Alec Holowka, Ron Carmel, and Simon Carless in attendance (photo by Dan Tabar)
The Austin GDC just finished up. It sounded like a lot of fun, with many indies in attendance for the first IGS in Austin. Here are write-ups of the various talks that were given by independent creators last week:
Day One
How Fantastic Contraption Became A Fantastic Hit (Gamasutra) – “Fantastic Contraption creator Colin Northway explained how he created his Flash-based physics game with no pro game experience, and “made a boatload of money” along the way.”
NinjaBee’s Fox Gets Practically Indie (Gamasutra) – “NinjaBee’s Brent Fox discussed the history of the company, which was set up as a brand for original IP in 2001, and has made Xbox Live Arcade games such as Clonin’ Clyde, A Band Of Bugs and A Kingdom For Keflings, talking in human terms about creating a stable indie game company.”
Gaijin’s Roush on Bit.Trip’s Indie Construction (Gamasutra) – “The original concept of the first Bit.Trip title was ‘Pong with music,’ said Gaijin Games’ Mike Roush Roush—but ‘we all know a great game needs more than a concept.’”
Certain Affinity’s Bullard On Bootstrapping Your Indie Business (Gamasutra) – “In an intensely practical Indie Games Summit talk at GDC Austin, Certain Affinity (Age Of Booty) production manager Jennifer Bullard talked about the realities of game business for a mid-sized independent developer, spanning business to relationships and beyond.”
Wolfire On Making Indie Marketing Buzz (Gamasutra) – “Wolfire’s John Graham discussed how to get the word out about your independent game, based around successful tactics for upcoming PC action game Overgrowth.” Slides available here.
Day Two
2D Boy’s Carmel On ‘Beyond The Finish Line’ (Gamasutra) – “World Of Goo co-creator Ron Carmel from indie studio 2D Boy examined the world ‘beyond the finish line’, discussing what happens after your indie game is released and how to deal with it.”
Swink, Wegner On Blurst’s Rapid Prototyping Madness (Gamasutra) – “Flashbang Studios’ Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink explained how their rapid prototyping of web-based games like Off-Road Velociraptor Safari gave them larger life lessons.”
Lost Garden’s Cook On Why Premium Flash Games Rock (Gamasutra) – “Bunni co-creator and Lost Garden blogger Daniel Cook explained why he believes charging users for more complex Flash games is the wave of the future.”
Twisted Pixel Talks ‘Splosion Man Postmortem (Gamasutra) – “Mike Henry and Sean Riley from Austin-based indie Twisted Pixel used their Independent Games Summit talk to postmortem the six-month XBLA project ‘Splosion Man, a significant indie success in the ‘Summer Of Arcade’ for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.”
Storytelling Through Independent Games (Destructoid) – “Alec Holowka, formerly one half of Bit Blot (Aquaria) and currently the head of Infinite Ammo (Paper Moon), was the last speaker to go on at the Independent Games Summit of GDC Austin.”
Eurogamer will be holding another Expo this year after the mild success of 08’s offering, and returning once again will be the Indie Games Arcade which will also be present throughout the event emitting rays of awesome from whatever part of the convention it will have landed in.
EGExpo 2009 tickets are available now for £6 and will be open for four days. It starts at The Royal Armouries on the 27th and 28th October in Leeds, before moving to London at Old Billingsgate on the 30th and 31st October. I’ll be around on the 31st so I’ll be sure to take some photos and post up some impressions, especially for Cletus Clay, but hopefully it’ll be redundant if you’re a UK TIGer as you’ll be dropping in to show your support. Right?
Looking forward to seeing anyone who heads out there!
The 15th Ludum Dare “48 hour solo game development competition” has ended. The theme this time around was “Caverns,” and there were over 143 (i.e., 144) games submitted—all of which you can find here. (With screen shots!)
The top honors this time went to ChevyRay’s Beacon (shown above) and YMM’s Broken Cave Robot, which are both excellent. But there are many other gems! I advise scrolling through the voting results and trying everything.
Ludum Dare 16 will begin in December. Prepare thyself!
In case anyone’s wondering what to get me for Christmas, Adam Robezzoli’s Attract Mode videogame culture shop has at long last opened its doors. (You may know Adam from the equally excellent ARTXGAME/Giant Robot shows.)
Currently featured are some excellent shirts, a number of chiptune records, Tetris ice cube trays (!), some super cool pins from the likes of Auntie Pixelante and Cactus, as well as gigantic prints from Mr. Craig D. “superbrothers” Adams. (Who you should check out if you haven’t—he’s great!) Tell your moms friends!
If you missed the link: You can find the Attract Mode shop here.
I am so sad I’m not at GDC Austin right now. Brandon Boyer’s New Indie Hotness session alone would have been worth the trip. (Not to mention the indie love explosion that’s undoubtedly going on this very minute!)
Fortunately, the unstoppable Simon Carless is doing his best to cover the event. Keep an eye on GameSetWatch as the week goes on.
Simon has already posted his wrap-up of day one, with pretty thorough articles on many of the sessions. It’s like you’re right there!
You may have already heard this news, but I think it’s prudent to post it again: The fourth iteration of the previously Montreal-based indie game exposition / dance party, Gamma, will now be held at this year’s GDC in San Francisco. While I’m sad to not have an excuse to take the train up to Montreal this year, I’m thrilled to see Gamma return bigger than ever.
Read Simon’s announcement post for all the details. (Or if this is the first time you’ve heard of Gamma!)
Kokoromi will reveal this year’s theme and open submissions in November, so stay tuned!
The results of the Adult/Educational Competition are in (and have been for a while now, sorry about that)! This was a super-close race between Edmund and Back Door Man, with the former winning by two votes. Congratulations to Farmergnome for winning the grand prize with his controversial game.
You can find the full breakdown here. Once again, please be aware that some of these games depict graphic pixel-on-pixel intercourse and are possibly inappropriate for young children, depending on how tight-assed their parents are. Make note of what category the game belongs to before you play.
Does anyone love stats? Here are some: of the top 10 games, 8 were of adult nature, 1 was educational, and 1 was both. Proving once again that people enjoy sex more than they enjoy learning. But everyone loves video games.
Thanks to all the participants! This was a crazy one, and the next one might be crazier. See you next time!
Chris Heckerhas announced that he’s been laid off from Maxis, where he was a major contributor to Spore. In the announcement Chris reveals that he’ll be working on Spy Party, a game which he demoed at this year’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop. In the game you play a sniper watching a cocktail party from another building, trying to figure out which of the partygoers is the spy by looking for various tells. I saw it at EGW and it’s a cool take on the spy genre.
Chris isn’t new to indie games by any means, having helped organize the Indie Game Jam and The Experimental Gameplay Workshop for several years. He also infamously ranted about the Nintendo Wii at GDC 2007, which – even though he was speaking for himself – ended up becoming the rather lurid headline “Spore Developer Calls Wii a Piece of Shit.” Good times!
It’ll be exciting to see what Chris comes up with now that he’s gone ronin! Good luck, man!
