The Indiepocalypse Continues: Arcen’s Story

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 29, 2016

This sucks. So Arcen has a critical success that is a commercial flop, for various reasons, and this small indie team is going to have to be gutted as a result. I was talking to a friend on Facebook today, and I mentioned that when the market gets like this, when supply totally outgrows demand […]

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The Strange RPG Keeps Getting Stranger: Five Nights at Freddy’s World Released, Removed from Steam

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 26, 2016

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a very popular jump-scare horror game series by indie developer Scott Cawthon. I’ve played the first one. I was amused. My kids, however… my kids loved it. They and their friends didn’t want to play it, mind you. Maybe because it was too scary? No, they wanted to watch other […]

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Mystery Game Sales: Cool Discovery Tool, or Sign of the Indiepocalypse?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 21, 2016

Lately, it seems that “mystery games” are becoming more popular around popular indie game distribution sites. Pay your money now, find out what you get later. There are a lot of examples, but I’ll point out some big ones: Humble Bundle is doing this with a subscription service. Random games every month. GOG.COM has done […]

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Why Would Anyone Buy Another RPG?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 29, 2015

With the bundles and two steam sales recently (Hey, did I mention Frayed Knights is on sale at Steam? Well, consider it mentioned again!), my game collection is threatening to get out of control again. I’m not sure when I’m going to play them all. I do try, at least. Last night I spent some […]

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The Value of “Exposure”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 9, 2015

Wil Wheaton’s recent blog post on the value of “exposure” has brought a matter to popular discussion which has already been making the rounds for a bit: the use of “exposure” as compensation. In this case, it’s probably one of the more egregious abuses recently: An extremely popular and highly-valued, presumably quite profitable site – trying […]

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Five Point Nine Billion For a Bunch of Candy Crushers

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 3, 2015

I don’t know what to say. But seeing as that rarely stops me from spewing whateverage on this blog, I’m sure I’ll find something anyway. Activision buys Candy Crush creator King for $6 Billion Thought 1: Incredulity. Is Activision itself even worth $6 billion? I guess so, but that’s a lot of money.  (Answer: Yes, […]

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The World of Darkness Steps Back Out of the Darkness

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 30, 2015

As a fan of White Wolf’s old World of Darkness RPG series, this is a significant thing for me: Paradox Interactive Acquires White Wolf Publishing from CCP Games The new / old White Wolf Publishing company will run as an independent subsidiary, and will primarily deal with licensing the brands. To me, this means hope […]

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Old-School CRPGs: Smells Like Victory

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 26, 2015

Part of the surprise here is that it’s not such a surprise. Obsidian Games just announced that Pillars of Eternity surpassed a half-million units sold worldwide. This is a game that was originally a nostalgia project… a game like Baldur’s Gate. They created it on a fairly low budget (by their usual, more AAA-focused measurements – it […]

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The Importance of Not Being Average

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 16, 2015

I was led to this incredibly awesome 40-minute long talk by Vlambeer’s Rami Ismael – one of the relatively big indie success stories of recent years – by Josh’s post at Kickbomb.  I’ve got it embedded at the end of the post. It’s geared more for newbie entering the indie field, but it’s a great […]

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How Much Does It Cost To Make a Video Game?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 7, 2015

I want to make a video game. How much will it cost? How much time will it take? How many people do I need on my team? How much can I expect to sell? These are all what we often call “How long is a piece of string?” questions. There are so many variables involved […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Production - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Indie Apocalypse is nigh!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 9, 2015

A few years ago, it looked like selling online was excellent. People were getting rich. Companies swelled from just a couple of guys in their basement to dozens or even hundreds of people. But now everything’s falling apart. Clearly, the whole thing isn’t working out. There isn’t enough room, the market got saturated, and if […]

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Good Crunch and Bad Crunch

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 21, 2015

Crunch is when people working on a project put forth the “extra effort.” It’s long hours, late nights, sacrificed weekends, and often heightened tempers. I’ve done my share of crunch, both inside and outside the games industry. I’ve done crunch as a game developer both as a full-time employee and as an indie. I could […]

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The Little Cube Goes Into Retirement

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 28, 2015

Not a big surprise, but… As previously deduced, Razer has purchased Ouya. But it sounds like they only purchased the software assets and the service, not the (somewhat disappointing) hardware. Razer has promised to support legacy systems for at least a full year, and then offer Ouya owners a deal on their own hardware. Ah, […]

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Biz: Five harsh truths about working in a creative industry

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2015

I’m not an expert businessperson. If I was, I’d be… well, a lot more successful than I am now, I guess. But I wanted to state a few things for the record here that might be related to my own business ethics and views, but mostly based on observation. I see some individuals and small […]

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XBox chief promises that this time they are REALLY REALLY PINKY-SWEAR serious about PC Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 17, 2015

From Gamasutra: XBox chief admits Microsoft “lost its way” in PC game market “There have been times in our past where maybe Microsoft has lost its way with PC gaming,” Spencer said, adding that games are critical to Microsoft and Windows’ success. REALLY? No kidding? You know, this might be encouraging if we didn’t hear […]

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Sequels and Remakes

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 16, 2015

I was paying a little bit of attention to the some of the big unveilings at or just before E3. I saw articles in the media complaining once again about all the sequels, remakes, and reboots. The list is impressive… on my end, I’m kind of excited about a Final Fantasy VII remake, and Fallout […]

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