Independent Games

[Shnay]

Recently, Valve offered the independent game Darwinia (http://www.darwinia.co.uk/) for purchase through their digital delivery system Steam (http://www.steampowered.com/). Darwinia has gotten a lot of high praise from critics and gamers for being a fun, unique experience (there's a demo out now, if you want to try it for yourself). Previously, Valve released the independent game Rag Doll Kung Fu (http://www.ragdollkungfu.com/) through Steam, as well. By doing this, Valve is giving games that wouldn't normally see publication a chance to reach a wide audience, and doing so in a way that will give the creators of these games a larger portion of the profits than they would normally receive.

Other examples of prominent independent games include Alien Hominid (http://www.alienhominid.com/), a popular Flash game that was released on major home consoles. Cloud (http://www.thatcloudgame.com/), a game about a young boy receiving ongoing care in a hospital who dreams of flying among the clouds, has gained a good deal of media attention. Other independent game developers have done extensive full conversion mods using popular PC game engines to make games like Counter-Strike or Red Orchestra (http://www.redorchestra.clanservers.com/).

Have you played any independent games? What do you think they will do for the future of gaming? Will they provide freshness to a creatively stale gaming industry? Or are they little more than novel ideas that lack the needed refinement of professional games?

[Roman Legion]

Have you played any independent games?I've played plenty of mods in my day, but I've never had the time (or computing power) in the last few years to keep up. I've still been following them, though. I think it's always interesting to read up on independent developers.

Meanwhile, my brother's pretty darn good with Red Orchestra. By that, I mean he picks people off one by one, while they're far enough away to be no more than a few pixels wide. If you've ever played RO, you'd appreciate what a feat that is without crosshairs or a fixed aiming vector.

I've worked on my own mods, but since it's just my brother and I developing, we've never been able to finish anything. It's a lot of work...


What do you think they will do for the future of gaming? Will they provide freshness to a creatively stale gaming industry? Or are they little more than novel ideas that lack the needed refinement of professional games?Future of gaming? Independent games and mods are the past and present of gaming. Much of the current industry's best talent has come from the mod community... where publishers quickly stomped out their hopes for creativity, apparently. Such games are going to have a much harder time in the future, as people's expectations rise. Of course, this may just mean that we'll all have to come up with more creative solutions...

--Romey

[Shnay]

Meanwhile, my brother's pretty darn good with Red Orchestra. By that, I mean he picks people off one by one, while they're far enough away to be no more than a few pixels wide.Wow.


Future of gaming? Independent games and mods are the past and present of gaming.I suppose I phrased that wrong. I didn't mean to imply that this was a new phenomenon, but rather that it seems to me that independent games have recently been getting some attention from gamers who were previously unaware of these efforts. Mostly, I'm excited about Steam and the possibilities it offers. Everyone booting up Steam to play widely popular games like Half-Life 2 or Counter-Strike will soon learn about great games like Red Orchestra, which previously required some knowledge of the "mod scene." I'm really hoping we see Steam continue to do stuff like this, and other companies follow suit.

[Roman Legion]

I suppose I phrased that wrong. I didn't mean to imply that this was a new phenomenon, but rather that it seems to me that independent games have recently been getting some attention from gamers who were previously unaware of these efforts.Ahh, in that case, absolutely. It's just a shame that they weren't more visible to the average gamer much earlier. Indies can forever compete on purely creative grounds, but the future of content creation is going to hurt. It's a small miracle when a team of solid programmers gets together, but when you start asking for a horde of skilled next-gen content artists, you're gonna have some trouble.


Mostly, I'm excited about Steam and the possibilities it offers. Everyone booting up Steam to play widely popular games like Half-Life 2 or Counter-Strike will soon learn about great games like Red Orchestra, which previously required some knowledge of the "mod scene." I'm really hoping we see Steam continue to do stuff like this, and other companies follow suit.I was skeptical about Steam before its launch, until I realized just what it might mean for developers. It's a step toward taking publishers down a notch. Better still, it's a chance for the real little guys out there to shine.

Romey
--Now, if only I could gather myself a mod team... :sweat:

[Shnay]

...the future of content creation is going to hurt. It's a small miracle when a team of solid programmers gets together, but when you start asking for a horde of skilled next-gen content artists, you're gonna have some trouble.Could you expand on why this is? Is it just because higher level graphics (assuming that's the area "content artist" refers to) take far more people to produce than they previously did?


It's a step toward taking publishers down a notch. Better still, it's a chance for the real little guys out there to shine.Gamespot is running a series of articles (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6141519.html) asking what the game industry has against innovation. A few of their points are debatable, and they throw the word "innovation" around far more than I'd like, but it's an interesting read. Anyway, there's a quote in there from Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango, Psychonauts) about pitching game ideas to publishers:
"I'm working on a new game now and we have a couple of publishers that are very interested, but in finding them we talked to a lot of publishers who are incredibly risk averse. And in pitching the game to them I found myself playing down the innovation of the game and playing down the creativity of it a lot because it's--just hearing those words--those are the wrong words for them. I found myself trying to explain the game in terms of how everything in it had been done before just to calm them down, and then I come to work and I go to a design meeting and the focus has to be, 'How can we do something that's never been done before?'"It sounds a lot like the movie industry, which, given the current size of the game industry, makes sense. But when it comes to movies, those who aren't satisfied with the majority of movies produced by large Hollywood studios can turn to independent films for something different. Many of these independent films try new things or tackle new subject matter that major studios wouldn't want to take a chance on. Occasionally, these ambitious films become big hits, and the studios reevaluate their position on what people want to see. I'd love to see more of this in games, and Steam is an excellent start.

A lot of gamers complain about games heading in a direction that doesn't appeal to them. I wish more of them would get excited about a a possible solution.

[Roman Legion]

Could you expand on why this is? Is it just because higher level graphics (assuming that's the area "content artist" refers to) take far more people to produce than they previously did?Pretty much. This is less an issue for people relying on creativity and innovation alone, of course. For anyone who wants to "keep up" graphically with the rest of the industry, things are gonna be difficult. You'll need artists to churn out many times more content than ever before -- materials that may require seven or more 2048x2048 textures each (plus settings for physics), film quality high-res character meshes (millions of polys), mid-res meshes (4,000 to 12,000 polys) which fit the high-res meshes like a glove, collision meshes that fit the mid-res meshes, multiple materials per mesh, larger environments with several thousand objects (and dozens of types of objects) per scene, complex shaders, etc.

That stuff all takes a lot more time and work than what most mod teams have been used to... and they have to do a lot as it is. From the look of many current X-Box 360 offerings, a lot of the bigger companies aren't even keeping up as well as they could be. Not that graphics are everything, but it's getting a lot harder to meet the level of visual content that's demanded.


A lot of gamers complain about games heading in a direction that doesn't appeal to them. I wish more of them would get excited about a a possible solution.It'd be nice, especially while it's still far more viable for most people to jumpstart an independent game than it is to produce an indie film. :sweat:

--Romey

[Shnay]

Though the topic didn't generate too much interest, I thought a small bump for a link to GameTunnel (http://www.gametunnel.com/) might be in order. GameTunnel has reviews of lots of independent games, as well as information about where to download them. There are also articles about independent games and other aspects of the game industry. It looks like a great resource for anyone interested in finding new, different, fun, FREE games (which should be everyone here).

[Captain Harlock]

Though the topic didn't generate too much interest, I thought a small bump for a link to GameTunnel (http://www.gametunnel.com/) might be in order. GameTunnel has reviews of lots of independent games, as well as information about where to download them. There are also articles about independent games and other aspects of the game industry. It looks like a great resource for anyone interested in finding new, different, fun, FREE games (which should be everyone here).
Not many people are in tuned to the independent game genre. Myself included. I think that was the problem with the topic, no offense. However, many thanks for the link as it'll give me a chance to see more of what's out there.

[Shnay]

Not many people are in tuned to the independent game genre. Myself included.

Neither am I, really. One of the points of the topic was to highlight a few of the projects I did know about that others might not have, as well as get people talking about games they knew about that I, or others, might be unaware of.

I only learned just how ambitious and creative some of these projects are a few years ago. Even knowing they're out there, it's awfully hard to keep up with what's worth checking out. I think systems like Steam and sites like GameTunnel make it a lot easier, and could potentially open up a lot of new possibilities. The idea of so many people out there working on games without restrictions from publishers is so exciting to me, I was just a little surprised that so few felt the same way (or, at least, didn't say as much).