GT: Let's head for the question on everyone's mind. With the budget that AH had, 1.3 Million dollars, many people I meet don't consider this to be an 'indie' game. How do you respond to that statement?
JB- LOL...yeah, we get that a lot too, but it is pretty simple actually. When we were filling out the IGF entry, we decided it was best to put a number which accurately reflected the amount due to all the people who worked on the game as well as the out of pocket expenses. It didn't make sense to us to put up just the out of pocket numbers because that doesn't reflect what the game really cost to make. None of the founders of the Behemoth will see any money until we start seeing royalties. I think what some of the IGF teams will find when they start looking for publishers is that if their stated IGF budget is very low, they will be in a very difficult negotiating situation. On a side note, no intern labor was used in the making of the game.
As for our definition of "indie", that's simple too...indie means no one else had faith in your product so you went out and made the product anyway. An indie product is platform independent. It could be a game, music, film, movie, book, toy, you name it. It means you own and control the IP and no one paid for the development. As far as Alien Hominid is concerned, we paid for 110% of the development of the game ourselves, including non-development things like marketing, trade shows, PR and getting reviewers to review the game. We didn't use any outside money from our distributor O~3 Entertainment, venture capitalists or outside investors, we did it all internally by mortgaging or selling our homes, liquidating savings and the like. Some of the guys even worked side jobs or freelance. In the end the real kudos for this game goes to our wives, girlfriends and kids who bit the bullet with us, stood by us and supported us 100%. For more info about how we made Alien Hominid, check out [the FAQ on the website.]
Tom Fulp: It really irks me when people bring up that IGF number, because none of the founders were paid any salaries for making Alien Hominid and our additional team members are paid back heavily in royalties. I can say without a doubt that we are about as indie as you can get. We worked our butts off for 18 months and gave away our money instead of getting paid.
DP: If putting MORE out of your own pockets on the line somehow makes you LESS indie, then someone needs to explain to me how that works.
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