I love the indie industry so much. There’s so many hidden gems in that genre that it’s one of those things I appreciate isn’t exactly sought for by everyone. Make no mistake, I still love me some Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Halo, and all those major AAA titles. But looking at something like Minecraft and what it’s done alone is incredible. It’s amazing to see something succeed and is so simple, yet so intricate at the same time. We’ll come back to Minecraft later on, don’t worry.
The indie industry started out extremely small and compared to the rest of the gaming world it can maybe still be considered small. But over the years it’s been growing due to new advances in technology, games such as Minecraft, console platforms bringing indie games for digital distribution, and many more reasons. I’ve just started getting into indie games probably within the last couple years. I’ve seen how fast it’s grown and it’s very interesting comparing it to the mainstream game world. I would go even as far as saying I enjoy the indie games more now than the larger published titles out there. For those of you who don’t know about the indie industry. Indie games, in short, are like independent movies. They are not published by a large company (Such as EA), and are usually games made by a single developer, or a small team of people. Indie games are cheap, easily accessible, and are in almost all cases digitally distributed. The process of an indie game being developed is also different than if a AAA was being made.
I started looking into indie games actually probably about the time Minecraft was getting attention. It was still in its alpha stage and was in the process of what indie developers call “Alphafunding” and I believe it was one of the first games to start the alphafund craze. Alphafunding is genius. It’s one of the many reasons I love the indie genre. Alphafunding is releasing your alpha stage game to the public to buy. They sometimes have a demo but the alpha build is released to buy for a fraction of what the game would cost if it was released in its final version (Usually 20% ore more off). First of all indie games are pretty cheap as it is, so you’re getting the game even cheaper. Not only that but you have the game right then and there. No more payments needed, because part of alphafunding is that you get the rest of the game’s future updates for free, as well as the final build when it comes out. So for a recap, if I bought a game in alphafunding, I would get it at a reduced price…”Early” access to the game…all future updates free…and on top of that I wouldn’t have to buy the game when it was officially released. Well gee, that sounds like an amazing deal to me! Plus you can feel good because you’re supporting the developer DIRECTLY. No money being tossed away to useless things. You’re directly funding the game you just bought and supporting the game.
Regarding support, indie developers are awesome in the sense they have the freedom to be very involved with the community. They are usually always on top of their updates, they listen to their customers, and they are always grateful for people buying or even trying their game for feedback. You ever look at a AAA published game and see people trying to get their questions answered? In the indie industry if you PM a developer you’ll almost guaranteed be answered by the developer/team directly about any concerns you have. Overall the indie community is just more…polite and nice.
Once Minecraft came out with their “Buy alpha and get every update free after that” model. It blew up and caught fire. Notch, who was the main developer, made Minecraft by himself and just in the alpha build, sold over 800,000 copies at around 10 bucks. In short, he made millions in it’s alpha build. As of now, he’s made around 33 million in revenue, all the while not being behind a major publisher and his game being spread by word of mouth. The game is in its released state with over 16 million registered users Not only that but little did Notch know, he would have inspired many other indie developers to use his game to create their own. There are tons of Minecraft inspired games that have all been doing pretty well. Terraria, took Minecraft’s building/mining aspect, turned it 2D, and added monsters to fight, bosses to beat, and loot to….loot. It also gained much praise among the indie industry. Notch himself even praised the game and even used some ideas in his updates in Minecraft. You have indie developers trading ideas, and building on them, all the time. That’s what I love about this so much is you sometimes get the ideas of one developer, then have another use those ideas and build a whole new game on it that doesn’t feel the same. Everyone shares ideas, and everyone inspires one another. I look online at people still comparing Call of Duty and Battlefield and it makes me sick. Everyone’s fighting but in truth, no one has any idea of what they’re even fighting about. You look at the larger titles (Especially MMORPG’s), and all you see is “X, totally stole that idea from Y”.
Regarding ideas, I truly believe the indie industry is where all the great ideas are coming out. There is always something new, and always something innovated being put out. Even if it is something like Minecraft inspired? I’ll check it out because I know “Sure, it has blocks and randomly generated worlds, but I know that game is going to be totally unique”. There are no publishers to restrict developers creative juices and this means anything goes. They can do things on their own time, say what they want, and release the game how they please. Not only do great and unique ideas come out of indie games, but I also believe they create some of the most beautiful games. The indie genre really knows how to prove that video games can be another art form and another way to express someone’s thoughts and feelings. Dear Esther is a prime example of this. Its a story telling game that was released recently and it is probably one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen from a technical standpoint. Photorealistic graphics and incredibly designed landscapes truly make this game something to marvel at. Dear Esther also supports the art by being a purely story drive game. No monsters, no weapons, no levels, just you, your feelings, and the world.
Not only are indie games beautiful but going back to the uniqueness of indie games, there are always incredible ideas just waiting to be put into game form. A great example is a game I saw that was released today, called Mari0. Who would expect someone to think to develop a game where you play the original Super Mario Bros for the SNES, but add the Portal gun from Portal, customizable models, and 4 player co-op. Only in the world of indie games could you find that, and then be able to access it in a 5 second download for free.
Accessibility is another aspect that I love about indie games. They’re cheap which results in not having to pay $60 for a new game, yet can result in just as much, or more content. For example, a few years ago I bought a game called “Killing Floor”. It was a co-op zombie FPS and I played the hell out of that game. I have 148 hours logged on that game in Steam and I haven’t played that game in over a year and in that year they’ve still updated it with new weapons, levels, and characters. I don’t even want to know how much time I could have spent on that game. I paid $15 for that game. $15 for almost 150 hours of gameplay. I’d say that was worth my money. Indie games are also a lot smaller in memory size which means you can download a lot of them in a short amount of time and not have to leave your computer while it downloads that 10 Gig Dragon’s Age file. My computer is quite nice, and being custom built I can play pretty much everything on the market today. There are many people who cannot play video games just because they don’t have the money to afford a decent computer and that really suck. I’ve been there, and it sucks majorly. Indie games are, from a technical standpoint, usually a lot less intensive and many people can run them on their PC’s. It just goes to show graphics aren’t everything and I’ll always take gameplay over graphics.
The indie industry is growing, not only in size, but in exposure as well. More people are taking notice of indie developers and what they’re coming up with. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the main market and the games it’s putting out, as well as affecting how indie developers handle things. I insist everyone download Desura, a steam-like program but catered towards indie games, and alphafunding. It’s gaming heaven on there and everyone should check it out!
– M. Yee
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Elaborate?
Elaborate?
quality will suffer
quality will suffer