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[Andeh187]

Firstly, apologies if this is in the wrong section I took my best guess before posting.

I wanted to reach out to the Indie Developer Scene myself and find out if there is any interest in our project which has just been accepted for crowdfunding.

I am an avid follower of both the opensource and indie game scene, I would really like to see Indie Devs make a comeback like the golden days and really drive innovation and creativity in a boring rinse and repeat market.

After following a number of new development teams, it became clear that the biggest hurdle in this day and age is visibility. 4 of the 5 projects I was following stopped production of there projects, either due to failed crowdfunding, or project rejections from places like Steam Greenlight, or Desuras IndieDB. Yet all of the projects looked very promising.

It's my belief that the Indie Scene needs a central platform to generate a fan following, before taking the next step into crowdfunding or services like Greenlight, and apparently I'm not alone.

I've teamed up with one of the ex-Desura developers to bring our idea from plans to paper to PC. introducing CODENAME:Storm

Please see our crowdfunding project page for all the information of what this service could mean for the developers, and if you agree with what we are proposing, help support us in achieving our funding goal and getting our Indie Developers the visibility they deserve!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/codename-storm

[Games Inquirer]

You were only following 5 indie projects? There are countless out there, many get completed and many don't.

I'm not sure the visibility problem can be solved. Suppose Steam accepted every single game ever on their store, then it would simply be (even) harder for the consumer to sift through everything, once again they'd only be able to really see the most prominent releases and the lucky few that get word of mouth. The point of visibility is that you stand out from the pack. Essentially by having people positively talk about it most of the time (see Minecraft which didn't get on Steam or anywhere). If everything stands out, nothing does.

And did indieDB really reject projects? Why would they ever, I thought pretty much anyone can make a page on there with no evaluation, outside noticing trademark infringing and what not. Desura is different.

You're also presenting different issues. If a project was given up on before being completed then it can't be the fault of Steam, Desura, or any other platform's rejection. Crowd funding is a different issue but once again I don't think anyone can guarantee to raise money for a project since that relies on other people.

[Andeh187]

We took 5 projects as the control group to back up what we thought was actually really happening. On a personal level I follow a lot of opensource projects and indie projects.

Whilst I agree that the visibility can't be 100% fixed as some games will naturally perform better than others for all sorts of reasons! like timing and current trends. The aim is to eventually provide a one stop shop for the developers to post information about there games and for the gamers to find that information.

Most projects fail due to the amount of time the developers have to dedicate to marketing, and let's face it, you can be the worlds best coder and not have the first clue about PR.

The core idea behind this project, is to get the project noticed, so the info gets started on CODENAME:Storm and we take care of the rest, the developers can get back to what they are doing, and see how many people are interested in their project. We are hoping to be the bridge between the various indie communities and would like to incorporate as many of the established sites as possible.

With the added potential of early financial support before committing to the crowdfunding further down the road.

I had meant Desura not IndieDB, so apologies for the confusion there.

I believe that if some of the pressures behind giving up are related to either not enough interest or spending to much time away from developing the game.

I've actually been running a 2d mmo for 9 years and I've been to both extremes of the feedback and visibility problems myself.

I really do believe this service will make a difference.

Thanks so much for your feedback.
/Andy