Comments on: Sort of Crazy Idea: One Brand to Rule Them (=Indies) All?

By: Mikushi

Mikushi — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:04:38 +0000

I like the idea.
If the world is well though, you might end up with a universe that could offer enough space for hundreds of different unique game experience.

If you set some ground rules, a basic timeline, i think developers could evolve around the idea, kinda what happened with the Star Wars universe and the books.

Possibilities are endless, and the opportunity to create a recognizable brand/universe for the players, its a gate open to something awesome!

By: MC

MC — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:15:58 +0000

Hi,
I’ll give you a post idea: (excuse my english)
What do you think about Game Walkthroughs?
It seems like a “must” in these days with so many puzzle games outthere…
they’re useful when people’s get stuck, but some players quit too easy and go to the walkthrough guide and BOOM!, the game is done since you already know whats coming… and the game lost it’s appeal right there

By: Fabio

Fabio — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:45:11 +0000

Juuso,

let me give another idea, going on the same direction.

For me, there are two hard tasks to make money with games: 1) Build a really good game 2) Sell it.

So, why not think about a juuso-insider game store? A place where insiders could put their games in reasonable revenues.

Since you have a good audience and well understanding about marketing things, including web payments, so it appears a thing that you can handle “easily”.

Steam and other probabily will keep leading, but “Insider Store” could be a significative presence and buzz.

What do you think? I´m crazy? Let me know.

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:10:19 +0000

Indies are not about money, but about to have achieved something in their life by doing it their way. Sure, it can make money also, but that’s just a side-effect. True independance as in Indie means also to be independant of money :)

By: Juuso

Juuso — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:41:54 +0000

Hmm.

By: merc-ai

merc-ai — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:44:56 +0000

Said indie games would lose lots of their unique feel due to shared setting/franchise. They would become dependent on the overall quality and rules of the setting/franchise.

And in the end, you’re no longer creating your own worlds – merely adding to an existing one. Unless you created it in the first place AND have the powers to decide what gets in it and what doesn’t.

By: imre

imre — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:48:23 +0000

In my opinion, you’re going a bit too far with this idea. Such widely shared franchises would be too much work to maintain and probably also too constraining for the individual developers. In addition, for many people half the fun of game development is actually building their own worlds and characters and background story.

On the other hand, some large-scale asset sharing among indies would be really nice and useful. While we already have some asset packs available, this is still laughable compared to what we could have. If we could at least reach the same level of sharing that we have with code (consider all the available game engines and middleware packages and open-sourced full games), that could give a really nice boost to inide developers. And while I can understand why people don’t want to publicly release some of their assets (like the main character of their game), releasing things like generic sound effects or 3d models for furniture wouldn’t hurt anyone, but could greatly help kickstarting new projects. And in return, you could get similar assets for your next project for free.

Basically what the indie world needs is something like sourceforge for assets.

By: Fili

Fili — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:08:20 +0000

And then you’ll have 1000 games in a steampunk world. Players would get bored about that world after 2-3 games and it will be the end of the show.

By: Htbaa

Htbaa — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:31:16 +0000

In a simpler form I suppose this has been done with the spritelib ( http://www.flyingyogi.com/fun/spritelib.html )?

By: Arya

Arya — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:16:31 +0000

I think this idea is kinda hard to implement. In that example you suggest that we’d all come to an agreement, but how long would the discussion take? it could be months before we all agree

and what about the timeline scenario? (am I choosing the right words? dunno) Like when one indie is making an RTS while other is making a shooter game, both games will have their own timeline in the ‘indie universe’. And I think it’d be strange if one character (the main character) is seen in two different brands (serving different genres and probably time in the story).

sure it’d make a nice world, I just doubt it’s doable