At precisely 4pm GMT ish today, give or take for those who were jetlagged or living in another country, a hand-picked collection of game developers simultaneously blogged their thoughts on the current state of the Independent games industry.
The "So you want to be a Indie Developer?" project features articles of advice on the reality of making your own games from every corner of the sector; from those currently risking everything by going full-time Indie to established industry leaders such as DEFCON's Introversion via unmitigated nonsense like Lemmy and Binky.
- from a post by Dan Marshall on Indiegamer
Gibbage.co.uk
http://www.gibbage.co.uk/2006/11/so-you-want-to-be-indie-developer.html Cliffski's Mumblings
http://cliffski.blogspot.com/2006/11/so-you-want-to-be-indie-developer.htmlGameProducer.net
http://www.gameproducer.net/2006/11/20/so-you-want-to-be-an-indie-developer/ Lemmy and Binky
http://lemmyandbinky.blogspot.com/2006/11/so-you-want-to-be-indie-developer.html Reality Fakers
http://sharpfish.realityfakers.com/?p=103 Zoombapup
http://www.zoombapup.com/2006/11/so-you-want-to-be-indie-developer.html BoneBroke
http://www.bonebroke.com/blog/index.php/2006/11/20/so-you-want-to-be-an-indie-developer/They Came From Hollywood
http://www.tcfh.com/news.htmlLot's of interesting and funny stuff about independent gamedev.
PS. Lemmy and Binky made the most fun blogpost ever :) ... be sure to check it out.
My new computer could make me the most exciting Indie developer in the entire world - without writing a single line of code.
pah they never asked me ;-( as I have a cool blog about how to sell Indie games (http://greyaliengames.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/an-approximate-guide-to-selling-indie-games/) which someone in Brazil just linked to and here is the babelfish translation of their summary (it's quite funny):
"Searching my list of blogs on games, I found this post muitíssimo interesting of blog Grey Alien Games giving some tips of as to vender its game. 1 - It finishes its game! This exactly! She finishes it, therefore much people find that making all the phases and some effect the game is ready. She thinks about a menu with options for the player, full way janela/tela, options player to change the buttons to it of the commands, etc. Rules of the game, screens of aid, etc. It is certain of that everything is functioning and with good quality, its game will not make success none if the graphs or the sound will be bad same with the best jogabilidade of the world! 2 - Alpha Test This phase of tests consists of calling the amigos/familiares (players and not players) to test the game and the navigation through the menus. A good tip is to look at intently while they mechem in its game (without giving no tip) to see in that the people have difficulty for the use. In this phase also it is good for testing its game in many computers, to check the minimum specification for the use. 3 - Test Beta Here, when its game for one confides numbers limited of players to wait for its "feedback". Good things will also come, bad, personal, radical commentaries also! It sees for the numbers, it sees if equal claims exist, fix small bugs, have accepted certain segestões and improve its game! 4 - It publishes its game Which the advantage to publish its game? When the money ($$$) to entar, will be ALL its! You it will not need to divide with nobody! But for this you need some things as: - a site; - an installer of its game; - One licensa for acceptance of the user; - a service of payments; - and Security in this system! 5 - It finds a Publisher (investing) If you do not have saco/tempo/conhecimento to make all these things of item 4, then she finds somebody to publish its game. With certainty this pessoa/empresa that will make this well done work very but will have its price (it knows of this) 6 - It places its game in a vestibule Many vestibules exist to publish its games, really do not know if it is dificil to place its proper games there, but much people search these sites to search for games. She follows some here: Real Arcade, Big Fish Games, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, IWin, Reflexive Arcade, to remember the Brazilians superdownloads and Baixaki. 7 - It improves each time more It listens, it asks, it reads! Each time more to improve its game. Not only its game, also improves in all the development phases its next game, to try to make right the things in the first time!"
..hmm..regarding all this readings, it seems that majority of money is just sucked out by publishers..is there really any other way to publish your game with better profit share ratio than present one (BFG, RealArcade...).. what to do if your game and content itself is really a bit higher than typical Indie game, or at least if you think it is a bit higher standard..is there any other way to push your game out under better conditions...
Grey, I think you're breaking into the indie dev community inner crowd but it's probably gone be a little more time before you'll get the recognition and respect you're looking for from them. It will come brother...
>Naughty Alien<: Well sell publish and you get all the money, but how are you gonna create the website traffic?
Chroma: Don't worry dude, I'm, not really worried about it (half of the inner crowd are up their own bums anyway) - but thanks anyway. I just got a job offer that would make most of them jump for joy anyway :-) So like I just anyway 3 times.