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1000 Bloom, 900 Wither

The phrase appearing most in my IMGDC notes, although no one actually said it, is “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Whatever fun or crazy idea you have, make that game. Independent studios have the freedom to try things that are too risky or quirky for big producers. Barriers to entry have never been lower, with improved middleware and distribution channels. Everyone on the forums who thinks he can do better has a chance to prove it.

Of course, Sturgeon’s law applies. Most of them are going to be crap. Have you been to a flash games portal? There are a dozen decent games of each type, followed by a couple hundred horrors. That is fine though, because players will tend towards the few quality games, followed by a long tail of niche games with implementations that appeal to a small number of people. Many attempts at low cost will produce a few gems, which can then receive greater attention.

By greater attention, I mean being bought by a larger company, unless your indie has the business framework to work with a million customers. That is a good problem to have, but it probably means you should cash out and use that money to fund your dream project. If you are not part of the crap 90%, you might have a sustainable niche game, and a select few will be bought out by EA, Sony, etc.

Or maybe they will just take your idea and run with it. I have not noticed Blizzard making payments to Games Workshop or the estates of Gary Gygax and JRR Tolkien, nor did Richard Bartle drive away in a gold-plated limousine.

: Zubon

What we say // What we mean

“Hi everyone” // “Why do I even bother? Half the guild never replies”
“After thinking it long and hard…” // “I really-really thought about it for five minutes while I was having lunch, but it had been festering for a while”
“…I’ve decided this isn’t really the guild for me.” // “I’ve decided that 40% of the guild are retards, the other 40% are useless and the remaining 20% are people that I have no beef with. For now.”
“I guess the guild changed from what it used to be, and while change is good…” // “I’m not getting my way anymore”
“… for some of us it can take some effort to adapt” // “I can’t be bothered”

Continue reading What we say // What we mean

Great Concepts

I will be posting about things from IMGDC for a while, but first I must take a page from Nerfbat. If you want your game to succeed, you must have a more awesome concept than Attack of the Mutant Camels, in which you battle giant, fireball-spewing camels. This is a concept so awesome that it not only spawned a sequel involving bipedal goats with guns, but someone else used the same name for a later game. It looks like someone made an updated version, but you can still play the original.

I proposed a panel on “fire-breathing camels and your indie game.” They turned me down.

: Zubon

Midwestern Conference

IMGDC is in Minnesota. After having had conferences across the Atlantic coast, this is a nice change of pace. People hold doors and say words like “please” and “thank you.” They smile and greet you even though they have never met you and will never see you again; these are not paid employees, these are just people at the same store being friendly Midwesterners. If you turn on a blinker, people will make space for you, instead of tailgating to make sure you don’t get ahead of them.

It is like going from Something Awful to Terra Nova.

: Zubon

Virtual materialism

We’ve all heard grumbling here and there about the latest WoW patch’s new high-end loot. The new loot can be obtained much more easily than before the patch, when you had to complete high-end raids to get gear of this caliber. The grumbling generally revolves around the idea that it’s unfair and demoralizing to raiders who obtained similar gear when it was more difficult to do so.

My feeling on this is, so what? The change is not massive, and there are good reasons for it — it will help more people see high-end content before the expansion comes out. But more importantly, there’s more to WoW than gear. What about the experience of learning to work as a team? What about the satisfaction of overcoming a really tough boss fight? What about the aesthetic beauty of seeing a new dungeon? What about meeting new people and making new friends as you play together?

Being overly-focused on gear is simply materialism brought to the virtual world. It’s not a very fulfilling path. I’m not saying gear is bad, or material goods are bad, just that treating them with the proper priority is an important part of having a fulfilling life in a virtual world as well as the physical one.