A goodly number of indie game developers are lured into Lostgarden.com by the free game graphics. Every few days an email pops into my inbox, "Hey, could you draw the graphics for my cool game design idea?"
I'm honored more than you can imagine when I get such a letter and they mean a lot to me. Unfortunately, I have my fingers in so many projects at the moment that squeezing in an additional graphics job wouldn't be doing anyone any favors. Still, it bothers me that talented people with amazing dreams can't make their games due to a lack of graphics.
Here's a run down of several techniques that help you get your game finished without being blocked by the graphics bottleneck.
Build a game that fits your level of art skills The first path that you should go down is to build a game that fits your level of art skills. If you are a programmer and can only make squares, make a game that uses squares as graphics. It worked for Tetris and it can work for you.
At a functional level, graphics exist to provide feedback to the player, not to wow them with Hollywood-esque delights. Put those dreams of cinematic fantasms to the side and focus on the game mechanics, the interface and the level design. If you can nail all of these and you only have little ASCII art, people will still flock to your game.
Some successful games that designed the project around the developer's lack of traditional graphics skills include:
If they can do it, you can certainly finish your game without relying on an artist for graphics.
Use free graphics The next step up is to use free graphics. There are thousands of game graphics out there on the web. Admittedly, they have problems:
They may not be the most attractive. "Dude, these free graphics are totally sucky compared to StarCraft."
They may not fit your exact mental vision. "No, the Xenli Sorcesses has four silver spikes on her bosom armor, not two. It is completely wrong!"
They may not be complete: "I really need a female knight and and they only supplied a male knight! The end is nigh!"
Other people might be using them in their games. "Argh, now my RPG looks just like the one done by that guy in Australia. *sigh* Now I will never be l33t."
My heartfelt recommendation is that you get over it. None of these is really a blocker. If you can build a game with limited art, you can certainly build a game with a few carefully chosen bits of free art. Here are some answers to common complaints.
You aren't Blizzard. That's okay. You can still make a fun game.
Design is about coming up with great solutions in the face of complex constraints. In order to design a great game, you will need to adapt your vision to reality a thousand times. Practice your problem solving skills by using free game graphics in the best way possible to get as close to your vision as possible.
If the set isn't complete, get creative! If you need two knight graphics, colorize one blue and one red. If you need a dragon boss, colorize one of your knights black and change the villain to be the Dark Knight. Even primitive graphics skills can triple the number of usable graphics if you show a little initiative.
You browse free game graphics archives, but your customers do not. Out of the thousands of people that play your game, only a small handful will recognize that you are using free graphics. The only ones who care are typically merely would-be game developers snobs. Ignore them. That is easy enough.
Here's an example of noted game developer Sean Cooper using my free tile graphics for his Flash game Boxhead. Sean has worked on Powermonger, Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet and Syndicate. It is instructive to observe how he uses free graphics to give his game a leg up.
Pay for competent graphics If you absolutely must have quality custom graphics, you are going to need to pay an artist real money to produce them. There seems to be an odd opinion that that artists sit around all day doing nothing and whenever someone asks them for a painting, they scribble for a few moments and then non-nonchalantly hand over a masterpiece. Good art takes time and skill. Drawing a good tile set might take 20 or more hours. Drawing a simple background might take all day. If you aren't willing to pay for their very valuable time and effort, most competent artists will go work for someone who will.
Prices vary dramatically depending on the type of art, the quality of the art and the reputation of the artist. Expect to pay anywhere from $20 to $60 per hour. The best bet is to ask the artist what their standard rates might be. You can always negotiate, but remember if you squeeze the artist too much, you increase the chances that they will put your game on the back burner when a more appealing opportunity comes along. Negotiating for royalties is another option, but since 90% of the reason that games don't get finished is because the programmer flakes out, I would hope that most artists would be rather wary of this path.
There are numerous ways to bootstrap your art budget if you have your heart set on custom artwork.
Create art-free games to fund games with more polish. Release a version using free art. If it sells, reinvest the profits in creating the same exact game with better graphics.
Set aside a certain amount each month to pay for graphics. One fellow I know is setting aside 300 bucks a month to pay for game art. That will buy him about 2 days worth of a cheaper artist's output a month, but if he plans well enough and limits the amount of extravagant graphics in the game, this could be enough.
If you are looking for artist, you can find a reasonable collection of game artists for hire at these links. Just keep in mind that they all expect to be paid.
The one technique that doesn't work The most common strategy I see used by would-be developers is the only one that doesn't work. They pray that they can find an amazing artist who will work for free on their game. If only they hang out on enough forums and email enough artists and beg loudly enough...a godly artist will drop from the sky and gift them with amazing artwork.
It generally doesn't happen this way. Good artists can generally find work that pays in cash. Most likely what will happen is that you'll make a deal with a starving student who immediately leaves you in a lurch as soon as something that lets them eat comes along. They aren't being mean. They are just hungry.
So the would-be game developer mopes about the message boards, complaining about artists leaving their projects and how artists constantly ask for real money. Yet despite the substancial energy that goes into these activities, I've yet to see prayer or complaining ship software.
The big lesson Out of all this discussion about graphics, never lose sight of the big picture. The single most important thing is for you to finish your game. Iterating towards completion is the root of all practical knowledge about game development. Putting a complete game in the hands of player is how you'll learn to make your future games shake the world to its core.
If you are telling yourself "Oh, I can't complete my game because I don't have an artist," be honest with yourself. You are making excuses. Graphics are not an impediment to making a great game. Do what ever it takes to finish your game.
Design a game that doesn't need professional graphics.
Use free graphics when possible.
Set up a rational budget to purchase custom graphics from a professional artist if needed.
As I sit here, listening to the Flame Trick Sub's rendition of 'Plastic Jesus', I am brought back to their rocking performance at the Gathering of Developer's Holy Lot back in 2000. "Sing loud. Sing strong. Sing like the beer in your hand was brought to you by the Lord."
G.O.D. created a trailer park of sin and gratifyingly poor taste in a parking lot next to the edifice of E3. The free beer required an ID, but anyone could be entertained by the midget pole dancers, befatted 'Satan's Cheerleaders' and the bevy of Catholic school girls cum floor talent. As a business, the Gathering burned and sank into the Texas swamp. A few Easters later, the team was resurrected as the high class publisher Gamecock. They now insist on mimes outfitted with Kiss makeup when they throw a party. Ah, such is the mellowness that comes with age.
I can't say anything about the games they released or their business plan. The thing that delights me is that they actually appear to possess a personality. You know, one of those crackling zestful outbursts so chock full of rainbow sparkles that the gray morasses of humanity momentarily pauses and perhaps stare.
The existence of a vibrant personality hints at an abnormality of thought that I happily associate with the destruction of the status quo. Admittedly, such human ElectroPlanktons are not necessarily revolutions in and of themselves. They are however, day glow markers that let us know that the broader community supports and rewards a spectrum of behavior generally not considered predictable or rational by the wise majority. If the freaks can survive here, it must be quite fine to get a little freaky.
Personalities of Christmas Past When I was an impressionable young scrapper, there were people visibly and crazily in love with games. Molyneux was so hip I named my female cat after him. Minter had his llama fixation, George Sanger, aka The Fat Man wore his Suits of Infinite Coolness. Richard Garriot built a goddamn castle. On a more personal level, dozens of my compatriots made shareware games, not for the money but because they were mad with passion (and more than a little angst.) Katanas, furry conventions, giant stuffed animals and whigger posturing were par for the course. From big to small, these were electric personalities casting sparkling arcs of inspiration throughout the industry. You could be guaranteed that at the very least, your gaming coworkers would be colorful.
Upon graduation from college, the options were obvious. A bright lad like myself could work my way up in an established business. Intern, copy boy, illicit affair, promotion, paycheck. Maybe I could even become a 'high level middle manager' one day. One day. In contrast, the kaleidoscopic roosters in the game industry yodeled from atop their precarious unicycles, proclaiming there was still a job where you could be creative, alive and yourself. Once, I heard the call and I do not regret a second of the ride.
When the music stops, turn out the lights Years passed. The industry matured. For a while, I thought personality might have died. The same old names were trotted out when the believers asked "Whither the creativity?" Franchises and brands were established. Did anyone stop to nurture and grow the industry's creative spirit? Process is great, but it needs to be the sort of process that still allows for the construction of a life sized sofa out of pastel mini marshmallows and spritzer. You know, one with matching felt pillows.
A New Hope A little while ago I got a chance to meet Daniel James of Three Rings. I hear he wears a pirate hat. I know for a fact that he also happens to carry about a long scarf in case the opportunity arises to dress up as Doctor Who. I wanted to hug the man. That might have been awkward.
The spark of revolution still glows.
I recently stopped by Derek Yu's site TIGSource forums. My god, what a wonderfully bitchy bunch of ill informed hackers and dilettantes. These are the sort of people that make games about Columbine. Oh, and several of them just won the Indy Game of the Year award at GDC. They'll produce a lot of crap, but they'll also be willing to push buttons and boundaries. We all benefit when our perspectives on what is possible are reset.
Indie communities driven by strong personalities that match the old glory days of PC shareware are rising again. Smaller MMOs, village games, are growing like communal fungus on the dark underbellies of the internet. L33t Flash developers with amazing hair are rediscovering the demo scene 20 years after the fact. They are using their new found skillz to make...games.
To quote Scripture, "For those about to rock, we salute you." Yes, we do.
It makes sense that folks with personality are emerging at this time in history. The big consoles throwing money at the problem of innovation in order to differentiate themselves from the pack. The PC world with platforms like Torque, RPG Maker, Flash and XNA has put massively powerful technology in the hands of the small teams on the fringe. Digital distribution is coming of age. All of this means a wider range of people making games and more unedited press for those who rarely are coached in proper 'rod-up-the-rump' PR etiquette. I watched this year's IGF awards and was intensely proud of all the stuttering and yammering.
Creative Canaries Personality matters. We need our anarchists, yiffers, cross dressers and virtuous assholes. They are the canaries in the coal mine. Where they exist, they indicate that our industrial culture venerates the rule breaking that these larger-than-life personalities embody. Where they do not exist or are not tolerated, beware. Creative expression requires a conducive cultural environment. If you lack that environment, even simple innovations are often an act of banging your skull against a thick granite wall.
Cultivate your canaries. Cultivate the unique spirit of large-than-life personalities. Encourage people to shatter a few boundaries. Reward them, even. Especially if they make games that reflect these values.
I had a delightful lunch today with Amanda F. and her handsome, watch loving friend. She is the driving force behind the new indie RPG Aveyond and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what she does next. Most of my contacts with the game industry go back to the old PC shareware glory days, so it is quite enjoyable to connect with one of the rising stars of the new generation of entrepreneurial game developers.
Out of the many topics we meandered through, one jewel was the bursty nature of shareware game traffic. She’s been noticing a trend. Whenever her game hits a new portal, there is a rise in traffic across all portals that the game is featured, even her website. Portals where her game has long fallen off the chart suddenly start featuring her title again.
There are two potential reasons here:
Repeat impressions are needed before customers take action.
The downloadable market is highly fragmented.
Repeat impressions matter People don’t look at a game and think “hey, I’ll try it out.” The first time, they become aware of the title, they might be about to wash their laundry or perhaps they are at work. Maybe they aren't in the mood to check out games. (Shocking!) The moment passes and the title that has consumed a year or more of your life passes out of their heads without a second thought.
Getting people to download your game is a lot like playing one of those maddening quarter games at the arcade. The machines taunt you with dozens of quarter balancing precariously on the edge of a small ledge. All you have to do is place in a single quarter and you’ll push an avalanche of coins over the edge.
But imagine that you start with an empty machine and each quarter is actually a mention of your game. You need to build up quite a few impressions of your game within a potential buyer’s head before the cascade of impressions overflows into action.
When a title hits a new portal, there is a buzz of word of mouth around it. This leads to lots of people getting fresh impressions of your title. Only a few are saturated with enough of your message “Hey, this is a cool game” to actually take the extraordinary effort to search the internet and download it. This leads to more word of mouth and more downloads. Thus the single media event leads to a burst of sales across multiple distribution sources.
Market fragmentation The fact that the downloadable and casual games market is fragmented isn’t really news, but it too informs your sales patterns. Think of the new shareware market being composed of dozens (if not hundreds) of population pockets. Each group might be built around a single portal or a special interest group.
They don’t talk to one another much, nor do they read common news sources. Many don’t consider themselves mainstream gamers. I like to think of them as the oil shale of the gaming market: A bit difficult to reach in larger numbers, but still highly valuable customers if you can figure out the techniques.
The result is that long term promotion will often have incremental payoff even with products that a no longer ‘hot’. There will almost always exists large populations of players that will have never heard of your game. Don’t be surprised if you end up getting letters years after your initial launch that exclaim “I had no idea that this [insert superlative] game existed!”
Often someone who just heard about your game may introduce it to new markets. Within a short period of time, the number of people who become aware of your game can increase dramatically. This also contributes to and magnifies the bursty nature of sales.
You must pop little markets one at a time over a long period of time before the total number of customers that might buy your game is tapped out. Indie games are in many ways closer to evergreen products than your typical launch and dispose commercial titles. Think about it. Bejeweled is still selling to this day and it is doubtful that the majority of those customers are repeat buyers.
Marketing is a long term effort There is the dark side to all this as well. If your game doesn’t trigger a big enough burst of word of mouth, you may see a small spike that fades away rapidly. Quite likely your awareness raising event isn’t large enough to ignite a chain reaction across all the sparsely connected social nodes. Alternatively your game isn’t good enough to inspire strong word of mouth. Or maybe you are popping smaller markets and not reaching the bigger ones.
I think of the system as the following (completely unscientific) equation:
[# of promotional events]
* [Average reach of promotional events]
* [Word-of-mouth worthiness of your title]
* [Average number of existing impressions]
* [Number of new markets that you breach]
* [Average size of each mini-market]
- Percentage of market already reached.
- Percentage of people who just don't give a damn.
= Magnitude of each PR burst.
You’ll likely have to promote your game for longer than expected. Don’t give up on an older title just because it is no longer the latest thing. Re-releases, targeting radically different audiences with an existing products, as well as shameless and consistent broad-based self promotion are all valid and useful techniques for getting your games out in the public eye.
Matt and Mike Chapman, the artistes that draw Home Star Runner (and Strong Bad!) are Nintendo DS fans. They had put on a talk at FlashForward in Seattle and the first thing they did was announce that they had started a Pictochat session. While one guy talked, the other guy would doodle away and read messages from folks responding in real-time to their talk. They also showed an early version of their cartoon that they claimed was created in MarioPaint. I have no idea if it is true, but these guys rock. Hero worship should be encouraged in such situations.
I have mixed feelings about the Flash community at the moment. At FlashForward, all the cool people get together and show off the crazy things and cool techniques they can do in Flash. The game industry has jaded my inner technophile. Pixel operations such as morphing of two images are nifty, but wasn’t that done in the mid 90’s on the desktop and even earlier in the research labs? One fellow showed off some crazy particle effects. They are certainly artistic, but the same basic stuff was being done on the Amiga and C64 in ages past. The demo scene for god sake…how can you forget the demo scene? It’s like someone playing Black and then claiming Criterion invented the FPS…because they never played that last decade worth of games.
Why the Web is cool But complaining about the fact that Flash people think ancient technology is cool misses the whole point of Flash and web technologies in general. These platforms succeed based on two key points that the game industry might want to take to heart:
Reduced barriers to entry for the customer
Putting creative power in the hands of non-technical people.
Why make a web application? From the user’s perspective the benefits are huge.
You don’t have to worry about a CD that you’ll inevitably lose.
You don’t have to worry about putting something on your machine that will screw it up.
You don’t have to worry about losing that silly application icon that gets lost in the crazy hierarchy of the Start Menu.
You can type an easily remembered URL into your web browser and get to your stuff instantly.
These are all minor items to the technologist, but they are some of the thousand little paper cuts that make many users despise their computer.
From the author’s perspective, the benefits are equally cool.
You do not need to be a technical expert. With a simple piece of software and bit of scrounging around the internet, anyone can just start making something. The 99% of the population who can’t code their way out of a paper bag can still make a blog. The 99% of artists who can code can still draw in flash and maybe even hook up a button or two. More passionate people working in a medium = better content. It is a simple thing.
For many simple projects, configuration management, updating users about versions, etc, etc are a thing the past. Upload to a central location and your users get the newest stuff. The cost of maintaining content goes way down.
A case in point are the Home Star Runner guys. Earlier in the day, you had the Adobe pitches gushing about the latest wild improvements to Flash 8 and beyond. Matt and Mike have what many attendees consider a dream Flash job. They are self employed, profitable, have their own office and produce kick ass creative content. Guess what they use? Ancient Flash 5, baby.
They use some simple drawing tools and the ability to navigate around. But that’s about it. No fancy pixel manipulation. No crazy XML integration. Just some basic tools and a lot of creative spark.
A pencil is a stick of graphite (but no body cares) The best creative works are not only about technology. All artists have this pounded into their heads from an early age. A pencil is just a stick of graphite. It is cheap, readily available and easy to publish the results. It may not have the latest Gel Ink 5.0 technobabbloid writing engine. But that’s okay. Art is always about using what you have in a manner that inspires and entertains. The user doesn’t see a thousand flecks of graphite on a pressed sheet of paper fibers. They see a beautiful sketch by Leonardo.
The same goes for the web. The end user doesn’t care that Matt and Mike use Flash 5.0 instead of Flash 8.0. They could care less that the graphics technology behind Flicker or Google is 10 to 20 years old. These experiences are fun, hassle free. They showcase unique creative voices that may never have had a chance to blossom in other forms of media.
Imagine a day when two guys in an apartment working part time can make a world class game that garners more success than most big publisher properties. It has certainly happened in the past. The trends are such that it will happen again.
As the middleware industry matures and morphs into artistically friendly tool
As the deployment platforms become more standardized,
As the language of game design becomes more accessible and broadly taught
Production costs will fall and entry barriers to talented creative whackos will decrease.
The exciting part is that the web, as a platform, is in some ways much further along this path than our vaunted consoles or desktop PC games. Pretty cool. The fact that Flash-based casual games are one of the fasted growing segments of the game market is not an accident. Of course, now I wonder where all those AJAX web 2.0 games are lurking and why they aren’t more popular. :-)
I couldn't have said this better myself. Here is the view of Greg Costikyan on the state of the industry. I enjoy it when a game designer curses violently out of passion for his choosen profession. :-)
Much of the work on Lostgarden is there to provide practical tools for accomplishing many of the goals that are outlined in Greg's PowerPoint. "Death to the Game Industry (Long Live Games)" describes a movement made up of dozens of individuals who are active with blogs, talks and more. We need to spread this philosophy beyond the core group such that it infects hundreds of top designers. The ultimate goal is to influence the creation, marketing and distribution of future generations of games.
Some pertinent topics that I've been covering on this site:
How do we create alternative business models that increase the power of the game authors and reduce the destructive influences of the distributors, retailers and publishers?
What alternative distribution systems need to be created to ensure success?
How do we reduce production costs?
How do we empower smaller developers?
What are market factors (such as genre addiction, genre lifecycles, etc) that affect the success of games? How can we build games that succeed in the market and still maintain creativity?
In this light, Space Crack is more than just a game design. It is intended to be an illustrated example of many of these ideals in action. My intent is not to preach theory, but to demonstrate a series of simple, revolutionary tools in a practical, concrete fashion.
I just played through the demos of Oasis, Clash N Slash, and Future Pool. I'm admittedly a demo whore. I'll play them, form an opinion about the mechanics and move on. It takes a truly rare game for me to plunk down my hard earned money.
Of the three, Oasis had the most innovative gameplay. Others have compared it to Civilization meets Mine sweeper and I'd agree with the characterization. It plays with the well-honed mechanics of a veteran German board game: tight rules, well paced risk/reward schedules and an appealing setting.
I was quite impressed by the Tutorial mode, which took me about 50 minutes to complete. It manages to introduce a wide variety of concepts in an incremental fashion so that the player is never overwhelmed. All board games should have this feature built in. :-) Goodness knows, I'd be able to convince more people to play Settlers of Catan and Adel Verpflichtet if I didn't have to give them a complete brain dump of all the rules all at once.
Aren't you trying to sell me something? I didn't purchase Oasis, even though it is exactly the type of game I enjoy. I played the game, finished the demo and was satisifed to leave the experience at that. The Tutorial demonstrates a meta-game associated with collecting the Glyphs of Power. It is a rather classic mechanic. Every game that you play may gain you a Glyph of Power. Gather all the Glyphs of Power and you win the meta-game. Striving for a complete set of Glyphs kept me playing the main game over and over again.
However, as soon as I completed the meta-game of gathering all the Glyphs, I felt a lovely sense of completion. At this point my trial time had mostly run out. The game made a feeble attempt to ask me for money, but I was riding high. I had conquered Oasis...it was beaten. Why should I pay more?
Oasis was a very enjoyable class A game, but the structure of the demo provided no hook, no reason to play further.
A demo is a selling tool! Back in the shareware days of Epic, we would always leave a big hook at the end of the game. The rule of thumb was:
Show 1/3rd of your game in the demo
Promise 2/3rds more content if they buy the final game
Now there is a hook! We'd promise new units, new maps, new weapons and prominently display them to the player. We promoted it as a transaction. The message was simple:
"If you give us money, we will not only let you keep playing, but we will also give you lots of very cool stuff. This will make your experience even more enjoyable than it is now."
The Oasis demo is an unfortunate example of a game demo that doesn't realize that its sole purpose in life is to addict people and convert them into sales. It currently sends the message:
"Now that you've seen everything under our skirt and had a jolly bit of fun, won't you pay us out of a sense of respect and appreciation?"
This is an honorable and naive attitude that relies too much on the inherent value of design. The idealist in me respects this attitude, but the pragmatist in me worries that the talented folks at Mind Control are not making the bank that they should on this delightful title.
Alternative techniques Here are some alternative techniques that could help with the sales of the Oasis trial:
Give each player an hour and a half trial: Let them get half way into a new game before you end the trial. Promise that you'll let them continue their current game if only they pay you. I like to call this 'holding the player's game hostage.'
Create a 'buy now' button in the game: Give the player every opportunity to purchase the game.
Promote the hook: Create a screen or three that describes the great content available if you buy. Pimp this at when they download, at the beginning of your game and every time they close the application.
Track your conversion rate. Ping a server with a unique ID when the install is complete and ping it again when the purchase is complete. Use the conversion ratio to judge the success of your trial. Put out several trial variations and then promote the one that does the best.
If you can increase your conversion rate from 4% to 5%, that's a 25% increase in revenue. This is generally well worth the small development cost associated with creating a data driven trial system and posting several variation of the trial. If you have a well-publicized game like Oasis, it is silly not to perform this type of analysis.
Lessons learned about creating a good game demo This is capitalism, baby. Make me a pitch. Tell me about the benefits I get from buying your game. Make it bold, make it exciting. Entice me into purchasing the game. By collecting simple data, you can ensure that the changes you make have a positive impact on your bottom line. Do not rely on mere hope that I will appreciate your efforts.
take care Danc.
PS: So that I won't feel horribly guilty about critiquing this demo, I did ultimately purchase a copy of the game. After all, I had a jolly bit of fun and enjoy supporting indie game developers. I am happy to say that the purchase wrapper that was used is quite elegant and the buying process painless.
I had a dream about next generation consoles revolutionizing indie game development.
In this dream, the indie game development community was fragmented and suffering. A gleaming savior with tens of millions of eager customers appeared on the horizon. He spoke in a booming voice "Bring me your games, both small and weary. I will distribute them and you will finally be able to feed your family. You will rise and rule the world!"
He ends with a bizarre and disturbing cry:"Developers, developers, developers!" It was Steve Ballmer from Microsoft! My eyes darted furtively from side to side. What was this madness? I'm independent. I don't do deals with the Man!
But my belly was growling from the hunger pains. Too many late nights and not enough pocket change to buy sustaining Cool Ranch Doritos had taken their toll. My precious game in hand, I approached the world's largest software company and became an official Xbox Live developer.
The state of the Indie scene drove me to do it The current indie gaming scene is doing better than I expected but is still a piss poor way of making a living. The reasons are plentiful and have less to do with games and more to do with distribution and marketing. Specifically:
Customers don't know about the existence of many indie efforts.
When they do hear rumors, there is no easy way of getting the title.
The Web as a Stealth Market Now, I can see some folks saying "Wait! We have the Internet. It is our mother, our savior! With the miracle of Google you can find anything. With the marvel of HTTP, you can download files directly from the developer to your hard drive. Woot!"
This is a naive vision of how a consumer market works. The Web is a highly fragmented market that requires users to forage through a forest of nearly invisible information sources. I continually discover wonderfully informative websites that had been lurking just below my radar for years. Most information on the web exists in stealth mode. If you aren't looking carefully, you'll never even know it exists.
This naturally poses a problem for the indie game developer. Sure, they can put up a website, but it won't get much traffic. There are few spots of indie press, but their traffic isn't so hot either.
Fuzzy consumer behavior Another fun problem is that the way consumers gain knowledge about new products is often not well suited actually finding those products on the Web . If I type a specific product name into Google, I can get some great results. For example, type in Gas Powered Games "Supreme Commander" and that title immediately appears 4 out of the top 5 hits.
Unfortunately, very few people learn about games this way. Suppose a friend in a bar mentions to you that Supreme Commander, the sequel to Total Annihilation is out. This is what you remember:"There's this game that is the sequel to a RTS I played a few years ago where you mined metal"
Google becomes nearly useless. I'd give the persistent searcher a 5% chance of finding the title if this was the only information they had. A game store on the other hand is perfect. You can ask and you can browse the existing titles. There's a 95% chance you'll find what you are looking for. On top of this, many gamers go into a game store simply looking to see what is new. The little fragment of information about Supreme Commander is often enough to pique their interest. When they see the box, they buy it in the spur of the moment. The concept of a game store as an established, communal gathering point does not exist for independent game titles.
These factors slow the adoption of indie games dramatically. Indie games are lost in a dark sea with no market beacon bright enough to draw in the customers they so richly deserve.
Next generation consoles are the Indie Savior What we need is a well known media outlet that promotes a wide selection of new titles. The infrastructure necessary is being built right now by some of the largest game companies on the face of the planet.
Microsoft Live: The Marketplace feature will have a built in e-commerce system that can take micropayments. You'll be able to download data and perhaps whole games onto your hard drive
Nintendo: There will exist a system for purchasing smaller game titles and downloading them to memory cards. Initially this will be older Nintendo titles, but the possibility is there for 3rd party titles.
Sony: Sony is the least well defined of any online effort. We know that they will have internet enabled console, but there is no evidence of any effort to build a marketplace.
This is great! These have all the hallmark features that indie game developers have been screaming about for years. The coming generation of consoles finally creates a viable, mainstream, digital game distribution channel. Look at all the goodies it contains:
Easy access to the customer. A console gamer flicks on their machine and they can start buying your titles. No searching, no fragmented information sources. All the games are right there, at your finger tips.
Efficient distribution system. An Internet-based delivery mean no incremental cost for each unit sold. Inventory cost is meaningless and profit margins are 8 to 10x higher than on games sold through traditional channels.
Promotional opportunities: Pay enough money to Microsoft and you could be the featured download of the day.
Long shelf life: The terror of retail stocking fees need not apply. Your game can be available to gamers for years. The newest buzz word, The Long Tail, makes it's presence felt.
But it still sucks. Face it. Console publishers will screw this opportunity up royally. When you have gotten used to running a walled garden, it is a major cultural change to open your borders and let a bunch of lunatic developers have a go at your customer base. Let's look at standard console business practices that will lock independent developers out of this new and potentially vibrant distribution channel.
Expensive Development Kits: If you want to develop, it will cost you 10 to 15k. Some will cost you 30k. For many developers this will be a hard pill to swallow.
Long QA: The QA processes for console titles are expensive and time consuming compared to that of PC development. You can't just build and release. You need to build, test for 2 months and then release. This kills traditional rapid iterative design, episodic content, and other fast moving development strategies.
Tight authorization filter: This is probably the biggest barrier. Every game that appears on the console is approved by the publisher. If there are too many FPS in the current lineup, the console manufacturer can reject your title simply because it is a FPS. If smaller games are authorized using the same metrics, creativity will be squelched. Many good titles will be squashed early in development by the well entrenched control freaks. Remember, it is always safer to say no than it is to take a risk on a questionable title.
Lack of tools: Console development is technically quite difficult. There are few established next generation engines and they tend to cost a good amount of change (350k + 3% of your revenue is a hard price to pay if you are a smaller shop). Simply gaining the technical expertise to develop a game for the console becomes a major barrier.
Lack of Marketing: Historically, the console manufacturers have little to do with the marketing of 3rd party titles. That is the job of publishers. But when you own the point of purchase, you control the major means of reaching the customer. If console manufacturers do not build promotional options into their console stores, customers still won't know what to look for.
Each of these are natural and long standing realities of console game development. They exist for good reasons and the inclination of an established console developer is to shrug and say "Deal with it."
Why console manufacturers should care I'm going to argue that independent developers are valuable additions to a console's arsenal of marketing tools. They may not be the primary drivers of success, but the games they bring can dramatically accelerate the adoption of a console. The indie game development community is worth actively pursuing.
The quantity argument: New systems have only a few games and the console with the most titles is often seen as the safe choice by the consumer. I've talked to many Playstation owners who claim that the reason they purchased is because they knew they would have a good choice of titles. By rapidly building a library of smaller games at launch, a console can claim variety and quantity.
The non-traditional gamer argument: Smaller games have historically been appealing to non-traditional gamers who have time constraints that are much more limited than the hardcore gamer. Smaller developers, who are ideally suited to the creation of casual games, can unlock this vast and potentially valuable market.
The innovation argument: A thousand hungry developers who are targeting niche audiences are more likely to create the seed of a successful new genre. The current system of large, risk adverse teams won't cut it. It is worth fostering the development of the next GTA for your console.
What console manufacturers can do to kick start the Indie Console Market Console manufacturers need to recognize the opportunity represented by independent developers and take concrete action to secure their support. The steps are straight forward, but they cost money and require a rethinking of how console games are created.
Reduce the cost of development kits Reduce the cost of console development kits to the $5000 range. It is still expensive, but in the realm of a serious developer. If you need to subsidize these kits in order to get the price down, do so.
Invest in tools that create safe sandboxes Pay Macromedia to port Flash to your console. Even better, port a 3D tool like Anark Studio to your console. The benefits are massive.
By having an artist friendly robust tool, you no longer need advanced engine programmers to get the job done. This means teams focused on creativity and content, not technical wizardry.
By having a mature tool with a well defined asset pipeline, you increase productivity. Your quick prototype can be evolved into a polished game in a low risk fashion.
By having a standard playback engine, you build a sandbox for small game to live within. This dramatically reduces QA requirements. Ultimately, a tool like Anark Studio could reduce the cost of independent game development on a console by a factor of 10 and knock the QA costs in half.
Build a beta test area into your marketplace Let the customers volunteer to be guinea pigs for new games that are not yet completed. The console manufacturer gains quality control over the final releases since they can see how beta users respond. The developer gains an open area for new experimental titles.
Build a comprehensive marketing system for new titles Create a method of advertising new titles to customers. This can be an online editorial magazine, a catalog with user ratings, a series of console-based websites, or something as crass as banner ads. You can potentially have paid ads, but be sure to reserve a portion of the marketing bandwidth for breakout titles that may not have the marketing budget to compete with the big boys.
When I turn on my next generation console, I want to be informed about the next Nintendogs indie-developed genre-buster. Then I want to click a button and buy the damn thing.
Conclusion If this dream comes to pass, it will still not be a perfect world. The console manufacturers will still have substantial control over smaller developers. Big publishers will still get the best deals and AAA titles will still garner the vast majority of the revenue and publicity.
But that is okay. We would have a vibrant and growing market place for independent games that is far more viable than anything that exists today. Indie developers would be able to compete based on the quality of their games, not the depth of their wallets. With lower distribution and development risks, innovation would blossom.
Most importantly, there would be a few more developers on the streets who could splurge on a well deserved meal of Doritos and Dew. In the end, it is all about the lips smacking taste of indie success.
I like this design philosophy for several reasons:
Innovation friendly: You can try a bunch of interesting systems and you don't have to rebuild a dozen levels.
Design testing friendly: You can test these games rather quickly and gather interesting statistics. Gathering 3 - 4 game play data sets per day from a user is a lot better than gathering one data every 2 weeks.
Minimal plot: I love how they really just 'suggested' a plot with bits of setting randomly strewn about, but didn't really put one there. Good enough for me and a more economical use of development resources.
Some users will dismiss this type of game for not having an epic story. Wake up and smell the innovation. There are other forms of pyschological reward than an arbitrary injection of plot. Character building, social rankings, and such are equally enjoyable and actually give you more gaming bang for your buck.
Here's a dirty little secret. Most game genres are in the form of short games that just happen to be tied together by a simple metagame that relies on plot snippets as a reward mechanism. RPGs? Short tactical battles. Adventure games? Short puzzles. FPS? Short tactical shooting sessions. Remove the story and you still have a delightful gaming experience.
This site is about art and game design. You'll find galleries of my latest illustrations. Also, I have extensive ramblings on a wide variety of game design topics.
Why people read this site
"[...] probably the most interesting article I've ever read." Tycho from Penny Arcade on the Nintendo Innovation Strategy article
I've been a game designer, pixel artist, painter, tools designer, product manager and marketing guy. I got my first job while in college working on a shooter called Tyrian at a little company called Epic Megagames. These days, I'm designing games deep in the forests of the North West.
I remain, to this day, not a chickadee plucker. Despite the rumors.
