indie Night, Summer 2006
* Utah Indie Game Developer Night, Spring 2006

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:20 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
RPG Dialog Systems - Revisited
"While I'm very fond of full dialogue trees, I believe that the keyword system is the foundation of any evolution of RPG dialogue systems. I would certainly be interested to pick up where Sir Tech left off and see what could be done with this concept. The 'tone interface could be easily tied to speech skills and an Arcanum-like disposition system."

So saith the Indie RPG Designers, Vince Weller and Gareth Fouche.

So say we all.

Well, okay, probably not all. But me. They have a very extensive look at RPG conversation systems, and I gotta admit, the conclusions sound pretty reasonable to me. But I'm one of those scary retro-gamers who actually likes dialog in games, even if I must *gasp* read it myself.

Wizardry 8 gets cited as an example of an unfortunately abandoned evolutionary path that showed a great deal of promise. I've played the demo, but I don't have the full version. I've asked it before, and I'll ask again - does anybody know where I can pick up a reasonably inexpensive copy of Wizardry 8? Checking on Amazon, it looks like I can find a used copy for approximately double its original price. I never thought of computer games as investment-quality collectibles, but hey. If I can find a good-quality used version (with full manuals) for $50 or less, I'd be thrilled.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:22 AM (Permalink) 12 comments links to this post

 
Steven Peeler Talks Indie with RPS
Rock Paper Shotgun has a very cool interview with indie RPG author Steven Peeler, the guy behind the awesomelicious Depths of Peril. Some bits of trivia coming out of the interview:

* As I expected, Steven is the only full-time guy at Soldak Entertainment. The other names in the credits are contractors.

* Shortly before leaving Ritual, he pitched another RPG design - a very tense, scary, first-person-perspective RPG. Nothing like Depths of Peril.

* Soldak is not his first start-up company (or his first start-up company working on RPGs)

* His inspiration comes from an outstanding list of classic, old-school RPGs --- and Dungeons & Dragons.

* He's got another top-secret project that's "pretty far along now," but not talkin' about it yet.

He also talks about his decision to go indie after being pretty up the programmer hierarchy at a major development studio, where he came up with the design of Depths of Peril, the difficulties inherent in creating such a dynamic-world game, and much more.

If I were to teach a class in making indie RPGs, I'd put this article on the "required reading" list.

RPS Interview With Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews, programming, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:10 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Rose & Camellia 2
The elegant art of feminine combat... revisited.

The new version apparently requires you slap your way to the top of the original to play. Put your hardcore smack-down on the aristocracy now!

Rose & Camellia 2

You know you have been waiting for it!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:59 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
More Age Of Decadence Play-Through
The third installment of the "Let's Play" series on the indie RPG Age of Decadence is now up over at RPGWatch. The play-through involves one of the developers playing the game, posting screenshots and commentary for the walk-through, but letting the community make all of the major decisions.

Age of Decadence is an upcoming RPG by Iron Tower Studio based in a setting reminiscent of Rome near its collapse.

Let's Play Age of Decadence #3 at RPGWatch

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:06 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Depths of Peril Now On Sale For the Mac
The Mac version of Depths of Peril, which has been out in a demo version for a week, is now for sale.

I'm just gonna swipe the press release right here, because it allows me to be all lazy 'n stuff:

"Depths of Peril is a single player action role-playing game (RPG) with strong strategy elements. You play as a faction leader protecting the barbarian city, Jorvik, by destroying threatening monsters and completing quests. At the same time, you compete with rival factions to see who will rule the city. Barbarians choose their leaders by fighting to the death!

"As a faction leader, you must deal with rival factions through diplomacy, trade, and in time, war. Between battles and raids against other barbarian factions, you build the most powerful faction possible, to withstand your enemies. Building the power of a faction involves exploring a fantasy world, slaying dangerous monsters, solving quests for the city, avoiding deadly traps, and plundering loot to share within your faction.

"But in this world, actions actually have consequences, so take care. Annoying the powerful and aggressive Legion of Fear faction will cause them to declare war and destroy you. Ignored orc uprisings in the Black Forest might lead to attacks on the town or even more trouble. Protect ally covenants that are being raided, because friends are hard to come by."

I've already said a great deal about this game. I'm a fan. I think it's a stellar example of what indie games - and indie RPGs in particular - can be. But it's also quirky and different and probably not for everybody. But that last sentence, in my mind, is to some degree the very definition of niche, indie games.

Mac gamers, enjoy!

Depths of Peril - Now Available for Mac and PC

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:12 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
I downloaded and played the demo of the new Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness tonight. I didn't play enough to get a real strong feel for it, but here are some first impressions of the game.

First of all - yes, it's an RPG, in the same way that the old 32-bit jRPGs are RPGs. Character creation is limited to choosing gender and alternatives for body type, face, clothing, and gloves. When you level up, there really aren't any choices to be made (well, at least for the all of two levels I made in the demo). It's very action - oriented.

And it's the humor can get pretty rude. If you like Penny Arcade's humor, this should be right up your alley. If you are offended by Penny Arcade's humor, you will be offended by the very first combat. The "F-Bomb" gets dropped regularly, you get a cat that attacks by licking itself, and the initial combats are against the notorious "fruit f***er" juicing machines of the comic strip (who make comments like, "I'd hit that," about anything they happen to see). The "M" rating is well-earned.

But I have to admit, I was laughing as I played it. From the opening scene, to the narration during the tutorial, to the animations to the dialog between Tycho and Gabriel, to just seeing a 20-sided die roll out in the "Roll For Initiative" screen, it is both funny and fun. I love how Tycho has a book he reads in one hand, and a Thompson submachinegun in the other.

And can I add here that I'm thrilled to see another RPG that isn't based on medieval fantasy?

Combat is similar to that of many jRPGs - it seems to be "timed turn" based, meaning you have to wait for the action timers to complete before taking an action, but the game will not wait for you to take said action. There are some button-mashing (or spacebar-mashing) action sequences to block at the right time or perform a special attack. You get combo attacks with other party members, and build up special attacks as you level.

All-in-all, it seems very much like a "modern" jRPG. The graphics are - in my view - perfect. Some players may take issue with the frequent transitions between 2D and 3D graphics, but the two are similar enough in style that it is not too jarring.

The camera angles got a little frustrating. I never found out if you could actually move the camera around, but the camera path felt pretty restrictive. I found myself wanting to turn the camera around and zoom in or out. But I expect the world may very well "end" just a little way behind the camera. Your path is pretty linear through the world, at least during the first "bunny slope" tutorial mission.

A little bit has been said about the copy protection on the PC version. You have to register online, and you are limited to installations on three different computers. (The End User License Agreement, incidentally, is quite fun to read, as they include an often humorous layman's description of every section before the obligatory legalese).

To some degree, I find this less of an issue than disc-based protection. It's going to become the norm in the future, I think (and the sooner we can get rid of disc-based protection, in my opinion, the better). But as an old-school retrogamer who is still periodically installing and playing games that are no longer supported by their creators (in many cases, their creators having long since gone out of business), I worry that I might not be able to play the game four or five years from now. This concerns me. Of course, by then, I can risk downloading a potentially malware-infested crack... but I really don't want to rely on the shady gray market to be able to enjoy a game I've legally purchased.

However, I'm still going to be picking this one up. And I'm gonna bug Hothead games for giving me more licenses whenever I upgrade / change machines for YEARS to come. Maybe the cost in customer support calls will help offset this trend in a few years, huh?

Another issue for me is the general issue with episodic gaming. I mean, in general, I'm a fan of the idea. I'd rather have my gaming in smaller doses these days. But I do wonder if this episode is long enough to justify the $20. Are six episodes worth $120? Do they provide more gameplay value than a single game costing $50 or $60? I hope so.

We shall see.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:31 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Emotion And RPGs? Indies of the Round Table #3
Once a month (well, ideally) we bring together several of the top indie RPG developers to tackle questions about indie game development, RPGs, and game design. They range from experienced vets with years of experience doing what they do, to new developers making a splash with their freshman projects; hardcore to casual; freeware to commercial; single-player to massively multiplayer game makers; and hardcore to casual.

Previously, we've discussed "Why Indie RPGs?" and "What Does the Future Hold for Indies?"

This month, we get emotional.

QUESTION:
As one of the more powerful genres for storytelling and character, computer and console RPGs have demonstrated some potential to bring out emotional responses in players - from shock over Sephiroth's notorious murder of Aeris, to the overwhelming desire to smack the smirk off of Jon Irenicus's face, to the very disturbing decision of the war between "sister" vampires Jeanette and Therese, to some marvelous unscripted moments of panic or vengeance. RPGs may not have proven that they can pack an emotional wallop, but they have flirted with the territory.

So my question(s) to indie RPG developers this month is this: Is emotional impact something you try to achieve in your games? If so, what do you do to involve the player emotionally in your game, and what sort of emotions do you try to bring out in the player? If not, is this something you'd consider worth doing in an indie RPG? Why or why not?

And here are the responses:

Thomas Riegsecker, Basilisk Games ("Eschalon: Book 1"):
I don't know if emotion is a big factor in RPGs or not. Certainly here are some console RPGs (Final Fantasy comes to mind) that provide an emotionally charged storyline in lieu of a deep role-playing experience. Short of that, I'm not sure that an RPG is the most effective format for delivering an emotionally loaded story. To get a meaningful emotional response from a player requires a carefully delivered storyline, which is hard to accomplish with an RPG where the story is erratically paced and rarely linear.

Regardless, I do think it is important to give the player a sense of personal involvement in the story. In Eschalon: Book I the player has a meeting with his brother, which for as short of an encounter that it is, generated a surprising number of responses from players who were moved by it. So yes, I think emotion can work well in individual scripted situations where feelings of empathy, anger or fear can be an immediate factor to drive the player forward to his or her next goal.

Mike Hommel, Hamumu Games ("Loonyland 2: Winter Woods"):
You know, I haven't seen these purported emotional responses from RPGs. Whenever I see an RPG try for something like that, it just makes me laugh at how trite and self-important it seems. Honestly, to go from one second having my little chibi pixel man swing his gun-sword at air to make big numbers float up from an eyeball monster across the room to the next second proclaiming undying love for the poisoned princess... I'm not exactly choked up.

I think text adventures (and adventures in general) have a significant edge in this matter over RPGs. They control things much more and don't have you spending hours dealing with numbers and statistics. They are closer to movies and books, and both do elicit emotional reaction of all kinds. I suppose that's a slap in the face to the people who make such a big deal out of the interactivity of games, but there's no question to me that the very interactivity is what prevents you from making an emotional connection. At least the interactivity we can currently offer. I guess it also has to do with empathy - if I see a real person emoting, I automatically feel some measure of that. A cartoon emoting is just silly, unless it's extremely well done. And right now, games are cartoons.

Except Sega CD games - now those are an emotional thrill ride! And again, the interactivity stunts it. Even if there's a dramatic cry over the fallen princess, I'm not engaged because to get to that I was fighting an army of orcs. My mind is in number-crunching, orc-crushing mode, and I see the cry as the very technical outcome of that interaction, not as a real event, like I would perceive a movie scene (even if it's literally done as a filmed movie scene in the game). I just hit Retry and go again to see if I can save her. Not because I care about her, I just want to win the game.

But no, it's not something I even desire to try. The only emotions I am after are laughter, a sense of triumph, and as little frustration as I can manage. But that's just the style of what I want to do. I would be impressed with a non-ridiculous RPG story that felt emotional. But I sure won't be providing it!

Steven Peeler, Soldak Entertainment ("Depths of Peril"):
Of course we try to bring out emotional responses from our players with our storytelling. What’s the point of a story (in any medium) that doesn’t evoke some kind of emotional response from the player? Not much in my opinion.

However, games have a huge advantage compared to other mediums: games are interactive. Instead of just telling or showing the reader/viewer something scary, we set off a trap, make a group of monsters attack your town, or have another covenant raid your house. Since it is happening to you, it is much more emotional. I mean which is more emotional, the guy on the screen finds the item he has been searching for or you finally find that unique two-handed sword you have been searching for for the last 3 days? I would bet you finding the sword is much more emotional. There are tons of ways we try to evoke emotions from the player like this (and so do other games whether they realize it or not): spawning unique items, placing rare chests, town attacks, intense boss fights, leveling up, deadly traps, and many other things.

Georgina Bensley, Hanako Games ("Cute Knight Deluxe"):
I like big emotional scenes. I like them lots. I'm hesitant about using them in RPGs, though. Far too often, supposedly emotional interactions in RPGs fall prey to Stupid Cutscene disease - in which stuff happens that would absolutely not happen if you had control of the character during the cutscene like you do in the rest of the game. Sometimes that's bad writing or bad world design (you really can't have cheap bring-people-back-from-dead items without wreaking havoc on dramatic storylines) but often it's just a painful contrast between complete control and complete lack of control.

So currently, I prefer to keep emotional content fairly low-key in the RPG, and leave the Major Angst to the visual novel. For all the RPG projects I have secretly bubbling at the moment, the emotions I most want to inspire in the player are happiness and a sense of achievement. I want them to smile.

This certainly isn't a hard rule for me, it's just affected by the style and the scope of the projects I have going at the moment.

Vince D. Weller, Iron Tower Studio ("Age of Decadence"):
I think it goes without saying that emotions are very important in RPGs. These emotions should range from "Oh my god! Will you look at the graphics! They are breathtakingly amazing!" or "AHHH! I'm blind! Turn the fucking bloom off!"

How to achieve it, how to bring the player to this emotional state is the real question. There are different methods and professional techniques. While I hope you understand that I can't share professional secrets with you, here is a tip: get rid of most designers - they are a useless scum anyway - and replace them with graphics artists. Your game can become a huge success with one or less designers, but it simply won't do well if you have less 100 artists.

Jason Compton, Planewalker Games ("The Broken Hourglass"):
Yes, we're certainly looking to evoke emotional responses. There are a number of reasons to play a game through to completion (and then come back and play it again), including dogged determination, curiosity about "what's behind the next corner?", new rules exploits to try, and so forth... but one of the most enduring reasons are characters that players enjoy interacting with and responding to.

We're using a number of devices to that end. We put the PC in a situation where they have to make a crucial decision early on which should provoke an emotional response. We give joinable NPCs a range of motivations and priorities, ways to explore their own stories and in some cases romantic entanglements.

I'm not sure there's any particular emotion we're actively *avoiding*. The real trick is to avoid harping too much on emotional themes of despair and loss. Finding a way to pace humor, friendship, and romance in the midst of death and destruction is hard enough in linear media, considerably moreso when the pace and the sequence of the story are to some extent controlled by the player's whim. So we'll see how well it all works out.

Conclusion:
There is no conclusion. It seems like the panel is divided on this one. While emotional impact is a natural aspect of storytelling, and most RPGs aspire to tell some kind of story (even the very open-ended ones), the indie developers apparently favor a light touch here. None feel compelled to create an overwrought melodrama of Final Fantasy proportions, but instead prefer to focus on simpler fare.

Two creators emphasized other story-heavy genres - text adventures and "visual novels" - as more ripe territory for deeper storylines and emotional content. And Vince offered to share some of the emotions that come from developing games.

So... What say you? Do you prefer a game with lots of emotion-evoking situations, or do you prefer it to get out of your way and let you play?

I want to thank all of the participants in this month's Indies of the Round Table. If you have suggestions, or simply want to let us know how much you enjoyed it (or didn't), feel free to post in the comments section or over at the forum. Or just email me (jayb) here at rampantgames.com. And if you did enjoyed this article, be sure and support the participants by clicking on the links by their names and giving their games a try.)

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:15 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Kieron Reviews Depths of Peril
My favorite RPG of last year, Depths of Peril, gets some pen-time with Kieron Gillen at Games Radar. The introduction sums up many of my own feelings about the game:

"At the time of writing, Iron Lore, makers of Titan Quest, have just gone bust. A THQ Creative Director put the blame pretty firmly at the feet of software piracy. While it’s easy to sympathise - there’s nothing funny in hundreds of thousands of people playing a game for free while its makers run into financial difficulties - you can’t help but think if Iron Lore had actually displayed even a fraction of the imagination this indie action-RPG does, they’d still be here today. With Depths of Peril, the only element in the game that doesn’t display vision and quiet confidence is its somewhat underwhelming name."

What I like about the review is what I like about the game - while it's certainly flawed, its attempts to innovate the genre and provide an exciting "living world" covers a multitude of sins for me.

He goes on to further comment on the mechanics of the game in an editorial at Rock, Paper, Shotgun - without the word-limit demanded by the magazine that the review was originally intended for (and a big "d'oh!" for an indie RPG review getting bumped out of print... CORRECTION: My misunderstanding, it did run in PCG UK Magazine):

"It’s an enormously dense game in terms of strategic decisions - which is the thing which would alienate some RPGers - quests exist to be solved or destroy you rather than just existing as a means to get XP, as in most games."

The note about it alienating some RPGers is an interesting one. And unfortunately, it hits right on the mark. That living, dynamic world, where your actions (or lack thereof) have a real meaning and impact on what's happening - is one of the most-requested features by RPG fans. At least, based on my very informal polls, it is. Unfortunately, as implemented in Depths of Peril - indeed, as far as I see it being implemented in any game - this means WORK and a lot of decision-making. And work is sort of the opposite of fun for many gamers.

Is there a happier medium in there somewhere that could be achieved? I don't doubt it. But I'm pretty thrilled with Depths of Peril for putting a stake in the ground and exploring what could be done.

Depths of Peril review at Games Radar

Rock, Paper, Shotgun commentary on the Depths of Peril Review

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:55 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People
Coming soon from Telltale Games (Bone, Sam & Max) for the PC and Wii:

Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People

It sounds vaguely... uh... adventure-game-ish, doesn't it?

I don't know about you guys, but from my perspective, Telltale and Hothead are two up-and-coming game studios to keep an eye on. I'm sure SOMEBODY told them that graphic adventure games are dead, and you can't make money on RPGs if your name doesn't begin with Bioware, Bethesda, or Square. But these guys keep ignoring the "facts" of the industry and seem to be kicking butt. Telltale got into a partnership with GameTap, and Hothead is in a sweet arrangement with Penny Arcade.

And they are pulling it off by espousing the indie attitude, and they seem to be largely bypassing the mainstream publishing and distribution system.

Cool. Also: "Gimme!"

Strongbad's Cool Game For Attractive People Information at Gamasutra

Labels: Adventure Games, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:07 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Why Game Developers Are Screwed
Hey, I've got a really awesome deal I'd like to offer to anybody who'll take it: If you will give me $20, I will happily pay you $12 in return.

Sound like a great deal? No? It occurred to me this weekend that it's the kind of deal most independent video game developers keep making with publishers, again and again.

Part of this was brought about by a post Scorpia made this weekend about a number of studios closing up shop. I've begun taking a little bit more of an interest in investing lately, and I realized that based on very fundamental criteria, I'd never invest in a traditional independent game development studio. Because - the way royalties and advances are being handled nowadays, from the development studio's perspective at least - they are spending more to make a game than it has a reasonable chance of breaking even on. So they may spend $8 million on a game that will likely only make them $5 million.

But that's all to recoup the publisher's advance - which the publisher treats as "funding" the game with a zillion strings attached all the way up until the point where the game begins to sell. At that point it reverts to its legal status as an "advance towards royalties" at the developers pathetic royalty rate.

Meanwhile, that $5 million really becomes $0, because it's an advance on royalties and - as it turns out - was the developer's money the whole time. And the publisher - who is raking in much more money on the game, is making a modest profit. Except in the rare instances where the game far outperforms expectations, in which case the publisher makes enough money to cover a ton of losses (which they also take, admittedly - particularly when they cancel contracts), and the developer actually sees back-end royalties for a change.

Is that good business? I admit, I've not an experienced business-person or anything, but that sounds to me like a stupid proposition. Maybe that's just the nature of hit-driven businesses. But aside from practically winning the lottery with a game that greatly outperforms the publisher's expectations, the best a studio can hope for is to pad their advance (since that's really their only source of revenue) long enough to make a small, self-funded ("indie") game, or to stick around long enough to get bought out by a publisher. Or to make tiny games in such quantities that a developer literally has dozens of "clients" (publishers) pipelining money in.

Being a true "indie" may be a really tough row to hoe. But the alternative sure doesn't seem to be a winning proposition in the long run. Though I do wonder how long it'll take before making games for portals (who are slowly evolving into the new "publishers" of the online age) falls into the same trap.


(Vaguely) related weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth:
* Dependent, Independent, and Indie
* Explaining Indie Games, Illustrated!
* The Casual Game Industry Sucks, Too
* I'm A Gamer?

Update: Discussion rages on the forum!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 16 comments links to this post

 
Void War Soundtrack For Audiosurf
Today (well, yesterday, now) was "Void War Friday" for Audiosurf. Fans of both Void War and Audiosurf will find some familiar tunes to race to all this week.

Remember how I mentioned that the Void War music (composed and performed by my brother, Matt) made GREAT tracks for Audiosurf racing? Apparently the Audiosurf folks noticed, and asked if they could feature selected pieces from the Void War soundtrack for Audiosurf Radio for a week.

I agreed (duh!).

Playing Dogchild with Ninja Mono is just plain insane. I mean, I played it a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned it, and there were maybe four other people in the entire world who had raced to that music before. Now? Well, not only can I not place on the high score lists, but I can't even figure out how to get halfway there. And its only been one day!

Incidentally, the whole "Bach" connection from Void War came about when I was discussing the music I wanted for the game with my brother. He disregarded most of my suggestions completely, but when I mentioned the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach which was used in the classic arcade game Gyruss, I guess I hit a nerve. I think about half the musical pieces in the soundtrack are influenced by or contain elements of Bach's classics.

As another piece of trivia - I was surprised to learn that Audiosurf was based on a little prototype game I'd played way back in... gosh, was it 2005? Dylan posted four of his "prototypes in 7 days" and I think I tried out this prototype and another one called "Free Parking."

Anyway, if you haven't tried out Audiosurf yet, now's the chance to start! It's a wild game that turns your favorite music into

Oh, and try out Void War, too. I'm pretty proud of it. It was never a big hit or anything, but I've played some KILLER 8-player deathmatches with it. 3D space combat with Newtonian(esque) physics and Twisted Metal style special abilities might not have been the game concept that the entire world was waiting for, but I sure loved making it.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Greenhouse: Penny Arcade's New Indie Portal
There's another non-casual indie game portal in town, this one from the Penny Arcade crew. Considering how these guys managed to turn PAX into a major event that threatens to rival E3 in its salad days, I'd say they've got the potential to pull it off, where Manifesto (whom I still root for!) has had trouble gaining traction.

According to Mike "Gabe" Krahulik: "We developed Greenhouse along with Hothead originally because we needed a way to deliver our game to you guys. what we needed was a platform agnostic digital distibution portal. Once it was done we realised that it could actually be super useful to other independent developers. At first Greenhouse will be the place to get our game but eventually we'd like to use it as a way of promoting great independent games that might otherwise slide under the radar. Like PAX and Child's Play and all the other stuff we do we're starting out simple. We've got big ideas though and I'm excited about building Greenhouse into something really special."

We'll see how things turn out. They won't be selling any other games besides their own at launch, but they are already talking about the kinds of titles they'd like to put up... things like Kloonigames' Crayon Physics Deluxe. They've got a million readers, so I'd have to say this sort of thing has potential out the wazoo.

Here's an interview at Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/exclusive-inter.html

Here's an excerpt from the interview that really steams me up a bit, and demonstrates just how screwed up the entrenched brick-and-mortar biz really is:

We had a meeting with GameStop to talk about selling a boxed version of the game. Once we had a bunch of episodes together, we would collect them and put them in a box, you know? And GameStop said, oh, that's fantastic. We'd love to do it, we'd love to carry the game... but it's not going to be available anywhere else, is it?

And Robert said, well, we're going to digitally distribute it first.

They got really upset. And they said, no, you can't do that. We can't have it in our store if it's coming out digitally first. And he said, well, I'm sorry, that's the way it works. We're publishing our game and we can say where it goes. And so the deal that they tried to strike with Robert was okay, well, listen: If you cut us in on the profits from online distribution, and XBLA, and everything it comes out on, then we'll think about carrying it in the store. Just, what assholes.

I guess if you are new to the indie games scene, or to the games business in general, you might find this shocking. Me? I really can't claim to be surprised. The guys along the distribution channel really do think this way. It pisses me off, but it doesn't surprise me anymore.

For your amusement (since it's not live yet), here's the beta Greenhouse site:
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/

Have Fun!

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:01 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Avernum 5 Wrap Report
RPGVault has Jeff Vogel's "Wrap Report" (a better term, IMO, than "postmortem") for Avernum 5, the latest in Spiderweb Software's long-running indie RPG series.

Avernum 5 Wrap Report at RPGVault

An excerpt:
"I have become really impatient with RPGs, both single- and multiplayer, over the last few years, and I was determined to write one that had as few as possible of the elements that annoyed me. One example is repetitive cookie-cutter fights... trash, in other words. I hate battles that only serve to eat up time. I removed as many of those as I could."

He also set out to put more humor in the game (hey, I'm not at all opposed to humor in RPGs...).

And he notes that - so far - it's sold better than any game he's written in a long time. So maybe he did something right.

He also confirmed that there is only one chapter left in both the Geneforge and Avernum series, and that the new engines will be brought more up-to-date with improved engines that use OpenGL.

(Spotted on RPGWatch).

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:27 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Another Free Audiosurf Recommendation
I finally got around to playing Audiosurf to the Void War soundtrack. You'd think I would have tried that out first, huh? But it's very nice.

I highly recommend "Dogchild" from Void War for your Audiosurf-ing pleasure. But most of the music from the (*plug*really awesome award-winning*plug) game works well.

You can download the entire soundtrack (and some... weird remixes) for free from Matt Barnson's site here:

Void War Soundtrack

Labels: Indie Evangelism, music

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:22 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Great AudioSurf Song: Sidology Episode 3
Okay, if you happen to be playing Audiosurf and would like a really killer (FREE!) musical piece for it, I recommend this hard-rock medley of old Commodore 64 game music by Machinae Supremacy (also known for making the soundtrack to the indie shooter Jets 'n Guns).

Sidology Episode 3 - Apex Ultima

7 Minutes of high-speed downhill racing. My score was terrible.

If you haven't played the IGF award-winning indie game Audiosurf yet - hey, the demo's free, and it's a CHEAP (and fun) indie game. Give it a whirl with your favorite music as tracks.

But definitely try it with Sidology Episode 3. It may not create the most psychotic track of all music out there (I've seen some wild ones - like this one using the song from the most evil Guitar Hero track of all time...), but it's fun.

And BTW, I normally play the mono pro racer... this level is practically impossible for me with the other racers. Yeesh!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, music

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:27 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Play-Through of Age of Decadence
RPGWatch has a play-through of the early part of the upcoming indie RPG, "Age of Decadence," complete with plenty of screenshots. It literally starts at the beginning, with character creation choices, up through the conclusion of the first quest (or "vignette") for an assassin character.

Age of Decadence is "an isometric, turn-based, single-player 3D role-playing game set in a low magic, post-apocalyptic fantasy world, inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire."

I'm looking forward to this one.

Let's Play Age of Decadence, at RPGWatch

(Vaguely) related low-calorie, great-tasting goodness:
* Indie RPG News Roundup, December 26th
* Why Indie RPGs? Indies of the Round Table #1
.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:01 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
The Future of Indie RPGs - Indies of the Round Table #2
Last month, we introduced the "Indies of the Round Table." This consists of a panel of indie computer Role-Playing Game (RPG) developers who emerge from their dungeons and secret laboratories where they are laboring on their latest projects so that they can discuss various topics concerning their craft. They range from experienced vets with years of experience doing what they do, to new developers making a splash with their freshman projects; hardcore to casual; freeware to commercial; single-player to massively multiplayer game makers; and hardcore to casual.

Last month, they hammered away at the question, "Why Indie RPGs?" This month, they gazed into the future.

I remember too clearly the "golden age of shareware" in the early 90's, where companies like id Software, Apogee, Epic Megagames, and others transformed the face of gaming. And I have seen how casual games have risen from being just another niche indie game category to becoming practically an industry unto itself. I've seen web-based gaming grow, and broadband and torrents change the definition of a "small download." And as a gamer, I have seen some of my favorite game genres vanish, and then sometimes re-appear. And do I even need to mention how much better the graphics are today from fifteen years ago?

Things change. Rapidly. So this made me wonder - what does the future hold for indie games, and specifically for indie RPGs?

What Does the Future Hold?
Question: When asked about their expectations of future games, many mainstream developers reply with stock answers about ever more realistic graphics and rarely-realized promises of more believable AI. Indie RPG developers, on the other hand, have to make advances in different areas and small innovations. In the past, this has included capturing the attention of new audiences, creating wild hybrid games (such as found in Dwarf Fortress, or ... some titles by these panelists!), and revisiting older, classic ideas with modern technology and design sensibilities.

Assuming it won't expose any of your secrets for world domination, could you peek into the crystal ball that was issued to you with your license to make RPGs, and tell me what you think the future holds for indie RPGs in, say, five to eight years? What, if anything, might be different from the landscape today, both in the games themselves and how we obtain and play them?

The developers respond:

Thomas Riegsecker, Basilisk Games ("Eschalon: Book 1"):
I think the biggest challenge to indie developers is in expanding our customer base which has been shrinking for the past 20 years. A large portion of my customers are older- those who used to play Ultima on their parent's computer in the 80's. As an indie I can't afford a team of artists and a CryENGINE license for my games, so it is very hard to attract younger players who are looking for that type of experience. Along those lines, many younger players don't fully appreciate traditional role-playing because they've only been exposed to Action RPGs and MMOs. The good news is that I think indie RPGs have made great steps forward in terms of visual presentation and game play, and as our mainstream coverage expands we are likely to see our customer base grow. Here at Basilisk Games we are very excited about our plans for the next five years and despite the challenges, the future looks good for indie RPGs.

Jeff Vogel, Spiderweb Software ("Avernum V," "Geneforge 4," etc.):
It is beyond the capacity of an Indie to compete in the graphics area, and it is beyond the limits of our technology to create more than the barest improvements in AI. Where Indies can compete is in the area of storytelling and design.

For example, I am just starting the fifth and final part of our epic Geneforge series. I think that these are truly innovative games. They take place in a unique world ruled by a secretive sect of wizards (called Shapers) who create new forms of life to serve them.

They are completely wide open games. You can choose which side you fight for, even joining forces with the so-called "bad guys," and find interesting and satisfying endings. You can advance using combat, or never attack anything directly and instead use stealth, trickery, and diplomacy. You can play a solitary character or make a horde of fanatically loyal monsters to serve you. Fans of the series really appreciate the many meaningful choices available to them.

You can do this sort of thing on a low budget. I don't dream about a fancy graphics budget anymore. I look for the areas where I can excel, and I focus on those.

Steven Peeler, Soldak Entertainment ("Depths of Peril"):
Well much of the next few years will be the same as usual. The retail market will create games with better and better graphics with possibly some small innovations, but will essentially turn out clone after clone. Whereas indies on the other hand as a group will try out lots of new ideas. The past has shown that indies will explore the possibilities much more. We will blur the lines of the genres (Depths of Peril), create old school games that the retail market has abandoned (Eschalon/Avernum), create very unique heroes (Mr. Robot), create more casual RPGs (Fate), create games that you have many short play throughs instead of one long play through (Fast Crawl/Cute Knight), and on and on. These are just a few past examples. I see indies continuing like this and innovating in and exploring areas the retail market won’t go, well until an indie proves that it can make lots of money and then the retail market will gladly follow.

The big difference I see than in the past is that indies will start getting on more consoles through things like Xbox Live Arcade. This should be great for both indie companies and gamers. Indies will get a larger audience and more gamers will discover that there is a lot more out there than what sits on store shelves.

Amanda Fitch, Amaranth Games ("Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest"):
I think we are going to see lots of innocent-looking games that are serious games in disguise. Maybe Brain Age meets Guitar Hero? Wii Fit is a good example of what I'm talking about. Okay, I'll be honest... I am dying to get Wii Fit, and it can't get to the USA fast enough. I hate working out in front of other people. Gyms are the worst. I love the idea that I can get a workout and play a game at the same time. I want to play a game that keeps track of my physical stats and lets me log on to the Internet so that I can compare my stats to others and compete for awards. Weird huh? I WANT IT!!!! :-)

As for what's coming for RPGs? At GDC two years ago, I got to put on some video glasses that actually put me into the game. I looked up, I saw the sky, I looked down, I saw boxes that were flawlessly 3D. The world was Real and it was amazing. If my dreams come true, these glasses and games will be affordable and main stream. I still love 2D RPGs, but I dream of the day when I can walk around in fantasy world, not view it on a TV screen.

Georgina Bensley, Hanako Games ("Cute Knight Deluxe"):
Hmm... I think 'community' is going to become a bigger thing.

A general survey of geeks will show that many of them really want to make an RPG, but don't have the time or resources or patience. And with Neverwinter Nights we saw outpourings of people releasing mods, given tools. So far indie RPGs haven't gone too much for community content, that I know of. I expect there to be more games that allow players to create their own monsters, quests, and dungeons, and share them through the official site, both to engage players and as an anti-piracy mechanism. With NWN, if you wanted to plug your great new module on the Bioware forums, you needed to be a registered game owner.

There may also be developments in small-scale multiplayer, the sort of thing that the big companies aren't interested in. They want massive, worldwide games. 'Host your own multiplayer dungeon for your friends' is something indies could offer.

Josh Engebretson, Prairie Games ("Minions of Mirth"):
I think product deployment and compatibility are major improvement areas for the future. The focus will be the web which is slowly becoming a viable deployment platform. There are a number of cross browser/cross platform tools such as Silverlight, Java, Flash, and the new Director 11 that will play a major part in allowing customers to easily stream games. This will avoid the download, install, and compatibility issues that especially plague indie game companies.

There are already some great examples of browser games. The line between "browser games" and "desktop games" will be completely blurred. This is already happening and we're seeing major investment from companies like EA into web deployment. As most indie game companies depend solely on web based sales, I think this is an important place for indies to be as well.

Mike Hommel, Hamumu Games ("Loonyland 2: Winter Woods"):
I think the biggest thing to see for indie RPGs in the future, as opposed to mainstream ones, is going to be the variety. Which is to say we'll see lots more of the same from indies - Spiderweb will release Geneforge 11 (Woops! Not according to Jeff, up above -- Jay ), there will still be a dozen new games that look like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy 2, a bunch more low-quality 3D ones, and a handful of ASCII things.

That's not to say there will be nothing new - there will be tons. And those above games will include innovations and unique features. It's just that, unlike in the mainstream, indies don't drop technology and style because it's "old". A Final Fantasy style can still be fun and engrossing and tell a story. In the mainstream, you won't find a single game that isn't a perfectly ordinary full 3D world, and that's a shame.

The other thing will be even more crossover. More things like Puzzle Quest, or games like Sorcerian (a very old game - a side-scrolling platformer that was also a full party RPG with all the trappings), or Depths Of Peril. Mixing RPG with every other type of game. Mmm, remember Autoduel? There's already enough argument over what constitutes an RPG, and that will only get more blurry. I mean, think of God Of War - pure action game, but the RPG elements are all there, with the different skills/weapons you level up, and very much focused on a storyline. About the only difference between that and a recent Final Fantasy game is the interface for smashing the enemies. Maybe every game will be an RPG in the future!

I'm not much of a business guy, so I will leave the Steam/iTunes discussions to others. I will say that downloads are the future in every field (I see nothing but pronouncements of doom for Bluray, saying downloads are going to supersede it in a few years), they just happen to already be the norm in gaming.

I just hope real broadband makes it out into the desert here by then.

Jason Compton, Planewalker Games ("The Broken Hourglass"):
I'm sure things will be different in some way, but I don't see any major breakthroughs on the horizon which would make things "easier" or "better". In my view, the amount of reach a true independent developer has into the increasingly preferred gaming platforms is tiny and shrinking. You may know friends whose faces are always glued to Final Fantasy or Golden Sun on their DS, but there's also never going to be an independent market on mainstream handhelds. (Yes, I said "never." I used to think that the industry was due for an early 80s-style crash which would flush out the excess and open things up again, but I think they've managed to dodge that.) Control over the downloadable content markets on consoles is only going to get tighter. And never mind the mobile phone market you'll never get a sniff of as an indie, either.

On the desktop, I expect library aggregators like GameTap to continue building loyalty and depressing prices with vast catalogs of paid-for content (the downside, from the perspective of contemporary creators, of the "long tail" phenomenon.) And even for hardcore desktop gamers, AAA titles on the high end and "hey, look at this funky Flash game I found today!" on the low end will continue to cover most of what's left.

So, no, I don't suggest banking your money now and waiting for the technology to change.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:22 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness
David Marsh wrote a very poorly-titled, but otherwise excellent, article at Gamasutra called, "Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness." The reason I feel it is poorly titled is because "paths" indicate separate, mutually exclusive options. These aren't. In fact, if you are serious about making an indie game, you would be well-served to follow most of these points of advice:

Gamasutra: Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness

My inane commentary:

1. Efficiency In Design - More game for less cost. Making a single-player exploration-based game like an RPG is stupid. Oh, wait. Oops.

2. Utilizing Free, Cheap, or Open Technology - Don't save your nickels for the Unreal III engine. You won't be able to take advantage of it anyway, and your game will look and play no better than one created in Ogre3D, C4, or Torque which costs less than 1/1000th as much.

3. Distribute Digitally - a pet peeve of mine. Some newb indie developers refuse to look out of the box, and are still about the "box deal." Not that digital distribution need be your only solution - but as an indie, anything else is icing on the cake.

4. Develop On Open Platforms - boy, if I had a dime for every time a prospective indie declared that they wanted to make a game for the XBox 360 or the DS, and sneered at making a game for the PC or (gasp!) the Mac... They just don't seem to get it when I tell them, "if you haven't created a game yet, you aren't gonna get it on the consoles." While that's not strictly true, it's close enough.

5. Collaboration - Ka-CHING! Yes, that's supposed to be the sound of cash. This can take place on so many levels, from trading services (which can save both companies money in terms of taxes), to cooperating on marketing efforts, to running affiliate sales deals,to sharing resources, or simply exchanging ideas and techniques.

6. Consider Less Traditional Monetization Methods - And ad-based revenue is quickly becoming traditional.

7. Redefine Success - I think we are at the point now where the break-even points for mainstream games are mock-worthy, anyway.

8. Use Alternate Sources of Funding - What? Begging for Vulture Capitalists and Publishers to take all your real assets to help you make payroll isn't the be-all, end-all?

9. Get Personal - This is actually the Big Idea for big companies nowadays, too. Small companies have no excuses to NOT do this.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:08 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
2008 IGF Winners

IGF 2008 Winners Announced

Extra-special congratulations to Kloonigames with Crayon Physics Deluxe. The guy's been cranking out approximately a game every month for a while, now. I guess that goes to show how actually making and finishing games will make you better. One of his games proved to be really strong, and now he's been making a deluxe version of it which totally rocks... and he now has a little bit of extra funding and lots of extra press.

I finally played Audiosurf last night. Way cool game. Who woulda thought that "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" would make such a fun race-track? Sure, its a gimmick. But it's a clever and fun gimmick - and the best part is comparing your score with other people who apparently have the same musical tastes as you.

Desktop Tower Defense won the new "Gleemie" award. While it was definitely deserved, I was still disappointed that the awesome RPG Depths of Peril didn't place in the top three.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:58 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Indies On Consoles - For Real, This Time?
I am not at GDC, so I missed the announcement. Microsoft is finally opening up the flood gates for REAL indie developers to release content

But - for indies - this is potentially very, very big.

Announcing: XBox Live Community Games

XBox Live Community Games, the Most Important News In Gaming, Ever?

GDC Keynote: Microsoft Reveals Community Features for XBLA

XBox Live Community Games FAQ

The big question is about selling. How is this going to work? Apparently, that's not been entirely resolved yet. According to the FAQ: "We are still finalizing the business models and revenue sharing details of Xbox LIVE Community Games at this time. More information will be available closer to the retail consumer launch this holiday."

So all you guys who "wasted" your time playing with XNA... your efforts may just pay off after all!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:34 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Questions for Indies Part IV
This article is the conclusion of the "XFire Debate Club Annex" that Corvus Elrod and I have been doing for the last month. In this series, we took a bunch of questions that were asked in the audience participation chatroom that didn't make it to the actual debate, and we're giving our best answers. At least, trying to mask our stupid looks and ignorance.

This week, we've got four questions about the business of making indie games. These are fun, because ... while I have answers for them, I don't have "THE" answers for them. There probably is no "real" answer. But these are based on my own experience, and that of other successful indies that I have had contact with.

I should have a permalink from Corvus soonishly, but he should soon have his response to these same questions: XFire Debate Club Annex, Part IV

How do you start making indie games? What kind of education do you need?
I'll start out by answering the education. You don't need any kind of education, but you need to be educated. Does that make sense?

In other words, a formal education might help, but it's not required. However, I can't count the number of times I've been asked by someone, "How do I get started? I have a cool idea for a game! But I have no money, no team, no art skill, no marketing experience, and no interest in programming." My answer is: "No chance." It ain't happening.

If you are going to make an indie game, you are going to wear many hats. If you want to be in charge, make your own game, then it means you will need to know a little bit about a lot of things - and where you are lacking, you are going to need help, and you'd better know somebody who can chip in their expertise. But for the most part, you will need to educate yourself about all of these things. Indies don't have the luxury of being paper-pushing middle managers, or sitting in some ivory tower and being "an idea guy." Indies are low-budget, down-in-the-trenches, roll-up-the-sleeves and get it done people.

If you aren't willing to learn and become educated (through OJT), you shouldn't be trying indie games. I'm learning new stuff every week. That's a big reason why I love doing this stuff.

Now how do you start?

You start as simple as possible, IMO. Pick your technology, pick your game, but make it something you can start (and finish) quickly. People ask me "how do you estimate the time it will take to complete tasks," and my only answer is, "Past experience." A hotshot programmer may be able to get something done in a day that takes an inexperienced programmer two weeks. A skilled artist may get something right on the first try, and an inexperienced artist may go through a dozen iterations and end up with something that is merely adequate.

The only way you can learn is by doing. Grab yourself a copy of Game Maker and make yourself a breakout game. Learn Python, grab Python and PyGame and maybe the source code to Hackenslash and and make something out of it that doesn't suck (or sucks less than what I made...). Start building. Try to make something in a single day, if you can. Or a week. Or a month. Just make something you can finish.

Start by getting a screen up. Then get some player inputs working. Then bring in your own custom art, and learn what that takes. Bring in your own sound effects, and see what it takes. Then wire in your game logic. Then finish all the features, menus, UI, and the zillion other tasks that you will discover your need. Then make it FUN. Then polish.

There's no better training in the world than actually sitting down and making a game, start to finish, even if its nothing but a Space Invaders clone. The scale and budget changes, but the basic process remains the same.

How big is your team? How big do you wish it was?
For Frayed Knights, my team is three people right now. I'm the designer / manager / producer / programmer / buck-stops-here guy, and I also do a little bit of 3D modeling and 2D art (where it's simple), marketing, business development (signing contracts, purchasing stuff), and ... well, pretty much everything else. Kevin Rogers is our internal level guy, a very specific task which he is very good at. James McEwan, who also did a lot of the models in Void War, is handling a lot of the 3D modeling tasks, and has also been jumping in to help out on sound design and 2D art. Mike Nielsen is contributing his awesome musical skills, and we've contracted out for other elements like concept art, character portraits, and the title screen. And I've also been imposing on friends to help me with things like writing and editing.

And I've bought a lot of content off-the-shelf.

For a long time, though, it was a team of one. The way I do indie projects, so far, is it starts out as a one-man project, and the team kind of accrues organically.

Team Size: In my dream version of Rampant Games, we have four or five people working on a game in a small apartment-style office. Plus contractors off-site. And that's as big as it gets. Seriously. I don't want a huge team working on the games - that dilutes creativity and personality, and introduces a huge overhead in communication and process. it becomes more of a widget factory all about process than a creative endeavor. And it really increases the cost of a game. Forget that. Small, tight teams!

How do you get funding to make an indie game?
I have a day job. Seriously. Making indie games is a privilege I pay for. I also sell some games from Rampant Games, mostly by other indies. It helps me pay for contractors, buy tools, and license content. And buy the occasional indie game. So that helps pay for the actual cash costs of making the game, and the rest is ... uh, "sweat equity."

Eventually, one day I'd like to be selling enough from Rampant Games so that I could actually devote myself full-time to making and selling indie games. But for now, I work a 9-12 hour day at the day job, commute, spend a couple of hours with the family, sleep maybe five hours, and devote most of the remaining time to doing this. For free. Easy it ain't.

But I'd rather be doing that than sitting around waiting forever for my 'ship to come in' or whatever. But hey - tell everyone you know to buy games from me so I can make that transition faster. That'll help. :)

Do you make indie games to up-sell to publishers, or do you self publish?
I expect to self-publish. If I end up with a publisher at some point, and the deal makes sense to me, and I knew that the publisher was legitimate, competent, and paid their bills on time, then I'd be okay going through a publisher.

And bear in mind there are some small, indie-style publishers out there too. Not every developer is Bioware, and not every publisher is EA (oh, wait, Bioware IS EA now... well, nevermind).

The thing would have to come down to what the publisher is bringing to the table, and to realize what I'm giving up in return. For it to make sense to me, I'd assume a worst-case scenario: The game sells poorly, and that this is a one-time deal. I think too many inexperienced developers happily give away their most valuable assets on dreams of retiring as a one-hit wonder or something. If the publishing deal got me on store shelves, allowed me to retain IP rights and continue to sell directly from my own site (and portal partners), then I'd be willing to talk.

But I don't plan on it when developing a game. I expect to handle all of it myself.


(Vaguely) related visual droning:
* Questions for Indies, Part I
* Questions for Indies, Part II
* Questions for Indies, Part III

Got More To Add? To Ask? Here's a Forum Discussion!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, programming

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:08 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
The Monk's Brew
I haven't mentioned it directly on the blog here yet because I was waiting for him to get a few articles up first, but I think it's time I mention Mike Rubin's new blog, 'The Monk's Brew." We talked about this a little bit at the last Utah Indie meeting, and exchanged a few emails about the subject.

The Monk's Brew is very Adventure Game / Interactive Fiction - centric, and is sort of a look at that side of the indie gaming fence from the perspective of a developer (kinda like here). Mike Rubin lends his expertise and perspective as someone who loves classic text-based Interactive Fiction, but also sees new ways to bring the game style to new audiences. You'll find regular updates of his big "magnum opus," Vespers 3D, as well as discussions of other topics and stories from the adventure game side of things.

So... I'll pass it along... enjoy!

Visit The Monk's Brew! Add it to your RSS Feeds! And Have Fun!


(Vaguely) related adventures in topical chaos:
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin on Vespers 3D (Part 1)
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin on Vespers 3D (Part 2)
* A Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Different
* How Do I Get Past the Harpies?
* Utah Indie Game Dev Night, Summer 2006

Labels: Adventure Games, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:41 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Play the IGF Finalist Games!
GDC is next week (no, I'm not going), which means the 10th annual Independent Games Festival is drawing to a close. The winners will be announced on February 20th, at the closing ceremonies. If you haven't played (or voted) yet, here are a couple of links. Many thanks to Scorpia for sending me the links!

If you have FilePlanet access, FilePlanet has hosted all of the downloadable games, and have convenient links to vote and to play the online titles:

IGF Finalists at FilePlanet

There is also the official site, which goes through FileShack, though there are also direct links to the games' websites:

IGF Official Audience Choice Award

I haven't played all of them, but I am particularly fond of Globulos and Battleships Forever (what can I say, I'm a sucker for space combat games...)

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:18 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Questions For Indies, Part III
At the XFire Debate Club a couple of weeks ago, a lot of questions were suggested that weren't asked. Corvus Elrod and I decided to continue the Q&A sessions on our blogs. Just in case anybody from the debate was listening. Well, actually, it made for easy blog-fodder, and I'd rather deal with a topic someone somewhere was actually interested in. So... here we go. Three more questions from the XFire Debate Club about being an indie game developer.

You can check out Corvus's take on these questions in this post:
XFire Debate Annex Part III

Question: Do you create a game for yourself or for your audience?

Answer: Can't I do both?

As an indie, I am not going to make a game that I'm not excited about. I don't care of hidden-object games are the best-selling rage right now and are a license to print money, I'm not going to make one if it doesn't thrill me and I don't feel passionate about it. Life's too short, especially for something that I'm still doing as more of a hobby than a business.

But I also consider myself - to some degree - an entertainer, and a servant. I want to make things that make other people happy. The "other people" should include ME, too, but I'm okay with changing things and compromising my "vision" to make something other people will better enjoy. And frankly, I've been at this long enough to know that my "vision" isn't infallible, that other people might have brilliant ideas I've never thought of, and that my ego is way less important than making a really cool game. Screw the prima-donna "artiste" crap.

What's the difference between this and mainstream game publishers who create pablum for the widest possible audience? My choice of who I'm trying to please. My willingness to address a niche (which includes me!) of people who are hopefully as passionate about what I'm doing as I am. In fact, with Frayed Knights, I have been trying to make it a little bit of a group activity, incorporating feedback and suggestions from those who also want it to be good (and I fear disappointing them!)

Yes, I think games are an artistic endeavor. I just don't feel my games are all about me.

Question: Does becoming more "mainstream" to hit a wider audience defeat the purpose of being indie?

Answer: If you are talking about making a more mainstream-style game, then no. In my opinion, the purpose of being an indie is to take control of your own destiny; to make and sell games without groveling for permission to do so from your "mainstream" lords and masters. It's not so much about flipping off "the man" as it making "the man" an insignificant part of your universe.

So if you want to make Barbie-style games or first-person shooters or real-time strategy games that are totally based on "core" or mainstream or popular sensibilities, but you do it your own way without taking your marching orders from the Big Money Guys, you're indie. Indie games can be of any genre.

Now, if you are talking about becoming more "mainstream" by entering a publishing deal where you are then paid to make games for somebody else who can then use their Big Money Powers to hit a wider audience... then you aren't indie anymore.

Question: Where do you get your ideas / inspiration?

Answer: Desperation.

I find that when you need ideas and inspiration - you think about it, you work on it, you write it, you sweat over it - inspiration and ideas come. Most of the time they just come out of need. I usually need to sit down and actively try and write down some thoughts for the ideas to flow, but when I need a solution to a problem, and actively work to noodle around on it, the ideas come. Whether it's a sticky game problem, or the need for a blog topic for the day, or a piece of dialog that needs to come together.

And then I try and actively look at the world and ask questions like, "How would I make a game out of that?" or "What could I do to take some cool bit of this real-world experience and incorporate it into my current game?" or "How does this relate to games?" I get some blue-sky ideas that way.

I also talk to other people. There's nothing quite like bouncing ideas off of other people for things to gel and "cool ideas" to materialize as people force you to look at things a different way or suggest ideas which can then be merged with your own to make something better than either of them.

And yeah, I get ideas from other games - or movies or books. Oftentimes it comes out of frustration... I look at something and say, "Oh, sheesh, I could do SO MUCH BETTER than that!" Of course, it's never that easy, but it starts me down a path.


(Vaguely) related wastes of electricity:
* Questions For Indies, Part I
* Questions For Indies, Part II
* Why Indie? Indies of the Round Table #1

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:48 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Why Indie RPGs? Indies of the Round Table #1
Welcome to the premier edition of Indies of the Round Table! We've gathered together (virtually, at least) many indie computer role-playing game developers in a virtual summit meeting to discuss a variety of topics concerning their craft. They range from experienced vets with years of experience doing what they do, to new developers making a splash with their freshman projects; hardcore to casual; freeware to commercial; single-player to massively multiplayer game makers; and hardcore to casual.

In short, we've got a nice cross-section of indie CRPG makers here who offer a tremendous range of perspectives. Which they are going to share straight from the gut, without trying to be nicely political for the sake of their publishers and bosses - because they don't have 'em! So we'll be try to keep it real as each month they tackle one topic, question, issue, or controversy.

This month, I decided to hit them with the question of their own existence: Why bother?


Question: Why Indie RPGs? The last eighteen months or so have brought gamers plenty of role-playing games and expansions for computer and console from mainstream developers. And there are tons of Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs (MMORPGs) that are 'scratching the itch' for RPG fans and formerly non-gamers alike. And then there are literally thousands of fan-made modules for the Neverwinter Nights games. In this kind of environment, what does a comparatively low-budget indie computer RPG have to offer the player?

Game developers, take it away:


Jeff Vogel, Spiderweb Software ("Avernum V"... amongst many others):
I would certainly dispute that "plenty" of quality single-player RPGs have been released lately. There haven't been many at all. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is almost two years old. Neverwinter Nights 2 is only a few months newer than that. Outside of Mass Effect (XBox 360 only) or the Witcher (PC only), it's really been thin pickings.

As for user-made scenarios, while some of them are of a quality comparable to stand-alone full length RPGs, it's not a large number, and they frequently run on older (and sometimes no longer available) engines.

Or, to put it another way, we are selling more copies of our Indie RPGs now than at any time in the fourteen years we've been in business. So offering quality games still counts for a lot.


Amanda Fitch, Amaranth Games ("Aveyond 2: Ean's Quest"):
In my opinion, in the end, it comes down to the story. A good story is worth more than a million dollars spent on graphics and art. At least, I've personally found this to be true.


Vince D. Weller, Iron Tower Studio ("Age of Decadence"):
I don't understand the question. Maybe if I rephrase it a bit....

Thank God that Mask of the Betrayer and The Witcher were released, because otherwise it would have been the worst eighteen months or so for the RPG community, unless you count all those shitty action games with stats like Dungeon Siege: Broken World and Titan Quest. In unrelated news, the industry is still obsessed with so-called MMORPGs that are scratching the itch to grind and LARP for people who don't have anything better to do. And then there are at least 10 fan-made NWN modules that are worth playing. How do you crazy indie developers deal with all that?

Well, first, I don't think that the market is over-saturated (or even saturated) with RPGs, second, being an RPG fan myself I don't think that there is a such a thing as too many good RPGs.

As for what the indies have to offer, we can offer players things they won't find anywhere else. Mainstream equivalents of games like Geneforge, Avernum, Mount & Blade, Eschalon or Broken Hourglass aren't in development, yet there are people who want to play such games.

Overall, indies offer originality and creativity. I'm not saying that mainstream developers aren't creative. Obsidian is loaded with top quality, mind blowing talent - Avellone, Sawyer, Mitsoda, Saunders, Ziets, and many others and Mask of the Betrayer proves that beyond any reasonable doubts. Unfortunately, the publishers control the industry and at the moment they want MOAR action, like totally next-generation RPGs. So, if you, dear reader, want something different, well, welcome to Club Indie. We hope you'll enjoy your stay.


Thomas Riegsecker, Basilisk Games ("Eschalon: Book 1"):
There are several things that an indie title can offer over these other options, actually. Indie games cater to a very specific niche market that many AAA developers just don't understand. I'm part of the 1% of the population that didn't like The Witcher despite desperately wanting to enjoy it. It just didn't feel like an RPG to me, as is the problem with many mainstream titles that call themselves role-playing games.

Secondly, an indie title can offer a fresh perspective (new setting, new rules) that you don't get with user-made mods. I've played many NWN mods, and after the twentieth module they get rather redundant. Sure, there are some nice total conversions that are fairly stimulating, but 95% of users mods are just more of the same. Add-ons and user mods are no substitute for a fresh, new game.

Lastly, I think that most indie titles represent a good value. While AAA tiles may cost $50-$60 dollars each, you can get a great indie RPG for half that- plus you tend to get better customer service. When someone has a problem with my game, they can speak to me about it. How many people were able to talk to Todd Howard when they were having trouble with Oblivion?


Josh Engebretson, Prairie Games ("Minions of Mirth"):
The recent offerings from mainstream developers all have one very frustrating thing in common: the system requirements verge on the ridiculous. These games simply run like crap on anything other than the absolute latest and greatest. Furthermore, these titles don't always get released for Mac OSX or if they do arrive late. The Mac platform accounted for 47% of our sales last year. Indies really need to cover as wide range of hardware and platforms as they possibly can. This is a far larger 'niche' than technophiles with the budget for SLI rigs and an unsatiable thirst for pixel shaders!


Jason Compton, Planewalker Games ("The Broken Hourglass"):
We keep working for the same reason novelists and musicians and TV/movie producers continue to work: even in a world full of media choice, we think the audience is still telling us, "No, no, I'm not satisfied. I still want to hear *your* story."

All things considered, we have it pretty good compared to those other crowded media spaces. If you're a television producer, you're competing for attention not only with your contemporary peers, but with about 60 years of published product, much of it available on DVD or for download or on 100+ cable stations. You're also competing with YouTube--even an amateur can turn up 22 minutes of distracting video chicanery online without too much effort.

If you're a filmmaker, you're competing with about 80 years of published product--more, if you include silent films. You also have the same problems the TV guys have.

If you're a novelist... forgive the pun, but on paper, you're totally screwed. You have to fight with literally more than a millennium of competition, from your basic Ancient Holy Books up through Harry Potter and John Grisham, plus all the fanfic and self-published works which have flooded the world over the past decade.

Looking at it that way, I think I'll take my chances against the rest of the games industry any day. There's "only" about 30 years of titles in the gaming world to fight with, and really only a handful of those which tell stories using the devices we use.


Georgina Bensley, Hanako Games ("Cute Knight Deluxe"):
There are a lot of NWN modules. I used to play them. I used to write them. The "90% of everything is crap" rule applies here too. :) A lot of those free modules simply aren't any good. Poor grammar, terrible storyline, unbalanced challenges, sprawling level design... There's always room for another GOOD game.

And there's always room for something different. The bigger the game and the investment, the more tendency there is to lean towards the mainstream and trying to please everyone/offend no one. Which can make many games feel very same-y. Working with a smaller budget means you can target bizarre niches and take wild chances. You may not get WoW's subscriber count, but you don't NEED that many sales either.

How many games are there on the market at the moment where you can play a rabbit? There's a bunch of furry fans out there who might be interested if you make one.


Mike Hommel, Hamumu Games ("Loonyland 2: Winter Woods"):
I feel like, with RPGs more than any other type of game, it's really the individual work that you either want or you don't. The presence of Neverwinter Nights modules doesn't compel me in the slightest, though the presence of WoW does (compel me to not get any work done). I don't see anything about a low-budget game really being less compelling than a big-budget game in the RPG arena. You either are interested in the particular story, setting, mechanics, and style, or you aren't. I mean, a big-budget game can wow you with cut-scenes, but while that might get you to buy the game, it's not going to make you like it any more than the stick figure indie game once you play them both.

So, we certainly lose out in terms of exposure - we aren't going to sell what they are. But in terms of players actually enjoying themselves, the budget is no real disadvantage. It might be if big-budget games were made with the same tech as indie games - then they'd have a lot more content because of the extra man-hours available. But the way it's done now, the lower budget games usually give you more gameplay. Or at least more gameplay with merit. Final Fantasy can take a hundred hours, but 50 of those are watching movies and summoning creatures (oh it's so fun to make that unskippable!!), and 49 of the rest are spent clicking on "Attack" in mindless random battles. A big-budget action game might have amazing physics-driven kung fu, but an RPG of any budget is still going to be about clicking "Attack" and watching numbers pop up. Tech and money won't make you a good story and fun skills and abilities. A single person with great creativity and talent can definitely pull it off (and in a more intense, personal, and unfiltered way than a design-by-committee game).


Steven Peeler, Soldak Entertainment ("Depths of Peril"):
If you ask me ( and since you did :) ), the answer to your question is pretty much in the question itself. To quote you, “there are TONS of Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs”. That’s exactly how the retail market works, one great game comes out and then everyone copies that game until another great game comes out to copy. AAA games cost so much money to make these days that few publishers are willing to take the risk to try out new forms of gameplay, so they simply spend money on better graphics and copy the gameplay from a proven game. This is why we have seen so many Diablo clones that have much better graphics, but have the same gameplay. Actually the sad part is usually the clone doesn’t even have as good of gameplay as the original. So in reality what you end up with is a better looking game with sub-par gameplay. Now of course, World of Warcraft is the big thing, so everyone seems to be working on or releasing MMOs these days.

I will speak only for myself here, but I think many other indies are very similar. I’m a fairly passionate gamer myself. I play the same games that you guys and gals do and I’m tired of playing the same game over and over again. If I want to play Diablo or WoW, I’ll simply go play Diablo or WoW. I don’t need a prettier version that’s not as fun to play.

This is where I think indies fit in. Indie games offer something different. They tend to be much more innovative than their retail counterparts. We try new things, especially with gameplay. Just take our game Depths of Peril for an example. Depths of Peril is an action RPG with some major differences which I will get into in a minute. If you look at the retail market you will find tons of action RPGs, but truthfully how many of them have any new gameplay compared to Diablo 2? How many of them are just sub-par clones with better graphics?

Now back to Depths of Peril. Instead of having a static world that revolves around a character that plays through the storyline at his or her leisure like a typical action RPG, in Depths of Peril the world is very dynamic and doesn’t stand still waiting around for you. First you aren’t even alone. You aren’t the lone hero in the world. There are other factions (called covenants) living within the town walls with you, that would love to kill you off. You see, the barbarian town of Jorvik is currently leaderless and barbarians choose their leaders by fighting to the death. The last covenant alive becomes the new leaders. The dynamic world goes beyond the other covenants though. If certain quests aren’t solved quickly enough an NPC or another covenant might solve it first. Other quests that are ignored might lead to harder quests or real consequences. An ignored uprising of zombies might lead to an attack on the town where some of the town’s vendors or quest givers might die (they will eventually be resurrected). Or a thief might come into town and start stealing the vendors blind. Do you care that the vendors are losing real items that you might have wanted to purchase? Or two monster leaders might get together for a meeting somewhere out in the wilds. If you kill them without anyone finding out about it, you can cause their groups of monsters to go to war with each other. For that matter, some groups of monsters already hate each other and will attack each other on sight. These are just a few of the many dynamic things that can happen in Depths of Peril.

Depths of Peril is just one example of something different that indie games can provide. If you go looking around for just a few minutes, you are bound to find many other examples of indie games with cool new gameplay that the retail market has never tried out and won’t until someone else proves that it is fun and more importantly makes lots of money.


SCF ("The Last Scenario")
What can an indie developer offer nowadays? In two words: something different.

You won't see an indie developer creating successful MMORPGs or FPS games with bleeding edge graphical environments, but that's not all there is to making games. Take a look at the GBA Advance Wars series: there's nothing special about the graphics, and really nothing about the game is beyond the means of independent developers . What makes the series popular is the strong gameplay and nothing else. Sure it benefits from the portability of the GBA, but it still shows that there's an audience for games that are not technologically advanced.

The same goes for RPGs.

When it comes to story and characters, high-budget games can offer far more immersement than a 2D sprite-based game, but in the end, the story and characters have be written well first. Any game with a unique gameplay idea or a compelling plot can work, even on a smaller budget. Will it be a major hit? Probably not. But then again, most games aren't.


Conclusion
It seems there is a need for indie RPGs. Many RPG fans - and potential RPG fans - do not feel adequately served by the increasingly risk-averse mainstream games industry. They have had to make do with a trickle of titles, many of low quality and poor entertainment value, that have been made increasingly generic to be more palatable to a different - albeit larger - audience. But they want something more. Something different. Something playable in native mode on their platform of choice. Something that addresses their own tastes and needs better. Something flavorful they can sink their teeth into. Or - if nothing else - just MORE, to tide them over between the rare mainstream releases. On top of all that, RPGs are one of the best video game genres for storytelling, something which can be more personal and unique for creators and their audience alike.

And that's where the indies come in.



I want to thank all of the participants in this month's Indies of the Round Table. This was a lot of fun, and I'm already looking forward to doing it again in March. If you have suggestions, or simply want to let us know how much you enjoyed it (or didn't), feel free to post in the comments section or over at the forum. Or just email me (jayb) here at rampantgames.com. And if you did enjoyed this article, be sure and support the participants by clicking on the links by their names and giving their games a try.

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:31 AM (Permalink) 15 comments links to this post

 
Questions for Indies - Part 2
Continuing the little semi-collaborative discussion from last week, Corvus Elrod and I decided we'd continue to tackle Shamus "McLaser" Young's questions for indies. Taking them in small groups allows us be more long-winded go into greater detail in a blog post.

You can check out Corvus's response here:
Man Bytes Blog: XFire Debate Annex Part 2

So here we go!

If you got a million bucks in no-strings-attached funding, how would you use it to make your game more successful?

I wouldn't. Next question?

Maybe I should elaborate. Cue the music by Barenaked Ladies.

What I'd REALLY wanna do is take the money and run. Well, invest it, live on the interest, and use that to remain an indie game developer for the rest of my life. But... the question was about using it to make a GAME successful.

The problem is that I still attach strings. The natural string being, "The game should at least break even." So I'd still feel obligated to make a game that would generate $1 million in sales, at the least, so I wouldn't have to lay anybody off and could continue to make games. And to be honest, at this stage of the game, I really don't know how to make a million bucks on an indie game, except to sell out, make the best-dang-casual game clone possible, and put it on every portal. Which wouldn't be my thing.

Now - putting a million into my company to make it successful over several games? Absolutely. I'd stretch that million out. Because it's a lot easier to sell five games for a million than one game for a million. The thing is, the five games - if they are related and similar - can help sell each other. Example: If you find out about Aveyond 2, and think it's really awesome, there's a good chance you'll also go back and buy the prequel, Aveyond 1. You win, and the game developer wins. Everybody's happy, and it's a lot less work.

That all being said - I'd probably allocate half to two-thirds of the money into keeping a very small business operating. I'd go full-time, and I'd probably bring on full-time help in the form of an art lead. Depending on what we're working on, I might also bring on a full-time programmer. We'd still operate out of the basement - though ultimately (more than a million dollars later), I'd aspire to having a little office with maybe 4-6 full-time staff, max. It'd be cool.

But for most jobs, I'd outsource. Contracting people is a pain in the butt, especially when trying to find people to contract, but especially in the content-creation field, under the watchful eye of an art lead who actually knows what the heck he's doing (unlike me), it would be the way I'd prefer to roll. That would also allow me to bring in specialists for limited windows of time - a GUI expert for two weeks, a writer for a couple of weeks, whatever.

Which is kinda what I'm doing now. Except instead of a million dollars, I'm financed by whatever I can find under the couch cushions.

For the remaining half or third of the money, I would put it all into marketing. Seriously. Run advertisements, bribe politicians, give away consoles, whatever. I'd advertise not only my game(s), but the company in general.



Amanda Fitch and Jay Barnson have both said in the past something along the lines of, “Making the game is one-third of the job.” Or words to that effect. The idea being that once you finish the game, you’re one-third of the way to having it where someone can buy and play the thing. What is the other 66% of effort required after you finish the game, and is this a challenge unique to indie developers?

I'd put it closer to 50/50, but Amanda's more successful than me (so far!), so maybe she's got a better handle on the ratio. And I'll answer the last half of the question first - no, I don't think it's unique, based upon experiences I have read and heard about. In fact, that was the biggest shock to me upon releasing my first game - even after years of experience in the industry. Running a dinky, niche indie games business is a heck of a lot like running any other business! And maybe that's what bites so many indies in the butt.

Once you decide to release a commercial game, there are tons of business-related things you now have to do. Besides getting a business license and all that legal junk, you have to handle questions like: How do players get your game? If they want to actually pay for it *gasp*, how can they give you their money? How do you fulfill their order? How do you deal with customer problems? What happens if there's a bug - how do you get the fix to people? Are you going to create a demo version to help sell your game? How will your demo help up-sell the full version? If the game really does make money, how do you handle paying the people on your team? How do you deal with taxes? Is everything on the up-and-up legally? Do you owe royalties to anyone as your game sells? How do you deal with the contracts that are required to sell your game through a third party, like a portal? What do you do when other people approach you with additional business opportunities (and more contracts to sign)? Do you have a website? Who maintains it? Who continues to pay the hosting bill? What do you do if the game takes off and consumes all your monthly bandwidth by the 8th day?

Managing that aspect of things can consume time. And annoyingly, it tends to consume time right at the tail end of development - when you need every second devoted to getting your game polished, bug-free, and ready to go out to the public. But that's nothing compared to the demands of marketing.

Without marketing, you spend month or even years - a thousand+ hours of time for you and your team, and hundreds or thousands of dollars of money out of your own pocket to make this really cool game. And then... what exactly? Maybe you upload it to a website, and listen to the sounds of crickets chirping as two people stumble across it and download it by mistake.

As an indie, it's not like you've got some built-in infrastructure and information channels that you are already plugged into to get the word out to the potential customers. And when you do, through Herculean effort, manage to make people aware, they simply shrug and say, "Okay, so, when's the next Halo game come out?" I sometimes think I'd generate better sales for the same effort by going door-to-door. Nobody knows about your game, and nobody cares. Nobody knows why they SHOULD care.

You've got your work cut out for you. Big time. And marketing isn't just "when the game is finished." Marketing is something you need to at least be noodling on the day you decide, "Gee, I'd like to make a game." It will affect your game design. It will impact the development schedule. You'll be wasting precious development hours responding to interviews, fielding questions, writing up press releases, and trying your hardest to get people to pay attention and care.

And they still won't. Well, not much. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but marketing - to me - feels like trying to dig the Panama Canal with a soup spoon. At least at first. Fortunately, success tends to build on itself over time. But it never ceases to be a lot of work.

What's funny is that I thought I understood this when I got close to releasing my first game. I'd heard people tell me this over and over, and yet I still didn't quite believe it. I figured it would take some effort, sure, but the magnitude never really became clear to me until - in late development - I discovered that I'd put in nearly twenty hours of work, and only about five of them had anything to do with actually finishing the game.

At the end of the XFire interview the mod asked everyone what their favorite game was. I’ll ask this: What game (any game, new, old, mainstream, whatever) do you wish you could have worked on and taken part in?

I hinted at this last time, but... probably Ultima VII. Not only because it's probably my favorite RPG of all time. But it (and Serpent Isle) were the last of the "good" / "real" / "true" Ultimas. Richard Garriott was still more-or-less directly involved, and it would have been awesome getting a better feel for how his mind worked. And then there was the awesomeness of the game engine, and it's potential (something the Exult guys have discovered through their reverse-engineering, no doubt). How quests are arranged, for example, in a "quest-less" game engine. I think I would have learned a lot from working on it.

Plus, I could have been there to blow the whistle and say, "Guys, let's NOT get into the business of making our own custom memory manager! There has got to be a better way!" And then everyone would have said, "Shush, peon," so I guess it wouldn't have made a difference.

Aside from that, another one that would have been a fascinating learning experience (and, naturally, is a favorite of mine) would have been Ultima Underworld. There are still some real brilliant things they did in that game which haven't been entirely equalled today. Technologically, the years have treated it poorly. But there are some very clever design decisions that I'm not sure they made consciously, but they did a good job.

More Questions?
And by NOW, I'm betting Shamus is cursing himself for asking these questions. This is what he has begotten. However, Corvus and I are not done yet. There are more questions that were asked that we figured we'd tackle. And we'll tackle more if we got 'em. I'll also direct you to the forum thread link below, where more indies have posted THEIR responses - which are probably better than mine...

The Discussion Continues In Furious Forum Form!

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:31 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Questions For Indies - Part I
Corvus Elrod and I decided to borrow some of the questions proposed in the XFire Debate Club last week that we didn't have time to answer, and offer some answers - in a lot more depth - in our blogs. Sort of a collaborative project, without actually having to collaborate. Since actually coming up with a topic is way harder for me than just spouting off about something I know nothing about, I loved this plan. And as a bonus, the ability to spout off about things I know nothing about makes me eligible to be used as an expert on Fox News!

Shamus "McLaser" Young fired five shots across the bow with stuff HE would have liked to know about how indie game developers work. Since his questions didn't suck, Corvus and I decided to start there. We figured we'd go in depth on two this week, three next week, and then tackle some of the others extracted from the logs as we go. And we are almost guaranteed NOT to agree with each other on all of these points. In fact, I really hope we don't, because he really hated The Witcher. And I ... uh, haven't had time to play it yet, but I intend to, I'm hoping it actually doesn't suck and that he was just smoking something. But he's also got a killer multipart retrospective going on about Ultima Underworld, so I can't dismiss his opinion lightly.

Incidentally, I also mentioned the questions to Amanda Fitch of Amaranth Games (you know, Aveyond and Aveyond 2 awesomeness) - she's actually made indie-dom her full-time job now, so she's more of an expert than either of us, so I will humbly refer you to her comments on the subject.

So Fire away, Mr. McLaser:

Question One: Why So Many Indie RPGs?
Shamus: RPGs seem really over-represented in indie games. (Or, you could say they are under-represented in mainstream games.) Why do you think indie developers favor RPGs so much?

This one took me by surprise. Because they... uh, aren't, unless you consider the dearth of mainstream RPGs these days to be "well represented." Short answer. Long answer:

Looking at The Great Games Experiment, as of a few minutes ago, there were a total of 936 games tagged "indie," and only 95 of these were tagged "RPG" (and some of those might be considered more, "games with RPG elements" and really stretch the definition of RPG. But we'll roll with it). So --- that's a hair over 10% of the indie games. Actually, if one out of 10 indie games were RPGs, I'd be a heck of a lot busier than I already am. But we'll look closer.

Subtract out all the titles that are tagged "in development", and we find that over 1 in 3 of those RPGs (36) are in that often never-ending vaporware state, as compared to under 1 in 4 of the other indie genres (224). So the number of completed indie games falls down to about 8%.

I think, however, that those numbers are a little skewed based on the community over at GGE, and that casual games (most of which are indie) don't have the indie flag like they should. There's over 1900 of 'em, and only 400 are tagged "indie." So if you assume only 2 / 3 of the remainder are actually indie games that just aren't tagged as such, the indie RPG count drops in half. Naturally, some RPGs (and other indie games) may also be missing the tag, so this is all just conjecture. But hey, you know what they say about statistics.

I personally would be thrilled to believe that 5% of completed indie games are RPGs. I personally think its closer to about 1%, but even at the above 8%, I wouldn't consider them overrepresented.

But Here's Why You'd Think That!
Indie RPGs had a banner year this year, and fans of RPGs can be pretty vociferous. This years crop got a lot of attention this year, partly because we had such excellent games released, and partly because there was really sharp, clever marketing going on (Thomas "Eschalon" Riegsecker, I am talking to you...)

I think a telling indicator - even if it's hardly exact - is the higher ratio of incomplete RPGs listed at GGE. I remember hanging out on the GameDev.net forums a few years back and hearing people constantly talk about how they wanted to tackle an RPG as their first project. These days, they've upped the ante and are usually talking about MMORPGs. More power to 'em... but even fewer of those will likely see the light of day.

But RPGs have a little deceptive quality to them. If you've played D&D, or a Final Fantasy game, you probably realize how the rule system (at least a scaled-down version of it) could easily be turned into a program. I mean, everybody computer geek and their cousin was doing it for their Apple IIs and Commodore 64's back when I was a kid. And RPGs are - as much as any other genre except maybe adventure / IF games - about story. Everybody has stories to tell. Just throw some graphics in there, and you got game! And hey, there are several RPG engines out there that could be used to just throw together a game! Why, you and some artist buddies could throw together something commercial with 'em by the end of the month, right?

So RPGs are tempting projects for indies to start with. So you may hear about a lot of indies making RPGs. Just far too few actually cross the finish line, unfortunately.

Question #2 - What Technology?
Shamus: Naturally indie games have to use older technology, which is less labor intensive and doesn’t require (as much) expensive software. But I don’t think that’s the only reason to do so. Certainly the older graphics - done right - can have a certain stylistic appeal as well. The other reason to aim low on the tech tree is so that you can hit the widest possible base of users instead of just the fanboys with $3,000 computers. If you could use any graphics technology you wanted - from Infocom to Crysis - where would you choose to go?

Ummm.... dang. Actually the technology I'm using now. Only I'd like it better, more stable, easier to use, and more feature rich, plzthx. It really depends on the type of game I'm making. Part of the design philosophy behind Frayed Knights was me deciding what kind of RPG would go really well with the engine I had on-hand.

I'd actually worry a bit about something like Crysis, because SOMEBODY has to make all those gorgeous models. And that somebody is probably gonna take a month per model, minimum. As an indie, I don't have time required to make it look good. And nobody but the really hardcore gamers - who really demand games that make their major video card investment look awesome - could run it.

Now, as someone who's been doing 3D graphics their entire game development career (starting with the Playstation 1!), I still gravitate towards 3D - just to leverage my strengths. But I shy away from the bleeding edge, and I'm constantly faced with the challenge of making 3D look good without trying to go down the photorealism route.

My Dream Engine
Now - my dream engine would be some modified version of the Exult engine (built to allow you to play the Ultima VII games on modern systems) with some 3D graphics for characters. And the scripting system from Neverwinter Nights. Something where I could leverage the best of 3D and 2D and have them mesh together nicely, works on low-end machines, is nicely mature and bug-free, and can pretty much have the entire game scripted out cleanly.

I think that style of game still has a ton of story-telling and gameplay value left in it. And it was simple enough for player to enjoy without having to constantly fiddle with the camera or any of that other crap they have to mess with in modern games. The 3D graphics would allow for some pretty cool special effects, particle systems, and a lot nicer character animation. The NWN-eque scripting system would allow far, far deeper levels of interaction in the game than Ultima VII originally supported.

And now, you can probably guess what my answer to Shamus McLaser's final question will be.

So... if I ever go back and turn my "Forrest Gump in Ultima VII" experiment into a full-fledged project, I may actually get part of that dream engine. Who knows? Once Frayed Knights has run its course, maybe I'll go back and try that out.

Well, I hope I've properly beaten Shamus's first two questions into the friggin' ground on my end. Whadaya think? And do you think the "McLaser" thing will stick? And for other developers reading this blog: Why are you reading this instead of developing your game? But as long as you are wasting time, what are YOUR answers to these questions?

Okay. Wanna hear what Corvus had to say on these same questions? Me too, I haven't read it yet. But I will now direct your attention to the link he just sent me:

Man Bytes Blog: XFire Debate Annex #1

And - Lookie Here! The Debate Continues In the Forum!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, programming, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Utah Indie Night - Winter 2008
Whew! I got in just ahead of the snow storm. That's the part that sucks about January in Utah. Actually, pretty much everything sucks about January in Utah. I guess the Wasatch Mountains are pretty, all covered with snow and stuff. On the days when you can see them. I don't ski, but I guess that's pretty awesome in January. So there are some things to look forward to.

The quarterly Utah Indie Game night is another thing to look forward to, which falls in January. This month it was once again at the Taylorsville ITT Institute. We had a pretty good turn-out, though a lot of the people - like last time - were ITT students of game design and development. They brought in some excellent Mexican food this time - a nice change of pace from pizza.

As to the night itself, it pretty much went the opposite of how Greg Squire, the founder, had planned. That was unfortunate. His initial plan was to have the formal presentations take only a half hour, and then have the rest of the time taken up by various discussions and little mini-presentations throughout the room.

This time, though, there were no other computers (I'd even neglected to bring my laptop this time), and the main presentation was stymied due to technical difficulties. The main presentation was LinkRealms, a great upcoming indie MMORPG. It seems they use the same ports as World of Warcraft, and ITT has all of those permanently blocked to prevent students from playing WoW on campus. D'oh! They made due - at the end of the evening - with some videos of gameplay. And Herb talked at great length about the game, their technology, their business plan, and what the indie MMO space looks like.

Prior to that, we had impromptu presentations by Greg Squire, who showed his "inner space" inside-the-blood-vessel shooter, and he also took several minutes to show a non-Utah-made game, the very-very cool Crayon Physics game by Kloonigames (which unfortunately looks to have exceeded its bandwidth for the month, so the link today no worky...) I also delivered an impromptu update on Frayed Knights. Since I hadn't actually prepared to give a demo, I wasn't entirely certain what to show, but I spend a bit of time wandering around, using a cheat code to clear out combats (one of the guys in the back would play the Final Fantasy victory fanfare music on his cell phone every time I did that), and clicking on various boxes and dialogs.

But I was pleased to be able to show the game to Mike Nielsen, who is going to be composing some custom music for the game. Steve Taylor was also there. And I got some feedback about the dialog system that I'm not entirely certain how to handle (yet). It needs some help. It can get confusing. Suggestions included getting rid of the comic-book style presentation altogether in favor of a different presentation (but I also had suggestions NOT to get get rid of it), to use face icons next to all the lines of dialog, and to color-code the boxes based on who is speaking.

Stuff to consider.

I also had some opportunity to talk to Herb about LinkRealms in a bit more detail, and had an awesome discussion with Mike Rubin about indie games in general, and Vespers 3D in particular.

My suggestions for the future:

* Limit all presentations to 10-15 minutes, max. And have somebody there to help the presenter keep track of time. I honestly have no idea how long I took. Though I think half the time was taken up by trying to get the game to work on the ITT machines (we'll call that an "alpha" bug...)

* Make sure there are computers (or desk space for laptops) in the room, and help people get stuff set up. Make sure everyone who needs to use laptops and an Internet connection has a WEP key or a network cable. I think there were a few games that would have been presented if they weren't done in front of EVERYBODY.

* Red Iguana food - definitely worth doing again.

* Instead of just presenting the whole game to a bunch of game developers, we may want to consider instead having presentations about certain aspects of game development. Like - for example - JUST the particle editor of LinkRealms, or JUST the dialog system in Frayed Knights. Short presentations on other subjects - like marketing, building communities, making deals with portals, the "state of the industry," console development for indies - stuff like that.

* We definitely need a better way to form the informal discussions. I noticed a few discussions ended up taking place in the hall outside the classroom we'd had allocated to us.

Next report in April. Hopefully with some new, fresh games to talk about!

UPDATE: Here's the poster advertising the event, done by one of the ITT students. Very cool. Now I wanna go... again...

Labels: Frayed Knights, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:43 AM (Permalink) 11 comments links to this post

 
Explaining Indie Games, Illustrated!
In the XFire Debate Club last week (transcript of the discussion now available), we went a little long (I thought) explaining exactly what indie gaming is. In retrospect, I think part of the problem isn't that indie games are hard to define, but that they are defined by what they are not. But if you don't understand what they aren't, then you are totally gonna be confused about what they are.

Okay. I just confused myself. Let me draw some pictures.

The System
What we've got now, over the course of 30+ years of commercial game development, is a System. The System is very close to what you have in other media (book publishing, the music biz, etc.) - in fact, it was modeled after that. Here's what the system looks like:

Okay. Here's how the System works:

The publisher is at the top of the chain. You'll note I have a crown over the publisher. That's because I'm obnoxious. The publisher wants a game made. The publisher either creates the game in-house, or contracts a developer to make the game for them. Let's talk about how the outside developer is handled.

Usually, the outside developer is pretty much told what to make. Something based on a cool movie or TV license, or a sequel / spin-off to a game another studio originally made (after the publisher has happily said to the original developer studio, "Go jump in a lake, we own the property, we don't need you, so NEENER!" or said studio has vowed "We'll never work with you again, you jerks! For definitions of 'never' that may only include this product cycle!"). Occasionally, the outside developer might have some cool proof-of-concept demo that the publisher is willing to go with, so long as the developer makes all these changes to it (usually converting it into something that is based on a cool movie or TV license, or a sequel / spin-off to a game another studio originally made... okay, you get the idea).

The publisher "funds" the development of said game. By "fund," we really mean, "loans money to the studio for." Because... really... funding is an interest-free advance against future royalties earned by the game. Which, according to modern accounting practice in the games biz, is actually just a myth and never really happens, so the loan almost never gets repaid, so the publishers can act all magnanimous about it. But hey - it's their investment money, and so they get to call the terms. If they want to make it their investment money back two different ways - both profit on the game and in recouping the cost from the developer's royalties - that's their call.

And because it's their money (the old "golden rule" - he that has the gold makes the rule - applies here as everywhere), they usually require that they own the game, the name, the trademarks and copyrights and all intellectual property rights. The developer is pretty much just a serf contracted to do the labor. See that crown? Which