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Your views on "going indie"

Started by April 20, 2011 02:20 AM
5 comments, last by Tom Sloper 13 years, 8 months ago
Recently I have decided to move away from my game-centric tech school and towards a four-year university. I plan on getting a BS in Computer Science and my overall goal is to be a game programmer. One of my friends is following me from one school to the other and he want's to be a game programmer as well as a designer. One of our dreams is to work for ourselves as a small independent game company. I realize that is something very hard to pull off, but I wanted to hear everyone's opinions on small indie companies. My inspirations are guys like Tommy Refenes of Team Meat and Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo. I love how these guys are able to succeed while on such small, but focussed teams of developers. I guess my question is how can I be like them? If I am the only programmer for an indie company (at least at first), what do I need to know? What should I focus on at first and where should I go from there. I know that Tommy recommends building an engine in C++ while Alec recommends using Unity for awhile. Thoughts?

1. Recently I have decided to move away from my game-centric tech school and towards a four-year university. I plan on getting a BS in Computer Science and my overall goal is to be a game programmer. One of my friends is following me from one school to the other and he want's to be a game programmer as well as a designer. One of our dreams is to work for ourselves as a small independent game company. I realize that is something very hard to pull off, but I wanted to hear everyone's opinions on small indie companies. My inspirations are guys like Tommy Refenes of Team Meat and Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo. I love how these guys are able to succeed while on such small, but focussed teams of developers. I guess my question is how can I be like them?
2. If I am the only programmer for an indie company (at least at first), what do I need to know? What should I focus on at first and where should I go from there. I know that Tommy recommends building an engine in C++ while Alec recommends using Unity for awhile. Thoughts?

1. This is a business question (you are talking about going into business independently). So this post is moved to the Business/Law forum.
2. You should ask technical questions like these in one of the technical forums.

Oh, and read this article and this article, too.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

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Being a successful indie dev: many will enter, few will win. Since you mention Team Meat, they spoke in a recent Gamesutra article that talks, among other things, about the hardships they faced. And their story doesn't seem atypical, aside from the success. I'm trying the indie rout myself, i just like to make sure people are aware of what they're in for.

What should I focus on at first and where should I go from there. I know that Tommy recommends building an engine in C++ while Alec recommends using Unity for awhile. Thoughts?

There are different reasons you'd want to use either. If you want to get a product and ship it ASAP, then Unity will probably save a lot of work. If you want to be able to make a game from the ground up, i'd recommend C++. The latter is what i'm doing and it has many rewards, but an engine you write will not have the features or capabilities of Unity. It may be more specialized, but a pre-built engine is mature and tested.

So, whether you want one or the other depends on what you want to do.
You guys should find a third friend who can handle the business-y parts of your business. That part sucks all the fun out of it if you are a programmer type.
--- krez ([email="krez_AT_optonline_DOT_net"]krez_AT_optonline_DOT_net[/email])
You should realize that the Team Meat guy was a pretty successful professional developer before he started his indie stuff. I believe he helped port the Unreal engine to the Xbox 360 so he is certainly no slouch when it comes to development. That experience is what helped Super Meat Boy succeed where thousands of indie games haven't. Do keep in mind that most indie games with no budget behind them rarely get finished and only a small percent of the ones that do finish make anything more then a few dollars. There is a reason why most 'successful' indie developers still have a day job.

While I do think that any programmer seriously interested in making games should make a game engine themselves just so they can have an idea how it all fits together. I don't really think that making an engine should be done on your first try at completing a game. There is a lot of work to get get a simple cube to render on screen. Thats time taken away from making a game. For the first few projects I'd suggest something like Unity so you can concentrate on game design instead of game tech. Your first few games aren't going to be very good anyway (nobody's are) so you should make it as easy as possible for yourself getting the experience of completing games. Once you've got a handle on what works and doesn't work for games and have a better idea what kind of things you need for your games you can start working on a specific game engine for you instead of something generic. You should also realize that C++ isn't the end and and be all of game programming languages. In an indie setting you are rarely going to need the full power of the machine the game is running on so there is nothing wrong with using a 'hand holding' language. You can get more of your game done when you aren't worrying about tracking down memory leaks
Thanks for the opinions and advice so far. I believe we are getting a business guy involved relatively soon. Also, we are planning on using Unity for our first few games until we have the development formula down. One thing we have ran into is how awkward it is to make a 2D game in something like Unity. Should we stick with Unity or are there better engines for 2D games? I don't want to move towards Game Maker or anything too simple. Perhaps XNA or Torque?

EDIT: Also, we are starting all of this while we go to school, so most likely it won't be 40 hours a week of work. Which isn't ideal, but it also means that we aren't worried about finishing by a certain date and we are also fine financially. Just thought I'd point that out. I want to keep this topic on the engine subject for now.
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Thanks for the opinions and advice so far. I believe we are getting a business guy involved relatively soon. Also, we are planning on using Unity for our first few games until we have the development formula down. One thing we have ran into is how awkward it is to make a 2D game in something like Unity. Should we stick with Unity or are there better engines for 2D games? I don't want to move towards Game Maker or anything too simple. Perhaps XNA or Torque?

EDIT: Also, we are starting all of this while we go to school, so most likely it won't be 40 hours a week of work. Which isn't ideal, but it also means that we aren't worried about finishing by a certain date and we are also fine financially. Just thought I'd point that out. I want to keep this topic on the engine subject for now.

OK, so the business question has been answered. This thread has veered off into a programming question, so I'll close the thread. Zbell, you should post your technical questions in a technical forum.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

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