{"id":514,"date":"2010-08-16T23:17:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T23:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=514"},"modified":"2010-08-16T23:19:59","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T23:19:59","slug":"the-indie-condition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/the-indie-condition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Indie Condition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/freeplay.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Freeplay Independent Games Festival\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/freeplay.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"70\" \/><\/a>I went to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freeplay.net.au\/\">Freeplay Independent Game Festival<\/a> in Melbourne, Australia on the weekend.\u00a0 It was a good conference with inspirational talks and a great opportunity to catch up on many of my friends in the indie scene.\u00a0 I noticed a trend among many indie developers I spoke to and wanted to raise some thoughts in this post.\u00a0 Many indie developers were developing their first game with a common complaint being that they didn\u2019t have enough time to work on it.\u00a0 Today\u2019s post is talking about this common condition and some thoughts on alleviating it.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">What do you want to get out of your game?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Many indie\u2019s are soldiering along in a multi-month (or multi-year) project without having clearly defined goals for their project.\u00a0 When asking developers the common responses included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Express creativity or artistic ability (e.g. I just have to be making games all the time, to stop the voices in my head)<\/li>\n<li>To make enough money so I can quit my day job and go indie full time (often accompanied by a long tirade of complaining about current boss)<\/li>\n<li>Bootstrapping a larger game company<\/li>\n<li>To get girls!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t already, stop and list the top 5 goals you want to get out of your current game.\u00a0 Do this for each individual team member, as well as the team as a whole.\u00a0 Make sure each team member is compatible and make sure the goals are realistic.\u00a0 More importantly, look at whether the game you are making is the best way of achieving your set of goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Write this list on a piece of paper and put it on the wall.\u00a0 Every time you (or your team) have a question or are unsure of a direction to take, use this list to help with the difficult decision.\u00a0 It\u2019s crucial that everything you do is driving you towards these goals otherwise you will not reach them.\u00a0 This is particularly important if you are making your independent game in your spare time (as most people I spoke to are).\u00a0 The less time you have, the more productive your limited resources must be.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">We\u2019re all on the same team: share, learn and collaborate<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Unlike mainstream game development, we are not competing with each other.\u00a0 When making small, low priced games, there\u2019s less competition than between the big developers.\u00a0 Gamers can easily buy many awesome indie games released on the iPhone for less than the cost of a single full priced AAA title.\u00a0 It\u2019s not you OR another indie, it\u2019s you AND another indie.\u00a0 As people start to enjoy games from indie developers they are more likely to buy more indie games.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.\u00a0 This also goes for small teams.\u00a0 Unlike large developers we can\u2019t just hire in the top talent to do a specific area of development.\u00a0 However within the indie community there will usually be someone with the specific skill you are after.\u00a0 By maintaining an open relationship between indie developers we can tap into a larger pool of resources to help with specific problems.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Finish <strong>SOMETHING<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Get out there and finish something.\u00a0 Many indie developers I spoke to were in the middle of working on their first indie game.\u00a0 Some developers had been doing this for months or even years and still hadn\u2019t released their first game.\u00a0 Common reasons for this included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stopping work on a project to start on a smaller game (which is often still too ambitious)<\/li>\n<li>Getting bored with an idea and moving on<\/li>\n<li>The entire game was one big feature creep where it would never be finished<\/li>\n<li>Far too ambitious for the team size and skill<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Pick something extremely small and make it<\/strong>.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/adamatomic.com\/\">Adam Atomic<\/a> gave one of the keynotes at Freeplay and commented on how <a href=\"http:\/\/adamatomic.com\/canabalt\/\">Canabalt<\/a> took him five days to create.\u00a0 While he may be an exception, it goes to show that small, successful games can be created in a short period of time.<\/p>\n<p>For your first game, I recommend giving yourself one month and creating whatever you can in that time.\u00a0 Aim to complete the game in three weeks with one week of polish.\u00a0 It\u2019s important that you release <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">something<\/span>.\u00a0 Like building a deck in Magic: The Gathering, it\u2019s a lot of fun making a game, however until you\u2019ve released it, you haven\u2019t fully experienced game development.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s the best way to learn<\/strong>.\u00a0 You can talk to as many developers as you want, go to as many conferences or read as many books as you can find.\u00a0 Nothing compares to the experience of releasing a game.\u00a0 You\u2019ll learn a lot about yourself, your team and your players.\u00a0 This ranges from time taken for polish to headaches with distributing your game <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">after<\/span> it\u2019s complete. \u00a0It will also make your next game better&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Finish something <strong>GOOD<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The next largest group of indie developers I spoke to were those that had released a small game that had reached little success.\u00a0 Many of these games were (almost) direct copies of existing games.\u00a0 If you want to have a successful game, you need to make something that stands out.\u00a0 Put yourself in the shoes of your player.\u00a0 Why would they buy your game?\u00a0 What value do you add to their gaming life?\u00a0 If this isn\u2019t an easy question to answer then you need to stop and re-assess your main goals.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Are you working on your first indie game?\u00a0 How long have you been working on it, how do you keep motivation and what are your top five goals from the project?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to Freeplay Independent Game Festival in Melbourne, Australia on the weekend.\u00a0 It was a good conference with inspirational talks and a great opportunity to catch up on many of my friends in the indie scene.\u00a0 I noticed a trend among many indie developers I spoke to and wanted to raise some thoughts in <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/the-indie-condition\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[112,42,91],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","tag-game-development","tag-indie-game-development","tag-iphone"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-8i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}