Indie Games Summit (Day 1)

Take-Aways
- San Francisco is sometimes foggy...which might just delay your flight!
- Don't make the technical a road to making your game, use the technical as the game
- You're not a brand leader, so be a brand challenger
- Web Games will displace consoles as the primary way games are played
- Contract work may not be glamorous, but it doesn't just create funds, it builds experience you can use
- If you release the demo a few weeks after releasing the game you can control the response to the game to those who are more dedicated to it

Sessions
Scattershots of Play - Potential of Indie Games
Evolving Aquaria
The Game Attorney Indie Edition
Highlights - Unfortunately my flight was delayed into SF due to fog, so instead of missing maybe one-half of one session I missed all of the first three sessions.  It's tempered by the fact that I got to play Zelda: Phantom Hourglass in the airport for several hours.  From what I hear the first few sessions were pretty good, though I was told by several people that the first session struggled a bit to find a voice - or in Jon Mak's words "It sucked."

Unique Knobs for Indie Games - Raigan Burns
Highlights - Raigan suggested that we aren't using the technology enough in making our creative ideas about the games we make.  In short he suggested that technical should be the basis of the game, not a tool to put content into the game.  Several examples were used to explain the point, beginning with the Beatles who made a transformation over the years from just making the music and letting someone else produce and mix it, to mixing and producing it themselves.  In the later stages they explored more how to create sounds and do things that were novel and unique and the music was strengthened because of it.  Further examples included games such as Facade, Gish and his own N.  Everyday Shooter was used as a lengthy example of how the graphic generation system was made into the game instead of being sort of a window dressing in the background of a game. (my full session notes)
Random Musings - Raigan talked about how many of his favorite games are focused on a gameplay that has been the focus of the programming (and has evolved over time).  I left wishing there were more Raigan's in the world, as I agree that it makes some interesting and unique games, but I don't think there are enough buyers to keep people going down that path. (would love to be proved wrong on that btw...)

Spreading Your Message as an Indie Developer - Vicky Arundel
Highlights - Introversion has become quite well known in the games industry despite having a small team (8 people) and having released just 3 games. Vicky focused on understanding that Indies are not brand leaders and should act like brand challengers (like Virgin and Apple).  She suggested doing things with gusto, being personable, building up a community and going directly to reviewers.  Mentioned was the fact that they had gone directly to the reviewers of their games, sending swag and 'taking them out for drinks.'  They found a key ally in the press that helped them become more well known. (my full session notes)
Random Musings - For a company that has become known for their brash behavior, the session was amazingly business-like and sedate.  I was disappointed to hear among all the brand discussions that Introversion only recently (last year) put together there Brand Ethos.  Introversion is an amazing story of reaching awareness.  Obviously they have good games, but they did go directly after the press and were successful.  Though it may not be repeatable, I was sorry we didn't get to hear more about how they got their message spread at the beginning.  A nice touch during the slides was that everything was in lower case, which follows their game titles and website.  That unity in communication was really a great message within a message.

The Web Game Renaissance
- Joseph Lieberman, Chris Hughes, Chris Pasley, Josh Williams
Highlights - This was a panel and so it had interesting pieces in bits.  Some of those bits included some hard numbers thanks to ArcadeTown.  Joseph stated that a web game play is worth about .0025.  Further he said they pay $500-$6000 to sponsor a game and they sponsor about 4 a month.  To earn $5000 off of a game it would need around 750,000 plays, which is no small number, but one that he felt could be worked up to by any developer overtime.  The group all questioned the ability of Instant Action to deliver to customers due to it being site-locked and requiring an additional plug-in download.  GarageGames CTO Josh Williams predicted the future stating that not likely this generation, but perhaps after that the web would become the way we all play games and that consoles wouldn't continue the way that we currently think of them.
Random Musings - Lots of great numbers and I love the bold thought of GarageGames, of course if they didn't believe that they'd be making a terrible choice to do a web console.  In order for web games to replace the console, you'd have to be able to play them on your TV, I expect that will come over time, but it is a major obstacle.  Notably GG also said that 80% of an Instant Action game would be free (referring to Marble Blast) and that they would sell levels at $2 a piece.  I think the percentage of buyers would make it successful, the only key is the volume of traffic, which is far more difficult to get than it is to think you can get it. Still, I felt pretty positive about the GG approach from listening to Josh, it's certainly a brave and unique turn on the market. (my full session notes)

Contracting vs. Indie: the Showdown - Brent Fox & Steve Taylor
Highlights - They began by taking opposite sides in trash talking each other and their respective approaches (Indie vs Contracting) and then went back to some slides to ensure that everyone captured all the key information.  Mentioned as key reasons for doing Indie work were IP control, long-term financial benefits, creative control, being part of the indie community and the excitement of it all.  On the contract side the benefits included up-front money, additional experience that can be used on your own projects, the ability to work on bigger games than you can typically fund yourself, and using the expertise and marketing departments of larger companies to get your games (and name) in front of more people.  Negatives on indie were really the uncertainty in money, while the biggest negative on contract work, besides losing control, was the onerous contract itself. (my full session notes)
Random Musings - This was easily the most entertaining session of the day with lots of humor and 'your mom said' jokes thrown in to lighten things up.  I thought that the balance that Ninja Bee strikes between games they do like Outpost Kaloki, with their contract work, made a lot of sense.  Clearly they are gaining knowledge regardless of the game is valuable...perhaps something that Indies should consider when pondering the benefits of casual games.

Postmoretem: Pixeljunk Series - Dylan Cuthbert
Highlights - Dylan talked about leaving Sony to work on smaller games as he felt that we were under using the power that HD gives to 2D graphics.  His vision has been to create a series of game (Pixeljunk is a series by Q games) that would focus on quick pick-up and play gameplay mixed with graphics that would be full 1080P and 60 fps.
Random Musings - My laptop battery died during this session, so I wasn't able to take any additional notes, but I found it interesting to see nonetheless. The games were all intended to be 6 months or less in length, but they appear to be taking longer and longer with each game, I don't know if that is true, and unfortunately didn't ask at the end of the session.  As well, he showed the next game, which appeared to be a swinging based game, with psychedelic graphics, something like Wik meets Flow if you can imagine that.  I'd be surprised to see it sell well, there just aren't enough Raigan's in the world.
 

My Full Notes in the raw (for those who skipped class)
====== Unique Knobs for Indie Games ======
Raigan

- Don't agree with my own talk...but hopefully will create discussion.
- Idea - Making your own games isn't bad (as it's been ghettoized around the net)

We're not into programming...programming is a tool for expression.

This talk is about implementing things your self, not b/c it is better, but b/c it gives you the ability to tweak it

Beatles Progression > not mixing to doing mixing...learned how to tweak things to accomplish their creative ideas...had to learn a bit of the technical to see what could or couldn't be done

Home Made Tech: Less powerful, less reusable, more 'flava'

Foundation > Game Systems > Content
Can make a great game at different levels, but his thought is that we can make more cool games through the modification of the rules/systems of the game world

Games = Rules
Work like knobs, but they are sending on their information to interesting systems behind the knobs

If you make your own technologies, you have your own rules, and the games end up somewhat different

While most games have some custom code, few games make those inventive technologies the core of a game;

More interesting? to base the whole game on an interesting technique or algorithm

Games should work more on creating algorithms than data, more R&D than Prototyping (b/c prototyping assumes that the technologies are done...it's a known solution to the problem

Experimentation with tech is a creative avenue well-suited to games - b/c software is maleable, game tech can become more than just a tool to present audio/visual content (every other medium can produce quality content)

Allows for trying out weird things...which is easier for small groups than large teams

The 'lame' business whys
- one of a kind tech is a talking point...will keep you from becoming obsolete in a short of period of time
- Example: Loco Roco and COD3 shipped at the same time...which are you still playing (strange proof point)

Examples
- Everyday Shooter - Procedural graphic system - changes w/ variables of the game (Quake 3 had similar technology, Jon made it the focus of the game) - use it to be unique
-

Conclusion - ? - Make the tech the game instead of a way to put things into the game...more likely to create a unique game that Raigan might be interested in...

Believes that N is good b/c of the way that collision detection was engineered

====== Spreading Your Message as an Indie Developer ======
Vicky Arundel

Small team - 8 people - met at university - got together + added a sister (Vicky) and a father (Shipping)

Competition - Hard to do so from graphics, Introversion do so with music + unique ideas

Talk about how to compete in branding
- Need to think of selves as brand challengers in order to be successful
- Brand (a promise, a collection of perceptions in customers mind, a valuable asset - "at end of the day it is all about sales, that is why we are building a brand")

Brand Leaders
- successful b/c they are sheep - try to make products that the customer wants

Brand Challengers
- desires exceed their resources, behind the brand leaders b/c behind in marketshare
- instead of following the customers, they invite the customers to follow them, often do so by appealing to emotions - often very passionate and emotional
- often rely on publicity stunts in order to get noticed
- Often have fun with their statements from their mission statement to their brand identity (not stuffy/businessy)

How to build a brand
- develop a brand personality (notably all the slides are using lower for all words...which matches all of what their company does...) Need to decide who you are (notably again...that they didn't do this for Introversion until last year...better late than never?)
- build brand awareness w/good communication (communicate who your employees are - w/hope of getting like-minded people [ they have hired 3 people from their forums],

Press
-- send out copies, inform people, understand their deadlines, single point of content, create exgtra stuff and send out game copies to reviewers with something extra and special that will make you stand out
-- be honest, tell stories about your past
-- build up a personal interaction (take people out for beer?)

Customer
-- Say who you are , not just what you sell - building a community of people who will talk about you
--  suggested putting personal videos up on the website to build up relationship with your customers and to help improve the community

Why bother w/Branding? - it's all about sales -

====== The Web Game Renaissance ======
GarageGames - Instant Action - Josh
Kongregate
flashgamelicense.com - flash brokering
ArcadeTown - Joseph Liberman - advertising & sponsoring for flash games

Success
- Feudalism - 21 million plays (can count on .0025/user page view) pay 500-6000 per game

$5000 - 750,000 visitors to make 5K off of advertising (give or take)
- obviously that would take some work if you are trying to do it on your own, but it is doable...if you have several good games (counter-point > it takes time to get the money and traffic, so it is often better to get paid up-front than to wait for 10 years down the line to make some cash)

Instant Action > 80% of the same Marble Blast game from XBLA is going to be free on Instant Action, will be selling level packs for a few dollars a piece to make the money back (will have to sell a lot of levels to pay for the 250k-1,000,000 funding that was mentioned)

Audiences
Kongregate - Males 18-34 - looking for higher quality flash games
ArcadeTown - short simple sweet, broad range 45% male, 18-45, key is to look for games that are cute (girls play and guys play with the door closed)
InstantAction - important to connect the developer with the player > gives more feedback

Interaction
Kongregate and IA both believe it is good to make connections with the developers and users, ArcadeTown strongly disagreed, stating that mostly it is static, not useful, and that the users are not savvy

Techonolgy - any hope beyond Flash?
Kongregate - 98% flash...we want to support more, but most people don't have plugins
FGL - adoption rate is just too low
AT - would have to be a phenomenal game to make people use the plug-in
IA - absolutely will be some other technologies in the future (Unity is a great up and comer) - IA - has a 200kb plug-in, with no separate installs for any game in the future - it is specific to IA, it doesn't go cross internet...yet

3-5 Years - Future of Webgames?
Kongregate - It's own medium, not an alternative, but a destination
FGL - Larger spectrum of game depth
AT - Larger global market :: games are free, don't have to pay for them - market grows as quality and awareness improves - market explosion!
IA - Revolution! We're still in the infancy, many of the big studios still have to react...everyone will come to the web, consoles will continue through this and the next generation, but I don't believe they'll continue as they do today

====== Contracting vs. Indie: the Showdown ======
Indie Projects (Steve) vs Work for Hire (Brent)

Indie developer - salary / cost of living = hobo

Indie - long-term financial benefits > own the IP, trading the up-front cash for more cash on the backend, hold onto your ideas, avoid the legal pitfalls (non-competes, late penalties, cancellations), on indie on the same page

Contract work - Indies don't create money, contract is safer, gives you lots of diversity, gives experience to the team, can explore things on other platforms

Survival
Indie - can put people on the project in downtime, can adapt the schedule as needed, more efficient to get the project started and less milestone dealing
Contract - provide the resources to create the huge indie game that is in your head, don't have to worry about marketing/distribution, plus they spread your name and reputation
Indie - we are in charge of our own reputation, instead of becoming the horse for someone else > ultimately responsible for how game does ourselves

Pluses of Doing Indie
- it's exciting
- Own IP, more long-term money
- can creatively do your own thing
- smaller games :(

However, you can't forget about your employees who need money
- Finding money for indie work is hard (you need to pay for salaries and insurance)
- Contracts take time
- Often adversaries with client
- Sign over tech and ideas
- Slow and painful
- get technology and experience growth - on someone else's dime
- more opportunities to survive if project doesn't sell?
- Bigger budgets with bigger games
- Lots of resources > QA/ Usability/ Help / Marketing/ contacts
- They take the risks
- More people play the game :)

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Monday February 18, 2008