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General discussion (archive)GOG.com/Indie: Putting your indie game on GOG.com made easy!(182 posts)(182 posts)
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Posted August 19, 2013
Indie Devs! Join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people, get an advance on royalties.

GOG.com, in our continued efforts to bring you all the best games in history for PC and Mac, is looking to make it easier for indie game devs to submit their game to GOG.com. To that end, we have launched a new portal on GOG.com today, containing the essential information on the way we work with our indie partners, and an easy entry form providing direct contact with our team. All this, and more, found under the URL:

www.gog.com/indie

For those of you who are fans of GOG.com the service, this doesn't mean much of a change, except that we hope we will have ever more exciting indie games to release while we continue our schedule of regular awesome classics as well. For those of you who are developing games, though, we hope to make this a painless process where you can be sure that you will hear honest feedback from us about your game and where we want it on GOG.com.

We are also disclosing our revenue share--a 70/30 share, as is industry standard--unless we offer you an advance on your royalties, in which case it's a 60/40 share until we have recouped the cost of your advance. There's been some speculation on the part of developers in the past as to what it is that we offer indie devs, and we wanted to make sure that was clear up front. We've invited some of our indie dev friends to talk briefly about the experience of putting their game on GOG,com, and here's what they had to say:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oqIc7vix2YU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you're a fan of classic games, brace yourself for a thundering great RPG on Thursday. If you're a dev, fill out the form today, to join the DRM-free revolution, reach more people with your work, and possibly get an advance on royalties!
Post edited August 20, 2013 by TheEnigmaticT
Posted August 20, 2013
What is "indie" vs "AAA" then? I thought the only difference is the amount of resources available for creators. Indie developers are more limited with funds, AAA developers have more resources because they are usually either a bigger studio with spare funds (like CDPR for example), or they are funded by external publishers. Tides of Numenera has quite a limited budget (well, around 4 times bigger than that of the Original Sin) which also came from the crowdfunding campaign. Unless I misunderstand what "indie" is supposed to mean.

Let's put it this way - where does "indie" end and "AAA" starts? Tens of millions in budget, or what is a criteria?
Post edited August 20, 2013 by shmerl
Posted August 20, 2013
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shmerl: What is "indie" vs "AAA" then? I thought the only difference is the amount of resources available for creators. Indie developers are more limited with funds, AAA developers have more resources because they are usually either a bigger studio, or they are funded by external publishers. Tides of Numenera has quite a limited budget which came from the crowdfunding campaign. Unless I misunderstand what "indie" is supposed to mean.
A couple of millions $ is not exactly a small amount, certainly not for an Indie game. And please note that's just what they got from donations, be certain they spend a couple of million more from their own pockets too. A 100 000 $ rage budget is an indie in my book. But again, just as the article on wiki says, there's hardly a clear definition, so you're free to stick to your opinion, there no consensus on what an indie game is. :)
Posted August 20, 2013
Yeah, that's why I generally dislike these definitions (indie / AAA). They are not exact and also can be quite misleading, since people can have expectations like above - indie = low quality/bad game, AAA = high quality/good game which can be simply wrong in practice.

I personally don't care about indie, not indie and etc. I care whether the game is good or not :)
Post edited August 20, 2013 by shmerl
Posted August 20, 2013
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shmerl: Let's put it this way - where does "indie" end and "AAA" starts? Tens of millions in budget, or what is a criteria?
Originally, "indie" was short for "independent", ie. no publisher breathing down your neck and wanting a return on their investment. The term has since been muddled enough that EA had an "indie" sale of games they published, over at Steam a year or so ago.
Posted August 20, 2013
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Maighstir: Originally, "indie" was short for "independent", ie. no publisher breathing down your neck and wanting a return on their investment. The term has since been muddled enough that EA had an "indie" sale of games they published, over at Steam a year or so ago.
Well, according to this definition, both Tides of Numenera and Original Sin are surely "indie". But this definition has even less correlation with quality expectations then the the budget based one.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by shmerl
Posted August 20, 2013
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shmerl: But this definition has even less correlation with quality expectations then the the budget based one.
Yup. As for what it means today? Ask a hundred gamers and you'll get a hundred different answers.
Posted August 20, 2013
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shmerl: But this definition has even less correlation with quality expectations then the the budget based one.
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Maighstir: Yup. As for what it means today? Ask a hundred gamers and you'll get a hundred different answers.
So the usefulness of such definition is rather minimal IMHO. That's why there is no point to make statements like "I don't like / not interested in indies because..." and etc. Since many people understand different things by it.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by shmerl
Posted August 20, 2013
I think it was Derek Yu who said defining an indie game is sort of a "you know it when you see it" kind of thing, but you've basically got "true indies" that are made by independent creators/studios and which cover a fairly wide range, "indie-ish" games that are basically publisher-funded but mostly hands-off games targeted at indie niches - e.g., Journey, Mark of the Ninja, Shank - and then you've got the AAA, big-budget, publisher-dictated titles that dominate the market.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by andysheets1975
Posted August 20, 2013
Great News!. Maybe I can see Indie VisualNovels in GOG. (^_^)
Posted August 20, 2013
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shmerl: keeveek: Original Sin should come out this year I think, and Tides of Numenera in 2015. What was your point? Does it make them less indie or something? They were brought as examples which demonstrate that "indie" is a broad definition and is by no means limited to low quality platformers.

Other examples which already came out - Torchlight, Amnesia, Legend of Grimrock and etc. etc. They don't look low quality to me, and not platformers either.
That's like 0.05% of 'indie games' in production/or released though. The quality is there. More issue of how to cherry pick the ones people will like AND buy

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shmerl: Let's put it this way - where does "indie" end and "AAA" starts? Tens of millions in budget, or what is a criteria?
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Maighstir: Originally, "indie" was short for "independent", ie. no publisher breathing down your neck and wanting a return on their investment. The term has since been muddled enough that EA had an "indie" sale of games they published, over at Steam a year or so ago.
Always thought indie was independant devs AND independantly published regardless whether dev studio was 3 or 50 ppl.
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thelovebat: ... The indie games of today will be the good old games of tomorrow.

Ten years from now, you'll be glad GOG decided to add indie games to the catalogue, so they're archived and have a place somewhere for future gamers.
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Trilarion: Not sure about both. Indie games are different from the conventional games, small and very often plattformers and quite often of poor quality. Maybe many of them will not become classics. I don't care much about them now.

I'm really more interested in somewhat older but popular games. The AA-AAA of yesteryear. That's what interests me most. If they never come to GOG I have to get them somewhere else.

I am mostly indifferent towards indies and much more interested in non-indies.
There are quality indie games. Just only a handful. And even smaller number one would put into the 'Classic' category.

What do people call AA or AAA games these days?. Always thought big names big budgets big greedy publishers? :D
Post edited August 20, 2013 by nijuu
Posted August 20, 2013
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nijuu: What do people call AA or AAA games these days?. Always thought big names big budgets big greedy publishers? :D
Take for example CD Projekt Red. They are quite big now and the budget of their upcoming games (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077) is really huge, yet they are independent and self published studio, i.e. they fund their own development and can make decisions which many big publishers wouldn't have allowed them to make otherwise. Most would probably call their games "AAA" nevertheless. So it doesn't look like there is a clear cut definition.
Post edited August 20, 2013 by shmerl
Posted August 20, 2013
OMG, GOG Gods! Just when I thought you were totally old-school, you go and do something amazing ;-p

I was gonna say maybe fix some forum issues but for now I'll just say thank you, you rock! Later we'll talk about the niggling issues you might want to consider fixing - in the meanwhile, serious thanks for opening the door to new devs that all of us Goglodytes would love to support. May this be a boon to all concerned ;-D
Posted August 21, 2013
So now GOG will have even more not good old games?
Posted August 21, 2013
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nijuu: Always thought indie was independant devs AND independantly published regardless whether dev studio was 3 or 50 ppl.
I guess Blizzard is now an Indie since it separated from Vivendi. :)
Posted August 21, 2013
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nijuu: ...What do people call AA or AAA games these days?. Always thought big names big budgets big greedy publishers? :D
There is no generally valid definition of these terms, so it depends on your individual estimation. My use of AA and AAA includes medium to large budget productions from professional dev teams managed by experienced publishers. So quite similar to your definition, only a bit more positive.
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General discussion (archive)GOG.com/Indie: Putting your indie game on GOG.com made easy!(182 posts)(182 posts)
(182 posts)