I was planning on doing another review today, but I failed to finish the game in time in order to give it a fair critique. Anyways, I was going to do a little rant about the "indie" scene and how I am taking interest in participating in it. "Independent (indie) Game Developers" are generally a small team of enthusiastic game makers who are not being funded by a publisher. What's so riveting about indie game makers is that risks are taken in development of a game and can bring about really unique ideas in game mechanics. When working under a publisher, the business men and women have the last say in how a game should look, play and be presented to the public. Because a publisher must look out for the best results in sales, less risks are taken and what is already known to be successful will be used. So if you're a gamer and wonder why that all of a sudden there's a slew of First-Person Shooters, or why every game is about zombies or leaning towards casual gamers, it's because it's the business looking for the profits. It's not (always) the developers fault for making cookie cutter games. Such as with Infinity Ward when they wanted to make a modern shooter, but they were stuck doing historical shooters for a while first. This is why indie games are becoming increasingly popular, not to mention that many of them start out being free.
The cool parts of making/playing indie games:
-You answer to no one but your team...if you have a team. Developers are like artists, they have a ton of new and innovative ideas. Publishers are about business, and they'll have to put restrictions on development in order to meet due dates and funds. Given this freedom, indie game makers are able to try out all sorts of wacky ideas and see which one works.
-You could work independently. This is something I am looking at right now since I want to build a portfolio, try out new ideas, and be able to learn the many aspects of game development so that I can grow as a game designer. Some of the most enjoyable indie games were created by one person:
Cave Story:
Source: Youtube Channel Chaddicl
Developed by Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya, the guy took 5 years to work on the design, writing, art, music, programming, everything and then released it free on the internet in 2004 for PC. It's got the attention of the game industry and has been remade onto the Nintendo Wii and is also going to be released on PSP and DSi from what I heard. In development of a game, I like doing the art, music, writing, design, testing and all, but I don't really like doing the programming part. Programming is very frustrating, which is why I respect good programmers.
Touhou:
Source: Youtube Channel Dracil
Under the name "ZUN", who created Team Shanghai Alice though being the only one in that team, the guy has created over 10+ games all based off of his original creation called the "Touhou Project." The sheer difficulty as a bullet hell (danmaku in Japanese) shooter, creative bullet movement designs and especially the inspiring soundtrack he composed for each of the games has brought the game and his name to fame (WOW, that all rhymes!) and has built a strong community within gamers, musicians, artists, cosplayers, fanfics, and such all around the world (if you don't believe me, type in Touhou on google). Though not everyone knows of this man and his games, I really respect him a lot and hope I can do something of his caliber.
Audiosurf:
Source: Youtube Channel GameShizzle
I apologize in advance if I got any information wrong. From what I remember, Audiosurf was developed by Dylan Fitterer. He would come out with a small game each week and shared it with the community on the internet and one of them was called "ride your music" or something of that nature. He decided to polish the game and worked with music composer Pedro Camacho and launched it on Steam, being the first 3rd party game to use the steamworks technology. The idea was simple, the execution was difficult, but the results were well worth it. Getting the type of attention he got as an indie game developer is the ideal kind that could land him a position in a AAA grade game company. It also benefits the gamers to have such a innovative engine be compatible with the music of the player's choice.
-It's (sometimes) free for the gamers! This benefits both sides. If the developer wanted to get exposure and recognition from the industry for their work, making the game free would spread word throughout the internet by gamers (if it was a good game) and would serve as good publicity. At the same time, gamers get to experience innovative ideas from those of the same community (be it forums, circles, or clubs) and actively participate in critiques, testing, and publicizing. Unfortunately, since this happens so often now, not all games reach their audience.
-It might inspire other developers and gamers. I'm not talking about a big name company taking the idea from a indie dev and making it their own. I'm saddened whenever that happens. There are actually quite a few gamers who want to make videogames and work in the industry, but there is a very limited amount of resources that allows anyone with no experience to start. I have always wanted to make videogames as long as I could remember (probably when I realized that videogames weren't created like movies were), but it never crossed my mind as a career path (I thought I was going to be a scientist in physics, ha!) It wasn't until in freshman year of high school when I came across the Campaign Editor of Starcraft that I became very serious in learning about game development. To point out a more well known example, DotA as we know it today was inspired by a custom campaign from Starcraft and then was recreated as Defense of the Ancients on Warcraft III's engine because of its capabilities of using RPG elements. These were all within a community of map makers, modders, and avid forum moderators. From those in the community, two came out and now work for Riot Games on League of Legends (Guinsoo and Pendragon) while the other (Icefrog) went to work on Heroes of Newerth and has been recently hired by Valve to lead the project for DotA 2 (I rather not get into the argument of whether it was right for Valve to copyright the term DotA or not). The game industry is similar to the gamer community in how we like to exchange ideas and work together and talk about games. If anything, take a look at what Minecraft has inspired some of its players to make:
Source: Youtube Channel Run3scaped
Source: Youtube Channel stewe231
Some sucky things about indie games:
-No financial support, no steady income, and no guarantee. The games that indie game makers create may not get the results they hoped for nor does it guarantee that the game will ever get finished.
-Gamers get a lot of bad games. Not all indie game makers plan on making something new and innovative. Some just really want to make a videogame, sometimes for attention. This leads to the next one:
-Lots and lots of "fan-made" cookie-cutters. Ever heard or MUGEN? RPG Maker? Then more than likely you have played some of the same games several dozen times. This is more of a "fan-based" community's doing rather than indie game devs, but there are a lot of games where the user just replaces the graphics and calls it something else. I was thinking of posting a video here, but I realized that it might be disrespectful to the person who worked on it. I'm talking about those who rips graphics from one game and plugs it into one of those "game" makers that don't require programming and say "hurr hurr, I made a Naruto game!" I'll admit right now that I had a huge phase in the beginning where all I wanted to do was fan-made versions of other games (mostly with the starcraft editor). I made a lot of bad maps and got it all out of my system and started to realize that I was missing the "game design" part and only concentrated on the references to existing "intellectual properties" (IP). I'm making a huge deal about this because developers in the game industry does just that: copy a game with different graphics and a different name. How many bejeweled, break-outs, and tetris iterations have you seen? I find it perfectly fine to take something great and twist it around into a new game (such as Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an excellent take on Bejeweled). But I don't want to hear about another "Ultimate MUGEN Showdown" or "Extreme Tris!" unless it has something new and innovative about it.
-Risk of stolen ideas. The copyright laws of intellectual property can be tricky and causes all sorts of troubles for big name companies. So imagine how terrible it feels when either a company takes the ideas from a indie developer without any crediting or if a indie dev purposely/accidentally uses the IP of a well known company. Problems can arise.
-Losing control over the game. I've read stories of how some indie game developers wanting to sell their games for cheaper or for free. But if that team or person signed a contract with a distributor or publisher, they lose control over a lot of IP and sales. This isn't surprising seeing how it happens in the actual industry (I'm talking about you Activision! $15 is enough to buy a full game nowadays!) despite the efforts of the development team.
These are only a few of the goods and bads of indie game making and indie gaming. If you feel compelled to suggest any indie games in the comment box, I'd be delighted to take a look at it
No comments:
Post a Comment