Well, if that's the case in today's modern society, the course for you is clear. Firstly you must stop using the internet. You must draw your salary directly from your employer in cash, and never use a credit/debit card again. When shopping you must not use any loyalty cards. Electrics, water, sewage and any possible licenses, local taxes, car taxes (depending on where you live) are also monitored and used for data mining. And just forget about using mobile phones.... Basically, anytime your id is electronically logged and can be tied to some sort of activity can and are being data mined for various purposes. If this was news to you, then welcome to to connected society.

I have to say, this has been the silliest and most amusing thread I read this week. Thank you for making me laugh.

The point about the internet is not true, just use an Ad and script blocker on your browser, it's rather simple.

And your point about public utilities (electricity etc) is also irrelevant, they are public matters, same goes for taxation. And I don't own a mobile phone either.

I have seen the game around.
Didn't buy it.

I think what doesn't help is the banner logo.
Its seems very generic and uninspired.

(Lets be honest here, A LOT of twinstick shooters these days use vector graphics. If I was making a shooter, I would avoid that. I'd probably go for the old-school arena dungeon style that I love in Smash TV. Probably pixel based sprite art unless I could find a co-collaborator who was decent in art and animation (I can't get my head around 3D))

To give even a crappy game like Hydrophobia some credit, the banner-art is interesting. It draws some intrigue.

Its also true that people do love characterisation and story, so why not make a game drawing that out.

Hell. You could even make a text adventure that would sell if the characters and plot was endearing enough.

In the end, videogames are an overall package, an experience as it were. If you make games not taking that into account, then its just not going to do well.

(I'd go even further and argue that going into making videogames to make money is even worse motive. If I ever got round to making videogames I'd be happy that I'm actually entertaining people and bringing some joy to them. I'd be jumping for joy that 15000 people played my game, let alone bought it! I'd be happy even if like 1 person played it and said it was alright. But then again, I guess I must be easy to please! XD)

EDIT: I think the best anology for indie devs is that they are ike Comedians

Not many become overnight successes, in fact, many take years and years to be noticed and given that opportunity of fame.
They have to tour the comedy circuits for years, working on their stuff, tweaking it until it becomes brilliant and noticable.
Some of those jokes get stolen by bigger acts. In fact some might even be hired by bigger acts to write for them. They find that niche to get them by. They may never get much further than that, you know, but maybe the bigger act gets cancelled or someone is ill, then they might be given the shot to try to entertain.

A few thoughts on the article, and also other things like the "low prices and sales destroy the value of games".

As was said somewhere, the only "problem" currently is that there are so many developers, ie. "too much" competition (especially on the indie market). That is basically which causes all the grazy sales, people not buying at full price or even not buying at all, most indie developers having hard time moving out of their parents' home on game sales alone etc. Tough. So many available choices for consumers.

The author practically said the same himself, when he said that if your indie game has ever been released for consoles, even if it failed here, it will get lots of recognition and free marketing on PC by that fact alone. Why? Because you've gone through some kind of more or less rigorous screening before you got your game published for consoles, ie. less competition (after the screening). The few lucky ones who make it to the consoles, get extra recognition right away.

I find it a bit hypocritical for some (indie) developers to complain that it is hard to get your title any recognition it the vast sea of PC indie titles, and at the same time concede how nifty it is that any one-man team can enter the PC gaming market with their indie title. You can't eat the cake and keep it too.


The author talked about how content is king, not gameplay. That is certainly an interesting question. If you have the muscles, it may be much more foolproof to make something with lots of content, and not trying to shine with trying something completely different with gameplay. I guess that's why we see so many "movie-like experience" games from the big studios, even if it restricts the gameplay in many cases.

It is partly the same question as the former GOG discussion, are you more interested in e.g. the story or gameplay/challange in your games. One old game that I personally found rich on both content and gameplay was Starcraft, and I liked it for both reasons. But if I had to choose between the two, I would have rather seen them drop most of the content (like story, music, FMV etc.) than gameplay (like having three completely different SC races to play; I consider that to be more about "gameplay" than "content"). I presume also that all the competitive SC players in Korea could have cared less about the story or the soundtrack.

It may not be easy to shine with gameplay alone these days, but when you do, you may really strike gold, like the Minecraft dude I guess (albeit I have no idea if Minecraft really made him a billionaire after all).

I think he basically admits this. He says, "I thought gamers wanted X (his game), but it seems they want cheevos, feel goods, etc." (paraphrased).

I think he knows he made a game that many didn't want to play, but if he's not even being pirated that's probably a bad sign that people just don't know about it.

FWIW I did play the demo, it was rather decent. I honestly think his problem was the promotional video did a bad job of showcasing his game. Watch the demo video for Sequence sometime and compare it to his, the Sequence one actually made me buy Sequence when I never would otherwise have considered it.

...

I'm wondering how many folks have actually played the demo? What about the inevitable comparison: Geometry Wars (1 or 2)?

He's not really lying, his game is quite good for what it is. I don't know if it's "best in breed" because I'm not all that good at those kinds of games. Still I can tell there's a lot of depth there just like I can tell Skull Girls is a good fighting game, I just don't know how good because I suck at that crap even worse.

I think his big fall down is marketing, he doesn't seem to know how to do it in an effective manner (which isn't really his fault, it's not his forte, but it is his fault for not recognizing he needs help here).

Also, I always thought games like that were drunk/high type games, I can laugh at doing really well and getting suddenly annihilated when I'm drunk and that is actually fun (I also scream "Kill the Space Marine!" in my best Ork voice when playing Space Marine drunk).