Comments on: XFire – Indie Games Debate

By: Eddie

Eddie — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:00:33 +0000

I know this post is years old, but I feel that it is important to let you know that as soon as I read “Shamus McLaser” I completely forgot what your actualy surname is. This is not a joke; I had to go to the About the Author page to remind myself. You have developed a name of incredible power. You should go into politics with it; you could rule the world within a week.

By: Cutscenes, interactivity and story « Indigo Static

Cutscenes, interactivity and story « Indigo Static — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:48:10 +0000

[...] solutions for a problem. Or cater to the player’s ego shinning through the main character (Shamus McLaser already talked about [...]

By: Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » XFire Debate Aftermath

Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » XFire Debate Aftermath — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:48:12 +0000

[...] I particularly liked Corvus’ answer to my second question. I don’t want to steal his thunder by excerpting him here, so just check it out for yourself. Also, I should point out that Amanda Fitch answered my questions here in the comments. [...]

By: FishyBoy

FishyBoy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:44:43 +0000

For #5, I would have loved to have been involved in the creation of Cave Story in some way, mainly so I could see what the methods of Pixel were. That guy is awesome.

By: Cloud's Tifa

Cloud's Tifa — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 07:30:40 +0000

I love cloud he is so handsome!he is so cool i love him i heart him so much!! I even almost pay so much of the game the game rocks i also want to be in the game it is so cool
vincent is on crack man i saw a video the guy make vincent say the moon is chasing me everywhere i go there it is knock it off mon or i am coming up there! so funy right that guy who is the person who made kadaj sing also that guy i on crack ad made on of the turcks say durka durka muhamajihama hakasurpa surpa a buck of lot and made tifa say candybars witha rough voice

By: Gareth Fouche

Gareth Fouche — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:55:10 +0000

I’m not really a very experienced game developer, but I’m working on my own RPG, so let me give it a shot :

1) The simplest possible reason. Because we like them. You have to remember, a large percentage of game developers are geeks. You will find a greater percentage of role-players, fantasy fans and suchlike in game dev than in say accounting. And indie game devs, for the most part, make games they want to play (until they go all commercial ;) ). Its the same reason as why so many of the games made when the game dev industry was in it’s infancy were RPGs. We like em, we want to make em. The mainstream industry would be cranking them out at a far greater rate if the suits didn’t poo-poo those plans in favour of sequels to sports titles.

2 ) I haven’t got insight into every engine out there, but from the editors I’ve played with…the engine behind Oblivion. Not for it’s graphics but for it’s fantastic and amazingly flexible content creation system. Many people didn’t like Oblivion, myself included, but I’m a professional programmer and I’ve played with it’s editor, it makes me drool. It’s a triumph of tool-design. A tool that powerful and flexible is a fantastic boon to a developer, since content creation is a slow and taxing process, far more than simply adding in a nice shiny new shader.

3) Admin and marketing, like Amanda said. Also, it’s the field most devs are weakest at.

4) I’d buy an artist and lock him in a room to churn out art for me. Art/content creation is far more of a challenge for indies than code dev.

5) VtM : Bloodlines or Thief 2.

By: Rubes

Rubes — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:42:17 +0000

Interesting. My experience has been quite the opposite: finding artists to donate their talent and time (or work for indie pay, as you say), particularly animators, has been an extraordinary challenge. But especially when you’re creating a game that has a lot of art content that can’t just use off-the-shelf art content packs.

By: Vincent Dehaut

Vincent Dehaut — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:45:30 +0000

Artists are vital, I agree, and they can have serious influence on the direction the game takes. That said, I don’t think they have quite the power to decide on the kind of game as the programmers do, mostly because of the (wrong) perception that the programmer’s work is more important, and the (mostly right, IMO) perception that getting a programmer to work on a project for indie pay (i.e. nothing or so :) ) is harder than finding artists to pitch in a bit of their free time in.