No, come back… I assure you I am not going to be preaching to you. I am not an authority on this issue and I don’t have a list of proven “rules” to give you either. I’m sure the more qualified of those who have taken part in this little bit of blog blitzing will have plenty of tips to help you avoid the pitfalls of starting out on the exciting but risky path of independent game development. Like my games, I wanted my addition to be a little bit different. Please see the list of links at the bottom of this post for other peoples take on the issue.
I set out on independent game development in 2004, after a break of around eleven years. A quick history of my game development background can be found in a previous entry.
…Two Years later I still haven’t yet released a game!
The past two years have flown by. Since I started seriously developing games I have left the retail games industry, gone back to it, left again, Moved house, seen new consoles, cars and TV’s enter my life. Enjoyed two Christmas breaks (even working for yourself you need holidays). Seen countless other indie developers release games, and still there is no game from ‘Atomic Pond Software’ (previously ‘Reality Fakers’).
Why is this?
As I said, I won’t be dwelling on where I have gone wrong and where I could have done better. I know the mistakes, have learned from them and am better prepared for future projects. However, every developer is different so you (as a future developer or currently developing your first game) will learn from your own mistakes. Maybe in your cases timeliness isn’t a problem. Maybe your problems will come from marketing or lack of polish or lack of research or thousands of bugs. The point is, there are no hard and fast rules for indie game development, whatever it takes to get you through is what it takes.
While I was never a big fan of casual games as a player, I have become more and more interested in them as I develop a game (or two) for that market. I am curious about their apparent lack of depth yet highly re-playable mechanics from the viewpoint of a casual game player. They are definitely different from what long time gamers though of as “games”. And they attract the scorn and distaste that gamers of a certain type are surely justified to fling in their direction, primarily they are games made to sell rather than games made for the love of it. I believe however there is room for both types to exist in a developer’s project list if you are up to the stresses involved in such a proposition. I said possible, though I doubt I would recommend it based on my ups and downs.
I have learned a lot from casual games that I hope to apply to more traditional games in the future. User friendly controls, slick interfaces, robust performance, intuitive mechanics and game difficulty open to all kinds of players are just some of the great things about independent casual games (which we must not forget are still indie games whichever way you look at it).
Not long after starting I became enlightened to the ‘reality’ of the market via great forums like indiegamer.com. The problem was I had become slightly confused with conflicting opinions and research; I had wanted to make shoot-em-ups, simulations, 3D racers, Platform games, arcade adventures and stuff like that. I was seeing that all evidence pointing to those kinds of games in the indie world showed typically poor sales of them. I also realised what a mistake it was to write my own “engine” and roll my own physics when there are much better freely available out there. I sorted that out and have been prototyping and developing actual games instead of technology ever since!
So, my dilemma now was that, although I had never entered into this for the money, I did need to increase my chances of selling at least X amount of copies to recoup some of the time and money lost by not earning a steady wage. I didn’t (and don’t) expect from a single game to ever make up for not having another wage. At first I thought there was no way possible that I could bring myself to make those casual games that a few months earlier I had been turning my nose up at. I really didn’t want to even attempt the impossible and try to compete with the ‘pop-caps’ and the ‘mumbo-jumbos’ of this world.
So I didn’t!
I combine “making the games I want to make” with the casual game ethos of refinement and accessibility. Sure, the first game is bound to misjudge a few things and adjustments will take place accordingly for the following games (which happen to be less casual anyway). The point is I am having fun making the games no matter how casual they are or are not. And I am having fun because I know I am not competing or trying to compete with the previous mentioned “giants of casual”.
As a lone developer (with occasional help from my girlfriend) I conceded early on that I couldn’t possibly match the efforts of a 5 man plus team so instead, instinctively chose to put my own personality into my games. Something that would make them appear different, probably less mainstream but nonetheless easy to pick up by the casual players if they chose to. This is the only way I can do indie development, I have to be enthusiastic about the game and I have to strive to offer something new or different. Its part pride part perfectionism and part stubbornness.
If you want to be an indie game developer then I would suggest you set a clear goal of where you are heading. If you want to be “a new pop-cap” then go for it, just bear in mind it will take time, talent, and probably vast amounts of money and at least a small team. If you just want to remove the stress and “make games for yourself” and try to see if others want to buy them, then do that, just understand that your chances are reduced of actually making any decent money from them due to not recognising a viable market for your game. If you fall in the middle somewhere, in the grey area, then you have an equal chance of success or failure and on top of that added stress because you are shooting in the dark to some degree but I can tell you it certainly keeps things interesting. Again, whatever it is that gets you out of bed in the morning and tapping away on your computer is what you are going to be sticking with for some time. Make sure your heart is in it before you start and that you can and will continue until it’s finished regardless of setbacks.
So now I was packing this nice moral stance I have of “not trying to clone anything while still trying to cater to more fair-weather gamers” I found reality yet again nipping at my heels. Coming up with a new game mechanic for casual games is extremely hard, if you want it to be fun, re-playable and to make sense it is anyway. In the end I had to ‘borrow’ certain elements from popular casual gameplay (the ubiquitous “matching” mechanic) but twist it and come up with new ways of using it to make a game that is more unique. I honestly see that as no different from me making a shoot-em-up or a platform game. All games borrow some mechanic or some conceptual genre and go from there. It’s just direct clones that tend to sicken people. I also ramped up the rewards and incentives in the game which are also part of its personality (I hope). As I said I run the risk of alienating typical casual players but I just had to do it. I had to make the games I felt were right at the time and that were fun for me to make, play and visualise the finished version of.
So for me, being an indie developer has been a fun, already rewarding experience. I haven’t received a penny yet for anything and I’m still carrying on. I have the drive to continue until at least those six games are out of my head (and off my hard drive) and with new ideas arriving weekly (when I allow myself the freedom to think about other things for a while) I know once those six are done another twelve will be ready to take their place. And with the increasingly long development times games are taking (due to higher expected levels of polish) eighteen games is probably nigh on impossible in any decent time frame if you do want to “live” a little also.
Reading this won’t have changed your life or your course of actions but perhaps the honesty in my story may help someone who is going through similar things realise that taking time is not a fault if it’s through good intentions. If you need to get bread on the table as soon as possible then I would suggest you have alternative income until the day your games become financially rewarding. If you are doing this purely as a clinical business endeavour then you will do what you have to I suppose and that is business for you. I am not a business man really and perhaps that is the obvious failing in my long winded game development plan. Just as I learned to program C++ though I will learn more about every facet that I need to until I can say “I’ve done my best”.
I just know if you started out saying “Yes I want to be an indie developer” that you will still be saying that after reading this. So my parting advice would be to read the other authors posts below, then make a cup of tea (or coffee), unplug your modem and get stuck in today, not tomorrow, don’t hang about because no-one else is going to do it for you. I look forward to seeing your future games out there almost as much as I look forward to moving onto the development of my second game!
This post was part of the ‘So you want to be an Indie Developer?’ blog project.
You can find the other entries via these links:
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Thanks for merely saying indie game development is hard work, and not for trying to discourage anyone. It sort of irks me when people say you can’t do this, or you must do it this way. There seems to be alot of that lately.
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