Independent Games

So the Game Developers Conference (GDC, I may have mangled my de-acronymisation there) was on recently in California, and the game blogs have been buzzing about it. It sounds like it's the more mature thoughtful brother of E3, where all the biggest names in the games design business (guys like Will Wright and Warren Spector, if those names mean anything to you) get together talk about what they're working on, and lament the sad state of the video game industry today.

This has given the game blogs another opportunity to tackle their favorite subject: What can be done to stop the domination of the games industry by big stupid blockbusters like Halo, and make sure the little guy (most commonly exemplified by Katamari Damancy) can get published and find a niche market. I read this post on These Damned Machines are Killing Me and it touched off a few ideas in my head.

It's well known that the industry has grown massively in the last few years, and consequently the cost of developing a game now runs into the millions. This is providing a significant hurdle to smaller developers who have in mind games that may not appeal to the mainstream market. At the same time, we've also seen gaming as a medium break out of the geek ghetto and become accepted by a broader market. Every flat full of ruggers and munters has a PS2 with Grand Theft Auto. The broadening market goes hand in hand with the growth of the industry, and many games blogs bemoan this fact, as it means more games starring 50 Cent and fewer about the old school gamer's favorite sci-fi and fantasy settings.

I actually think the broader audience will end up working in the favour of those of us who aren't just interested in flasher graphics and more realistic breasts in our games. One thing I've noticed is that casual gamers aren't going to rush out and by the new console or the new GTA sequel immediately, they're more concerned with good gameplay than with the latest bells and whistles that the hardcore gamer crowd have traditionally beaten off to. Most gamers nowadays could care less about Doom3's super realistic graphics. They'd rather buy San Andreas (which looks pretty much the same as the original Grand Theft Auto that came out over two years ago). I hope that in the next few years we'll see developers cotton on to this fact, and instead of trying to make the hardware bleed more profusely with each sequel, they'll focus on developing gameplay and content, and license or re-use an older engine that has been already proven to work.

If you look around on sourceforge, there are numerous projects recreating game engines of long ago and allowing people to make their own games using them. (I've been considering starting work on one myself.) Maybe in a few years free or cheap engines will be decent and respectable enough for an independent games company to use one, produce a clever game (or at least a demo with which to market to a big company) without a huge investment and find a niche market, much the way independent films do today. Alien Hominid is an example of a successful game that did something similar to this just recently.

But then again, maybe I'm just an irredeemable optimist.