Go Write A Novel
Jeff Vogel wrote this post which basically describes for me the nightmare scenario of making games for the lowest common denominator – the portal. Basically, I think it’s tough to sell a casual game without being on a portal, and now, it’s difficult to make any money even if you get on the portals because they’re selling your game for far less than it’s worth. You CAN’T BUY A PAPERBACK BOOK for less than the portals are charging for games these days. Hell, a paperback book is generally a dollar MORE than what they’re charging. Go write a novel. You’ll probably make more money than you would if you sold your game through a portal.
Some Clarification
I had at least one friend who is pretty much an iPhone developer ask me if they qualified as “Real” since they had to go through Apple in order to sell. I told him I figured he’s real indie because he’s as close as he can get to the customer and doesn’t have very many limitations on what he’s allowed to try to sell. Sure, it’s not as wide open as PC development, but it’s pretty damn close.
I really don’t know how far I can carry this “Real” indie thing, anyway. I’m more interested in discussing direct to consumer issues than whether or not someone fits into a bucket.
What’s A Real Indie?
I guess I better define what I mean by a “Real” Indie.
A “Real” indie, by my definition, is someone who makes their own games, and get’s the vast majority of their income for their products directly from the buyer, and not as a royalty from a publishing house or portal or other entity. Someone who isn’t limited in what they create by the editorial limits of the channel they’re publishing through.
You could argue that everyone is limited by their customers, but that is really only a personal limitation, and a problem successful developers have. If you are trying to get your games on a portal, the genres and styles of games they will take are limited to what they think they can sell, which is an external limitation, and is something “Real” indies try to avoid.
It may sound like I have something against independant development studios that publish through major channels, but I don’t, really. I just am not that interested in what they have to say as, at least the business portion of it doesn’t pertain to my business (such as it is). I’m not interested in creating a big team, or making casual games, or fitting a perception.
I, and others like me, want to make the games we want to make and sell them directly to customers and build relationships with those customers if we can. We’re not interested in growing teams or making hits for the sake of making hits or any of the other crap.
And with that said, a list of my heroes.
The First Post!
What the hell, you say? Another Indie Game Developer blogging about some random crap that doesn’t really make much sense? Yeah, well… YEAH. I’m sick and tired of the public places I go to get my daily indie game development fix. Places where the main desire seems to be “how to I make a game that sells on portals so I can get rich?”. Places where the average age seems to be 12 (not that that’s a bad age to be, just that as I’m nearing “Really Fucking Old”, I’m just not that excited about some new development trick. All I want to do is make great games that I want to play, and sell them to as many people as will buy them, and I want to do it on my own terms. And I want to talk about it with like-minded people.
If you are one of those people that make, or are going to make games with the intention of selling them on portals, you’re welcome to read along, of course. Obviously, there are some people that just like making those types of games. It’s not my bag, and this isn’t the place where you’ll find information on how to do it.
Anyway, welcome, and I hope we can turn IndieGameDev.com into the place to be for “real” indies.