Graphics vs ideas; the tide has turned

[S.R. Krol]

Saxon, unfortunately I think you’re comparing apples and oranges. The independent gaming field has never been able to compete with mainstream, AAA, titles in terms of visuals. And no one even tries. About the closest you get is maybe in the new Combat Mission game, which has been hammered left and right by both those in the mainstream and hardcore wargamers, so it’s not like having nicer looking 3D models than what’s typically expected in the world of indie gaming really made a difference.

Comparing apples and apples though, well, I think our developers stack up just fine. Consider Nethack and Dwarf Fortress, both extremely beloved and popular games, and they don’t even offer graphics, just ASCII! Our games at least have graphics. And since you’ve already mentioned graphics does not equate gameplay I won’t go into that lecture.

Now I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth but as far as I know our developers are quite happy with the visual content they produce. No one ever comes to us with a proposal and wants their name blacked out from the credits because they’re embarrassed by the graphics to their game. The last two words in that sentence is the key to indie gaming: it’s their game. That’s why you get into indie gaming, you want to see your creation come to life and you want it to happen your way, not some bean counter’s way.

A perfect example of this is Digital Eel. By day some of them work at a little developer you may have heard of, Valve. Prior to that they’ve worked at Ion Storm, Looking Glass, and several other AAA studios. They created games like Weird Worlds because they thought it was a fun little idea. In turn, they hope that other people are finding it a fun little idea. They’re not doing it to make sure that Digital Eel’s stocks rise fourth quarter.

Saxon said:

I have long refrained from pointing out a free game that cleans the clock of one Shrapnel product, as I deeply respect Shrapnel’s open forum policy on a money making business website. However, when the free games are meeting or beating some of the games for sale and the other commercial games for have much higher quality graphics, I fear for the business model.

You have my interest piqued about what this free game is, and what game we publish it’s directly competing with. Drop me an email or PM me with the name of the game. I try to keep up with most of the major freeware games and off hand I can’t think of anything that would be similar to something we have.

As Captain Kwok points out graphics = money. And to compete with a mainstream title you’re not talking thousands of dollars, nor even tens of thousands of dollars. To really compete you’re starting off with six figures and going up from there. Sorta hard for the typical indie developer (who consists of a couple of people) to even approach that unless their uncle is Bill Gates. And if you do have hundreds of thousands to sink into the project, guess what, you might as well become a mainstream title.

And ultimately for what? The percentage of mainstream titles that even break even is pathetic. Most don’t, and very few even reach the black. The return on indies is much, much better.

I also think that instead of fearing for the business model you’re probably fearing more for your changing tastes. I find it interesting that you say “I won’t argue your right to stay in that part of the gallery, but what I see over in this part makes me wonder why you would want to.” but you also list all the Shrapnel products you own and play in your first post. If you found Dominions fun before, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t find it enjoyable anymore simply because it isn’t powered by the Unreal engine.