Casually Hardcore devlog

Indie is cool, but why?

Indie game development has been the “it” thing to do for the past two years:

…following on the footsteps of indie music and film. A few developers I’ve met are more into the “idea of indie” rather than “being indie” – which to me is: to do the hell what you what regardless of commercial consequences.

Rarely do I digress into such pointless philosophical debates such as “indie vs. mainstream” and “what it means to be indie” because the end result is that indie game development isn’t much different than independent film. As they filmmakers say, “People knock Hollywood for their formulaic movies but the indie world is just as predictable.” I’d guess 95% of indie games are simply re-hashed old game ideas. Heck, my project started off as a bit of a re-hash and only developed its own style over time.

It’s no surprise that prominent indie game developers, like Jon Blow, have moved away from “innovation” and accepted some formula i.e either making a genre game or using existing ideas. I do believe indie games should be “artful” – in that they are works of expression by an artist (game developer) trying to evoke emotions or convey an idea. I don’t believe they should be crude pixelated junk like

The Marriage

OR Passage

..because a piece of art is a sequence of well thought out decisions and I find in both games, the decisions to be weak.

The Marriage explains – “I wanted a game that the graphics and other elements took second stage. So for example Chess is a great game whether playing with stones or diamond encrusted ivory sculpted pieces. One should not assume the game is incomplete because of its graphical simplicity, I cheated a little here by using colour symbolism similar to painting. This is also the reason there is no sound to the game, any element I could remove that got in the way of the game itself I did. Sound and music is a very powerful medium in and of itself, I feared its inclusion would overwhelm the subtle message of the game.”

From playing The Marriage, I feel there might be two layers of meaning, but both are fairly superficial, need excessive explanation, and do not evoke any emotions from me. In storytelling, the hidden layers below the surface is called subtext. There doesn’t seem to be much subtext in The Marriage or it’s poorly conveyed.

To borrow a cliche – subtext is like “layers of an onion” – peel each one and another is revealed below.

I’m more intrigued by flOw and the Grow series of games than The Marriage. Heck, the original SimCity had artistic depth.

i.e On the surface, you were a city planner, but complex emergent behavior arose from your actions. Will Wright is an artist, no doubt. He has an idea and set of emotions he wants to convey and executes them in a multi-layered experience via “a game.”

OTOH, the overhyped BioShock is about as deep as Britney Spear’s music. You can not force subtext. It’s NEVER overtly spoken about.

Add comment January 14th, 2009

XBLA sales – booms and busts

For indie developers, XBLA (and PSN) seem to be viable platforms, but there are warning signs that all is not well. Here at the top 20 XBLA sellers.

From Major Nelson

Top Arcade Titles of 2008 (Full Versions purchased)

Note: Bolded are original games from indie studios.

1. Castle Crashers
2. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
3. Braid
4. A Kingdom for Keflings
5. UNO
6. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
7. Fable II Pub Games
8. Duke Nukem 3D
9. Bionic Commando: Rearmed
10. Worms
11. SOULCALIBUR
12. Portal: Still Alive
13. DOOM
14. 1942: Joint Strike
15. Bomberman Live
16. MEGA MAN 9
17. N+
18. Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3
19. Marble Blast Ultra
20. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

If you dig deeper using sales data from vgchartz have been some busts… either mediocre sales or outright big busts considering the cost of development + VMC testing and ESRB + PEGI ratings.

The following 50 games probably have lost money. I’d say sub-10,000 units is pretty pathetic (saleswise) and definitely very concerning. A few here are recent releases (Age of Booty, Vigilante 8 Arcade, etc.) that will likely recoup by the end of 2009. I do not believe in long-tail for XBLA games as new releases drastically push down sales figures of previous releases.

Note: Bolded are original games from indie studios.

Again, considering cost of development is anywhere between $200K to $600K for a XBLA title, the above sales figures are horrible.

Add comment January 5th, 2009