"Death to the Games Industry"

[HaemishM]

Try to create some hype for stuff that doesn't come from EA, et al.  Stop reiterating existing bullshit hype like: OMG, the next consoles are going to be better than PC's.  Actually try out some of the innovative ideas that do make it to the surface of our industry before you rant about how bloody awful they are.

You mean like this? Or maybe this? You couldn't be talking about this kind of game? Or maybe you meant this game instead.

We do. We are. But mainly we talk about the shit that interests us.

And get over this stupid, unfounded stereotype of "furiously masturbating game developers".  What basis does this prejudice have ...? 

MMOG's.

[StGabe]

Sure, you reviewed an Indy game or two.  You still shit on innovation in general when it reaches the forum, support the retail market, hype big publishers far more than indie games, etc.  Blaming this on, "an MMOG developer touched me in a bad place" doesn't accomplish much except to further a prejudice that is anti-innovation and pro-hype.  Especially when most indy games aren't MMOG's.

GarageGames is good and I never said it wasn't nor did I say that Costikyan is the only independent effort out there.  I do think his essay nails most of the essential issues facing indie developers though.  And I think that Costikyan understands better than a lot of others that the fundamental problem for indie gaming is that of getting exposure to the gamer audience -- competing with and displacing the publisher's marketing machines.  GarageGames needs more hype, more buzz, more interest, more money.  And that's stuff that is going to need support from consumers to happen.   Talent and desire to create good games that gamers will enjoy isn't the bottleneck. And access to good tools has essentially become a non-issue as well, there are a lot of good, free or very cheap development tools out there.

Gabe.

[Samwise]

I do my best to hype up any good indie game I find.  The problem is that the last several indie games I've found haven't been good, and I figure it doesn't really help the indie cause if I hype up bad games.

[Glazius]

Sure, you reviewed an Indy game or two.  You still shit on innovation in general when it reaches the forum,

This is because 90% of everything is crap, remember?

--GF

[HaemishM]

Sure, you reviewed an Indy game or two.  You still shit on innovation in general when it reaches the forum,

Innovation is the mother of all fuckups. Innovation is great when it works, it's total shit when it doesn't and it should be labeled as such. Horizons was innovative. The Virtual Boy was innovative. World War II Online was innovative. They were also total shit for games, unfun, buggy, a veritable black hole of suck from which no light can emerge. If a game doesn't touch me in the goonies in a good way, or worse, kicks me right in the chao sack when I try to play, it deserves all the scorn and derision I can heap on it. Consider it the forum version of the MMOG death penalty.

Meanwhile, Starport and A Tale in the Desert were both innovative and fun, and didn't make their users want to stab the developers with pointy sticks. And I have "hyped" both, in either reviews, my forum posts, or in my commentary articles. Mythic, who is still an indy developer, is a crew that I have constantly said should be emulated, at least from a business and design perspective. It's only been when they've muddled their game beyond belief, or tried to convince me Romans in Space and Warhammer of Camelot are the next big things that I've given them shit.

support the retail market,

Like most Americans, I shop on price. The retail market (EB) usually gives me the best price AND I get to trade in my old games for more money off. I win.

hype big publishers far more than indie games, etc. 

Yes, because articles like this, this, and this do so much to hype the big publishers.

Blaming this on, "an MMOG developer touched me in a bad place" doesn't accomplish much except to further a prejudice that is anti-innovation and pro-hype.  Especially when most indy games aren't MMOG's.

MMOG's are my thing. I like to muse about them because I think they hold the most business and design potential, and am utterly disgusted at how shittily developers have handled the implementation of them. See innovation above. I should still be playing and loving Shadowbane for the innovation it brought to the table, yet I'm still lamenting the fact that all that potential got pissed away on ego and hype.

I am also utterly disgusted at the way developers let publishers rape the industry. And I do believe that direct marketing to gamers and direct distribution is a better model than what we currently have. Which is what I said months ago that you disagreed with, apparently because I view many developers as furiously masturbating with phat publisher money instead of producing and distributing games on their own.

In essence, I'm agreeing with what you have said, only you told me that wouldn't work many times over the last few months. So color me surprised at your response to this article. I guess when the Escapist says it, it must mean something.

[Margalis]

GarageGames is good and I never said it wasn't nor did I say that Costikyan is the only independent effort out there.  I do think his essay nails most of the essential issues facing indie developers though.  And I think that Costikyan understands better than a lot of others that the fundamental problem for indie gaming is that of getting exposure to the gamer audience -- competing with and displacing the publisher's marketing machines. 

The number 1 problem is better games. Without great games this is all academic. Exposure for mediocre games does nothing.

[StGabe]

The retail market (EB) usually gives me the best price AND I get to trade in my old games for more money off. I win.

In my experience this is almost never true.  EB frequently marks up above the suggested retail.  Amazon.com often offers at below suggested retail.  And EB gives incredibly crappy prices for buying or selling used games.  If you want a good deal selling your old games or buying new ones you need to go to EBay.  On top of that, items are almost always in stock at Amazon or EBay. 

I've bought two games from Amazon at below suggested retail when EB still had a $5 premium on their copy (in one case) or were out of stock.  Over the past few months ago I've purchased a DS (used but in perfect condition) and 5 games from Ebay for $160 after shipping.  I was in a mall and asked the guys at EB what they wanted for one of these games and they offered me $5 (to put it back on the shelf at $20).  Ended up selling it to the guy next in line to me for $10 and saw it was worth 12-15 on EBay.  I believe I've only only purchased one game in the mall this year and that's just because I'm a weak-willed being who couldn't wait an extra couple of days for for AWDS.

Gabe.

[schild]

EBGames prices everything at exactly the retail value. Saying anything else is utter bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Also, making an extra $2-$5 is not worth the hassle that is Ebay. Time is money man, and Ebay is a black hole.

I'd still like you to show me where EBgames "frequently" marks up above MSRP. Because they don't.

By the way, thanks for learning how to use the quote function.

[StGabe]

I'd still like you to show me where EBgames "frequently" marks up above MSRP. Because they don't.

In every EB I've ever been to in West LA.  Example, Untold Legends.  I wanted to get that for my PSP three or four months ago.  It was sold out at every Best Buy I tried.  The only EB that I saw it in had it for $44.95.  "List Price" according to Amazon is and was $39.99.  And they were selling it for $36.95 (just checked my order history).

I frequently see DS/PSP titles in the EB's around me for $5-$10 above the "list price" according to Amazon.  At least in the period of a few weeks after a release.  By the time the prices drop they're sold out anyway.  That's being the other problem with EB's here.  They never fricking have any more decent games.  They have buttloads of all the crap releases but the good stuff always gets sold out and seemingly never restocked.  If I ask when "X" will be around I tend to get told vague bullshit like, "we might have that next Friday".  Gee, thanks.

Gabe.

[schild]

Ya know, I'm going to go out on a limb here and just flat out say you're insane. EB prices for new product are nationwide. I worked at EB shortly after the PSP launch and bought 8 of the PSP launch titles the day before the system came out. Untold Legends was $39.99. Also, you know exactly how the preorder business with EBgames works. If you don't preorder and/or spend a couple hundred a month there (in other words, they know who you are), they simply don't care. They get inventory off preorders. Also, 99% of the time, EBGames have stuff in stock. But the employees are holding copies for themselves. If there are copies in stock, the warehouse won't ship new copies to the stores. I'm not saying it's important to be special or known at your local game shop, but it helps if you want new releases and don't want the hassle of preordering.

Also, all the decent games are hidden for the customers they like - just like new releases as I mentioned above.

[StGabe]

You can call me insane all you like.  Doesn't change the fact that I ordered from Amazon exactly because the extra price at EB pissed me off.  I've changed my buying patterns in the last six months and there are two reasons for it:

1) Working in the gaming industry  it is a lot more apparent to me that the retail market is a bad thing.
2) I've consistently found I could get things cheaper online.

And fuck pre-orders with all that other marketing bullshit (love how you every time you even say hi to an EB employee you get a 15 second preamble of advertisements for whatever shit title they want you to pre-order).  I'm not hyped up to the point where I need to remember when release day is, give money a month in advanceor suck up to EB employees just to get a copy of something.

In LA, to actually get a decent price on something and know it will be in stock, I depend on Amazon and it works quite well for me.  And for the used market, EBay completely destroys the prices that EB or any other retailer offers.  Whether you are buying OR selling.

Gabe.

[schild]

You call it sucking up. I call it getting my way.

So, who do you work for "in the gaming industry?"

Yes, I'm baiting you.

[Margalis]

You guys did a great job of derailing this thread. EB may or may not charge $5 more for game...wow that's an exciting discussion!

If your local EB charges more, don't shop there. How did you guys turn this into multiple paragraphs?

[StGabe]

I call ordering from Amazon/EBay "getting my way for less money and less hassle". *smirk*

I've been lead programmer for two games with a company called Sennari.  www.sennari.com.  Starting work on a third game as we speak.

The company did some GBC, GBA and PS1 work and a GC title and now has moved on to mobile gaming and services.  If you've ever played a bowling game on a cell phone that's almost certainly ours (it was and probably still is the most popular mobile game in the US).  It's not the sexiest work in the world but I enjoy it and I get to meet a lot of interesting people.  It's a lot better than grad school was.

That satisfy you? :)

Gabe.

[schild]

You did better than Bruce. He worked on some MUDS I think. But I can explain why the folks who sell mobile phone games don't have high regard for EBGames employees. They think you're a joke. The kiddie table. And compared to Japan, the mobile phone game market in America IS the kiddie table.

That said, Margalis, the original stuff was and still is masturbatory bullshit - and as I said before I'd like to think some of it will happen, I'd like someone to put enough money towards making some of it happen...but will some of it happen? Probably not.



You mean that?

[Ironwood]

Schild, leave him alone.  I want him to answer Haemish's post more fully, rather than get pulled into a 'my job's better than your job' discussion...

[schild]

Schild, leave him alone.  I want him to answer Haemish's post more fully, rather than get pulled into a 'my job's better than your job' discussion...

This wasn't about my job, nitwit. It was 100% about the fact he said he was "in the industry" and I wanted to know where. Knowing where now I understood fully where most of his opinions on the game industry come from. You may or may not know, here in America the mobile phone sector is publically laughed at by the people who work at stores like EBGames, CompUSA, etc. The industry is doing well, and there's a huge future there. Unfortunately our cell phone networks don't support anywhere near what they'd need to (and our phones are pretty much universally shit) for some of the games that exist in the world today. I'm fairly certain there isn't a single phone from any American company that would run Crisis Core (the final fantasy mobile phone game) acceptably. But even then, it would take a hell of a game to really break the market wide open. It's a shame the NGage was such a terrible piece of shit. The idea was brilliant. Also, your average American gamer has a better way of playing games - a PSP, DS, GBA, whatever. There's no reason whatsoever to play games on a mobile phone. But if I lived in Japan or China or even S. Korea? Shit yeah I'd be playing mobile phone games. You couldn't pay me to carry around my precious portable systems. Too many people. There's a different mentality east of here towards portable gaming. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it's completely different in parts of Europe as well. But I can say this, it's a long hard road ahead of the cell phone game folks before they aren't considered tacky chintz and can actually compete with the double headed dragon of Sony and Nintendo for retail gaming market shelfspace. And this concludes my explanation as to why Gabe is such a staunch supporter of this "Death of the Industry" shit. Of course, I may be completely wrong about the quality of phones and phone networks in America, but I don't think I am. I KNOW for a fact exactly how the gaming retail industry treats the cell phone games sector: as if it had the plague.

Anyway... I wouldn't mind seeing Gabe respond to Haem either considering how definitive his post was. In other words, Haem is 100% right in what he's saying - particularly the opinion parts and that part about us not caring either way really about what happens to the mass market folks. I, for one, will stick up for the little guy nearly 99% of the time. But this current situation is that 1% where I'm not following a burning plane.

[StGabe]

Actually I've never had a conversation in a game store about my job.  I don't walk around with a sign on my back saying "mobile game programmer".  Also I didn't say that my games were to be sold in the US. So that has very little to do with my opinion of those stores.  Most of what has influenced me is working with and meeting people who have worked across all strata of the industry.  I've got to hear a lot of stories about working with publishers and the development process and the underlying theme is that retail/publishers fuck up games far more often than anyone else.  For the reasons I've mentioned already and more.

To discuss mobiles for a second:
Yes, there are different cultures mobile usage patterns and cultures in the US versus Asia or Europe (Europe is also far ahead of the US in terms of mobile usage .  It's incorrect, however, that there aren't mobile phones in the US which can't handle high-end games.  Treos and Blackberry's and other "smart" phones are certainly available here.  These guys have decent screens, decent memory, lots of storage space.  They do have really crappy control interfaces but they can do some decent high-end stuff -- there are already several 3d libraries for mobiles which do work on some if not all US phones.  It's more the problem that the carriers are still supporting the older phones and to get a game published/distributed by a carrier (necessary if you are going to reach more than a small % of the market) you need to guarantee that you can support most of their phones.  You can write a great game for a high-end phone but to actually sell it you're probably going to have to make it work on 128x128 or lower resolution.  For a lot of older phones the total game, including graphics and code, has to be below 64kb.  That's quite a hurdle to overcome while still keeping any fun gameplay.  Actually that's one thing I enjoy about the market.  It's fun to try and crank out a complete and fun game with those constraints.  As a coder I'm best at optimization-fu.

As far as the 99%:1% thing you have yet to say, schild, why you think Costikyan is wrong.  Not in his manifesto which is fun to read but sensational, but in his Escapist piece.  Personally I'm guessing it has more to do with me posting it than with any of the actual ideas in the post.

Gabe.

[HaemishM]

EBGames prices everything at exactly the retail value. Saying anything else is utter bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Also, making an extra $2-$5 is not worth the hassle that is Ebay. Time is money man, and Ebay is a black hole.

I'd still like you to show me where EBgames "frequently" marks up above MSRP. Because they don't.

By the way, thanks for learning how to use the quote function.

I don't know about other places, but generally speaking, in my area if there is a lower price on a game, that price is at EB. Occasionally other places like Wal-Mart or Best Buy will sell it for cheaper, but on the whole, EB is either at list or below. AND they have a ton of used games for less than list price, which the others do not have.

And for Ebay? Fuck that, convenience over the little amount of money you'd get on Ebay. It's just not worth it.

EDIT:

The next big MMOG company that will hit it like Mythic did? They'll finance it with the profit from mobile phone games. Maybe 5 years from now. The shit is extremely profitable compared to any other type of video game, because the budgets are just so fucking low.

The fact that the NGage got made at all shows that the Euro market (Nokia being a Euro company) is a bigger mobile phone game market than the US. That will change, but only when the carriers upgrade and the phones stop sucking ass. Oh and wireless net access on phone plans goes down in price.

The article in question is mental masturbation, about topics I've already covered. It's also in the Escapist, which makes me discredit it on general principle. Sure, some of it's probably right, but saying "Death to the retail market" is stupid. It isn't going away, ever. At least not until they can transport physical goods over the Net. So not in our lifetimes. The retail market will help keep the indy market afloat. Saying that indy games are automagically better (or more valuable) products because they are indy is high school stupidity. Everyone wants the same thing, to make money selling their game, the indy just chooses a harder road. So be it.

But come with the good fucking game or shut the fuck up.

[StGabe]

Haemish:

I do think we agree on some of the directions the industry needs to go.  I just think that we disagree on most of the details of why and how.  And that's why I faulted your past article.

Until consumers get more involved there isn't money to support an indie market.  It's impossible that the indie market can go overnight from bust to boom just because a few developers want it to.  Developers already want more control.  They are already working longer hours than they'd like for the wrong bosses and see their games get fucked up.  But they can't change that without money.  So the masturbation comments are moot and only piss off the people you should be trying to support if you want real change.

I believe I said back then that I agreed that retailers need to go away.  I just don't agree with the "why" of it.  It's not that retailers take a cut of the profits -- that in itself would be fine.  It is that they control the market and the direction of the market more than the people who actually have the know-how and they have a vested interest in continuing the Hype and avoiding innovation or change that might damage their business model.

Most of your angst in the past article was misplaced.  It was directed at the developers themselves when it is mostly the executive folk who fuck up the game.  Most of your complaints had to do with marketing or retail and having to sell games through people that judge games not on the gameplay but on things like: is it a good license, is it a good franchise, how pretty are the graphics and what's the feature list?  Almost none of your complaints actually were the result of intellectual masturbation. 

Your perception of Joe Developer was vastly different from my experience meeting developers from all segments of the industry and I said so.  You were ranting at and faulting the wrong people.  You were shitting on the very people who need your support if they are going to get any positive changes.  You were giving patronizing advice like, "learn some business" and "share some code", that had no insight into where developers actually are.  Developers (indie and not) already share copious amount of code and there are already very good free libraries available for most of what indies need to do.  There are lots of intense discussions in the indie field about how to market the games and if anything the problem is that developers know economics too well to start working on indie projects.  They know that until the market is actually supported by consumers, they won't be able to make a living there.  I'd love to do indie work myself but I'm also starting a family and my assets right now are dwarfed by grad school debt.  So until there is a market, my indie work will have to be reserved for a couple hours here and there when I get time after work.

We do agree on some things.  I just think you need to incorporate a view of where the developers are at into your mindset if you are really going to have anything useful to say about the issues.  You are asking developers to make all the changes and instantly serve up on a plate exactly what you want.  But until they start to see some reliable income from going indie there isn't a path to get there.  Market changes like that can only happen slowly and only with consumer support.

[StGabe]

Amazon is almost always cheaper (edit: and you can buy used games there).  EBay isn't that inconvenient.  Get a bidsniper program and just put a bid down in the morning, check in the evening to see if you won.  If money is your concern you won't find it cheaper to buy or get nearly as much money selling.

And the problem is really that we are stuck in a local minima.  There's no way out without possibly going through some inconvenience.  On the one hand you are asking developers to starve themselves to make you the games you want.  On the other hand you aren't even willing to wait a few days in shipping to get a game just to stop supporting a retail market that is bad for the industry.

Gabe.

[Pococurante]

It was directed at the developers themselves when it is mostly the executive folk who fuck up the game.

I fully agree with this and it's one of the reasons I'm more likely to refer to publishers rather than devs.  Being an hands-on IT architect myself it's rare when the implementors are the actual problem.

[HaemishM]

Developers who run their own shops, OR who work for the cocksniffers like EA, are the executive folk who fuck up the game.

[StGabe]

The %'age of developers who run their own shop is incredibly small, almost small enough to not even be considered.  And these companies tend to put out better stuff.  But even they have to go through retailers and sell the to the lowest common denominator.

For the developers who work to EA we are back to the same thing:  you want developers to starve themselves to make the games you want, but you yourself aren't willing yourself to take the slightest inconvenience in how you buy your games to support the market changes you want.  I'd love to do indie work.  It just isn't feasible for my life right now.  And so I make mobile games instead (not for EA, but there are executive types involved) which is still fun and pays my bills.  It's not ideal for you as a consumer and it's not ideal for me as a developer but that's the local minima that the market is stuck in right now.  Moving away from that is going to take action from both sides.  There are lots of developers who want more control over their games.  Lots -- and they have the tools they need and even the business savvy (many of them do anyway).  Consumers have to find a way to make sure that their money ends up in the pockets of these developers and not in the pockets of EA, et al.  We can't force consumers to give us money.  And we can't just start turning out brilliant games until we can afford to quit our day jobs, hire other talented people and just sit down and do the work.

Gabe.

[HaemishM]

Where have I said developers should starve themselves? Never.

Mobile phone games. Development companies banding together to self-publish (Skotos.net is an example of that) all of their individual company's titles. Think of how GOD Games was supposed to be, before the peen-measurement got in the way. I have never and will never advocate the starving artist method, because it's not going to work for most people. Psychochild is an exception.

But working for EA? That's a choice, and nobody has to do it. Starving would be a better alternative.

Developers don't have to have publishers to get their products in the retail market. But they do need power, and one development company can't do that alone. Or are you going to try to tell me that if Bioware, Creative Assembly and Mythic all got together and pitched their products to EB as a bundle deal that EB would tell them to fuck off? 6 indy developers combined into one entity would most certainly wield almost as much negotiating power as Blizzard.

Of course, I also believe the PC gaming market IS coming to a screeching halt at the retail level. But I think that can only be a good thing.

[Pococurante]

You and schild both.

 

[StGabe]

Remember: I work for a small start-up'ish company (we're not a startup but in many ways we're very similar) working in the mobile space after having tried to get good operating funds off of other low-budget endeavors such as GBA titles.

It's not really like you make it out to be.  The mobile space is already almost closed and had issues to begin with.  EA, et al, are moving in as quickly as possible. 

To really make money with a mobile game you need to somehow get yourself on the carrier "deck".  I.e. the list of applications and games that are listed in the phone menu itself.  To do that you need to sell your game to a carrier (i.e. sell the idea).  The carriers themselves are the equivalent of retailers.  Only much more restrictive.  The development for one version of a mobile game is pretty straight-forward.  Maybe a 2-5 months with a programmer and an artist working full-time.  But then you have to port it to at least 20-50 handsets, depending on the carrier, before they will even consider it.  Then you have to get your game through a lot of testing.  And all that assumes that the carrier was interested in talking to you in the first place. 

Some money was made early on.  Jamdat made a lot of money with Jamdat Bowling for example.  Enough to become a publisher for the mobile world and start emulating EA.  My company, well, I'd love to use us as an example but unfortunately I can't.  We'll see where we're at in 5 years.  If you look around, the net is littered with literally thousands of mobile titles, many of them quite good given the technology they are on.  Most of these won't make any money.  Of those that do, most had licenses (i.e. "ESPN's Golf Challenge") and had someone to wine and dine the carrier folk, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

There was a window for mobile gaming and people ARE still making money there.  But it's not what you make it out to be -- a place full of money for game developers to go play around in for a few years and fund what they really want to work on.

The PC market is a much better place for the revolution to occur.  It's a much more open platform.  If consumers can get interested, there is no need to deal with publishers, retailers, carriers, etc.  There are good tools to build high-production quality games that will run on the machines of most of your target audience.  Mobile will make some dev houses some money and some of them will go on to fund good games on their own.  With every innovation we get a few early adopters that come out of it all with enough funding to do what they want to do.  But these are the exceptions and not the rule.  And there certainly isn't the momentum required to make ditching the publisher model feasible for the vast majority of developers.

As for skotos: yes, banding together is good.  And we see that happening all over the place.  But it doesn't magically conjure the money required to get a product on the shelves in EB.  You can stop trying to give two-bit business advice about stuff that indies have already been trying for some time.  It's obviously not enough, alone, to change the market.

[Pococurante]

I thought it quite reasonable your employer presents themselves as an overarching retention partner rather than a mobile games publisher.

I'm even more skeptical cell phone-based games are a huge market than I am Haem's & schild's insistence that consoles will edge out PC games to the status Mac owners "enjoy" currently.  Ring tones, obviously.  Convergence of phone and mp3 player, again obviously.  Convergence of phone and still/video camera, obviously.

But not games.  Form factor matters - people are getting larger, not smaller.  Particularly in the Asian markets.  Being comfortably middle-class has that effect.

Cell phone game hype is all too familiar to me as the b2b hype of six years ago.

Now handheld game devices are another story.  I do think that's as positively inevitable as the convergence examples I already gave.

[HaemishM]

As for skotos: yes, banding together is good.  And we see that happening all over the place.  But it doesn't magically conjure the money required to get a product on the shelves in EB.

You seem to think that I believe all of these things will happen magically and without any effort on the part of the developer, or that it will somehow turn the market into some grand socialist utopian scheme where every quality product makes money and all shit is destroyed. I don't. That's a ridiculous notion. You also seem to believe the same thing will happen with your idea. It won't.

The retail market won't go away and no one should want it to. Hell, despite my intense hatred for all things EA, I really don't want them to go down in a flaming pile of shit. Well, maybe them, but not all publishers. The industry needs that big money from the mass market to keep vital. Those pub houses and the retail market are GATEWAYS. They get people into the hobby, just like WoW brings people into MMOG's despite being the shallow and derivative.

The people who really want to game stay for better games, games they won't get from EA. They move on to buy Bioware games, to search the web for better, more in-depth RTS's than Starcraft, for more interesting role-playing than Diablo. The indy houses can be there to fill that need. But with the vast majority of the mass market, those indy games will never click, and that's ok.

An indy developer needs to reconcile himself with the idea that he'll never make more money (or as much money) as mass market products like Madden 20xx, but that he can live profitably and well making his own brand of decent games.

As for the mobile games, I didn't say that there was boatloads of money just sitting out there to be made. I said there was profit to be made. Profit = business stays afloat and gets to expand. There isn't some magical bees that bring money from the magical bee hive. There's working for a few years on multiple (hopefully profitable) mobile games to fund something a bit larger, using some of the same techniques Mythic used on DAoC to make a better quality title on the cheap. Modular, licensed software, perhaps some shared assets, maybe even a consistent brand or an upgrade of an earlier game system.

Nobody is going to hit the lottery in the indy market unless they get bought by the mass market. Trying to all be the Amazon's of the game industry will get you on the shitpile fast. But just like MMOG's, you don't have to be the biggest to be a happy developer. And you don't have to take some "FIGHT DA POWA!" high school wank attitude in order to do it.

As for PC vs. Console, PC games and developers would be better off focusing their efforts on the Internet as opposed to the retail chains anyway.

[StGabe]

Uhhh.....thanks for putting a lot of words into my mouth?

I have been saying all along that developers and consumers need to meet halfway.  It can't happen if only one side is willing to try new stuff.  I absolutely agree that indie development will have to be niched and while I preach the abolition of retail I don't expect it to completely disappear.  Not for a while anyway.  Retail is bad for the quality of the market but it's a crutch that many people are unwilling to give up.  Retail and publishers will have to be circumvented more and more though, both by developers and consumers, if we are to get a significant indy market going.

And I absolutely disagree with the ease you assign to making money with some small project to fund the rest of your stuff.  And I'm in a pretty good position to know.  Mobile gaming, by and large, is NOT profitable.  Most people who go into it won't make a lot or any money.  Those who do will be exceptions, not the rule.  It's already a little late.  Most of the early-entrant profit has already been made and the market is looking more and more like the console market every day.  I would recommend going into PC shareware with casual titles myself.  The market is bigger and more open right now (more casual gamers actually playing on PC's as well as no need to work through the carriers), if not still quite hard to make a buck on. 

Gabe.

[HaemishM]

The console market is more profitable than the PC gaming market. Someone who wanted to make a big splash PC wise would be better served making a budget console game than a PC shareware game, if the mobile market isn't profitable.

Longtime PC game developers have shifted focus to console games (or simultaneous development of PC/console versions) because it is more profitable. Making a niche shareware title would be a bad idea, IMO.

[StGabe]

The console market is more profitable than the PC gaming market. Someone who wanted to make a big splash PC wise would be better served making a budget console game than a PC shareware game, if the mobile market isn't profitable.

That doesn't follow.  You are talking about the "average" title.  I am talking about casual, low-budget titles which have a larger PC market and are easier to do on a budget.  The idea of a "budget" title itself is very different between the two markets.

To be most clear, I am talking about exploiting the 35+ year old housewife dominated market of casual gamers.  How many 35 year old housewives have XBox's?

In short, I think you need to leave the business planning to people who have a lot more experience in the industry and get over yourself and the notion that all developers are stupid and you inherently know better.  Almost every idea you mention is being and has been tried dozens of timers over.  The market hasn't magically become what you want.  Ok, where do we go from there?

Gabe.

[Merusk]

You're not going to change consumers. They're not going to meet you halfway.  Ever.  You have to sell to them, entice them, explain to them and educate them. You have drag them to you if you're not going to go to where they're at.  That's the way it is for every person trying to break in to every single established market out there.

 Indys need to make the large corps work against themselves by working at tighter profits, tighter payrolls, tighter resources.  My divison at work is being closed down not because we can't make money, but because we can't make ENOUGH money.  We're publicly traded and need to show 15-20% Profit after overhead, minimum.  Private builders around here work at 10% maybe 15% doing the exact same stuff. They're booming, we're closing our doors and going someplace else.

[Shockeye]

You're not going to change consumers. They're not going to meet you halfway.  Ever.  You have to sell to them, entice them, explain to them and educate them. You have drag them to you if you're not going to go to where they're at.  That's the way it is for every person trying to break in to every single established market out there.

Bingo. Merusk gets a cookie.

[Pococurante]

We're publicly traded and need to show 15-20% Profit after overhead, minimum.  Private builders around here work at 10% maybe 15% doing the exact same stuff.

One of the more sad things about the dot bomb era is how many people refused to build a business the old fashioned way and stay private as long as possible.  I've learned to steer clear regardless of sector of any business that whose controllers' sole business approach is acquisition and cashout.  The folks who benefit from that approach are a very small (and usually unethical) number and the employees are almost never see the reward for their work.

Best kind of company is run by some crusty guy/gal who doesn't believe in stock/options and instead emphasizes end of year bonuses.