I agree don't bother with developing countries (for now) until they're developed and start paying for games.  They only play famous hit games anyway (Plants vs Zombies, Angry Birds, Mystery Case files, Machinarium)

I really loved reading the replies, thank you.

I also read somewhere that a good portion of the modding scene... those who would have made "total conversion" mods years ago, are now releasing standalone indie games.  Had they been expert modders, then they would be expert indie devs today.

Yeah, 5 years ago I can release a small game in a forum, and people will be going "Good Job!"  Today there are so many ambitious projects, the smaller projects would be hearing nothing but crickets chirping.  Many projects that people lovingly labored over get ignored.  I suppose one main factor why I decided to put some money into games is because I don't want to become irrelevant.  It's partly an ego thing, I guess.  Even if I don't outshine other games I want to at least be on the same average level, and with a commercial game, I'm sending the message that major effort was put into the project.

MM > I always make new IP.  I've never made a fan-game nor participated in a group that made one.  The freeware realm is dominated by fan-games:  they're easier to make since you can just rip art assets from the original game;  the maker receives free publicity by being associated with famous IP.  The only downside is just make sure you're not C$D'd.

With new IP it's hard to find teammates to work with you for free, since they're more fond of more famous games (making fan-games) or they might as well just work on their own IP.  So whenever I embark on a free project with someone, the effort is to just maintain a good friendly working relationship rather than striving for perfection and risk angering/alienating teammates.  It's a "scratch my back I'll scratch yours, help me in my project I'll help yours" kind of situation.  That's not the case when I own the IP and just pay everyone else, where I can demand a bit more since, hey, it's MY game.

Many indie projects crash and burn before reaching completion.  If I asked people to work on my game for free, and if I fail, I would be guilty of wasting people's precious time.  At least by paying artists, I sort of feel better providing a little income to somebody in this economy, as long as the assets are finished, whether or not the game is completed.  The risk is all mine, but should I succeed, I can have no qualms grabbing all the success.

When I first decided to become an indie developer, I set my target on making a PS1-era quality game (Basic 3D, handpainted vs pixel graphics).  I thought by doing this I would leapfrog over the NES/SNES-era style indie games in development, of which there are plenty now, many on browser or for free (insomuch that a new paid-for game has to demonstrate it is better than e.g. Cave Story if it is to survive).

However now, I'm seeing games which are similar to my style which are free to play.  It's hard for me to put my upcoming game side-by-side with them and honestly feel like charging money.  It seems to me that the indie scene, like the mainstream scene, is slowly climbing up in the quality standard bar.  The first indie games were freeware Pong experiments, then later shooters with bit graphics, then more colorful platformers.  Now thanks to Unity and UDK, many indie games are now in full 3D with lighting.

Even though the cost for an indie developer is only a fraction, I still feel like one of the Japanese developers who are intimidated by the high cost of modern console* games and are surviving on the handheld.

*change that to 'indie' and it applies to me.

I had been making freeware experiments and thought now was the time to break and go commercial, but it feels like I've already missed the boat since the quality bar is miles ahead now.  Anyone else feel that way?

Looks very nice.  I remember when indiegames mostly had Poser sprites with jagged edges!  Now it's hard to tell them apart from other games!  My projects would have fitted in with the old site, but now I must up my game!

I would

1.  Make game for Android and iOS but in high definition
2.  Sit on it until Google TV and Apple TV make inroads
3.  Be the first to launch on said services and at iPad / console prices ($5-10)
4.  Profit while so-called 'TV Games' reach sophistication and penetration and start to eat away at conventional console market in the same manner than 'phone games' have eaten away at conventional handheld games.  (You'll know you've reached that point when you hear Microsoft and Sony reps dissing 'disposable TV games' the same way you now hear Nintendo reps dissing 'disposable phone games'.)

Age: 30 years old
Gender:  Male

Developer and Gamer

Hardcore:  I finish RPGs in 1-2 weeks, spending minimum 40 hrs/week gaming on top of 40 hrs/week day job, and rest of the time managing an officeless team.

What attracts you to a new game?
[ ] Graphics Quality - sad but true.  But doesn't mean realistic graphics.
[ ] Originality of Art style - color palletes, usually

How do you buy games most of the time?

PS3 retail
PC games direct download from developer website.  I have a Steam account but don't use it.  I used to use Impulse but haven't bought anything since the Gamestop takeover.

How much is too much for an average indie game?
Above $20.  $15 is already encroaching on 'discounted AAA game in bargain bin' territory.

In your opinion, is there a desire present for independently-developed games, with innovation at their cores, that can rival mainstream AAA

Yes.  As long as they offer more than just retro.

The only Chinese games that have interested me at all turned out to be Taiwanese.  Most are like Evony and install spyware on your computer.

It says a lot when they regulate the games industry like gambling, alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

Games as art?  Not in China.

At least in the west instead of being lumped with casinos, games are lumped with movies and afforded copyright protection.

Most Japanese can't speak English, so they go along in their own small doujin scene.

Single-player games are dead in China, and most indie games are single-player.  Confucian culture also rewards practicality, that's why people there would rather make another clone MMO with gambling-style mechanics.  The most talented indie Chinese devs did not make their break in China -- they're mostly in the US.

As far as I know I've been talking to plenty Indian devs lately, so that's no problem.

If they can speak English, they will gather to this or other sites centered around game-making.

So there's no need to worry about 'missing out' on any particular scene -- eventually somebody will translate a memorable non-English game and bring it over.

That is too cool.  Thanks for sharing.  Unfortunately I'm working in a specialized niche and won't be able to use your genius tactics.

I read that Chu's dynasty looked nice but that actual gameplay performance was subpar.  I think it's really the heavy sprites that must be cut down.  Looking forward to your reply!

Basically we want a more advanced affiliate system so that, let's say people go to Minecraft's page, and there on the sidebar are 19 other games made by 'friends of Notch' or whatever.

It's the reason why anyone releasing a new RPGMaker game ends up selling on the very same sites that the first ones were sold.  Veterans who have registered a business need to keep pumping output to pay their taxes, so they need a large library.  Newbies just releasing their first big endeavor need a sizeable focused audience which the veterans have already gathered through their mailing lists.

That's why every Humble Indie bundle style release should have a well-known heavy hitter to draw in the crowds, then essentially provides free advertising to the lesser known.

So is anyone in here capable of doing detailed sprites in the Vanillaware style?  I love that style, and I've got a whole game engine written in XNA, but my art skills aren't up to the task.

It's a 2d skeleton-based animation system, with keyframes & morphing, as well as stuff like ragdoll physics, a whole toolchain for quickly putting together animations, and all the systems for loading from metadata at runtime.

Holla

I'm also no artist (no portfolio, and currently outsourcing the art for my current game), but I can draw decently in a mildly anime style.  I'll be willing to attempt to make some spritesheets for you for free in exchange for the skeleton template for said spritesheets.  Right now I'm content with using isometric 3D pre-renders but want to level up my game so this is a good opportunity.  (If I can succeed at getting the Vanillaware style then I can lay the smackdown on my friends)

I couldn't make heads and tails from the Odin sphere spritesheet rips (too complicated!) but perhaps your animation system has things properly labelled and organized, so that I can, for example, see how the bones move and just draw on top of them.

PM me and I'll show you what I'm up to.  Hopefully we can establish a good working relationship starting from the hobby level but later maybe on a professional level as well (I need a friend who's already on XBLIG).

Two angles to this:

1.  The developer must be proven.  When I first decided to start making shitty little freeware games, as a noob, I went around asking for partners and artists.

No one gave a shit.

So I had to buckle down and do everything myself:  art, programming, even music.  I also offered my services for free for other people's shitty little games as well.  Eventually after a few releases people in the forums I frequented saw that I was a pretty reliable creator -- nowhere as talented of course, but still capable of finishing crap.

I was flattered when the designers/writers that I admired when I was first starting out requested my help for their small and eventually bigger projects.

So in relation to 8-bit funding, instead of begging for funds, its purpose should instead be to hold a game hostage.  Meaning, the creators should be able to finish the game within their means, then withold release to the public unless they are compensated for at least some of the effort.  Make 8bitfunding more of a digital auction site that promises already complete games but won't flood the internet with them unless enough people care enough to pay their development costs back.

With less games out, there will be more attention on the remaining games, which brings me to my second point.

2.  There's so much content nowadays that players are becoming jaded and spoiled.  Many gamers, instead of wading through every single game, just either go to the most popular with the highest ratings, or they set arbitrary thresholds for things that deserve their attention... they may ignore works-in-progress and just focus on finished games (since many WIP tend to die), or they may even just consider commercial games (since they guarantee a minimum amount of polish/value compared to freeware).

That's why I keep asking for raising the lower limit to more expensive projects.  $500 games are short time-sink type games best served on the iphone.  And the Appstore is flooded to kingdom come with these sorts of games.  As a noob developer, it's wise to start small, but at the same time don't expect fame and fortune from these small projects... only a good learning experience.

I want people to really present their 'Magnum Opus' and leave out their little side projects.  Few games on 8-bitfunding really feel like that magnum opus to me.

Geoff Gibson, can you set a minimum amount to at least $1K or $1.5K?  I see no reason why the $500 projects won't just swallow the risk themselves, unless they're a developer based in Bangladesh or some remote corner of Africa, maybe.

Interesting, since I'm currently working on a single-player isometric RPG and have allocated $7000 worth of savings to be spread over the course of the year (so far, 5 months and $2000 worth of art expenditure has passed).  I was debating with myself whether to join but figured there's nothing more respectable than shouldering this risk entirely on my own.

I am very curious about the generally accepted amounts of money people ask for certain projects, though.

At the very least, this is very different from Indiefund which targets $200,000 projects made by small studio teams. -- these are what you expect to be indie hits on consoles.

I'll be eyeing 8bitfunding for a while and see what comes of it.

(And I'm not a pure naysayer since I pitched in for 3 projects at the site).

I say get rid of the $500 projects.  Jeez, that's just one month rent.  $500 is a lot only to a highschooler.

I'd say it must be a requirement to film yourself making the pitch.  That's the surefire way to weed out those who want to make a quick buck -- there's a face we can hunt down if the dev doesn't make good his promise!!!

Even a camera-shy anti-social hermit like myself would force myself in front of a webcam and explain my project in a down-to-earth manner if I had a project I really feel passionately about.

I'm curious how non-Flash games can use vector art.  I'm not talking about really-low-level stuff like lighting up some pixels with a certain color, but games that look like they used Flash or some other vector animation program, but the games themselves are not in Flash.

I've read there are some recent games that use embedded swfs for animations (Games packaged in AIR I guess), but generally speaking, even if the animation software used is vector, do people usually still export png spritesheets with alpha?

I remember when shareware "demos" packed 7 or more levels, and playing them through took as long as the single-player campaign of today's games.

Nowadays you either have only 1-level demo, no demo at all, or even paid demos disguised as DLC.

The problem with a short game that's short because of a lack of environmental art assets is that it's not so feasible to create a demo:
* I principally dislike time-limited demos
* You can't exactly take the first few "levels" of an RPG and have it representative of the final gameplay experience.  You would usually want to show a bit of when your characters are maxed out and what they can do with the complete suite of skills.  Not surprisingly, a lot of demos for RPGs are entirely custom, dropping the player in the middle of the game, and hence their savegames are incompatible with the main game.
* Ideally I would create a unique demo-only environment, but I'd rather use the art assets to make the main game more complete.

At this point I can't exactly start asking for money since I don't want to make promises I can't keep.  I'd rather release a self-contained project in the end rather than keep something in development hell for years.  If the project is going to be bigger and more expensive than it already is, I'd rather a bigger studio take over rather than sign more of my life (and life savings) away.

The scenario I'm increasingly settling on is what Pirates of New Horizons are doing:  release a feature-complete prototype and have players participate in surveys to help improve the game and plan for the future.  Of course I'll probably add a nag screen with a donate button.  As well as host some ads on the website.  To me what's worse than a game that didn't get any sales is a game that wasn't played and enjoyed.  So I am still capable of treating several thousands of dollars as a write-off if they're not earned back... I'll just postpone buying a new car.  And after all, the money was still used to employ artists, which is my part in helping the economy.  It's when the sum reaches the 5-digit figures that I'm unwilling to risk.

The whole reason why I entertained the idea of going commercial is to give me more freedom to explore more platforms, many of which are commercial.  I had worked previously with a partner on a game that would have made a killing when the iphone app store first came out, but all hopes of an iOS port was dashed because my partner wanted the game to be strictly freeware.  None of us knew how to port at that time, so hiring someone else to do the porting was not feasible for a freeware game.

So now I just pay everyone else who contributes one way or another to my game, so that the IP is only under my name -- all the art and music is custom to this project -- hopefully making it easier to talk to individuals or companies who may want to take it further.

(Sorry for refusing to disclose more info about my current game nor past games... I wish to start with a blank slate and see how far a game can go based only on its own merits.  So I prefer to keep a very low internet profile with no recognizable association until the time comes.)

I'll get right to the point with brute honesty (it seems there seems to be some code of secrecy among commercial indie devs that it's a big deal when somebody discloses their production costs, sales numbers, or total revenue).

So far I've spent more than $2000 in art assets for my game and calculated the projected total cost for all assets to max out at around $7000 when complete.

The game is very pretty and can stand out in screenshots (right now since I'm nowhere near release I'm keeping a low profile, since it's too early to market and seek feedback).

It's a single-player RPG similar to Aphelion, but going to be released for PC instead of XBLIG.

The problem is that I only have around 4 dungeons, and if each dungeon takes about an hour each (that's with repetitive battles), plus story, the total playtime will only be around 5-6 hours at best.

I started the investment because I thought I had what it takes to make a commercial game, finally.  But I still have self-doubt and am unsure if I can sell my game.  I'm confident of the main premise and core gameplay systems, and the graphics are more on professional level rather than freeware level.

The problem is the value-for-money equation, since people expect their games -- especially RPGs to take a lot of their time, and this game feels more like a vertical slice or an extended DLC demo.  Ideally I would invest more to make it more extensive, but I'm not going to risk more money until it's proven that this new IP gives a unique experience.  The game will be feature-complete though.  And since this is a story-based game with a clear beginning/middle/end, I can't exactly shoehorn an 'endless mode' sort of gameplay to it.  I already ruled out the microscopic possibility of a minecraft-like level of success for the simple reason that the game is not open-ended and won't promise more than what I'm already giving to the player.

I'm thinking with today's cutthroat market, this is the kind of game that's best served in some pay-what-you-want bundle... except rather than the usual old but full-length game, this will be a new, unproven and quite short (comparatively) experience.  I'm definitely targeting the mobile / tablet as well.  Since the average PC indie title sells less than 1,000 units, I was hoping to charge $10 so that at least I'll break even.  But seeing the kinds of quality titles these days going for much less, $3-$5 seem more reasonable rates.

Another option I'm considering is the shareware route, which is essentially a donationware-based model with a nag screen.  I would prioritize having more people play my game rather than maximizing revenue, but at the same time I still want to recover the development costs (which don't include my own time).  My most desparate option will be to go totally freeware and pray that the game will reach Cave Story-level of recognition, enough to fund a paid console remake with lots of extras.

What do people think... as a player/customer, and as a fellow developer?

To piggyback on the question, is there a professional torrent tracker site that's used for legitimate releases (i.e. not ad/spyware supported warez sites).  I'll be asking this very same question in a couple of months, this time with ~500mb file sizes.