Is Old-School is Back In Session?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 18, 2012

Maybe it’s just because it’s the object of my focus, but it feels like “old-school” RPGs are back in favor … at least a little bit… everywhere but at the big publishers. Game journalists are talking about it. Kickstarters for games like Wasteland 2, Dead State, and now the huge response to Obsidian’s Project Eternity […]

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Greenlight: Putting Skin In the Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 5, 2012

Since last week’s lukewarm post about Steam’s Greenlight system for submitting games, it has undergone quite a few changes. Mostly for the better. They’ve changed the biggest thorn in the side, the “up / down” votes, with better communication for the meaning. The new queue system I’m… not sure I like so much. But one […]

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The Meaning of Indie. Again.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 23, 2012

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

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Your Friends, the Video Game Companies…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 20, 2012

Just remember: Video game companies are your friends. And these cartoons will help you remember just what kinds of friends they are. I guess I could add one about indies: “The indies are a collection of casual acquaintances you see in the local clubs, and perhaps you remember a few of their names. They seem […]

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Indie Game Development: Words of Discouragement?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 17, 2012

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

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

Why Game Development Can Be Like Fight Club

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 2, 2012

Kotaku blasts the games biz for what it thinks is its “biggest problem” – not telling customers (and the press) everything they want to know about everything going on inside a game development studio. Gaming’s Biggest Problem is that Nobody Wants to Talk The author chalks this up to some kind of incredibly secrecy that […]

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Epic Game Recruitment Ad

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 1, 2012

Okay, yeah, two days in a row linking to videos. But this one is worthy of note, if you haven’t seen it already. I’ve never heard of this game company before, but their recruiting video is pretty hysterical. Two words of caution: The language (and logo for one company) is not exactly family friendly and […]

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Games With Personality

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2012

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

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Those Are Mighty Big Numbers

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2012

How many games were published for the original Nintendo Entertainment System? MobyGames lists 1116. And the Super NES? 1043. The Nintendo 64 had only 324, the Game Cube 557, and the Wii an astonishing 1201. So all together for the Nintendo  consoles, that’s just under 4,250 games. The Nintendo  handhelds enjoyed hundreds of published titles […]

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Oh, Yeah – The OUYA!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 11, 2012

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

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

Steam Greenlight: Crowd-Sourcing the Slush Pile

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2012

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

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Sixteen Indie Success Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2012

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

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IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 3

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2012

Okay, part three of my ramblings (I’m stressed out in a foreign country trying to post between 12-hour days, so forgive me) about IP. In this one I try to finally answer the question… “WTF?” Or, rather, “Why?” Let’s dispense with the lightning-in-a-bottle examples like Minecraft for a minute. Your average indie, making a game […]

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IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 13, 2012

So yesterday I prefaced the whole “IP rights” thing with a story about a non-indie publisher. My feeling – echoed by most within the indie arena, but apparently not all – is that owning your own IP is a “necessary but not sufficient” aspect of your game being indie. But even within that, there’s a […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

IP Rights – Why Are They Are Important to Indie Game Developers? Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 12, 2012

This is gonna be a multi-part article about a discussion we had last week (in comments) about Intellectual Property rights. Why are they such a big deal? Why should indies care (beyond the fact that, in the opinion of most, if you are working on someone else’s IP, you ain’t indie)? Let’s talk about a […]

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

An Epic Win Helps Repair a Big Huge Fail

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 5, 2012

38 Studios pretty much bit the dust a couple weeks back, which took Big Huge Studios – which by most accounts had a reasonable freshman success with their first (and, sadly, only) RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur. Maybe not enough success to pay for its initial development, and definitely not enough success to carry 38 Studio’s […]

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