Why “Because We May” & Indie Pricing Is Important

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 29, 2012

The Because We May sale is entering its last few days (so don’t forget to pick up a copy of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon for all your friends while it’s still ultra-cheap! Sorry, that was Marketing Coyote talking… back to the other one!). During this event, I’ve seen a few comments on twitter […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Tips For Getting Your Game Accepted By Steam

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 28, 2012

Not like *I* would know, ‘cuz Valve turned me down and stuff, but hey… maybe next time: Tips For Getting Your Game on Steam (from Valve, no less!) There are others, of course, which are not quite so much within an indie’s control. Like: Win an award from the IGF. Or my favorite: Make gobs […]

Filed Under: Biz, Links & Tidbits - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Irony (Or: Same Industry, Different Worlds)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 25, 2012

I feel a little morbid about this juxtaposition, but these happened on the same day: A major “mainstream” development house with a huge budget fails spectacularly, potentially dragging taxpayers (and, by reputation, the games industry) down with it. In spite of a recently launched game that’s reportedly exceeded publisher expectations and sold over a million […]

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

“Always On” DRM

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 17, 2012

Everybody knew it would be a problem. The publisher and developer knew it would be a problem. The publisher / developer took enormous steps to prevent it from being a problem. It was still a problem. A big problem. I’m sure things settled down nicely and the developer / publisher is probably correct in assuming […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 27 Comments to Read

Old Ideas, New Blood

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 7, 2012

I will reluctantly admit that I’m as much a sucker for licenses as anybody else. While I probably would have contributed to the Kickstarter anyway, I got a little more glee contributing to  “Wasteland 2” than the same game by any other name. I’m more inclined to buy a game that is named after a […]

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Want a job with some legendary game-makers? Try this!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 2, 2012

Note: You may need to be a Monkey Island fan to truly get all the humor of the following. But I think everyone can appreciate it on at least one level: Okay, so the company with some legendary ex-LucasArts game-makers are funded to make an actual honest-to-goodness graphic adventure game.  You’d love to get the […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Biz - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Indie Commercialization: Selling Out?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 30, 2012

At the A MAZE Indie Connect festival, Jonaten “Cactus” Soderstrom offered a keynote address commenting on the state of the industry – in particular, the ‘commercialization’ of the ‘indie game scene.’ It sounds like he dished out positives and negatives about how money has effected this side of the industry, particularly with its effect of […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

The Crowdsourcing Revolution?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 13, 2012

It seems that with DoubleFine’s big adventure (to the tune of over $3.3 million), the floodgates were opened for another source of funding for “niche” games. The old-school style Wasteland 2 has now been funded to over $2.4 million (More, if you include out-of-band pledges) with three more days to go.  And there’s more. MUCH […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Turning Down Zynga

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 29, 2012

Going indie isn’t easy. Staying indie isn’t, either. This article at Gamasutra brought a tear to my eye. Well, almost.  Okay, maybe not, but it was still pretty cool. So this dude’s company hits the big time, and gets bought out by a fabulously wealthy game publisher known for… well, known for being kinda nasty.  […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Didn’t Like Ending, Please Change.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 20, 2012

There’s a lot of sound and fury around the ending of Mass Effect 3 right now. I haven’t played it yet, and I probably won’t be playing it for a while, so I’m simply commenting on secondhand information for part of this. And I’m not worrying so much about keeping myself spoiler-free (I’ll also warn […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life, Mainstream Games - Comments: 19 Comments to Read

The New CRPG Heyday…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 16, 2012

I’ve talked about how 1991 was a wonderful year for discovering PC games. And I talked about how 1991 was kind of the center-point of what I’d consider the “Heyday” of CRPGs. +/- 2-3 years on either side. I think one could make the case that we’re in a new one now. Pardon me while […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away: The Heyday of the CRPG

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 13, 2012

Joystiq has an article about the year RPGs transitioned into their more “modern” form…. 1995: The Year Role-Playing Games Broke. (H/T to RPGWatch for pointing it out to me). While my knee-jerk reaction was to jump to the defense of earlier-era RPGs, the article is actually pretty straightforward with the facts and not too far-reaching […]

Filed Under: Biz, Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Independent Games Festival 2012 Winners

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 8, 2012

The problems of the IGF largely derive from its current size and importance. So really, these are the right problems to have. As Brandon Boyer said in his intro to this years’ awards ceremony, they are constantly reevaluating what they are supposed to be for the indie games community. There were 50 games submitted to […]

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

A New Legend Forms Around Legendary Adventure Game Designer

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 10, 2012

So file this one away under “Adventure Games Are Dead and Other B.S. the Games Industry Tries to Sell Us.” There’s really only one topic I could comment on today, and that is the amazing crowdfunding success experienced by Double Fine Productions. In case you missed it (it’s sort of the top story everywhere in […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 13 Comments to Read

Crunch and the Part-Time Indie: Five Tricks to Getting Your Game Done Without Self-Destructing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 3, 2012

I don’t know when I was introduced to the concept of “crunch time” as a kid. Somewhere between stories like Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine and other tales of heroic efforts on the job, I came to see it as being the hallmark of the driven, passionate professional. Although in all those stories […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Some Indies are Dickweeds

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 2, 2012

As I tried to explain earlier this week, there is a big difference between being inspired by a game and making something similar, and ripping it off “practically pixel for pixel.” It’s the difference between advancing the art (or industry), and cannibalizing it. While I don’t know this guy or the context in which he […]

Filed Under: Biz, Casual Games - Comments: 19 Comments to Read



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