Gaming Lounge

[Sengir]

It was painfully obvious they wouldnt reach their goal, they Kickstarted wrong.

The Kickstarter money will allow us to:
- Bring in professional translators
- Have a full, original soundtrack and sound effects written and recorded
- Purchase hardware for testing (we want to support a wide range of devices, not everyone can afford a top end iPad!)
- Purchase additional licenses (we love you Linux users, why should you be left out?)
- Allow us to continue developing this title full-time until completion (work began in January and actual game development started in April!)

None of these things should ever be required for their Kickstarter to succeed but used as stretch goals. (If you are depending on making an indie game for money then you are either delusional or already an established indie developer)

Ask for the minimum amount of money it will take to make the game then if you get more than that then you add the extra features.
If you don't get the minimum your game most likely wouldn't sell anyways, and if you didn't get an over-abundance of sales to implement unneeded specials then your game probably isn't interesting enough despite those features.



I've been thinking about Kickstarting the game I've been working on with Zac, if only to gauge interest before we commit to the long haul.
edit: and asking for a really low minimum to get a web domain and host or something

[Koopaul]

I've been playing Godzilla Unleashed. Plays terrible on the Wii with the precise swinging you need to do, but I still love it!

I get to play as Jet Jaguar and beat the crap out of Destroyah! How awesome is that?

[Sengir]

But seriously though, I feel like a crash isn't the only way to move away from the stagnation the industry seems to have gotten itself stuck in. I mean, it'd certainly do the job (probably) but it would also really really suck. "Viva la revolucion" isn't always the only option.

the crash is actually a WIP going on right now

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17555...rofits.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17691...eloper.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17563...assets.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17631..._teams.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17630...PopCap.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17636...sequel.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17684...ayoffs.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17634...erpool.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/17667...tbacks.php



plus because of rampant piracy more and more devs are trying to break into free2play social market, and because they're actually making more money as f2p companies like Playfish (EA), SOE and Turbine they're able to absorb some of the new layoffs.

though (this is speculation) i'm betting that the rest of the layoffs (the ones who cannot find jobs) will form small companies and make their own "indie-level" games, not killing the indie scene but pulling enough consumers to effectively cripple it.

[Kami]

We need them to rethink marketing and designing in general.

That'll probbly happen after a crash or a sales decine.

[Vipershark]

From what I've seen, piracy isn't even the biggest issue (outside of the PC market, but that's another story) with developers right now. Piracy is an inevitability. Someone WILL break the security on your game and it WILL be distributed illegally. Developers need to accept that and instead of focusing (so hard) on trying to fight an unwinnable war, they should focus instead on the other issues that they have.

To me the biggest problem is that everyone and their grandmother is trying to produce AAA movie-quality titles (or just FPSes) with insanely high budgets. If one fails or you get low return, bam, you're millions in the red. Almost nobody is willing to make different types of games or take risks with smaller projects. If all the games are basically the same thing, people will stop buying them because they feel it's a waste of money since they already pretty much own the game. Or they'll turn to piracy. Nobody wants to pay 60 or 70 bucks for a game they already own.

What we need are new, innovative, games and not REALISTIC SHOOTER 647836483267 or else the industry is just going to keep going in this downward spiral.

[Sengir]

Piracy is an inevitability. Someone WILL break the security on your game and it WILL be distributed illegally.

Not if your game is already free to play~




Granted people can hack into your server and give items and all that, but that's a bit farther than piracy and should be taken care of.

[Kami]

From what I've seen, piracy isn't even the biggest issue (outside of the PC market, but that's another story) with developers right now. Piracy is an inevitability. Someone WILL break the security on your game and it WILL be distributed illegally. Developers need to accept that and instead of focusing (so hard) on trying to fight an unwinnable war, they should focus instead on the other issues that they have.

To me the biggest problem is that everyone and their grandmother is trying to produce AAA movie-quality titles (or just FPSes) with insanely high budgets. If one fails or you get low return, bam, you're millions in the red. Almost nobody is willing to make different types of games or take risks with smaller projects. If all the games are basically the same thing, people will stop buying them because they feel it's a waste of money since they already pretty much own the game. Or they'll turn to piracy. Nobody wants to pay 60 or 70 bucks for a game they already own.

What we need are new, innovative, games and not REALISTIC SHOOTER 647836483267 or else the industry is just going to keep going in this downward spiral.

Fffff, they need to learn to be an effective business person in the sense of thrying to make somethiing new & unique so they'll get better sales, plus the consumer wouldn't be bored with the next game that they create. They're too much of a pansy to make some risks that could benefit both the cosumer and themselves.

And on the piricy subject, they won't win that war, ever. If theres something of interest there will be group of people who will pretty much disect it. It's unavoidable.

[Kriven]

The problem with the industry?

“I don’t fucking want innovation,” the ex-employee recalls CEO Mark Pincus saying. “You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

well, that, but innovation is kind of a buzz word that gets thrown around a lot. there are a lot of problems with the videogame industry that you can't quite fit into bullet points and quick paragraphs. our technology fixation, where improving the technology we use before improving the "art" we make. there's an analogy about the game industry to be found revolving around inventing the paintbrush before you know what color is.
there's things like the incredible drive to be taken seriously as an art form, but the ultimate reluctance and pant shitting when someone actually criticizes not just all of videogame, but even specific titles or elements of the culture at large as they would for any other art form.
it is 2012 and there are honest to goodness, still developers that consider story and plot to run separately from mechanical design
and developers that in The Year Of The Donut King (2012) it is still acceptable for their "highly realized" (sigh) "fantasy world" (snore) designed by hand (yawn) to be acceptably traversed by opening a GUI menu and clicking a button

[puggsoy]

What we need are new, innovative, games and not REALISTIC SHOOTER 647836483267 or else the industry is just going to keep going in this downward spiral.

And that's where indie games come in

Seriously though it seems that indie developers are getting ever more successful, and I think a big part of that is simply their innovation. Commercial devs just need to realise that.

[Vipershark]

A lot of indie games aren't much better, to be honest.

Look at the indie market right now.
Look at the GIGANTIC percentage of angry birds clones or other game clones or """retro""" """8-bit""" indie games that are flooding the market.

Look at...
well, this.

Weekly kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theo...r-brothers

I don't even actively look for these things.

Nobody wants more gritty faux-retro mario clones yet they're still being pumped out at a crazy rate.
The very issue with the open indie market is just that; it's open to anyone.
With the market being flooded by legitimately awful games, you basically have to wade through an ocean of shit just to find one gem of an indie game. Most people don't want to invest the time or energy to look for something good.

[Gwen]

I don't think FPS shooter is the problem, Battlefield and Medal of Honor are fantastic series, but the loudest ones, Call of Duty and it's brethren refuse to change anything or introduce new ideas, and so the FPS genre looks as though it's stagnant, when in fact Battlefield and Medal of Honor are consistently releasing great games, and not just giving you some new maps.

[SKELTON S. SKELETON]

There was actually very recently a summer game jam with FPS as the theme, and there were amazing titles.

[puggsoy]

I think TF2 has got the right idea in the FPS area. Make no sequels, keep releasing updates for a single game. You can't complain about it not being different because it's the same game, but if it does add a new dimension (e.g. MvM) then it's great. Also community-made content is gold.

Also Viper I agree about the repetitive pumping of clone indie games. But what I meant is that (most) indie devs are at least trying to make something new or innovative, rather than being purely money-motivated. And hey, maybe some of those clones actually do it well, I mean look at Super Meat Boy. It does almost nothing new yet it's an extremely fun and generally good game.

[Rosencrantz]

There's also the fact that most indie games tend to be from college students who are trying to get a portfolio going.

Retro graphics or not, the fact that they worked on something means they have a much better shot at getting a job in the industry.

As much as you want to bitch and moan about indie devs churning out the same platformer clones day in and day out, this is *kind of* a necessary thing. I'll redirect you guys back to the Smash Bros Gameboy fangame; the devs followed the generic "retro feel" with poor animation and a general poor grasp of what "retro" actually means, with unpolished game mechanics and a lot of room for improvement, but the fact that they were able to churn out a product despite massive senior projects to work on? The lead dev works at Microsoft now.

Point is, a portfolio piece is still a portfolio piece. If you can churn out a Konjak-level game in ~30 weeks maximum (with the aforementioned ten senior level projects to work on at the same time), then you should never stop making indie games. But, odds are, you're not going to have that much free time to make a masterpiece. Odds are, you're going to have this indie game with retro graphics and platformer gameplay, because that's all you're going to manage in a project-overloaded timeframe. That is perfectly acceptable, since it shows how good you are at working within a constrained timeframe, and this is something game companies want in their employees. Now, turning around and putting these games into the market is a different story, but at least know there are contexts behind the oversaturation of these generic games.

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also
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1429...nture-game
this is a thing now