The time of the indie / start ups is here?
polycounter lvl 17
Hey all. It's not often that I create a serious thread but hey, Here we are. Bear with me as thinking like a normal person is hard work 
I'm sure most of us are aware by now of the big number of companies going belly up and just the general layoffs that have been happening so lately I've been wondering what's happening with all the artists.
I'm sure many of them will find new jobs but it still seems like it's quite hard to score one even if you're talented due to the sheer number of artists around.
Then recently it hit me. Is this the perfect time to start up new companies? Learn from the mistakes the industry is now paying for? (Making to big and expensive games, poor planning, whatever the reason is), Or will you run the risk of getting screwed over yourself?
I certainly know a lot of people got interested in the indie scene when Unity and UDK decided to give out their tech more freely. I know I certainly did. I can see this as one possible future for me. It's certainly a big incentive that you don't have to spend alot of money to get started (At least not the same amount you had to before).
In short. Do you think we will be seeing a great number of new companies popping up in the near future and have you ever had the thought of starting something up yourself someday?
I'm sure most of us are aware by now of the big number of companies going belly up and just the general layoffs that have been happening so lately I've been wondering what's happening with all the artists.
I'm sure many of them will find new jobs but it still seems like it's quite hard to score one even if you're talented due to the sheer number of artists around.
Then recently it hit me. Is this the perfect time to start up new companies? Learn from the mistakes the industry is now paying for? (Making to big and expensive games, poor planning, whatever the reason is), Or will you run the risk of getting screwed over yourself?
I certainly know a lot of people got interested in the indie scene when Unity and UDK decided to give out their tech more freely. I know I certainly did. I can see this as one possible future for me. It's certainly a big incentive that you don't have to spend alot of money to get started (At least not the same amount you had to before).
In short. Do you think we will be seeing a great number of new companies popping up in the near future and have you ever had the thought of starting something up yourself someday?
Replies
One one hand the market isn't saturated where I live (Greece), on the other we don't have many companies making real games with real time graphics etc (hell, we barely have web/mobile/2d hidden object) game companies. So yeah, the pay is crap (I'm getting ~basic wage) but it still beats working on a real job.
All things considered, I'd rather work on that company as long as they can pay me than go anywhere else to work 9-5 and that includes the couple of companies that make more, uh, serious videogames.
A few folks will drop out entirely (to become professional basketweavers perhaps?) but some devs will naturally gravitate back to creating games and get together to make something.
But, yes. I agree that smaller, more agile companies are a good idea especially for the times that we are in these days. Going all out on a big game with a large staff is just asking for trouble.
One of the real barries that has fallen is the cost of tools. Once upon a time, you had to drop almost a grand just to get Visual Studio. That is to say nothing of the graphical software necessary to develop a game. These days, not only are most of the development tools available for free, but there are free tools available for the graphics, and even the game engine. If you know where to look, you could put an indie studio together for a song.
The biggest barrier to indie development now has become the layers between the developer and the customer in the retail channel. Once upon a time, developers would put discs in plastic bags and mail them to their customers. Now there are multiple distribution layers that a developer must go to just to reach their potential audience. But thanks to digital distribution, this is also erroding. With DD, developers can reach their customers with only one, or even no middle-men.
The trial now is one of security. Which indie devs will rise up and prove to the industry that such development has become viable? The story of Torchlight is a recent example. It's the story of a small team that kept their expectations realistic, and created a high-quality title in a short time frame. They started with DD to help iron out any bugs in the title before their retail release. Hopefully we will see more stories of even smaller teams succeeding in the future.
This is the price we paid as artists choosing this field. It's not rocket science, it can be picked up in a year or two and almost anyone can do a passable job at it.
I'm very much looking forward to starcraft II. I hope the editor opens new doors for casual modding. The user base of starcraft II should be huge. To this day, Warcraft III had the best implementation of user made mods of any game i've ever played. If blizzard delivers on their promise to pay cash for well made mods and said mods don't require years of scripting to pull off, i think we could see some really cool user created product in the near future, and a new demographic of game developers who use an established engine and player base to create more content and profit. It's win win for everyone, except those expecting quality content for free, but who gives a f*ck about them?
New marketplaces have opened up, such as the iphone app store and Xbox Indie Games. These new markets have not turned out to be great money makers, though. The iphone store is insanely flooded with a surplus of games, so getting a hit game there is like winning the lottery. Xbox Indie Games has a very small customer base, that seems to be made up of lots of 12 year olds who end up buying random dumb stuff more often than the actual good games. PC games are all stolen en mass by the 'customer base'. Kind of tough.
Game engines are getting super cheap/sort of free. This will drive more folks to making indie games, for good reason. I'd love to make something cool using the Unreal Engine, for example.
So, for folks who want to make Indie games for the fun of it, or just to make something cool and release it, it's a great time. And a few Indie games will continue to be hits, like Braid etc. The tough part is making money, and for lots of folks, that is a deal-breaker, because they are trying to find a nice way to make a living, not just create stuff to give away for free.
If I had a dollar for every time I could tell people "I told you so" then I'd be set for life. Everyone wouldn't shut up about how much money you could make on the iPhone and I kept telling them, it's already too late and just going to get worse. It got worse. People still haven't figured it out yet because no one is putting out numbers, because nobody has good numbers to show.
Coupled with the difficultly of getting on Steam, pathetic advertising for XBLI, and the relatively low payouts in the flash market it ain't easy to get by when running an indie company. Lots of pie-in-the-sky attitudes for an extremely competitive market are going to lead to a lot of very let-down people. I'm an indie dev, and I'm doing alright for now, but I don't expect things to stay so rosy. Success is a moment-to-moment thing.
The key is finding investors. There's plenty of successful people with plenty of money and enough brains to not sink it into cars and spinning rims. There's also government grants and the like. It's got a lot to do with educating yourself on what's out there, and learning how to get in touch with these people.
The work of creating a demo is only the start. Pitching to investors is where most of the heartache comes in. I'm sure you've been in the position where some regular joe finds out you're a game developer, the first thing they do is tell you their ridiculous game idea and you say "what? no, you can't do that." Well, this is how investors see you!
From my own experience, a group of three of us (myself, animator and programmer) made a game demo and started submitting it around. About a half a year later we got a bite. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to pay ourselves enough to live and outsource some art. We finished, congratulated ourselves and moved on to other ventures.
If you can get a chance to do this I say go for it! Save your money up so you won't starve for a year, and roll the dice.
This is the thing that scares me.
Today almost anyone can make an indie game. And with that comes a lot of crap. There are thousands of iphone games out there, and most of them are terrible. The problem is getting your game out there and into the peoples hands. You can blow your entire budget on marketing alone just to get your games name out there. But what are you going to do when you have no budget? There isn't a lot of margin for error.
What really excites me about the current environment is that it feels like it is becoming much more likely for extremely small teams to produce games. The available tools have increased in quality to the point where a team of two, or even one designer can produce a game. This is a return to the industry's hobbyist roots, where a game could be carried from start to finish by just one enterprising programmer.
It's true that financially, the indie scene is still not very hopeful. The PC is the best platform for indie games, but rampant piracy prevents most small developers from earning any money there. Future developments in digital distribution might be able to mitigate these factors. One of the reasons services like OnLive are so appealing is that they can virtually insure against piracy. But that has yet to be seen.
I'm just stoked that it is now possible for me to begin work on my own personal game project, with all the tools I will need to see it through to the end. Even if I am not able to make the big bucks on it, I will be able to bring it to completion. The more of these efforts we see, the more likely it will be for them to grow in popularity and influence in the industry. The greatest advantage of indie devs is the undiluted creative vision they can bring to game development. They can produce a more focused experience because of their small size.
So? This is true for any and every form of media. When everyone can afford paper and pencils, then everyone can write. And you end up with plenty of crap books for every classic novel. When musical instruments become affordable, you get a lot of crap garage bands. When video cameras dropped in price, you ended up with a ton of idiots who think they will become the next big director. For every Shakespeare, Mozart, or Spielberg you are going to have millions of failures.
The current distinction is that the games industry does not have the infrastructure in place to let indie games shine. Indie game festivals don't attract a lot of attention. Publishers insist on indie devs selling their souls in order to make bank, instead of giving them an option to remian independent.
The real issue here is that indie games need to establish their own venue for self-promotion.
I would've started something myself, but I'm not nearly experienced enough, nor do I know anyone who are.
Good luck to anyone who's going to give it a try, though! Make it kick ass.
maybe you should make an iphone app which says 'I told you so' and sell it for a dollar!
i think the biggest problem with indie games, is that you can't make money the traditional way.
i think something like this:
http://www.newgrounds.com/
with the ability to donate/advertise could be an option.
indie games needs word of mouth to travel fast, because you can't have huge advertising campaigns, and having people pay upfront stops them dead.
they will never even play the game.
i've experimented a bit with getting paid for modding as well.
go into a game forum, make some models for the game, and offer up creating more models if you receive enough donations. it doesn't pay too much.
theoretically, if a game forum has 40 000 people, and every person gave you a dollar,
you'd have $40 000. unfortunately it doesn't work like that.
people will come along, see the model and think "i can't afford to donate to this guy"
200 people comes along and thinks like this, and then some guy comes and donates 30$.
I made about 80$ from this donation venture so far, on one forum. in about a month.
if i can get more people do donate less, instead of not donating at all, things could start rolling around alright.
another idea, is that you can release a basic game for free, and then take commisions to modify it.
you just need to think out of the box a little. come up with new ways to make money, create distribution channels if they're not there.
Crazy. There is nothing stopping a person from being both a designer and an artist. There can be overlap. Does being an artist make one automatically a better designer? Hell no, I agree. It does take something more than emulating something else or whatever silly idea pops in your head.
I do take fault with this. Whose to say the best designers are at big companies? I think its a slap in the face to designers to say all the best get paid big bucks. They have there hands tied more than anyone else in the industry creatively. Maybe the designers who can balance their designs/ideas with the monotony a large PR and developer expect (cant be too original now). Hell, maybe for that crutch they do deserve more pay. But best? Are they "best" because they have a large market push? Or best because their game is really attractive?
the times are better and worse at same time. Better because more tools, easy access, distribution channels.... exist. Worse, as the competition will continue to get stiffer. As the aforementioned billions of iphone apps or think of flash games out there... so much "free" stuff... and people don't spend "more" money on things, just different. I am also not sure how much "piracy" is really an issue, those who are unwilling to pay, will always be I guess... (there was a nice statistic on that "world of goo - choose your own price" promotion)
I just think of some "smaller studios" that pump out small games like crazy, so that some cash-in. (considering those cell phone studios...). However I do think that publishers will (to reduce their own risk) look more towards smaller productions, next to a few big Hollywood productions and subscription/micropayment-based models.
I'd say the "better" outweighs the "worse", because at least for everyone interested, the hurdles are reduced. And judging how many of you guys spend lots of freetime on "side projects" you invest into portfolio and self-education for funs sake anyway. Now the situation may rise the chance of getting another cash-flow in.
Nothing to stop a bunch of polycounters getting together and doing just this.
At the very least this recent spate of engine releases like unity and unreal should encourage more startups.
I fear though that in the UK the trend of companies disappearing will continue as the government doesn't really support the game industry with tax breaks in the same way the canadians do.
The problem as an artist offering yourself to a programmer as an artist to make say an iphone game is that generally the programmer sees you as a hire, not someone with ideas of your own. I have been down this route and its tough.
The main stumbling block for most indie coders is getting good quality artists on board
as most of the good ones are working and would rather spend time looking for another job if they are not working.
The main probkem for me as an artist is finding a good coder with the right attitude
A few of the reasons being that indie developers sell their games cheaper, people like the little guy and they usually don't fuck you over with copyprotection while Activision is selling their games for 60euro (PC) and actively saying in the press how they are in it to milk their franchises and get the most money out of it while adding copyprotection from hell.
Everyone wants to earn shitloads of cash of course but hell, you don't go out in the press and boldly and proudly say it. That's when you truly piss off the pirates. I know plenty of people that want to play their games but not support their asshole attitude.
but yeah there's always people that will download but I guess you just gotta make it worth the effort to buy. Online multiplayer? Bonuses, Things like that. It's the way things work right now... sadly.
Usually it is the coder who has spent time coding games and trying out game ideas, while the artist has made art for pretend game, but actually has no real experience in game design.
the coder usually knows what to do, (usually)
I myself, I do everything on my own for small indie projects, since then there is no one to blame but yourself if things goes bad.
I made a functioning game demo back in 2004 and it worked as in it was a playable demo.
I worked with a coder after initially doing some of the coding myself.
This little team worked well as the guy was very talented and easy to get on with.
That's the sort of collaboration I enjoy, where each party contributes ideas and has a generally fun time.
I did n't see my self as just the artist doing some work for a coder in this situation.
I actually have ideas also and like to be involved in that side of things.
TBH we could have done with someone involved in the gameplay side as it was
pretty dull:)
TBh though I know more about games now, so I think it would work out better if I tried again
World of Goo piracy rate disagrees. Its Pay-what-you-want sale also doesn't give me the impression that people are very sympathetic to indie developers.
that just described 90% of the people who buy games.
starting an indie game still feels pretty risky to me, I might start my own company in about 10-15 years but right now I'm fine with looking for work somewhere else.
If internet projects count as indie teams, I did that for 5 years, nothankyou.gif. I just can't work that way, I need face-to-face communication.
They're all susceptible to some form of piracy (with the possible exception of sculpture)
They're all fairly high risk in terms of return on investment
They're all somewhere near stupid to get into if your aim is to get rich quick. (or get rich at all for that matter)
For every platinum selling music artist, there are thousands of garage bands that only get to play a local bar.
For every best selling author, there are thousands of novels filled with tripe penned by people with stars in their eyes.
For every Braid there are dozens of barely playable ugly games that make early 90's shareware look polished.
The common theme is that those who do it do it for the love of the art, and occasionally they make money at it.
As barriers to entry lower, the number of products created increases, and so standing out from the crowd becomes more important.
Really though, anyone else remember those 100+ game disks of shareware?
Epic got their start then, and they didn't have youtube and social networking sites to advertise with.
Not saying those are silver bullets, but there are grassroots marketing opportunities that didn't used to exist, and really creating a game isn't any harder now, its most likely easier as there are options that are other than "make it from scratch".
A small team, or solo person, won't make a triple-a killer of a game, but thats not to say you can't make something fun that people will buy in modest numbers.
Sometimes its worth making a modest living doing what you love than making a killing doing what you hate.
You gotta take baby steps for some to change the mentality that good games shouldn't be free.
Seriously, the leap from paying 1 cent, to 5 bucks, isn't 50000%.
who knows, bottled water was the butt-end of a joke back in the 70s.