On Independent Game Development
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As a computer gamer, this is almost completely a Good Thing. Especially if you are a fan of a genre that is ill-served by the big publishers. Indie games are getting more press coverage these days, which means you are more likely than you were before to hear about the best indie games. Note that "more likely" is only an improvement over a wretched state of obscurity before. The quality of the best indie games will improve.The second is about defining independent games, and looks at the business structures of independent and commercial games.
Just look at how fans of traditional RPGs were served this year. We sometimes lamented the availability of good RPGs... and now... wow! There were more RPGs coming out of both indie and mainstream channels than I have time to play!
Note that here, the word "developer" is singular and "publishers" is plural - the opposite of how The System works. Publishers may not be exclusive. And for "publishers" you can substitute the word, "portals," "distributors,"retailers," "hardware manufacturers," "your aunt Jane who meets ladies at Bingo on Thursday night," or any other point of distribution that can reach more customers. The indie developer may take advantage of any and all means they have available to get their game to the customer, and may bypass all those middlemen that make up "The System" completely.Meanwhile, Bit-Tech has a chat at Independent Games, about the difficulty of being an indie developer.
And ultimately, that's what "indie" is. It's not a game genre, or a game budget, or a size of team, or anything else. It's really about developers who are trying to bypass barriers and middlemen that block them from getting their game to the customer. The System is a game stacked against the developer (and, I'd argue, not in the customer's favor, either).
The success we've had from our games stems from a realisation that for some gamers, gameplay is more important than having 15 guns to choose from in an FPS.
Admittedly, the market we're appealing to is niche, but it allows us to operate very comfortably in a zone which isn't trying to compete with the bigger publishers. We can make precisely the kind of games we want without publishers breathing down our necks to jump on the sequel bandwagon.
Creative inspiration for us has nothing to do with looking at game sales figures and the production of countless cookie-cutter sequels it's something more random and organic than that. Inspiration can come from anywhere and our independence allows us to fully appreciate the uncertainty, but amazing fruitfulness of unconstrained ideas-generation. Whilst independence can throw up its own creative constraints (without a big budget, our ideas must be practically achievable given our limited resources) we've always tried to use this to our advantages.
