Our Indie Experiment - MadMinute Games 62
baby arm writes "MadMinute Games' Norb Timpko has contributed the first installment in a series on independent game developers. He describes the balancing act required to get a game like Take Command: 2nd Manassas out the door while still having families and day jobs."
Indie principles rule (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Indie principles rule (Score:1)
I'm sorry, that was horrible
Re:Indie principles rule (Score:1)
Re:Indie principles rule (Score:2)
That's not strictly true as the article says that Mad Minute Games was able to pay both men involved a salary while using volunteers for a lot of the work (didn't Ultima Online get into a lot of trouble for using volunteers?). I suspect they wouldn't be doing it if they weren't getting a return. But yeah, more power to the indies.
This is a tough business (Score:5, Insightful)
Remote Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]
Re:This is a tough business (Score:3, Informative)
You're right that it is a gamble though. Your game may be a hit or a total flop. However ther
Re:This is a tough business (Score:3, Interesting)
Remote Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]
Re:This is a tough business (Score:2)
I think that we do compete with the $10M projects, and very directly so. After all, we produce "entertainment," so we're already in competition with movies, restaurants, and fun gadgets for consumers' money. The potential customer doesn't separate indie games out from the AAA titles as much as we'd like. Their money is (presumably) finite, so their purchase of one game means that they're less likely to purchase another, regardless of who created it.
We're not afte
Re:This is a tough business (Score:2)
The trick is to have a unique selling point that draws people. For a "casual" game, that usually means having a more streamlined experience and a lower price point. If a person can jump into a game
Buy the game, it's terrific (Score:5, Interesting)
And no, I do not work for the company. I hadn't heard of them until about a month ago.
Indie.. (Score:1)
A philosophy I agree with, and sounds like a fun way to do things. Especially if you like to be your own boss.
I suck (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll get modded down, I'll get replies asking "if I don't have better games, I better shut my mouth" or how bashing is nor productive and how many work went into this game.
But this is why the gaming industry is so tough nowadays. While all developers are small teams of talented boys and girls fascinated with technology, big budgets quickly up the ante and spoil it for everyone.
Indie games have to differentiate and separate themselves from the general games market and stress on different values, like gameplay, originality and fun (is Wii the Indie dev dream console?).
If they fight within the big market, too many people will stare at the low res textures on the avatars and sigh.
Re:I suck (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I suck (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe that is in Nintendo's plan. I hear the dev kit is $2000 (although it may be difficult to get one right now). Obviously, that is more than it costs to get started on PC ($0; assuming you already have the hardware in both cases), but it is cheaper than most consoles. Nintendo is offering easy XBox Live Arcade-style distribution of games via their Virtual Console feature. Actually, on that topic, how has XBLA been for indie developers?
Re:I suck (Score:2)
Re:I suck (Score:1)
HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:5, Insightful)
Please read and re-read that. It is this kind of motivation that is missing in a GOOD CHUNK of our K-12 education and I think it has a A LOT to do with why a lot of kids are not interested in "core" courses.
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here. But better give it up, educators world-wide believe you gotta stuff "knowledge" in the kids head against their will, or they will turn into little vegetables.
A lot of the stuff you learn in school isn't even useful, a lot isn't useful for the particular student (for example vectors are a must
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2, Insightful)
And when you're writing music, you still have
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the regular excuse, but it doesn't re
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
I will assume you meant to say taught instead of thought and reply that it depends on the _teacher_.
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
Open the student's books or the program voted by the appropriate institutions for the education framework. Does it have stuff like "question everything"?
Unless you plant a clones of that idealistic sample of a teacher in every school, this pathetic thought is just that: a pathetic thought.
What's described in the documents is just a set of facts and sphere's of science and knowle
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
Oh, except for science curicula where memorizing physical laws and their names are very important to learning the language.
That's the problem. You don't give someone a list of laws and says "they're useful, learn them". That doesn't work, it's wrong, and encourages the wrong idea on students.
Instead give them a nicely layed out booklet or a page with the formulas, explain how they work, and ask them, using this booklet to solve problems.
The learning of the laws by heart will come naturally as
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:1, Offtopic)
Aaand... ignore the typo/s/ (not a native speaker)
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:1)
wow. that sounds exactly like the regents (NYS standardized public school test)
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
Good for NYS. I keep fooling myself that other stuff than NYS or even USA exists, but that could be just my imagination.
Vectors ARE Useful in Music (Score:1)
for example vectors are a must for 3D graphics, but quite not for a music composer
Vectors aren't used in Rock and Roll, perhaps, but if a student actually spends a few semesters studying music theory, and post-tonal theory, they will discover that mathematical concepts such as vectors are commonplace. In post-tonal theory, Inter
Re:Vectors ARE Useful in Music (Score:2)
I'll be rude, if you're easily offended please don't read any further.
FOR FUCK'S SAKE DON'T TURN THE LAST REMNANTS OF WHAT IS ART LEFT, INTO FUCKING SCIENCE.
I think the brain of a great composer does a l
Re:Or not (Score:1)
1 a Corp agrees to sponsor a school
the corp gets
a possible new workers
b a nice chunky tax deduction
c a group of very heavily regulated workers (little jobs that have a huge "play factor")
the school gets
a funding
Re:Or not (Score:2)
Sorry, I'm not buy that. No, seriously, a tax deduction is me (a taxpayer) paying someone else to do something the government want's to have happen. I may as well pay for the work and prevent the corporation play nanny. For-profit institutions are not exactly the bastions of moralilty.
Also, workers who don't do much work, and can't be channeled and refined into performing specific repeptitve tasks, just aren't efficient.
Finally, you can't pay [kids these days] enough to keep
Employer-funded education the way of the future? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I don't have high expectations for civil servants in general, but I can't escape the conclusion that teachers are set up to fail. The ones I know work far more hours than any of their governmental supervisors. Given that the vast majori
Re:Employer-funded education the way of the future (Score:2)
So basically, you want to bring back serfdom [wikipedia.org], with the difference that instead of being tied to a patch of land you'd be tied to a corporation. And, of course, the empl
Re:Employer-funded education the way of the future (Score:1)
In California, a large part of educational spending goes to the teacher's union, and to the cost of negotiating with the union, rather than to the teachers themselves or to the cost of books and supplies.
Tenure, meanwhile, promotes freedom of expression and thought at the expense of the freedom to hire and fire teachers based on performance. One major lesson being learned by students to
Re:Employer-funded education the way of the future (Score:3, Informative)
What you're describing isn't something new; it's called indentured servitude [wikipedia.org] and it was a common form of employment in colonial North America. As we've become more attentive to the rights of the laborer, this and other forms of slavery (and being legally bound to a c
Re:Employer-funded education the way of the future (Score:1)
Frankly, without my initial, cynical wording, it really wouldn't be indentured servitude, at least not in the very-nearly-slavery sense. Rather, it would be the exchange of labor for education, at the end of which the worker would have both training and experience, two things an entry-level worker would benefit from having.
BTW,
Re:HELLO US EDUCATORS (Score:2)
Why waste time? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why waste time? (Score:1)
Re:Why waste time? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Why waste time? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've wanted to write my own game for YEARS. But that dream is only a dream. I like the planning, I like the thought of having my own game and doing what I want with it, but the reality isn't nearly so rosy.
As soon as your project gains even a little fan-base, you've suddenly got a group of people telling you:
A) Your game sucks because it's not (insert reason/other-game-name)
B) Your game needs to do this. Yesterday.
C) They hate you because you don't listen to them on YOUR game.
D) Everything is peachy and wonderful and they have nothing to say, really, except they want to waste your time and if you don't respond, they turn into C.
This is, of course, assuming you work alone. If you work FOR someone, or WITH someone, you've gained at least half a boss.
Life in game-dev land is NOT ALL ROSES.
Add in the fact that the average career of a game dev is 5 years and you've got a recipe for disaster.
More power to the game devs that make all the games I love playing, but I no longer want to be one of them. I'd much rather pay whatever I have to and just have FUN playing them games. Ultimately, they come up with more ideas that my single brain could ever create anyhow.
Re:Why waste time? (Score:1)
No need to write an MMO game, or even write a game at all. It just makes me angry and sad to think of all the effort that is being wasted trying to get the +5 Sword of Futility or the +11 Shield of Pointlessness by people who are surely smart enough to do something useful with the time.
It is often argued that MMO games are little different to other forms of entertainment. Perhaps time spent playing WoW would otherwise
Re:Why waste time? (Score:1, Insightful)
Pfft. I spend all day long doing something productive at work - writing code, fixing PCs, toubleshooting network issues, talking with clients... When I finally get home in the evening I've got more productive stuff to do - clean the house, mow the lawn, feed the pets
love the game! (Score:1)