photo by House of Sims

Hi all, yesterday was my last day at Big Fish Games so I’m officially Indie again today! I was Indie in the UK before I worked at Big Fish for 2 years and now I’m Indie again in Vancouver, Canada. There are tons of other awesome Indies here, some of whom are very well established.

Last night I had a party and invited some Indies round and we snacked, drank and played – you guessed it – Indie games on Xbox. It was a great start to going Indie. Here are some photos (bonus points if you can recognise any of the Indies 😉 ):

http://yfrog.com/h0nboabj
http://yfrog.com/gystzxoj

Last year I started the Vancouver Indie Meetup with Alex Vostrov and this year we will be taking it to a new level. Already we get 60+ people at the meetups and have great speakers. The meetups are a great place to meet like-minded Indies and to gain super-valuable information. Through talking to other Indies and doing research I was able to formulate a plan for 2011.

First up I’ll be putting some of my old games on the new Mac App Store and then I’ll be working on getting Easter Bonus converted to XBLIG and iPad. Then I have another existing IP I’d like to port to those platforms. I can’t release anything new for 3 months due to my non-compete with BFG but I’ll be investigating the Blitz “monkey” cross-platform engine meanwhile and will begin making a game for iPad. If the game does well (I hope so) then I’ll port it to a bunch of other platforms and start the next game.

My new games won’t be casual games but will incorporate some of the lessons I learned whilst making them. I may still keep some casual game side projects going alongside my main work to bring in some revenue because it’s a market I understand well. My aim is to work with other developers as a producer/designer rather than programmer for these casual games. Also I would like to do some game design consultancy in return for a percent of royalties. I already have some work lined up in this are – if you are interested in this service, please let me know.

If you want to team up on any projects, let me know, and I’ll see if I can devote any time to it. Thanks!

I’m proud to announce that my first game is live on XBox Live Indie Games! It’s a port of my PC/Mac download title Holiday Bonus that has been expertly coded by James Mintram of Mintratech. Many thanks James for doing a great job under lots of time pressure + getting snowed in away from home!

Yes the game is late, but it was a last minute surprise project for us both. Also we had to pull it out of the submission queue due to a bug and then the system forces you to wait another 7 days before resubmitting. After submitting you have to get the game peer reviewed by 9 other devs before it’ll go live, and that took 10 days.

*** Please download the game trial and give it a good review! Thx. ***

If you feel like supporting us, it’s only 80 points, a bargain considering the download version is $6.95 😉

Official Xbox page.

Next up, an Easter Bonus conversion!

I’m officially Indie again on Friday 14th January, and I have a LOT planned for this year. Looking forward to it. 🙂

photo by indigo_jones

I’ve been doing a lot of research for months into various different platforms so that I can decide which ones to choose to develop for as an Indie. The decision has not been easy and has involved lots of talking to people and reading of post-mortems and sales stats. Finally I think I’ve reached a decision!

Here’s a summary of the platforms I’ve considered and what I think about them:

Facebook

I have been working on a Facebook game for a year at BFG so it’s an area I know pretty well. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that the golden days are over and now you need a lot of money to market your game.

Also you need a team of at least 5 people: Producer/Designer, client programmer, server programmer, artist, metrics/marketing person. Obviously some of those roles could really do with MORE than 1 person. This pretty much rules it out for me unless I get funding and start a Facebook game studio.

Alternatively I could make an MMO, except that it would probably take years and require a similar size team, so that’s not appealing to me.

XBLIG

I was attracted to this platform because XNA is fun and many of the games on XBLIG are, let’s just say, slightly under par (some are really excellent though!). This gave me the confidence that I could make a mark there as a one person team.

However, the sales figures really are dismal and some of the experienced devs are quitting the platform. This is a huge shame because that makes it pretty much non-viable to make XBLIG games full-time. I might still however make a game or two just for fun and so I can say “my game is on XBox” 🙂

Having said all that, I am working with someone who has done a great job converting my Holiday Bonus game to XBLIG in a very short time, and who will be converting Easter Bonus soon and maybe more games. So we’ll see how it goes and if it is worth continuing. I realise that casual games don’t do that well on the platform, but still I’m interested to see what happens.

XBLA

To get on XBLA you need to work for a good year or more in C++ with a decent team. This would require funding for me to do. Also there are annoying contracts with Microsoft to wade through and lots of specialist know-how required. Luckily I know several people who are very knowledgeable in these areas who could help me out. However, I don’t think I want to leap into this arena just yet.

PSN/Wiiware

I don’t even have a PS3 and I don’t use my Wii much, so having to write a game in C++ for these platforms, which sell less copies than on XBLA anyway, isn’t appealing.

Handheld e.g. DS, PSP etc.

I have no experience of programming for these devices. I’m sure I could figure it out and get help from some people I know, but I would see these as a secondary platform to launch on after you had hit the main consoles first. I don’t have any decent sales stat info for these platforms. Anyone got some?

Spectrum 48K / Commodore 64

Only kidding.

Kindle

Haven’t investigated this much. Apparently there are tons of units sold, but there aren’t very many games and I don’t know how many of the users are gamers anyway. Plus there’s the fact that the games would have to be in black and white which I find a bit boring. I will keep an eye on this platform in case it takes off and I need to most fast.

Android phone and Windows Phone 7

Android could be interesting but I don’t want to put anything on it until I’ve at least tried iPhone first. Also Windows Phone 7 doesn’t yet have a decent number of units sold, but that may change. Having said that I may have something in the pipeline for WP7…

Other mobile/cellphone

I’m just not interested in supporting the myriad of different form factors and OSes.

Android and Windows 7 tablets

Again, these platforms may take off, but until they do, and until I’ve tried iPad, I’m not interested.

Flash

I’ve been using Action Script 3 for a year at Big Fish and recently I’ve got to know the core components better. I believe I could bang out some Flash games pretty quickly and try out stuff like Flash Game License and ad support etc. However, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much money in them (and I need money to feed my family of four). Again I’m tempted to make one or two just for fun, maybe at a game jam with Flash Punk just so I have an online game that people can play anywhere without a download.

Also Flash could be good to advertise a download game by putting a mini-version out there (including on Facebook). This has been done plenty of times before.

PC/Mac/Linux

PC and Mac are my areas of expertise, at least for Casual Games. I’m that sure getting my games running on Linux wouldn’t be too tough based on what I’ve heard. The real question is should I make Casual Games or switch to something more “Indie” like an Action game, or RPG or strategy? I’m tempted to keep some casual games ticking over in the background, by working with some other partners, whilst I focus my main attention on some non-casual games.

Also I’d have to sell non-casual games differently because the casual portals wouldn’t be interested in them so building up an audience on my own site, using affiliates, and getting on Steam and Direct2Play etc. would be the way to go. Plus I want to see how the new Mac App store performs with my Holiday Bonus and Oz games.

This will probably happen in 2011, but after I do something else first … read on.

iPhone and iPad

The iPhone is super saturated, but also has a ton of units out there. Some games can still do very well on it, but personally I don’t like the form-factor. It’s too small and fiddly and limits the type of games you can make. Mind you if I made a great game on a different platform, it could be a no-brainer to get a mini-conversion done for iPhone.

iPad is a different matter. I love the form factor and I think the device is great. It’s also encouraging that people aren’t all selling games for $0.99. Sure there are less iPads out there than iPhones but good and even mediocre games seem to be doing pretty well.

Therefore I’m going to start with iPad in 2011. I can’t release any new IP until my non-compete with Big Fish expires in mid-April, but I can at least figure out the platform and get something ready to launch. Also I’m working with someone else to convert some of my existing IP to iPad in the near future. That will be a good test of the platform and will help to inform my future decisions.

If the iPad stuff goes well, I can consider going cross platform to PC/Mac/Linux and cellphones. We’ll see what happens…

What Language?

If I do any PC/Mac/Linux stuff I’ll stick with BlitzMax because it’s awesome, easy and fast, and works on all of them seamlessly.

For iPad I have a choice of learning Objective C, or using something like Unity which means that I can port it to other platforms fairly easily. However, there may be a new language called “monkey” about to enter the arena. It’s by the creator of BlitzMax and it will be cross-platform. This interests me very much because I already know Blitz, so if it’s similar I have a head start, and also being cross-platform future-proofs me should I make an awesome game that I need to spread far and wide (which I plan to of course!)

So there you have it, I should end up with several games on XBLIG, several on iPad, a couple in the Mac Store, some casual downloads via partners, possibly an Indie download title, perhaps something on iPhone/Android/WP7, and maybe even something in Flash. Sounds ambitious I know, but I like aiming high! It’s certainly going to be a productive year in terms of products shipped, whatever happens. Of course plans, like wars, are subject to change, but that’s what I’m planning to do for now. Wish me luck!

Have I missed out a platform you think deserves a mention? Or have I missed some important piece of research that will change my mind? Please let me know your thoughts!