GBGamesIn Calendar Aggregation, Seth Godin asks why there isn’t already a single place to go to find out what is happening in your area.
Isn’t Metromix exactly what he’s talking about? Do cities outside of Chicago not have similar tools available?
The Cloning Innovation is an article at Game Tunnel that focuses on the indie innovation issue. It essentially says much the same that Jeff Vogel claims: innovation doesn’t pay.
In the mainstream games industry, making clones of existing games is a sure-fire way to make your offerings mediocre, resulting in poor reviews and horrible sales. In casual games, however, cloning a successful game means that you can also be successful.
Weird? I think so. Then again, I don’t spend much time on casual game portals. I’m not familiar with what millions of people are playing in terms of casual games. Perhaps people loved Bejeweled so much that they wanted to play the Bejeweled clones as well. Would a Professor Fizzwizzle clone do as well as the original? Apparently so, especially if you find an audience that never heard of the original game.
If it is the case that you can be financially rewarded for simply engineering the same exact game that your competitors are making, what does it say about the importance of innovation? If the customers don’t care, then the only incentive is for the indie to be proud of making innovative games on principle.
No, principles don’t pay the bills, but there are a lot of moral choices that people make simply because it is the right thing to do and not because there is something in it for them.
Some of you may have been reading Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel’s “View from the Bottom” series of articles. I think he is generally pessimistic when it comes to indie games, and his previous articles basically show that he thinks innovation won’t come from them. His latest article, #3, seems to make the argument that innovation isn’t rewarded, giving Jeff’s personal account as an example.
I really hate trying to do something new. Sure, it gives personal satisfaction. But you know what else is fulfilling? Staying in business. Not losing your house. And you can’t pay for food with Creativity checks.
…
If you are an indie and your game flops… well, small companies have a real hard time surviving the blow. And I don’t want to lose my house.
Remember that the next time you look to the independent developer to be the source of innovation in this industry. There is nothing scarier that aiming at a market that doesn’t exist yet. It might not exist at all.
It’s hard for me not to get upset about such words. Unfortunately, I also don’t have the authority to say anything to it. I don’t have my first game published yet, let alone sales figures to argue against Vogel.
Luckily, David Michael has something to say. Blaming Innovation is Michael’s take on the issue of innovation. He agrees that it makes sense to continue investing in what already works. Innovating means you’re leaving your established audience and trying to find new ones.
But if you never move past what you know works, you’re in what’s called a “rutâ€. And I’ve never heard that described as a good thing.
Sometimes you just have to face the uncertainty.
You might as well try to enjoy it.
I’d argue that finding new audiences is a good thing. Yes, you may have your loyal customers, and yes, innovating might turn some of them off. I think that if you have a core audience and great customers, you should reward them well.
But isn’t it possible that doing something refreshing and unexpected means you’re expanding and diversifying your base? Are you stretching yourself too thin? It’s possible, but it is also possible that by not innovating, you’re locking your potential audience to the same exact audience you already have. Game players grow older and stop playing games. Without new customers, you’re not only stuck with the same customers, but it’s also possible that your customers will leave you. Who will replace them if you don’t try to appeal outside of them?
I have been using Steve Pavlina’s advice on business plans for indie game developers. I have found it to be a good guide, even though I think it is geared towards existing developers. There isn’t much talk about what to do if you’re just starting and you don’t have a product yet.
Luckily, Juuso Hietalahti recently wrote The Basic Marketing Plan for Indie Games. Even though it isn’t as detailed, it is a good supplement to Pavlina’s document.
Inc’s One-Person Business Resource Center has a number of links for the person running his/her own business. One example is the article “Marketing on a Shoestring” which give some effective tips on marketing to your customers.
While the website is not targetting indie game developers in particular, I’m sure there is plenty of useful information.
A friend pointed me to this article: Sun Promises to Open Source Java.
If Sun does make Java open source, it is good news for people who prefer to run Free operating systems. It’s one less technology that they have to do without. Existing open source solutions are always behind the one provided by Sun.
Now the choice for Free software developers is “Do I switch to Java or do I continue to use the language I have been using?”
It is interesting that Sun’s main concern is fragmentation of the codebase. When you give people the right to redistribute the source, it is bound to happen; however, the worst-case scenario nightmare that opponents of Free software think of is not typical. There aren’t exactly hundreds of forks of the Linux kernel, for example. Everyone basically works off of the main branch of development. If someone wants to take Linux in a different direction, they are free to do so. Of course, if everyone is sticking with Linus’ original project, then the fork won’t exactly be a problem in terms of “fragmentation”. And with Free software, forks are free to merge back into the original project anyway. Contrast the situation with software under the BSD license, which would allow someone to fork a project without giving anything back.
Hackenslash had posted Is Linux Gaming Plausible?. It makes for a good read, although I felt it was light on details and didn’t provide much of a definitive answer.
However, a major disadvantage for Linux gamers is the availability of DirectX in Windows, a multimedia tool that allows developers to create applications easier for the Windows platform.
“Unless DirectX runs on a different platform, it (Linux game development) might not really take off,” Gotangco said, adding that Linux gaming and game development would most probably remain an “indie” or independent industry.
DirectX is a Windows technology, and as such it is platform-specific. I don’t see Microsoft opening up access to their API to other operating systems. Since some major games, notably Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004, have been ported to Gnu/Linux without the “advantage” of DirectX, it shows that Gnu/Linux game development is entirely possible and doable. Like DRM, DirectX isn’t a requirement for game development.
Multiplayer game servers are almost always provided for Gnu/Linux, and so the porting effort shouldn’t be too difficult for the client software. Unfortunately, when a developer uses a platform-specific tool such as DirectX, the porting effort becomes difficult. To create a version of the game that runs on a different system, you essentially have to gut your game code to remove the DirectX-specific parts and replace them with something available on a the target platform. Most developers will decide that the rewards would be too little to justify the expense of making such drastic changes to the code.
Still, I don’t believe that game development will be so dreary on Gnu/Linux.
A few Linux gamers actually have ways of circumventing the cross-platform issue of playing an enticing Windows game to Linux, without having to port it. One answer is just emulating the game for Linux. But according to Zak Slater, this isn’t an accepted industry and he said it is better for users to buy Linux versions or directly create Linux-native games.
I am 100% in agreement with Slater. I am not a fan of technologies like Wine or Cedega. It’s great when it works, but I would rather have native support for my platform of choice.
While the Linux gaming industry would not certainly be able become as big as traditional PC gaming, both Slater and Gotangco agree that Linux gaming is there to stay. They suggest that Linux game developer-hopefuls can get their Linux game fix from Icculus, Pompom Games (www.pompomgames.com), Tux Games (www.tuxgames.com), among others.
I’ll also note that the Torque Engine from GarageGames is both inexpensive and cross-platform, so games like Orbz and Dark Horizons: Lore can have native Linux-based clients right out of the box. With more indie games like those, I don’t think that we’ll have a problem if game development on Gnu/Linux remained an indie industry.
Also, using open source engines will probably become more common in commercial games. The infrastructure of a game isn’t the game, yet developers always spend a lot of time on recreating it. Using existing tools just makes sense, and using open source tools gives you a number of advantages, including the ability of your more technical customers to give you more than a simple bug report.
I believe that gaming on Gnu/Linux is definitely plausible. It’s very difficult to tell how many Gnu/Linux gamers there are since there are hardly any games available for them and they’ll likely pay for their games on the Windows system for lack of a better choice. They WANT native games for their preferred OS, and so far there aren’t many options.
The Canadian Music Creators Coalition is a group of Canadian musicians and artists who have gotten together to say that they aren’t being represented by the multinational record labels.
[L]obbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels’ control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels’ foreign parent companies.
If you look at the link that says what they stand for, you’ll find that #2 says the following:
Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
Artists do not support using digital locks to increase the labels’ control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music or laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures. The government should not blindly implement decade-old treaties designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers. Laws should protect artists and consumers, not restrictive technologies. Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.
Good on the Canadian musicians for taking a stand for themselves and their fans! And good on them for taking a stance against DRM. What customer actually wants technology that reduces the value of their purchase?
Also on the CMCC site is Steven Page’s A Barenaked Guide to Copyright Reform in PDF format.
Action noted that the new Indie Game Developer’s podcast is up. This time there is an interview with Joe Lieberman of VG Smart. Joe recently published the book The Indie Developer’s Guide to Selling Games, which I hope to receive in the mail today. The interview features some excellent marketing advice, something every indie serious about business should have.
Also, Action requests that if anyone has finished a game or two, he’d like to interview you! To find out how to contact him, check out the link above. Perhaps we’ll hear your voice in the near future.
I just learned that The Indie Developer’s Guide to Selling Games is available to purchase. It comes in both PDF and dead-tree formats. The table of contents indicates that it is really a marketing book, although marketing and sales do go hand-in-hand.
I already enjoy reading Joseph Lieberman’s blog, so I imagine that the book will be a good read, too.