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Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

DragoFireheart

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Torment having more exposition didn't make it better than ME. There are loads of amateur BG mods filled with loads of exposition and typically half a dozen or more flavor dialogue options and they're all poorly written.

You used to be cool Roguey. What happened to you?

You are no longer a worthy foe of Islam. I disown you as my enemy.
 

Pantalones

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Must be the worst thing I have ever seen anyone write on the internet. I don't even agree with the "GOOD GAMES WILL ALWAYS SELL" argument, either. Games that don't sell are games people don't want, that have better alternatives available. You can't expect to make the same crap everyone else makes and get any interest.

Jeffy seems to be almost angry about all this, like these riffraff are stepping on his toes. If you make games anyone can make then the only difference is what the budget is and how good the artwork is, and how good the writing is.

Jeff makes games anyone can make. He probably makes them better than many others who might try to do the same thing, but not even as well as a decent mod for a popular game in a mainstream genre. If the actual game and engine were bigger and better few people could ever compete with his niche. However he seems to have this nickel and dime mentality to keep scrounging chump change from casual gamer's pockets and of course the problem here is he has 50 million other guys who also have a 5-10 dollar casual game to peddle.

I can remember him saying that dumbing down his games was so smart because look at all the money it's making him. Well, enjoy it while it lasts. Won't be much longer :lol:
 

Ninjerk

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"I can't tell the difference between ME and Torment, also patriarchy" - Roguey
Torment having more exposition didn't make it better than ME. There are loads of amateur BG mods filled with loads of exposition and typically half a dozen or more flavor dialogue options and they're all poorly written.
It had more meaningful content to expose than Mass Effect with its bargain basement Halo-inspired plot. Never mind NWN2 OC :troll:
 

Cromwell

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So you don't see the differences, then post a screen explicitly showing the differences? I think you solved your own problem there.
Do you seriously believe there's a difference between "I'm [charname]" "My name is [charname] and I'm friendly" "I have a chip on my shoulder" and modern Bioware-style dialogue?

the diference between the three are at least 1-2 points in int or Cha.
 
Self-Ejected

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JohnMay 21, 2014 at 2:26 PM
Perhaps if success was more equally distributed then more gamedevs could enjoys a stable income at the cost of fewer enormous successes. I don't know how to accomplish this though but it's still interesting to think about.

Jeff VogelMay 21, 2014 at 2:53 PM
I think that the future will, indeed, look a lot like this. Or, at least, I hope.

- Jeff Vogel

communism.png
 

Curious_Tongue

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The money generated from one AAA flop could keep a smallish studio in business for decades.

Not sure what point you are making. Are you saying AAA games companies should be forced to fund Jeff Vogel, when no one wants his games?



Publishers are geared to go after the blonde, and while doing so they're fucking over the smaller studios who want to go after the brunettes.
 

DraQ

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Aren't dragons natural horders?
Also natural fliers.
:smug:
And they hoard gems, not turds, no matter how polished.
Offering more than 3 or 4 dialogue choices is just going to lead to a large amount of pointless, superficial reactions. Did it matter what your answer was to "What can change the nature of a man?" No, it did not.
I too want to be a dragon.
Offering more than 3 or 4 dialogue choices is just going to lead to a large amount of pointless, superficial reactions. Did it matter what your answer was to "What can change the nature of a man?" No, it did not.
It's roleplaying, and, for that particular choice, I personally found it quite compelling although I was fairly certain there was no mechanical benefit.
Precisely, it's not *inherently* bad, sometimes the act of choosing your replay is too important in defining the character to pass up even if there *can't* be consequence.

The reason they are bashed is that they become shitty where they are being presented as actually having consequences (despite having none) which is also the reason why they're called biowarean choices - because trying to falsely portray them as meaningful is bioware's thing.

OTOH sometimes there can be meaningful consequences for much more than token 2-3 distinct options, especially if the game is smartly enough designed to use state rather than trying to provide different outcome for every combination of options.

Please note that all those ~options~ in the Torment screen are purely of the "give me exposition" variety. These days, such exposition would either be presented in a manner that attempts to simulate an actual conversation better and/or set aside in the "Investigate" option of Bioware's dialogue wheel.
Actually, fuck dialogue wheel. Exposition is best handled by topic system, but topic system and dialogue trees can exist alongside each other, and benefit from that - it unclutters dialogue trees, and prevents awkward and bug-prone emulation of them via some otherwise unremarkable, and easy to miss, topics.

"I can't tell the difference between ME and Torment, also patriarchy" - Roguey

I thought you were just weird, time to start ignoring.

Don't. You'll miss out on lulz.

JohnMay 21, 2014 at 2:26 PM
Perhaps if success was more equally distributed then more gamedevs could enjoys a stable income at the cost of fewer enormous successes. I don't know how to accomplish this though but it's still interesting to think about.

Jeff VogelMay 21, 2014 at 2:53 PM
I think that the future will, indeed, look a lot like this. Or, at least, I hope.

- Jeff Vogel

communism.png
Why the fuck would I even want more gamedevs enjoying stable income, especially at the cost of fewer enormous successes?

I can't, don't want to and won't play unlimited amount of games in finite amount of time.
I'll try to pick a handful that interest me - so "at the cost of fewer enormous successes" simply translates to "there will be about as many games I'll be able to play but instead of being good they will all be mediocre".

Sure, I want devs to enjoy stable income - that handful of devs that can consistently produce awesome or at least enjoyable stuff.

And if you want to maximize the market's capacity for successful devs, then explore all the fucking niches instead of jumping on a bandwagon and pumping out endless fucking clones of already shitty games - isn't capacity for innovation and thriving in niches deemed unprofitable by the mainstream supposed to be the whole fucking point of indie development? Because no matter how sick I may be of soulless corporate behemoths churning out endless scripted cowaduty clones, trading them for a whole bunch of used bejeweled salesmen isn't much of a fucking improvement.

Yeah, you should be allowed to take off chasing a dream, and I'm commie enough to consider it state's duty to keep you healthy, fed, and having access to information and means of self improvement so that you don't starve or get reduced to de facto slavery if something goes wrong, but sometimes when you're chasing a dream, the dream just turns back towards you and tells you to GTFO and go back to flipping burgers, you fucking loser, and that's what you should heed. Not everyone is as fucking fabulous as they think they are.

Filthy parasite.
:keepmymoney:
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

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http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2014/06/surviving-in-post-indie-bubble-wasteland.html
Surviving In the Post-Indie Bubble Wasteland!!!


Incendiary title. Check. Dramatic image. Check. Time to sit back and let the retweets roll in!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a widely read and mostly acclaimed article about the popping of what I termed the "Indie Bubble." I promised to write more about what I thought was coming and how I thought a small-scale creative artist could make a living in the times to come. It’s a long piece, and boring, so I’ll try to slip in a fart joke somewhere to keep things lively.

Although I'll be focused on video games, I flatter myself by thinking that the things I have to say apply to creators in all sorts of media.

Quite a few people, publicly and privately, asked for my advice and for my opinion on where things go from here. And I think it is solid evidence of how unpredictable and gut-emptyingly terrifying things have gotten that anyone thinks it useful to ask for my opinion.

Look, I don't know what's going to happen next. I'm not a sorceror. I approach these blog posts like Seal Team Six. I sneak in over the border, plant my bombs, and get out.

Plus, I'm old. I keep mentioning how old I am. Folks, this is not a boast. It's a warning. This whole mess is in the hands of the next generation, who grew up with their bleepy bloopy devices and have an intuitive grasp of them I never will.

I went to see a rock show the other week and these two kids in front of me (kids = people in their 20s) used Instagram, followed by SnapChat, followed by three apps that, I don't even know what they were, and it was like watching the birth of a new species. These people shouldn't be listening to me about anything.

I don't know what is next. But I'm not useless. One thing my weird endurance in indie games has given me is a very fine understanding of the advantages of "being indie." What makes people like us, what keeps us around, why we are needed, and how we can turn that into money. (I like money. It can be exchanged for goods and services.)

(Oh, and by the way, lots of people objected to my use of the word "bubble." Here is why I called it the Indie "Bubble." Because I knew if I did, many more people would read the post. It worked. Ha ha.)

So come with me! Let us, in the spirit of Christmas Specials of olde, learn the True Meaning of Indie.


In the future, young indie developers will have to fight in the Thunderdome. Winners get a 300 word preview in Kotaku.

The Term 'Indie' Is Useless

People in all media argue ceaselessly about what "indie" means. It's a sublime waste of time. Silly eggheads! Indie means whatever you want it to mean.

Indie is a type of business. It's a type of funding. It's a marketing term. In fact, the term ‘indie’ can mean everything but a type of game. Calling a game an "indie game" is like buying a six-pack of beer on sale and offering it to your friends as "on-sale-beer."

"Indie" describes the manner of its making, not the game itself. But you're the customer. You don't care how the sausage was made, only that it's sizzling on the plate and won't give you a case of the gutworms. So, in this sense, the term "indie game" is stupid and useless.

That's a Lie. You Know It. I Know It.

Everything in the previous section was wrong. You can feel it in your gut, next to the worms you got from the sausages. Yet if you try to explain why, you'll get tangled up in words, because you're trying to quantify art, and that is unpossible.

When humans say "Indie," whether in games or film or music, they are describing a quality that is completely intangible and yet entirely real. They are describing the feeling that the creation in question feels like authentic communication from another human being.

What makes my little RPGs "indie"? It's that, when you play them, you can feel the presence of my brain behind them, and you know that I cared. When you play, say, Avernum, you are spending some time living in the world as I saw it when I wrote it.

This quality is not restricted simply to games that intend to be art. My favorite example here is AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, a game you really should try. It's a simple arcade game, and yet it is written with a very peculiar, hilarious, distinctive aesthetic that makes one feel, after a time, like one is visiting the creators' brains. (If you try it, play levels until you start to unlock the funny videos. You'll know them when you reach them.)

It is possible for an independently produced game to not feel at all Indie. iTunes is full of this. Similarly, it is possible for a big-budget AAA game to feel super-indie. (Insert Saints Row IV plug here.)

You are creating something for people. To affect them. To take one of many possible routes into their brains. We're toymakers, and it's an awesome thing to be. This is the Goal.

Advice #1: Make the thing you care about, and people will sense it. If you make something you don't believe in because you think it'll make more money, players will smell the stink of desperation on you.

And yet, "indie" is almost always applied in the context of small, scrappy, hungry developers. There is a very good reason for that, which you ignore at your peril.


The facts: Most people want this. This will sell more than you. But people need to know that they have choices besides this.

Our Greatest Advantage!!!

Our biggest advantage is that people like us. They want us to succeed.

Small game developers fit the archetype of the lone tinkerer, slaving late into the night, creating because they are driven to create, damn the consequences.

In my culture, at least, this is a truly powerful and beloved archetype, one buried deep in the cultural and professional DNA of our society. When people see you as a driven tinkerer, rich in drive and creativity if not in wealth, they will want you to succeed. It is then a short jump to actively helping you to succeed.

As long as they like you. (But more on that later.)

Indie games will have their ups and downs, but they will always be around, because people will always be driven to make toys, success be damned. And there will always be profit in that, because some people will be determined to make them succeed, because they can't stand to live in a world where the little guy can't make it.

Advice #2: Never forget that people want to root for you, and be someone they'll want to root for. When your survival is necessary for the psychic health of others, that’s good.


Pictured: The indie ideal.

An Instructive Example

When I saw the game Octodad: Dadliest Catch at PAX a couple years ago, I had to write about it. Note, I've never played it. I only watched a few seconds of it. That was enough for me to know it'd be a success.

It's a game where you play an intelligent octopus with a human wife and children, and you have to perform tasks without them realizing you are not a human too. Much of the fun comes from the imprecise controls, which make your character flop all over the place in a humorous, destructive way.

Yeah, it's bonkers. What made me sure it'd do well is this: There are a lot of people who would buy it because they wanted to see a game like that be a success. (See also: Goat Simulator.)

To be clear, the quality that brings this sort of support is not humor or novelty. Your game doesn't have to be wacky or gimmicky or hentai-scented to succeed. (Though humor can help a LOT.) It just has to feel personal. Being in some way surprising is also helpful.

But again, this all depends on people wanting you to succeed, which means they have to like you, and they have to keep liking you. So you should know how to manage that.

Heading Out On the Path

OK, here's the usual scenario. You're passionate about games (or music, writing, acting, etc). You've been doing it as a hobbyist for years, and that's awesome. Creating things as a hobbyist is a noble activity. All those famous designers you look up to? Practically all of them were writing games for years before they made the one you heard of. It takes ten years to make an overnight success.

But you've been doing it for a while, and now you have a hot idea. You think you can turn it into money. You want to Go Pro.

Now, before, I always gave the advice to look for an underserved niche and serve it. I kind of have to take that back. One of the tough things about the glut of indie games is that the number of underserved niches has gone way down. As I write this, Steam is getting a new RPG a DAY. So many. Does this worry me, a writer of RPGs? Hell yes. But I write RPGs for a living. It's all I'm good for. So, even if I see a sexy new market somewhere else, I have to die on this hill.

Inspiration strikes where it strikes, and individual creative processes are very important. Write what you care about, even if it's another 2-D platformer. If you like to work alone, work alone. If you need to be part of a team, do that. If you don't mind doing things on the cheap (like using stock art and music), that can work. If you need perfect professional work for everything, that's what you need to do. (But be prepared to pay the price.)

Advice #3: Figure out what your process is, and then respect and defend it.


How the game industry sees me. "Golly! Is that one them new-fangled computer thing-a-ma-bobs? Gosh!"

So You Have a Dream and a Process

You're working on your game. You believe in it. There is a subset of gamers, maybe large, maybe small, that you can look dead in the eye and say, "You HAVE to try my game. It will change your life." (If you can't honestly do this, you need to go back a step or two.)

Now you need to write it, and you need to sell it. To do this and make money at the end, you need to keep two key variables in mind: PR and Budget. The reason I am writing this article is that the way of dealing with these variables is rapidly changing.

First, there is how much PR you can get. Word of mouth. Web site articles. YouTube videos. You NEED some PR, to start the word of mouth at least, and you need to be realistic about how much you can get.

Some people misinterpreted the end of my indie bubble article to mean I thought that indie games would die out and there would be no more hits. Of course, this is ludicrously far from what I was saying. Their have to be hits. Journalists need hit games to write about. Steam and iTunes need to make hits to sell. Gamers need hits to buy. Some games will always get the golden PR ticket, because the system demands it. The problem now is that, to get the attention, the number of rivals you have to elbow in the throat is WAY higher.

(Yes, I just said that Steam and Apple make hits. If they decide they just want to make a game a hit, they can give it great placement. This phenomenon happens in many media. We've been lucky so far in that the games chosen to be hits are generally good. This will not always be so.)

Here's the key point about the PR. If your game is really good, you'll get word of mouth. With work and press releases, you can get more on top of that. You need to estimate how much press you can get, and adjust your budget accordingly.

Consider Spiderweb Software. We do our games on the cheap, and, as a result, we don't need to get a lot of press to make a solid living. Most people don't want to take our route, but you should know it's open to you. If it was necessary to go to conventions to get enough attention to survive, Spiderweb Software would not exist. I'm just not good at working the crowd.

Advice #4: Do PR or die. I don't know what you should do, but you need to do SOMETHING.

Then, Budget

After you know what sort of attention you can get, figure out how much you can afford to spend on your game. I don't have a lot to say about this. If you're SURE you need a hot big-name musician to score your game, hey, that's your process. My opinion is unimportant.

Just remember that every 5% you shave off the cost of making your game gives you a 5% better chance of business survival. Just make sure that 5% is worth it.

Me, I live cheap. I'm a bottom feeder. I'm merciless about reusing assets from game to game. Rendering creatures in Poser instead of getting a pricey freelancer. Buying cheap, royalty-free sounds. We sell detailed, interesting stories, written in nice, cheap text, and skimp on everything else.

We're so cheap that sometimes, at conventions, other developers make fun of me TO MY FACE. If you know how generally cordial indie developers try to be to each other, this is worth noting.

Most indie developers would rather throw their computers into a fire than release products with my level of polish. But I have a plan. I intend to retire in this business, and I will do what it takes to make it happen.

Advice #5: Don't forget that the best reason to go indie is that you get to do things your own way.


How you want your audience to see you.

On Being Likable

Seriously, the greatest advantage indie creators have is that people naturally sympathize with us and want us to succeed. Play to your strength, and remember, every time you act like a jerk in public, you're hurting all of us.

Cultivate a FRIENDLY personal relationship with customers whenever possible. Answer e-mails. Be present and engage users on forums in a friendly way as much as you can stand. Try to make a demo available so users can make sure your game will work before they pay for it. (I haven't been good about this lately, and I regret it.) Give refunds. Give advice. Use smilies. Be a nice person.

If you do a Kickstarter or Steam Early Access, be damn sure to live up to your promises, or give the users a timely, informative reason why you didn't. Doing otherwise hurts all of us.

Do your best to say yes to REASONABLE requests. It's OK to say 'no,' though. It's your game, your baby. Sometimes, you have to live up to your own ideals, even though you'll get a lot of undeserved hate for it. Here's a good example.


How you don't want your audience to see you.

Don't Look Sauron In the Eye

Conversely, if someone is mean to your game on some stupid forum somewhere, never ever engage them, attack them, argue why they're wrong, whatever. Nothing good has even come out of doing this. Ever. Some people won't like your game, or they won't like your face. Let. It. Go.

Here's a rule that I have violated many, many times, and I've always regretted it: If you must go out in public and air your edgy opinions, remember that goodwill is like money, and you are spending it. It is very easy to cross the line from being a positive archetype (sincere, small creator) to a very negative one (dour, humorless, judgmental blowhard).

This is one of the reasons I wrote the article a few weeks ago defending mobile games. If you are the hip indie developer who lectures gamers about what they should or should not want, you will make them defensive. Then they will get angry. At all of us.

Obviously, I'm not saying you should never say anything. Goodwill is money, and money doesn't do any good if you don't spend it. Just learn from my mistakes. People like us much better when we come forward in a spirit of being friendly, accepting, and eager to help.

Advice #6: Be nice and humble.

I Still Don't Know Where the Game Industry Is Going

Nope. Nobody does. No idea. This whole medium is completely new and without precedent. Nobody knows anything.

But there are some things that always work. Creativity. Determination. Believing in yourself. Working hard. A bit of luck. Kindness. Humility.

The bubble has popped, but we'll keep going on. As long as we make sure to embody the right set of ideals, gamers will refuse to let us fail.
 

No Great Name

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I always thought that the term "indie" is short for "independent" as in something (music, movie, game, etc.) made by a person or small group of people independent of a company, not how a game "feels" when you play it.
 

Abelian

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Jeff Vogel said:
Bundles used to earn a ton, but they don't anymore. If making pennies a copy selling your games in 12 packs is the main source of a developer's income, that developer is going to disappear. Also, all of the bundles and sales encourage users to expect to pay a price too low to keep us in business. It’s just the same race to the bottom as in the iTunes store, except this time we were warned, and we did it anyway.

And hey, I’m not blameless in this. My games have been in a million sales and bundles. It’s what you have to do now, and I’m just as fault as everyone else.
Meanwhile, GOG.com has a Spiderweb RPG Collection 85% OFF sale going on right now.

I always thought that the term "indie" is short for "independent" as in something (music, movie, game, etc.) made by a person or small group of people independent of a company, not how a game "feels" when you play it.
He probably confused "indie" with "hipster" (in his defense, there is significant overlap). :smug:
 
Repressed Homosexual
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Jeff Vogel said:
Bundles used to earn a ton, but they don't anymore. If making pennies a copy selling your games in 12 packs is the main source of a developer's income, that developer is going to disappear. Also, all of the bundles and sales encourage users to expect to pay a price too low to keep us in business. It’s just the same race to the bottom as in the iTunes store, except this time we were warned, and we did it anyway.

And hey, I’m not blameless in this. My games have been in a million sales and bundles. It’s what you have to do now, and I’m just as fault as everyone else.
Meanwhile, GOG.com has a Spiderweb RPG Collection 85% OFF sale going on right now.

I always thought that the term "indie" is short for "independent" as in something (music, movie, game, etc.) made by a person or small group of people independent of a company, not how a game "feels" when you play it.
He probably confused "indie" with "hipster" (in his defense, there is significant overlap). :smug:

Jeff has dedicated fans who are ready to pay launch price for his games, even to buy them directly from him on his site at higher prices than on Steam so that he gets more money. It's a problem for people who only have discounted bundles to really count on.
 

Burning Bridges

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the problem is not the number of games, but the fact that they are all the same.

also someone is butthurt that he gets less attention than it used to be.
 

Turjan

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also someone is butthurt that he gets less attention than it used to be.
He doesn't actually come over as butthurt. Which doesn't mean you should listen to his advice, but it's not really important what he says. He's just following his own advice here - do PR. No matter what you say, keep people talking about you. Obviously, he succeeds very well at this, and it doesn't cost him a cent.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
He's so full of himself, yet at the same time, utterly self-aware. I must admit that it makes for a fun read.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2014/09/on-new-games-rewrites-and-pain-of.html

Best quote:
Indie game developers seem to be having a real Sophomore Slump problem. When I look at developers who had a hit, I'm not seeing a lot of really inspiring follow-ups.

Sure, there are a few developers (like Supergiant and Klei Entertainment) who have really managed to keep their momentum going. However, a lot of small devs who produce a great game either go crazy and quit, get caught in an infinite development cycle on a new product, can't even get started on a new product, or release a new product that's just kind of meh. I was smart and avoided this problem by never releasing a great game in the first place.

This is why I think you're going to see a lot of indie devs recycling their hits. Remastering them and releasing them on new consoles. Rereleasing them with new material. Doing full rewrites.

This is as it should be. It's good for developers and it's good for gamers.

:lol: Full text below.

On New Games, Rewrites, and the Pain of Higher Prices.


Fourteen years without an update is long enough.
We have finally announced our next new game. It's Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. It's a complete, ground-up rewrite of Avernum 2, which came out in 2000. It, in turn, was a rewrite of Exile 2: Crystal Souls, which came out in 1996. We at Spiderweb Software are about nothing if not integrity.

You can see a trailer and other info here. Avernum 2 is probably tied with Avernum 3 for our most beloved game, and I know a lot of fans are looking forward to a reboot. Now with better design (I hope), a better interface and graphics (in my opinion), and the ability to run on tablets (yay).

We don't half-ass our rewrites. This one is taking a full year. New material, new quests, a new dungeon, more dialogue, actual boss fights. You might not like our work, but you can't fairly say we're not trying.

But enough self-promotion. I've said a lot of overly self-assured stuff over the last few months about the state of the indie games biz. Now that I'm having to actually make hard choices and release games, I wanted to talk a little about how I'm adjusting to the New Game Reality.


Sometimes, you don't need a full 140 characters to drop the truth bombz.

We're Raising Our Prices.

I thought this tweet covered it perfectly.

I have said for years that indie developers have to be careful not to charge too little for our products. Most of us tend to the needs of small, niche audiences, and we have to make sure to set a price for our specialty products that enables us to stay in business. For a long time, our new RPGs were $20.

But then something happened I would never have predicted: The Indie Bubble. Almost overnight, there was a massive increase in demand for games like mine, and there weren't many good titles. All of a sudden, my games were getting the sort of placement on places like Steam we could never get in a normal environment.

So we reacted accordingly. We lowered our prices on Steam and similar services to $10, a price low enough to motivate people who stumbled on us on the front page of Steam to give us a try. Tons of people were seeing us for the first time, and we tried to take advantage.

Things have gotten back to normal. We are back to getting a modest amount of visibility and press, and most of our sales are from fans and members of our particular niche. Our last game, Avadon 2: The Corruption, sold a reasonable number of copies, but the $10 price didn't generate enough revenue to make writing the game worthwhile. We can’t run a sustainable business on $10 games.

So we're going back to the old days. Our new games, going forward, are back to being $20. We have to count on existing fans and retro RPG gamers to provide enough sales to stay in business.

It's terrifying. What if our audience isn't there anymore? What if there is now too much competition? What if my games just can't cut it anymore?

It's scary, but it's been scary since we started out in 1994. We've had times when we flirted with going out of business, and I'm sure we will in the future. But the days of universally cheap indies are over. A lot of small devs are raising their prices, and I'm one of them.

And look at the bright side: All of our games will be cheap eventually. Steam sales still exist, and we'll still put our older games out there with steep discounts. It'll just mean you'll have a longer wait until they are two bucks on Steam or show up in bundles.

One Implication Of This

I have always believed that if you're going to charge $20 for a game you have to have a demo. Ten dollars is cheap enough that you can get away with it. However, if you're going to charge $20 for a game you can't get a refund for, I feel you are ethically required to give a gamer a way to check it out and make sure it'll run on their machine.

Of course, we never stopped making big, meaty demos available on our web site. And we never will.


TL;DR version: This is how you should picture me.

Rewrites. Remasters. Remakes.

Indie game developers seem to be having a real Sophomore Slump problem. When I look at developers who had a hit, I'm not seeing a lot of really inspiring follow-ups.

Sure, there are a few developers (like Supergiant and Klei Entertainment) who have really managed to keep their momentum going. However, a lot of small devs who produce a great game either go crazy and quit, get caught in an infinite development cycle on a new product, can't even get started on a new product, or release a new product that's just kind of meh. I was smart and avoided this problem by never releasing a great game in the first place.

This is why I think you're going to see a lot of indie devs recycling their hits. Remastering them and releasing them on new consoles. Rereleasing them with new material. Doing full rewrites.

This is as it should be. It's good for developers and it's good for gamers.

For developers: Look. Writing a game is hard. Writing a good game is harder. Writing a good game and actually having it catch on and become a hit is catching lightning in a bottle. It's almost impossible. It almost never happens for one developer twice. If we let developers turn one hit into a career, it helps more developers make a living, which encourages the writing of more games.

For gamers: Look. If a game is fun, it doesn't stop being fun. Castle Crashers will still be awesome a decade from now, and I am surprised that it hasn't been ported to the new console generation yet. I talked to several developers at PAX about the expanded versions of their games that are forthcoming, and I'm thrilled. I liked them before, and I'll like their new levels on the PS4.

One of the things I've always hated about our art form is how it discards its classics as technology moves on. Anything that keeps good designs fresh and playable is all to the good.

A large part of my professional life now is acting as curator for the things I made when I was young. I spend my time trying to be respectful to the work of my younger self, bringing it into the modern day while preserving the stuff that made people love it in the first place. It's a very different sort of job, with its own challenges, but I do enjoy it. I wish more people did a better job of respecting what they made when they were young. (CoughGeorgeLucasCough)

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 is one of my favorite games of the last console generation. If it comes out for a console with online matchmaking, that is the console I will buy. James Silva, MAKE IT HAPPEN.

When Will My Rewrite Be Out?

I've been shooting for early December, by my increasing old-person-exhaustion is making it hard to keep up the furious pace of younger days. The Mac and Windows versions will probably be out in January. iPad a few months after that. I don't know how to develop for Android and getting a good person to do a port is hard, so I'm not sure if that will ever happen.

And that’s what we’re up to in the Business World. New game soon. Hope you like it!
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
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Messages
35,656
Tongue-in-cheek.

He's also right about a lot of indies being one-hit wonders, and that's fine. Most arteests will only have one good song/album/book/movie/game/etc in them.
 

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Kinda not related to the topic but the majority of bands I listen to usually last at least 3-4 albums of fairly consistent quality before burning out completely.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
13,999
Location
Platypus Planet
I don't even know if Vogel is being ironic or not anymore. I guess he hasn't gone full retard like Pierre, though.
 

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