GDC 2009 – Indie Summit Day 1

These are my notes from the GDC 2009 Indie Track Day 1 of 2.

Admitedly, these notes will be of more use to me, than most because they are sparse on details, but I do hope they have some value for folks who also attended and those who did not.

These notes were often written in a hurry and/or after the fact. Thus, I can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. If you think I misquoted someone or made a mistake in my notes, please leave a comment.

23 MAR 2009

2D Boy: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Going Indie But Were Afraid to Ask (Ron Carmel of 2D Boy)

• Taking pre-orders seems to have worked well for World Of Goo, Crayon Physics, et al.
• WIIWARE was comparatively (a lot of work) by comparison to sales value (World of Goo 2000)
• World Of Goo Breakout: 65% Win, 25% OSX, 10% Linux
• World of Goo -> Publishers: Waste of time. (Did better than $700K advance + 15% royalties)
• Advice: If you sell via retail: Accept flat-fee deals ONLY.
• Digital Distribution:
  • DIY
  • Big Boys First (i.e. approach the large channels first)
  • Nag Creatively (if at first you don’t succeed with getting a chance, keep trying)
  • Global Release @ Uniform Price is best (for not pissing off customers)
  • No DRM (waste of time and money)
  • Self-promotion extremely important. Don’t rely on channels to do this for you.
• Linux was only 10%, but awesome for creating buzz because the community is so vocal.
• Another source of statics mentioned in lecture (for another Indie)
  • http://greyaliengames.com/blog/category/sales-statistics/

Indie Games: From Buzz To Business (Tom Buscaglia; Dylan Fitter; Mike Wilfer; Zach Aikman)

• Mike W.
  • Folks were unhappy about downloadable content @ cost.
    • “Why didn’t you release this with the game?”
    • “You shouldn’t charge for extra content!”
• Dylan F.
  • Regularly gives out new (free) content to maintain buzz.
  • This is working for him.
  • Maintains his own community and Forums (Steam is OK with this)
  • Doesn’t go for direct sales. (Too much work, for too little profit)
  • Pushes Steam.
  • Provides a friend feature (? what did this mean ?)

The Four-Hour Game Design by Cactus (Jonatan Söderström)

• suggests sfxr – Sound FX Tool
• Do plenty of prototypes
• Made one game per month till he hit a download spike for a released game.
• Did trailer for download spiked game and this pushed downloads up ~10x
• Makes good point => Original Ideas never survice the development process. i.e. Final Product != Original Product Idea
• Notes that playing prototypes helps explore new ideas that might not otherwise occur to him.
• Prototyping allows you to test ideas and not kill too early. i.e. not killed in conceptualizing stage. (interesting, but likely a fact that lots of games never get to even early implementation because of the development barrier)
• Feels the public part of his prototyping,
  • requires extra effort for art/sound (i.e. he feels the need to meet certain standards)
  • has danger of idea stealing (cloning)
• Point: People fear criticism of their creativity which acts as a significant block to trying out ideas and showing them to others.
• “Weekly Kleenex Testing”?
  • Read this, looks like Coyote knows about it -> http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/01/first-playable-level.html
• Point: Right-Size Your Games (do what you know with regards to all aspects of the design; especially important for lone-wolf types).
• Found adding levels to a game actually shortened the duration dependent on cadence.
• Didn’t appropriately identify his audience.
• Interesting question from audience at endof talk – Asking person feels education still not well served by games.

Other folks writeups on this lecture:

• http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/03/gdc_09_cactus_on_the_fourhour.html

Embracing Constraints (Dylan Fitterer of Audiosurf, LLC)

• Total Freedom == Total Failure
• Too many pieces limit freedom. (Over complex)
• Working under strict constraints creates a feeling of freedom
• BS ideas by putting together odds-n-ends list(s) selecting words/topics, and then making up mechanics to fit the choices.
• Set constraint on graphics options
• In early audio surf version, he found that using cars caused people to avoid them (a built in response based on previous experience) when the goal was the opposite. point is, sometimes people respond to what they see/here in a way contrary to what you expect.
• Artificially short days to ‘crunch’ more often (a thing they did at FlashBang)
• Making games from randomized categories of words:

1. Cat #1 Cat#2 Cat #3 ….
2. Randomly select one card from each category.
3. make a game (make up mechanics to fit).

• ‘Real Deadlines’ – Use other people to enforce meeting your deadlines. Don’t rely on yourself. You’ll slip otherwise.
• My comment: Constraints sound good, but you still need a knowledge base.

Stardock On The PC Hardcore Scene As Indie (Brad Wardell of Stardock)

• “Many a dead indie…”
• Sins of a solar empire
• Steam, impulse, gamers gate, direct2drive, GOG, XBox Live
• Publicizing Your Game
  • Find web sites that cater to your base
  • Build your own customer base
  • Make your potential customers part of your game
• With regards to publishers: “If some thief breaks into your house and doesn’t steal your television, you don’t say he gave you a television.”
• Stardock does open-betas by pre-order.

Other folks coverage of this lecture: http://gdc.gamespot.com/story/6206641/

No Publisher? No Problem! iPhone for Indies (Adam Saltsman Semi Secret Software)

• wurdle
• field runners
• “menus are kind ofa pain”, so don’t do one.
• wurdle == crazy low work ==> crazy big sales (lucky)
• Used community to localize their content instead of paying for it. Great idea.
• “The 5 Second Rule”
  • Doen’t need to be good.
  • Just needs to understandable in 5 seconds.
• Be prepared for Apple to request a high-resolutoin image of your game logo/work
• Rollercoaster difficulty better than straight progression, otherwise too wearing and may cause folks to give up.

Tagged as: gdc, indie