Time is money... Especially in the tech industry. 

And though art is a large component of game design, not many people will shell out for a new Commodore 64 title, not matter how cool it is.

That doesn't fully counter your point, but then look at the tools indie games are created with... They either cost shit loads to buy officially, or they're open source, have very little documentation. Or a very small community of expert practitioners, and consequently take a lot of time to learn (or reduce the opportunity to collaborate with other designers).

Similarly, with film, the best equipment is often outrageously expensive and extremely complicated... That's not to say you can't produce great work without top kit... But your audience will generally be wary of the difference, especially if the prices are similar.

But again, that's not at all the case with music. Or literature... But then literature is subject to a completely different set of rules (it's very hard to localise a song, right?). That said, you can bet that a book written over a 5 year period will perhaps mean more to you than a copy of 50 Shades...

I can accept that my argument is a little shaky, but there is a correlation.

dynamiteReady wrote:

Time is money...

True.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/marketing-dumb-luck-and-popping-of.html

A choice section:

This is the problem with so many indie devs cozying up to the Escapist and Kotaku and the PA Report. There is a flood of new titles, so many that Humble Bundle sells them in Costco-sized bundles of a dozen for a dollar. A lot of good titles won't ever get that press. They just can't. There's not room.

And that's just for the flashy titles (the "AAA Indies"). My turn-based, low-budget, word-heavy RPGs are a lot of fun and have a real audience, but nobody at Kotaku gives a crap about them, nor should they. Why would a Let's Play channel on YouTube want to do one of my games? It'd be like putting up a movie of someone reading a book. Alexander Bruce's marketing path is useless to me, but my business is still valid. Has been for 20 years.

Also, the gaming community doesn't care about indies as much as we like to think they do. (Minecraft is an ultra-mega-uber hit, right? Well, Grand Theft Auto V made more than it in like 18 seconds.) The gaming press knows that gamers only want to hear about so many indies. Soon, they'll start picking who lives and who dies.

The point? Any article about marketing indies that doesn't mention the word "luck" is lying to you.

Yeah there is a silly kickstarter rush thing these days. I don't mind the "help us get through this last part" type of campaign as you can see what they're doing and that they've put in the majority of the work but there's too many "look at our concept video give us money" campaigns. Like that riot game recently where their kickstarter was about getting money to travel to places to research riots and get "first hand accounts". Fuck off cunts, you don't need that to make your game. They only had a pixel graphics concept video too which proved nothing. They got their money in like a few days.

That blog post is a good'un, lots of true words. I still am not a fan of Bruce, he's a fuckwad. Made a pretty game but damn did he drag it through the ringer over those 5 or 6 years he was working on it. I met him a few times seeing as he's Melbourne based and he's just so far up his own ass. I couldn't believe he was showing it at PaxAus this year when there would be plenty of up and coming devs who could do with that space. It's out already dude, it sold a fuck-tonne, let it go.

Continue?9876543210 sounds like it could be interesting.

You are a dead, failed video game character wandering through the recesses of the Random Access Memory, trying to find peace in the final moments of your existence before being deleted forever...

http://continue9876543210.com/about.html

It's by the guy who did Skrillex Quest, if you've come across that. Well, it's still by him if you haven't, but you know what I mean.

Trying to remember the name of an indie game that had a trailer out last year. Style was a 3D glitched version of Tron. I think the idea was to hack computers.

I genuinely cant remember anything more than that.

Any help?

Just watched that in the indie thread. Not the game I am thinking of. It's 1st person. In the demo I think the player went over to a computer screen (big 80s style green text on black and being able to type on it.

Haha, yep, thats the one. High fives.

Thanks.

No, not quite as I remember it. But the style of it features no backgrounds/flat textures. Etc. Dont know how to describe it exactly.

three1ne wrote:

No, not quite as I remember it. But the style of it features no backgrounds/flat textures. Etc. Dont know how to describe it exactly.

I'd describe it as looking like Valves place-holder textures or, at a push, a low-fi version of System Shock 2's VR.

I keep thinking this thread is about those Mr. Kipling cakes but it isn't.

I've literally just been playing that. It is pretty confusing, but it's starting to make sense. I've done side A, but haven't named any planets yet. I still don't really know what I'm doing, but it seems to mostly be about lining things up.

Yeah, half the fun's figuring out what you're meant to be doing. Been enjoying poking the spaceship to figure out how it works, too.

Holy shit, that's beautiful!

Nah I think it looks amazing. Quite Fez-like