Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2001, Sir-Tech released the final entry in its famous Wizardry
series, but since it belonged to what was considered a niche genre (a
turn-based RPG) it was very difficult to get the game on store shelves.
Apparently the big publishers felt that such games were out of style, and
as a result Sir-Tech (now defunct) had to make a deal directly with the
(also defunct) Electronics Boutique game store. Unfortunately, the deal
wasn't enough to keep them afloat and the company went under, but one
developer from the team later said that if Steam had existed at that time,
Sir-Tech might still be alive today.
Because of platforms like Steam, as well as independent sources of
funding such as Kickstarter and The Indie Fund, it's easier for develop-
ers of all kinds to get their games made and published. No longer are the
big publishers the only ones making the calls—the playing field has been
leveled.
With people who love games more in control and middlemen less
in control, we have even more reason to be optimistic about the future.
Downside
The upsides of the rise of indies are clearly dominant, but is there a
downside? There's only one I can see: as much as I hate the institutional-
ized quicktime-event-action-vampire-cutscene-spam games of the ma-
jor developers, the fact is that they do have a system. They have teams of
80 or more people sometimes, and everyone knows very precisely what
their roles are. There isn't a lot of bickering or debate about what a game
will be, and when it's finally decided, few people are surprised by the
result. It's either the third-person action game, reskinned ; the first-person
shooter, reskinned ; the RPG, reskinned ; or some such thing—there aren't
too many options. Indies, of course, have no expectation of following
this pattern. If anything, they have an unspoken responsibility to do any-
thing but follow this pattern. If that's the case, though…what do they do?
What will indies do with their new level of power and control?
Currently, I don't think most indies have a very strong idea of what
they should be doing with it; most of them seem to be doing one of three
things.
Recreating retro games . Many developers simply create games
that copy both the strengths and the weaknesses of games from
an earlier time. The indie team Iron Tower Studios has been try-
ing to create a “last-gen American style RPG� for nearly a decade
as of the time of this writing. Spiderweb Software has been doing
the same ever since that style of RPG was current. A message
to these developers: we didn't do it right back then. Those older
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