Indie Game: The Movie.
polycounter
Watched it last night. As an aspiring Indie game developer I've been looking forward to this for a while.
I thought it was going to be a harsh reality of what being an indie dev is actually like. Sleeping on friends sofa's having no money for food, etc. It does go into the worries about lack of funds, etc. I thought i'd come away from it thinking "shit, is this really what it's like, maybe i'm not ready" and It also goes into some of the nasty trials and tribulations that a lot of devs have to go through to get a game out.
But mainly I came away from it greatly inspired and I was able to connect with what the devs were going through with their projects.
Anyhoo. Great film. I highly recommend it even if you're not thinking about becoming an indie dev.
Go watch it.
http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/
I thought it was going to be a harsh reality of what being an indie dev is actually like. Sleeping on friends sofa's having no money for food, etc. It does go into the worries about lack of funds, etc. I thought i'd come away from it thinking "shit, is this really what it's like, maybe i'm not ready" and It also goes into some of the nasty trials and tribulations that a lot of devs have to go through to get a game out.
But mainly I came away from it greatly inspired and I was able to connect with what the devs were going through with their projects.
Anyhoo. Great film. I highly recommend it even if you're not thinking about becoming an indie dev.
Go watch it.
http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/
Replies
I highly recommend it :thumbup:
He said something like: "If I don't complete this game i'll kill myself, seriously i will" and "If he doesn't sign this. I will kill him! I will...seriously..."
Grow up!
I realise he was completely stressed out and people say dumb things when stressed. Also, the video never really goes into why Phil and his ex-partner split. Might have been good to get the other side of the story. Maybe Phil was the dick in the partnership and the ex-partner was getting a bit of revenge.
Seems dumb though, holding out on signing something thats potentially going to make you very rich.
Team Meat on the other hand, seamlessly amazing guys that continue to work their asses off and are just so godamn devoted to their craft, it's incredibly inspiring.
One of many, but a vast majority of indie developers will go through quite some hardships but shrug it off without any plans to kill themselves, even after they still haven't reached success and still struggle
Indie game: the movie is partially designed, much like another fantastic documentary-movie: king of kong, it's made to bring out emotions.
It's a lot harder career choice than the average person imagines lol. Still worth it I'd say
There are times when cabin fever drives you to the brink of insanity, but you just have to wake up next day and get back on the horse.
Well that's worked so far haa
So to everyone out there who's also going nutso loco, gud luck and push through, you're not alone
...Neither does any of these guy. They are selfpublished, all of them, hence they are indie.
SMB
Fez
Braid
And no, sharing publishing rights with MS for access to the XBLA distribution platform is not the same as having a publisher, if it were: No game on any type of digital distribution platform is indie.
They are independantly developed, but some freedom was sacrificed with publishing deals, which is one of the big things you avoid with independant games. They're indie, but it would be a lie to say that their contracts with microsoft weren't in any way limiting.
A bit like the recent issue surrounding the skull of the shogun.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/12/follow-up-skulls-of-the-shoguns-win-8-debate/
Yeah, all 3 of the games in the movie had funding/deals in one way or another. Fez had a couple companies on board, plus a grant from the Canadian government. SMB had contractual obligations with MS to not put it on platforms other than desktops and xbox, so their must have been some kind of payment there, either through services or money. Braid seems like most of the money actually came from Jblow, but wikipedia does cite xbox live studios and another company (that links to Jblow) as publishers.
Regardless, these games had help. Where as games like Minecraft were made by someone with a day job, until the game supported itself, and the developer.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, and I admit it's pretty juvenile of me to argue over the differences. I'm just saying I attribute more "indie cred" to people like those on polycount who have built their games from the ground up without help from a big business. I didn't see one person in this movie goto a real job to support themselves through the process, and that got to me a little.
I recall them trying to get SMB onto the Wiistore, but were unable to get the files down to the correct size
http://wii.ign.com/articles/114/1141940p1.html
Seems the contract was that it couldnt be on the PS3
Also on SMB: Sony showed no interest in the game, so to spite Sony, Team Meat got a contract that prohibited them from EVER releasing the game on their platform.
It doesn't make you NOT indie, but it limits the purpose of being indie in the first place.
The dominance of indie games on PC didn't come without a reason, there's no costs involved, no licenses, you're free to do anything you would ever want, no rules to limit the content you put in your game.
will kinda depends on distribution, since you prolly have some obligation to valve if using steam, is a form of distribution, just like selling on the xbla marketplace.
though on PC you got the option of buy webhost space, and making your own place to sell the product.
I didn't exactly want to fight some fact that these games aren't indie as much as wanting to point out the fact that they have some extra income from publishers which funded the development and made it possible to finish these games, via contracts or not. I still see Binding of isaac going to steam as being a much better and less restricting platform for indie-developers to go for, easier to be indie.
It's a small wonderful albeit over-dramatized window into games development, but it's just one small picture of it.
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All that really matters to me is that people are able to make the games that they want to make and that players get to enjoy them. Hopefully with the side effect of that being the developers making enough money to continue making games.
I suspect the special edition will be closer the Canabalt, PegJam, and Alec Holowka & Infinite Ammo shorts, than the actual movie itself.
Triple-a games and developers included!
True, boring non-dramatic developer candy
people who argue what is indie and what isn't are just snooty-snoots that want to keep it an exclusive club.
Having investors or a publishing deal doesn't disqualify you, having a department that handles those deals does.
And on the other side you have highly regarded indie developers calling triple-a games shit for being triple-a games.
Yeah, I thought it was ironic and snooty as fuck when the Tommy guy called mainstream games like Call of Duty shit when Mario and Megaman were just the Call of Duty of their time (i.e. good concepts sequel'd into oblivion). People 30 years from now will probably get all nostalgia'd from their rose tinted glasses about Modern Warfare.
People complain about E3 being all gun gun guns, when e3 1992 would be jump jump jumps.
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Also, it just kind of shocks me how games like SMeatB get so many perfect or near perfect scores, sure it's got great level design, and it's fun, but it seems like a game we've all played, many times before. If that's how we're reviewing things we should have given Live Free or Die Hard an Oscar.
So my new issue is sitting here watching it and hearing that if I like stuff such as modern warfare or halo reach I will think super meat boy (which I completely adore) to be shit.
But then again, I probably shouldn't take everything seriously, lots of things are overdramatised :P
Still: fantastic movie!
One big reason was phil fish hopping in with little artistic knowledge at the start, he basically became better at pixel-art as he went, and remade the style several times.
Same happened with the game itself.
There are 3 spots in the film that make me tear up every time.
- BoBo
Tommy and his family and Edmund and Danielle together are my favourite parts of the movie.
Also, yeah, this movie is all kinds of awesome.