Great little story, if I wasn't supposed to be working right now I'd check out the game more. (Maybe it'll hit the Humble Bundle next time around.) They seem to understand that the greatest threat to any creator trying to monetize a product is obscurity, not piracy. Also, when you release something, some amount of Value is created and you're not going to be able to capture all of that Value no matter how hard you try. But things like this that actively play the torrenters can let you capture more of it than you otherwise wouldn't have.
Maybe it'll hit the Humble Bundle next time around.
I hope so for them, but you realize the HIB is basically the lottery of indie games? A tiny fraction of all indie games get on it, so the chance of each individual game is minuscule.
How is it the lottery of indie games? All the games sold on HIB - that I've played - are good, original, well polished games. Some, I believe, are some of the best games ever made, indie or non indie. It wasn't luck that put them in the HIB shelf.
I don't think the GP was implying a purely random process, rather the fact that if there are 20,000 games submitted for the bundle, your chances of getting picked are pretty low (akin to a lottery). As an indie dev, you have some knobs in your control (how good you make the game), but many knobs won't be.
There are a lot of really good indie games out there, but most people are only aware of the famous ones, or the ones they get exposed to via stuff like the HIB or high-visibility steam sales.
If you enjoyed the HIB games I suggest you keep digging as there are many, many games out there at the same level as the average of the game in the 4 bundles.
Indie games itself are a lottery. Either you get on HIB, Steam, Xbox Arcade, get featured by Apple or you die silently.
Gaming is a market where you as an indie have to hit the jackpot or you have to somehow face your competition, which are multi billion corporations like EA and Activison, and beat them at their game.
From all the indie gamedevs I only know 2 that really made it (in the sense that they created a sustainable business): Jeff Vogel with his RPGs and the guy from "Gratuitous Space Battles". (I'm not yet sure about the Minecraft guy.)
All the other success stories are like a burning sheet of paper. They burn bright but they burn fast. And then there are the other 99.99% of indie gamedevs who will never succeed in any sense with their games. Not because their games are bad - but because the market they compete in is a slaughterhouse.
Wow. I think you're painting a way overly negative picture.
I'm not sure what your definition of success is (so Minecraft is not good enough for you?) but I know many - just look around - indie developers that are making a good living and growing their business out of selling good games and being reasonably clever about business, they're nothing like a burning sheet of paper. They may not all have made 3 million bucks - a handful obviously have and that's great -, but they're able to live doing what they love. I'm not saying it's easy, it takes a lot of talent, passion and endurance.
And I don't think you should try to beat EA at their own game. You should be playing a different game. The simple fact that you're not EA could be one of your best cards.
ugh, most indie platformers haven't yet reached the level of the original super mario bros. nintendo spent a LOT of time fine tuning the controls. The lack of fine tuning is very noticeable in games like this (another really good example is meatboy). Intuitively the controls don't feel "tight". What's really going on is that there is a lack of a way for the player to create repeatable conditions so they can do experiments and thus learn the fine degree of control exhibited in speed runs of SMB. This generally happens below the conscious level.
ugh, most indie platformers haven't yet reached the level of the original super mario bros.
This is hardly surprising when Super Mario Bros is widely regarded as one of the very best games of all time, some would say the best [1], and sold more than 40 million copies, making it the best-selling game ever until 2009 [2].
You don't rubbish a new play by complaining that it's not as good as Shakespeare, or a new album that's not as good as Thriller. And you don't rubbish a platformer for not being as good as Super Mario Bros.
Bad controls sink a platformer. I haven't played this one to evaluate it, but if it's sloppy, that really does make it a no-go--the difference, for me at least, between "good and worth playing" and "unacceptable, give it a pass" is really narrow.
Given that developers have had about twenty years to study and reach deep into the guts of games like the original Super Mario Bros, it really does make it harder to rationalize that, as the GP poster noted, very few games are really even in the same ballpark in terms of fluidity of control.
Well, controls are some of the things you shouldn't compromise on. If it takes you more time to get them done right then take that time and skip some fancy graphic effects.
The controls are very tight and honestly have to be for the level of difficulty of the game. A very, very good game and one of the best I have played in a long time. You should check this out before you say that every indie platformer doesn't have tight controls
I totally agree the controls are tough here, BUT I wonder if that also has to do with the keyboard/mouse interface a bit? It just feels a lot harder than the old-school 8-way directional and 2 buttons. I haven't been much of a gamer since the Nintendo days when I was a kid though so maybe it's just me.
I agree with you on the value of "tight" controls; I really wish someone would characterize what "tight" actually means in gaming controls, and explain some of the common failings in loose control schemes.
But that wasn't bootlegging, that was people legitimately recording the shows with the Dead's blessing (many bands followed suit). But it still remains it was the Dead's choice to give that blessing, and I still feel creators should maintain that right. Even if they choose to exercise that right poorly (ie, if the Dead disallowed recording) that is their choice, not the piraters.
Same as in the article. The firm themselves chose to give away a pirated version. I am certainly not trying to claim that all piracy is good - only that some who embrace it on themselves do benefit.
The only thing is, a pirated video game is a bitwise/identical clone of the product they are selling, whereas watching a concert on video is not even remotely close to being there in person.
The lack of a proper full screen mode really kills this game for me, I end up click outside of the window and inadvertently switching to a different application.
