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[Fuzz]

The nice thing about genres such as tower defense, platformer, et al, is that since they are already so popular, they are the easiest genres to reinvent. Braid did it with the platformer, Immortal Defense did it with the tower defense genre, and both are great games.

[Mipe]

And yet they brought something unique to the genre; Braid brought time manipulation (sort of), which is actually part of the gameplay, Immortal Defense... Umm... well, it is more abstract and it has a long campaign story which most players will want to see to the end.

[Fuzz]

And yet they brought something unique to the genre; Braid brought time manipulation (sort of), which is actually part of the gameplay, Immortal Defense... Umm... well, it is more abstract and it has a long campaign story which most players will want to see to the end.

That's what I'm saying: both games reinvented their respective genres in their own ways.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think ID's distinction was that it had a lot of short 3-min levels rather than one long 1 hour+ level like most tower defense games previously. Also it added a story-focus and a mouse that could shoot and use special moves. I don't think abstraction was new: Vector Defense was also an abstract Flash TD game which existed prior to ID.

Also, I think the reason people make games which are very similar to other games is that you get a built-in audience if you do it. If you make a jRPG for instance, you know that there are hundreds of thousands of people who like jRPG games and play jRPG after jRPG, and will play yours if they hear about it, even if it's just more of the same. Not everyone looks for something new when looking for a new game, many people just look for the same things they enjoyed in the past, on the theory that if a game that did x was enjoyable, another game that also does x will also be enjoyable. And they're often right.

I don't mean to discourage experimental games like increpare's and such, I'm just saying that the reason Exit Fate and Cave Story have like a million downloads and his games have like 1,000 or something (I'm just guessing here at the actual numbers but I don't think I'm that far off) is probably because they are "clones" that clearly fit in specific genres and his are experimental games that try something new. So the price of experimenting is lower audience, I don't think doing something new will usually get you more players and fans than doing the same thing will. I fully expect Saturated Dreamers to do worse (in downloads and sales I mean, not in reviews) than Immortal Defense did, if only because it's a more experimental game.

[HybridMind]

I read the Tigsource frontpage and forums to find games, as well as indiegames.com, but I also usually read the blogs of developers I like to see if they make new games/write about anything interesting. So I read messhof's blog, cactus's blog, dessgeega's blog, agj's blog, Terry's blog, increpare's blog, Paul's blog, etc. I generally focus on developers I like (doesn't matter if they're well known or not) and read the major blogs to find new games by developers I haven't heard of.

I take almost the same approach down to almost every blog you mentioned.  I guess I use my RSS reader to cast a wide net from various people who have mentioned games I've liked in the past. 

I wonder if any parallels can eventually be drawn between services like last.fm or Pandora that work to find new music you like because obviously there are so many songs and bands out there that it is impossible to know what you might like really. 

In the past I just relied on friends or recommendations which I'm sure still is how many people still find all the things they are into and that will likely never change.  Whether word of mouth is by voice or electron. 

It is tough though to counter the 'fear of missing something' but I try to relax and enjoy the trip as it is fun to swim along in this sea of games.  As someone who was spending every spare moment programming BASIC games in the 80s with no way to really share them beyond floppies in a ziploc bag between friends... I am thrilled to the gills over the free ways to get people to play your games that are now available.

Bring on the games! 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yeah, I kind of wish the tigsource db had a more intelligent recommendation system. Right now it just recommends the highest-rated game in the genre the game is in. It doesn't look at what other people like (i.e. if people who gave a 5 to yume nikki and also tend to gave a 5 to glum buster, it should appear as an associated recommended game). It doesn't look at the tags. It just looks at the genre + rating. I'm not sure how hard it'd be to code, though. I don't know php.

As an aside, I want to compile a list of all significant indie game sites/blogs, so if anyone has a particularly large collection of indie game blogs they watch, it'd help to post them (either here or in a PM or something).

[Strong]

the one reason i'm freaked out about this is because i'm not really well-known in the world at all, and i'm terrified of working for untold hours on a game and then have nobody play it.

[Melly]

You can make the game you want to make and not care about what others think of it, but after you're done with that I see no harm in advertising it and making sure as many people as possible get to experience it, whether they hate it or love it, instead of leaving it stuffed into a forgotten website.

Do it like Stalin vs. Martians, minus the shitty game that came with it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the one reason i'm freaked out about this is because i'm not really well-known in the world at all, and i'm terrified of working for untold hours on a game and then have nobody play it.

That's a very real possibility -- there are plenty of great indie games that only get a few dozen or a few hundred downloads. Even if you're releasing freeware, marketing techniques help get your game a lot of players. A lot of my early games have downloads only in the dozens or hundreds, I had to gradually work up over the years.

As an example, this is one of the earliest games I worked on, and it only has 817 downloads: http://www.castleparadox.com/ohr/gamelist-display.php?game=101 (you can see the actual download count there). And note that it's been there for six years, so that's only 817 downloads in all that time.

Compare that to the 50,000+ downloads Missing and Alphasix have, or the estimated 100,000+ demo downloads Immortal Defense has.

Were those games actually "better" than Wingedmene? I don't really think so. I just think that the more you make games, the more fans you build up (from your previous games) and the better you get at promoting them.

[Gainsworthy]

the one reason i'm freaked out about this is because i'm not really well-known in the world at all, and i'm terrified of working for untold hours on a game and then have nobody play it.

Were those games actually "better" than Wingedmene? I don't really think so. I just think that the more you make games, the more fans you build up (from your previous games) and the better you get at promoting them.

Heh, you got in before me. I think that's spot on. I'd say that if one fears the downloads staying in the triple digits for a big project, start small, build an audience, get people who will tell their comrades about your new stuff, champion your old stuff. So instead of folks going "oh, a game by some Strong guy" they'd go "Holy Expletives! Strong's got a new game!" or even "Strong ey... I've heard of that guy".

Or, you could seek comfort in the fact you've got a small but loyal audience!

[Melly]

Yeah, don't expect much from your first game. If you constantly release high quality stuff though you're bound to be more and more noticed, especially if you take some time to POLITELY let people know of your games.

[JLJac]

Actually I imagine that this very site is one of the strongest tools for making yourself a name in indie gaming. Hang around the forum, post some artwork and videos, help other people out, don't be an asshole and soon people in the forum will know you and what you do. Then you post your game here, and since you have been building an interest you will propably have some people checking it out. And the next thing you're front paged, and from there it can only go upwards. I imagine that there are other indie game blogs that look at what's on the front page of this one, as well.

Then of course it can never hurt to send some polite and humble e-mails to indie game bloggers. As in most of this world, it's mainly about not being an asshole.

[Mipe]

Get in the cliche and you'll get recognized. That sucks, yeah, but one's gotta swim in the ocean full of sharks. If you gotta swim, at least swim with others who'll protect you from the sharks. Or get eaten before you.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Not actually true entirely -- most of the most famous and successful indie games are made by people who don't even interact much with the community. Pixel doesn't post here, but everyone knows Cave Story. Ultimortal, CosMind, etc. also aren't too active in the community, but Iji and Glum Buster etc. are well-known indie games. So I think making a good game is still far more important than knowing the right people. But the latter does help a little.

[Craig Stern]

I imagine that there are other indie game blogs that look at what's on the front page of this one, as well.

Indie Games blog pulls an awful lot of its content from TIGS front page and forums; I've also definitely seen Rock Paper Shotgun pick up stories from here as well in the recent past.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I actually think it's the other way around -- more often timw posts about a game, then derek does, rather than vice-versa. Check the dates to verify

[Craig Stern]

I don't doubt that TimW wins the race to post about new games, but I'm still pretty sure he finds a bunch of the things he posts on the TIG Forums.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yes, that's true. there used to be an indiegames.com/blog forum actually, but he took it down due to low activity there. but i first posted alphasix and missing in that forum, which he then wrote about, which led to me meeting him and getting more involved in playing/reviewing indie games, so i've good memories of that forum.

[handCraftedRadio]

Sometimes i have these dreams where im trapped in a pit and games keep falling in and there are just too many games and they start filling up past my neck and to my face and it gets harder to breathe so i try to throw the games out of the pit, but the faster i throw them out, the faster they come in and every effort i make to stop the games only seems to make them angrier and they try to drown me even harder.

[Skirvir]

I think the availability of technology combined with the fact that children are now growing up on the internet and exposed to more technical 'stuff' in general is why your witnessing an explosion of hobby gaming growth, the tools are widely available, many of them are free or at least very cheap and the only thing now barring one from making a game is sinking your teeth into all that technology and actually crafting something.

When I was little I would craft up little games on pieces of paper and play through them in my head, I was basically going through the design process without knowing it, now however, kids can do something similar and actually move that design into the computer, even if it's just something simple, that wasn't so readily done just 10 or 15 years ago.

10 years ago, I was checking out the small selection of game making books at the bookstore and piecing together various niche tutorials across the internet and largely learning and hacking a lot of stuff together on my own. Now there's sites like this and vast amount of libraries and sample code and forums, tutorials and books, entire university programs devoted to making games solely, etc.

Also, obviously things like Game Maker etc, go a long way to helping less technically adept (that is not a putdown) still put their creative minds to work and come up with something fun and playable with a modest amount of effort, it's definitly good stuff!

I don't think there's too many games tho