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krabbo
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« Reply #60 on: November 15, 2009, 03:07:38 PM »

i think you missed my point -- my point was not that indies don't have dreams, but that it's not a good "dream" to want to work in the mainstream games industry. a lot of indies left the industry to work independently due to the greater creative freedom.

braid, world of goo, the path, and zeno clash are not mainstream games, they're just famous indie games. the people who made those games don't work 'in the games industry'. i agree that it's a good dream to want your game to become well known, but i just meant the path to that is often *not* through working in a mainstream games company, so articles about how to get a job at EA (etc.) are not exactly useful to most indie developers, who would see such a situation as more nightmare than dream.

You missed my point. Breaking into the industry doesn't mean getting a job. In my case it means creating a game that is recognized in the industry as a real game. Smiley

We never worked 'in the industry' and don't plan to and don't encourage others to. Anything we have to say in an article is about independent game development only.
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #61 on: November 15, 2009, 03:11:52 PM »

in that case it may be a misunderstanding in part, but i still have a definite terminology disagreement. in particular, i disagree with the use of the word 'industry' -- indie games tend to be more about community and craft than industry. industry has connotations of production, making products, assembly lines. which fits the mainstream games industry because they make games in that manner, as products. whereas most are drawn to indie games due to people actually creating games for the love of it rather than as products.

in other words, i suspect the makers of 'the path' (they're friends of mine) would kind of be dismayed to hear you describe their game as something which 'broke into the industry'.

if indie games are an industry, they're definitely at least only a cottage industry
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krabbo
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« Reply #62 on: November 15, 2009, 04:09:46 PM »

in that case it may be a misunderstanding in part, but i still have a definite terminology disagreement. in particular, i disagree with the use of the word 'industry' -- indie games tend to be more about community and craft than industry. industry has connotations of production, making products, assembly lines. which fits the mainstream games industry because they make games in that manner, as products. whereas most are drawn to indie games due to people actually creating games for the love of it rather than as products.

in other words, i suspect the makers of 'the path' (they're friends of mine) would kind of be dismayed to hear you describe their game as something which 'broke into the industry'.

if indie games are an industry, they're definitely at least only a cottage industry

Fair enough. Words and articles can easily be massaged to fit the audience. It's fine to disagree, nothing wrong with a good debate.

As for the 'dream'.. I've had them since as far back as I can remember. As a little girl I always knew I wanted to do something big. I drifted through school daydreaming looking out the window, often times, and spent most of my free time drawing and painting. Fortunately I was one of the smart ones and could afford to daydream.

I guess my point here is, dreaming is a wonderful thing and I bet a lot of people do it.

The other thing.. this 'cottage industry' is growing.. it is breaking in. The word industry is irrelevant to me personally.

Telling people the story is what's important to us. And we'll have our audience. This conversation has provided me with the title, or at least the content of it. So thanks!  Smiley

--
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #63 on: November 15, 2009, 06:30:18 PM »

welcome. and again i want to emphasize that i do think people should have dreams and fulfill them, just that it doesn't necessarily have to be someone's dream to make a million dollars with their game. there can be other dreams, such as just making a game which is significant and valuable to a few thousand people, or a dream of finally finishing the ambitious game you wanted to make, even if not many people enjoy it. or the dream of pushing new ground and experimenting with new types of play experience. etc. etc. -- i.e. being a success in the classical sense isn't the only dream someone can have.
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varmint
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« Reply #64 on: November 15, 2009, 07:13:35 PM »

welcome. and again i want to emphasize that i do think people should have dreams and fulfill them, just that it doesn't necessarily have to be someone's dream to make a million dollars with their game. there can be other dreams, such as just making a game which is significant and valuable to a few thousand people, or a dream of finally finishing the ambitious game you wanted to make, even if not many people enjoy it. or the dream of pushing new ground and experimenting with new types of play experience. etc. etc. -- i.e. being a success in the classical sense isn't the only dream someone can have.

  I want to emphasize, that is the point of this article if you bothered to read it. This is why it's on GameCareerGuide.com instead of Gamasutra as it's aimed at small developers, new developers and independent developers that often frequent this site. Hence the title "Small Team, Big Dreams". If it was "Big Team, Big Dreams" well who cares that goes on all the time :D Tongue

  Lessons like the "Garbage to Gold" section is one of the most valuable things new / small / independent developers could learn from this. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people just give up because they did not learn this lesson.

  This article is intended to help people achieve their goals and dreams no matter the size of the project. It will help them to find a path to finishing their project instead of giving up, especially look at the areas of choosing an engine. If you choose the wrong engine you may not find out until your 80% though and again most people give up at this point.

  So in short if your Blink goal is to truly help the independent developer Ninja , this is a good article to do just that, which I've had a lot feed back from many independent developers on, thanking me for writing this. It covers many areas and pit falls that we fell into on our journey which can help others to avoid.
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #65 on: November 15, 2009, 08:13:28 PM »

i read it, but it was mostly about engine design, choosing a 3d engine, making one yourself, and so on -- technical aspects. interesting for those who want to make 3d games, but not especially related to what we were talking about here, which is why i wonder why it was put in the 'breaking into the industry' category. i didn't see that much about dreams, even though its title was small team big dreams -- it seemed mainly to be a history of your team's development of krabbit world origins, and had the feel of a postmortem: what went bad, what went good, etc.

i definitely agree about not giving up and sticking to a project though -- one of the big differences w/ the mainstream games industry is that nobody is there looking over your shoulder getting you to work on your game, so indie devs need to learn self-discipline and learn how not to give up on projects and such
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varmint
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« Reply #66 on: November 15, 2009, 09:56:59 PM »

i read it, but it was mostly about engine design, choosing a 3d engine, making one yourself, and so on -- technical aspects.

What? Seriously? Shocked You can't have read it, there is nothing technical or about engine design. It's about how to choose the right tool for the job you want. In fact when I was originally asked to do this, I was asked to not do a technical article, but an abstract more theoretical article that would help new developers. In fact in this article I even discourage creating an engine if your goal is to make a game. Because and I quote from the article:

The more time you have to focus on your game, the more time you have to polish it and really make your true vision. If your time is divided, your project will suffer. Any time you are not working on something that is directly related to your project, then your project is put in second place. Try to avoid this as much as possible.

These are white papers on technical design so that you can see the difference Grin
http://shadow.krabbit.com/varmint/KDBFS.doc
http://shadow.krabbit.com/varmint/KSQLite3.doc

interesting for those who want to make 3d games,
  It's not just about 3D games, in fact I don't even say what type of game. I do mention Tomb Raider as an example as it's one of my favorite games. But the methodology of choosing the right tool for your job still applies. Well, hello there!

  Even though in the section An editor is key. I do talk about how a 3D modeling program is not a game engine and this still applies to a paint program is not a game engine. If you have a choice of engines, look for an editor, it will save you time. You need to see the end result.

  From 96 to 98 I ran my own little multiplayer 2D game http://www.varmint.net/index2.html Forgive me I'm not an artist Tongue and back then 256 colour palette was essential for speed on computers. Especially when using WinG API. I had to make my own tile editor which took some time, unfortunately tools for independent developers were few and rare.

  From 2000 - 2002 we ran http://korner.krabbit.com/viewtopic.php?t=1944 (scroll down to 4th post for some screenshots) So we have a lot of experience with 2D games and now 3D.

  I guess in the article I focused more on 3D from our involvement in the irrlicht community http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/author.html where I've contributed things to the engine and helped by trying to maintain the Mac OSX port as time permitted. Beer!
 

but not especially related to what we were talking about here, which is why i wonder why it was put in the 'breaking into the industry' category.

  Breaking into the industry was the category http://www.thirteen1.com/ put it in this month's magazine. This section in their magazine is aimed at new, independents and start ups, with an average age group from 18 - 26. Perhaps your interpretation of that category is different, that's fine. Perhaps you can suggest a title which better fits. Smiley

i didn't see that much about dreams, even though its title was small team big dreams -- it seemed mainly to be a history of your team's development of krabbit world origins, and had the feel of a postmortem: what went bad, what went good, etc.

  Not true at all. Durr...? This has been my dream to make games since I was 6 years old. I even start off the article with first thing you should ask yourself is, what do you want to get out of this, this is not something you would see in a postmortem. If this was a postmortem, I'd be specific about tools we used, pitfalls, etc. This also would have been posted on Gamasutra were postmortems are posted, plus I would not have waited till the end of the article to talk about our experience.  Cool On page 3 of 4 about 2/4 down the section that starts with How does all this apply to the path we took? is the only part about how everything that had been written before that applied to what we did. This was to back up one of my earlier statements about asking people for a portfolio of their work when they give you advice on the path to your dream. Tongue After all who are we to be giving all this advice, so this shows who we are. Tongue

  And in that section I talk about We did present to many non-game industry investors .. At least once a week I see a number of independent developers go down this path, get discouraged and give up. Even we felt like giving up going though these things, wasting a year with investors who really just wanted to change the dream. Which returns to my previous statement. If your time is divided, your project will suffer. And because of this we lost our momentum we had gained and our community dwindled and fell silent.  Cry

i definitely agree about not giving up and sticking to a project though -- one of the big differences w/ the mainstream games industry is that nobody is there looking over your shoulder getting you to work on your game, so indie devs need to learn self-discipline and learn how not to give up on projects and such

  Yes I definitely agree with you here. In today's world of noise and distractions it's hard to keep focused on your goals. Which is why I talk about this in the Garbage To Gold.
Try to put together at least one level first. Just use place holder art (square blocks). You will find it much more inspiring to have a level you can run and jump through, even if it's just a bunch of square blocks. And it's very true, having something that works in front of you, on your screen certainly kept us focused in the face of adversity.

  Which brings me to my closing comments, the quotes I live my life by
Henry Ford: "Obstacles are those scary things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."
Walt Disney "The best way to get started is to stop talking and start doing!".
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #67 on: November 16, 2009, 05:41:26 AM »

i think you're right about most of those points, except that it still really felt technical to me -- it seemed it was mostly talk about engines, very little talk about game design, art, business aspects of selling a game yourself, music, etc., and perhaps a little motivational talk mixed in there, which is fine since space isn't unlimited. but my impression was that it used what i can call the gamedev.net worldview: that making games is 90% engines and programming, 10% everything else, when in my experience it's more like 90% everything else, 10% engines and programming. it might be interesting to see another article on the experience of your team in those other aspects, how it handled game design / balance issues, how it adapted the game to the player experience through playtesting or other methods, how it went about creating the art and music for the game, how it went about marketing the game, and so on.
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ChevyRay
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« Reply #68 on: December 16, 2009, 12:09:29 PM »

Is it possible for Josh's post about the Indie Music Cancer Drive to get frontpaged? I could even write it into a more organized post if you want, but pre-orders are now available and he's already got a nice image of a bunch of the featured artists and everything.

Smiley
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