Indie Game Devs: ‘Forget It’

Indie Game Devs: ‘Forget It’

Developers tell aspiring game makers the ugly truth.
May 10, 2006

A panel of independent developers delivered a sobering reality check to aspiring game creators at the E3 expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, warning those who harbor dreams of producing a game with a small team and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars from a big deal with Electronic Arts.

“You have a zero percent chance of success,” said Warren Spector, a game industry veteran and the current president of Junction Point Studios, a company that develops games for consoles and PCs. “The barrier to entry in terms of cost, quality required, access to a market… forget it.”

Fellow panelists echoed Mr. Spector’s sentiments, telling a room full of game company representatives, industry consultants, and members of the media that the path to entering the $7-billion market is fraught with more pitfalls than Tomb Raider.

While opportunities do exist, small companies and startups find it difficult to secure funding and distribution for their work. They often have to deal with past projects that pigeonhole them and potentially hamper future expansion.

While opinions differed on ways to overcome these problems, the panel reached a consensus on one thing: the need to have several elements in place before success is even a possibility.

“Don’t come to the traditional game companies and try to sell [them] an idea,” said Gordon Walton, co-studio director at BioWare Austin. “It won’t happen. Every company I worked for had a backlog of ideas that was too deep to work through.”

Instead, Mr. Walton said aspiring developers would greatly increase their chances of success if they could show actual implementations of their ideas.

“Publishers… are saying they won’t sign anything until they see a working prototype,” said Michael Scandizzo, president of Castaway Entertainment, a small company staffed with numerous former employees of Blizzard Entertainment, producer of the blockbuster multiplayer game World of Warcraft.

Double-Edged Sword

In a cruel twist of fate, panelists warned, companies that manage to pull together enough resources to produce a working demo, secure funding, and get their game distributed might end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Companies that originally intended to develop sports games but ultimately broke into the puzzle or casual games market won’t find it easy to return to their original area of focus.

“You can’t go make Bejeweled [a puzzle game] and then tell EA you want to make Madden,” said Mr. Spector, referring to Electronic Arts’ lucrative John Madden-inspired football game series, a perennial hit for the entertainment software giant.

While that may be an extreme example, past performance is the ultimate predictor—and potential limiter—of future performance.

According to BioWare’s Mr. Walton, companies looking to diversify might find themselves, in a worst-case scenario, back at square one.

“You almost have to start over again… which causes you to lose momentum,” he said, explaining how game titles create brand identities that can be both a blessing and a curse.

Jim Deal, president and creative director of Airtight Games, admitted that at one point his company considered starting a second firm to create games for the sole purpose of generating enough revenue to support the development of the title they wanted to make originally.

While they ultimately finished the game under a single company, he still thinks the idea merits some thought. However, companies considering such an option may need to face investors who are not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of using profits from one game to fund an entirely different one.

Great Casual Hope

Despite all the doom and gloom, panelists and audience members expressed limited optimism about the likelihood of small companies breaking into the games market.

One area attracting a lot of attention these days is time-passing “casual” games. Difficult to define, but hardly short of participants, casual games are often classified as basic puzzle, card, or trivia games that are easy to play on a PC or phone and don’t require a large time commitment. They also require much less money to develop.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 52 percent of all games played fall into the puzzle, board, game show, trivia, and card game category. Thirty-two percent of heads of households report playing games on wireless devices.

For aspiring developers, flexibility is the key, said Mr. Deal. Startups won’t get the chance to produce titles and build a company by going to a large publisher and demanding hefty sums of money for games using development plans written in stone.

Mr. Spector trumpeted a tried-and-true strategy for anyone looking to break into an established market. “Look where the big guys aren’t,” he said. “Embrace the chaos.”

Taken from: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16830&hed=Indie+Game+Devs%3A+%E2%80%98Forget+It%E2%80%99&sector=Industries&subsector=EntertainmentAndMedia

0 percent chance success at what?
Overthrowing the big developers?
No, really?!
What about having fun with what is clearly, for most small developers, a hobby that happens to earn a bit of money? (Since otherwise they would be going for a full-time job).


Other than that, it's a decent article.
Can't see why it started off like that... It almost had me stop reading.

Not sure if I learned anything from it or not...
I guess I not know a few new statistics :)

I thought most of what was said was common knowledge. Really, how much of the stuff here did you not know?

I just posted it for the benefit of people like Aurora. Plus it's not often that people talk about independent games. BTW the beginning was emphasising that you have almost no chance of getting a commercial deal or selling an idea no matter how good, without the right people behind you.

A lot of people still don't get that part.

I take it you saw his post on GameDev then?

Who in their right mind would want to do that anyway? there are easier ways to make millions of dollars :)

Well, who wouldn't want to do it? The thing is we all grew up hearing stories like this. Of course games of today aren't as easy to produce as the games of 20 years ago ... so yeah back then 3 people could get together and make Final Fantasy ... now it takes 300 people!!! Plenty of people are doing very well making games and still every now and then a team breaks out making their dream game with some fantastic technology. These people who say there is 0 percent chance ... are people that didn't even know about the indie movement a few years ago ... now they are talking about it in panel discussions.

I'm not saying there's a chance of a big commercial deal like there used to be but there's still a chance to create a hit game ... there always will be.

What a jerk for saying something that will put people off developing games.

Making millions of dollars is clearly not possible. But look at what's being produced by the big companies - update after update of the same game and the only major change is better graphics.

No, not all games have to be developed by huge teams - small fun games can be enjoyable too. For people with limited free time (like myself) or casual gamers these type of games have great appeal.

all games that make millions of dollars today with very few lottery like exceptions need to be made by big teams with big budgets.

Because the games not of that 'quality' aren't given a chance.

The few that are not of that 'quality' that come out, are illconcieved pieces of crap, and it just 'proves' to the game companies that low 'quality' games won't sell.

They ignor the fact that those games are also low quality in the gameplay, striped down budget titles.

Fact is, the big time games people are as hard to break into as the movie biz is... everyone wants to be a part of it, and few get to. These things cost lots of money, so they look to people who have produced results before, and they look for things that produced results before.

They are run that same stupid way as the movies. Sequel after Sequel with no innovation... and honestly.. when they are innovative, they get flak.

When a movie strays too far from the first one, it loses the audiance.

People want the same thing, from the same games, with something else in there to make it feel new, or at least new content. New eye candy, and new distraction.

When companies do try new things, the fanboys always complain...

Oh, Final Fantasy X used that silly sphere grid. FF12 has this new different battle mechanic... where are my annoying random battles? I'm scared.

People fear change. They want the status quo.

The people who buy these eye-candy games WANT the eye-candy. It sells.

as game developers we want to do new things in GAMES, not in the genres that games borrow from... if we wanted to make movies we'd have gone into the movie biz.

But people don't want new ways to play... at least, they don't want to learn a new way to play.. they want to be able to do more, but too much change scares them. Since making the same game with better graphics sell better than a brand new game style and better gameplay doing something new sells less... it is a no-brainer as to which game to produce.

This makes breaking into the biz like that even harder... since a game they are looking to make, is easy enough for them to create, that they don't need you and your fancy new game idea, when whatever they pull out of their ass will sell better anyway.

I think you can make millions if your prolific and producs a lot of simpler games that are still great and have the right marketing skills, you can build a lot of money from selling more than one game.

It's still tough, but a lot easier to get off the ground and less work than developing one big game over 2 or 3 years and hoping for the best.

@noel heh the devnet thing was funny, he did that before, and was flying off to Korea with a couple of asian production artists in Saudi Arabia to sign a deal or something.

Cygnus and I have been too busy with our own things, and wanted to see whether he would support the users of his engine. He hasn't responded to pleas for help on the forums since the 7th. Kind of disappointing really, since the engine showed a lot of promise initialy.

Now he's bored and trying to form yet another team to make a sensible soccer style game.

Pfft, what an arrogance.

Thinking outside the developer-publisher-distributor box is still very hard for a lot of people.

Compared to 20 years ago we have a much improved toolset, better development tools, 3d editores etc. etc. Also, we are better educated with games, have more "hands-on" knowledge. And we have the means to cheaply self-publish our stuff.

Self publishing, and much more important, self promoting is the key for indies to become succesfull. It can even more succesfull salary-wise than a regular employee of a big dev. company. After reading my old friends blog entry about the folding of Take 2 in Vienna, even more true.

agreed.

Working outside the box is the only way to be successful and still do what you want to.

It doesn't negate anything said in the article, though, as it was talking about selling your idea to a big company.

Ye, i know. But i always have the tendency to stand on my soapbox when i read such articles. :)

Thing is, good Indie games can make a lot of money in the Indie market on the download portals etc, there's no point trying to put them in boxes up against Tomb Raider X and Quake XX. Also if you get good at making Indie games, your team might grow until you are ready to make a big budget game and finally release it en-mass, this could take years though, but fine, so what?

I think the problem is, all of the big companies came from the era, one way or another, when games where made by a few people. Over time, games require more and more staff to build, and they have gradually increased their size. So, trying to build a dev team to compete woould take a very long time or a shit load of cash.

To me, it cuts the wheat from the chaff. I think he knows this.

it sounds like an attempt to crush the dreams of COMPETITION.

"...now it takes 300 people"

Right ,but it must also generate a 300 or more revenues to pay back all these people
Generally speaking I am fully convinced that it is impossible for a a mall group to compete with big companies.
What about niches market segment however ?
Any official statistics ?

###warning those who harbor dreams of producing a game with a small team and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars from a big deal with Electronic Arts.##

I would like to see this man in front of Crytek team when they start working on Far Cry 1...

Its bullshit, thats like saying no independant film maker can possibly have a hit because they dont have holywoods money, yet every year some small outfit has a hit somewhere.
With the internet you dont need to get a game into stores now to sell it.

most of what he said probably stems from the current rampant delusions of mmorpg grandeur.

No, he's saying you can't just walk up to Time Warner and expect them to fund, publish or distribute your indie film.

It really is common sense. If you're an indie developer in the current climate you're not going to be able to sell your game to a large publisher and reap the rewards. Introversion were something of a Cinderella story, yet the larger publishers and distributors are still refusing to touch them with a barge pole. Thank goodness for Steam.

I'm not sure it's arrogant so much as blitheringly, witteringly out of date. All of it is true, sure, but none of it is news... the bit that mentions "casual" games as if they are so new and mysterious that you need to wrap the term in quotation marks says it all.

This has shattered my beliefs.

How could I have been so wrong?

Doesn't stop anyone from at least wowing a big crowd. After all, there are some small game developers that have been making it big for years... id Software's real big now, but when they started out, Carmack knew what he was doing all throughout. Also, 3D Realms is also another small company turned big, with Prey and Duke Nukem Forever on the horizon, they're looking to dominate the gaming market once again, too... However, EA's gonna be tough to dethrone, which is unfortunate... I'm betting on Vivendi Universal throwing in the towel, but not anytime soon...

Sounds like they are talking about new game companies trying to enter the AAA market, not about real 'indies'.

I certainly don't need to make "hundreds of millions of dollars" off a single game to be happy with my life and my work. :p

yeah... a few hundred thou would be quite welcome here as well :)

--Mike

my name is chilli palmer and I have an idea for a game. ^^

Of curse we have to forget it.
A perfect game idea? So what?
When the big companies have to spend millions for the development of a game( damn you Wings Commander) they have to be sure that they are not going to loose money. This is the main reason that a perfect and very original idea will be thrown away. It is safer to produce sequels of existing games or to copy the best.
I remember when Doom came out. It was like a nuke to the world of computer games. ID managed to be one of the top companies with a shareware.! What happent then? Doom-clones everywhere and anywhere. Sure thing. They copy the Best. I remember thinking... when this is going to stop? Never. Doom-clones everywhere and anywhere. They copy the best.

Damn you Wings Commander.

When I was at the GDC I was approached by dozens of people who "had a great idea". I asked them if they had a working example, and they said they didn't really have anything done.

Game development has a lot of groupies who just dye their hair and dream up ideas. Those people are useless.

There were even companies with booths, showing products that were much less advanced than some of the user-made tools here.

If Blitz Research would just learn how to network and do business, they would be so successful. Blitz3D would have been a huge hit there.

An easy to use 3d language for games or simulations as well as prototyping game concepts - no market at all for that is there? I really think BRL should be kicked up the arse sometimes.

BRL is fine ... yes they could be huge but they don't need to be because they must apparently be very content running a strong business that can also be easy going. I don't blame Mark for running it his way. Not everything's about world domination.

Compared to TGC BRL are pathetic, considering BRL have the better language...It's beginning to smell like Sam Tramiel had dropped spores around here or something - like BRL don't want to do good business. Take a look at the snotty modding of late - miffing supporters off left right and centre with a 'like it or lump it we're BRL!' attitude = pure ATARI!!..except I wouldn't equate the products to the Jaguar. Heck! That makes it an even bigger shame!

I thought that was kind of interesting but it is also biased from the egocentric point of view of these multi-millionaires who churn out sometimes cutting edge technologies but little in the way of something that appeals to a larger market. I don't think this needs be disheartening or disappointing. Most of us here have a strong belief in our creations.

I don't know what you guys are talking about... All my books and professors in the game design program sing the praises of Blitz for prototyping...

Yeah, that's all well and good. However, I'm quite sure that Nintendo may not be looking too much for indie games for the Wii as part of their download offer. Microsoft has been doing the Live Arcade for a couple of years, and MS encourages indie development, obviously, but not too sure about Sony, tho, that may be another story like Nintendo...

I think hes wrong, he is using integers for his percentage, I use doubles. We really have 0.00001% chance.
The CS team did it (although they got marketing help, had an engine already made, etc)

The original post is a typical view held by those in the industry. Most of them are not creative enough to comprehend the diversity of the marketplace and have a very narrow world view of what the games industry is based upon their place in it, and completely fail to comprehend anything else.

The rate of new overnight sucess stories hasn't changed, the number of sucessful indi developers earning a sensible crust hasnt changed, the number of products over-rated by their authors which should be freeware has possibly grown though.

If they where creative, they'd be making the games playing public into a bigger audience by producing more games that the AAA-cynics that frequent the indie scene would buy.

Anyone for a game of GTA5? Or Quake 6 million? How about we just play the new Sensi Soccer instead... Well count me out, i'll stick to what i'm doing thanks.

Dimwitts, the lot of them.

Last game bought: Live For Speed (an indi game).

True, guys like Warren Spector (who himself has been having problems) sit on or near the top of a huge castle ... so far up they can't see the ground or the base of the castle which supports them. There's plenty of room for success for indies because we're not aiming for the top of the castle.

I think too many people are reading this as Warren Spector telling indies to sod off, rather than a lament at the current developer-publisher-distributor model (which simply does not support indie developers).

Notice how all the panel members are themselves in independent games companies (perhaps with the exception of the guy from BioWare - I can't remember if BioWare is tied to a publisher or not).

BioWare is independent.

Mr. Spector must not have heard of IO Interactive (Hitman) and Deadline Games (Total Overdose)? And those are just recent examples from my country.

Then again, it seem like there's a lot of that going around.

when you guys who are scoffing this guy get to where he is, then your opinion might have a lil more credence...

... he's probably right.

the truth is a hard pill to take sometimes.

regardless... if you really feel he's wrong, why don't you just shut up and go about proving him wrong... get to work on that million seller instead of wasting time with all this useless rhetoric...

--Mike

I don't think people are saying he's wrong period, just that he's painted the whole scenario with too broad a brush...anyhow it's not like he said anything that wasn't leaning on the side of common sense - I mean if I knew somebody who really, really thought they could stroll up to a publisher with a head full of ideas and walk out with a big fat contract...well I'd run indoors every time I saw them coming! They'd have to be really dysfunctional or something to be so detached from the real world...which makes me wonder why somebody at the top rung of the ladder would even bother to open their mouths about such a fantasy scenario in the first place. No use to anybody except the heavily medicated dreamers out there...There is nothing new to what he's saying at all.

Because apparently it happens at E3 all the time. Hundreds of individuals and companies walking up to developers and publishers expecting a million-dollar deal just like that.

"Apparently" - I bet you 1,000,000 internet hyper-credits that the actual number of people who walk up to a booth or where ever with just an idea or a few pencil drawings expecting a contract are absolutely minimal compared to those who actually put their concepts into action with a playable demo of some sort. Anyhow, lets not dig ourselves into a hole here, the above article did address other more valid yet for some reason equally as obvious points as well.

Well that is what E3's all about, y'know. It's not a show for the gaming public, it's all about networking and marketing. Trying to make a deal.

The thing is that a small team could spend up to 6 months full time producing an "E3-ready" demo. In terms of wages, equipment and so forth that small demo has already cost something of the order of £100,000. It's not entirely surprising that not everyone produces a demo.

Sometimes I go out and buy really expensive toys for my kids, but when we get home they play with the box.

Indy games are the box. They don't have all the polish and shine, but they can provide as much or more entertainment than spendy shiny things.

I've worked on deals and had meetings with publishers at E3. As well as stand in the queues waiting to do 2-5 minute presentation with the other developers wanting to get their game considered for the next years investments.

The show is important for people to peddle their wares, but at the end of the day its the business executed in little cubicles hidden away sporting guys with suits thats often what E3 is about for developers.

I miss the good old days of the CES. I'm sad I never got to go :( If you take a group of people and put them on a podium and tell them to talk, they're going to. If they can't come up with anything new then they'll just say all the same old stuff that's been said before. No one has any respect for anyone so they're just going to keep arguing the point until it's no longer relevant. It seems to me that very few people doing the talking have produced anything to back up what they say.

That's odd. I thought E3 was exclusive to trade organization members, and members of the press?

Yeah, if you have a professional game studio that has some big names under your belt, that'll be the only way to make it big at E3 anymore... As far as I'm concerned, besides the guy behind Geometry Wars, noone else may have a chance against the big guns...

Damn you Wings Commander.

Nah, everyone is wrong. Remember a little Billy saying he didnt believe that a PC would require more than 640k of memory.

Or another historic moment when (I cant remember who it was) who said "Everything that can ever be invented has already been done so".

Well, I belive that if you have the talent and ablility you can do it. As was previously mentioned the Internet has made the world a much smaller place and marketing your games should be much easier now than in the past. I'm not saying everyone here will make millions, but the potential to make a bit of extra cash is there for everyone... err (well everyone who has so far grasped BB - not like me yet...)

Anyway - just thought I would throw my hat into the ring.

:-)

I second that notion.

Highly likely

Personally I dont need to earn anywhere near hundreds of millions, i'm happy with a few quid. I actually enjoy what I try to do.


My Amiga had 3 megs at the time, cost me a fortune for the 500k and the 2meg upgrade to the a500

Was great for multitasking when using AMOS - anyone remember that?:)

Personally I like it when Bill G said the internet would never amount to much.:D

When my games company rules the world, I'll buy him out.

Nicoust, AMOS was the bees knees, until Blitz came along. :-) It's a pity it never got much past the ECS graphics support - 64 colors. I did write a nice little paint program in it, though, and a fruitmachine game, plus pretty much learnt most that I know about programming from those AMOS experiments.

People would say AMOS would be used for prototyping, in the day. It was good for getting results fast and testing out an idea, if you were intending to use some other language eventually to make the actual game, maybe in assembler or C. So it's funny that Blitz is still riding with this impression that it could only be used for prototyping when it is plenty capable of professional software. It's not whether the language is capable as much as whether the people using it are capable.

I agree also about not having a need for millions and millions of dollars. These bigger companies only have their eyes set on surviving at the top in the big money market. Most of the rest of us would be content to just make a pretty good small fortune, or even just enough to live on to give up a day job would probably be most of our dreams. I wonder what Blitz product has made the most money for its author, across all versions of blitz? Still, that's not to say it wouldn't be great if someone here did come up with a million-dollar product. I'd be happy with that :-D

I also notice that Nintendo's encouraging an indie dev community for their "Virtual Console" on the Wii as well as all the classic gaming downloads. It says right here from Nintendo's own website:



Linky: http://wii.nintendo.com/hardware.html

Do you suppose that Nintendo covered this at E3 to some indie developers that were on hand at the expo? This would be good to know, it's Nintendo's way to get back at XBox Live now... TAKE THAT MR. GATES!!! HAHA!!!

He never actually said that. It was taken out of context, and attributed to him.

That on the other hand is very interesting in retrospect. Kinda like Thomas Watsons "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".

Most of the people I know who used it, mostly used it for generating look-up tables for assembly projects. Until there was Blitz that is.

Argh!

I didn't read the original article - but he was talking crap!

It's hard to explain 'coz I'm quite drunk...but yes, video games are NOT dying.

You CAN do what you want and you CAN be true to yourself.

...and you CAN buy me a drink!

Prosit!

OzBlitzManic

the guy who said everything has been invented was the pope, and that resulted in the dark ages.

/me buys mark a beer!

:D

Thanks DampeS8N! I thought it was someone important.

:-)

Galbraith's - Friday May 18th - 6pm NZST.

It wasn't the pope. It was Charles H. Duell. He said it in 1899, in response I believe, to the plans for the 1900 Paris World Fair.

I agree with him - he was right in 1899 and he's still right now.

Similer things have been said by people all throughout history. A roman engineer said it as well in 10AD

http://www.inventionmysteries.com/article4.html

Ok ok... that article was too bitter to finish... basically what was said there was trash. I started in a tiny games company here in Australia back in 2004 after something like 10 years in IT.

The company began with an idea and about 3 people, we are now nearly a hundred. In my time in the games industry, I've worked at places like Crystal Dynamics on the latest Tomb Raider, I've seen how places have been built up and I have spoken to a lot of people in the industry(artists, programmers, producers, designers etc).

You can still start a games company, and no you don't have to try and make millions, you can start off small and do smaller independant games... hell sell them at apple's website or something, the mac os x platform is always hungry for new content!

Dear oh dear!

Well I think there's some truth to the saying that if you want to be a successful game designer you should have started in 1987.

But the game industry is not significantly different from any other oligopolistic high-tech market.

Yup - For the greater part it's an old boy's club plain and simple - get in with them and you're laughing. Look at the number of near useless, profitless companies that start and fold over and over, it's like musical chairs but the same faces keep getting the seat.

In a related example, I know one small company that has been making games for more than 6 years and has not released one single game yet it has started 3 projects!! Can you believe it? Some sly scam going on there for sure.

its in many peoples interest to deter indi devs (less scary compitition and less bolts from the blue...)

just ask yourself how many people produced tetris or elite

yes there is more media in games today (and it seems less gameplay) however I'd say with the right game a talented small team could have a run away success, especially given how much the same todays games are....

I'd say, guys keep honing your media and programming skills some day an indi dev is going to make the modern crop of games look boring and unoriginal as they are

Why is a game like lumines on the PSP successful? It does not have a lot going for it asset wise. Why is it that a small crew from brisbane, Australia made close to 1.5 million from a casual game developed in house? The opportunities are there people. You just need to take them... I don't know, form a group, run game incubators and run community interviews with submissions to select members... nothing is impossible.

Could a small developer comprised of a team of three to five people have made Katamari Damacy? Absolutely.

Coming up with a game design and then submitting it to EA to get a big deal might be a pipe dream, but indie developers can still, and always will be able to, make games that compete with the big boys. It's just a matter of being innovative, and not trying to bite off more than you can chew.

We only have to take care for the web won't become a medium that is controlled ans censored by the same big boys. As long as it remains a bidirectional communication medium it will be a chance not only for games programmers, but for every kind of small business.