Can someone give me links to famous Indiegames that became famous?
I only know of AngryBirds but I dunno much maybe it's not even Indie.

a few off the top of my head.

Minecraft
Wordfeud
Angry Birds
Mount & Blade
Dwarf Fortress
World of Goo
Braid
Farmville

M&B stopped being indie game when it became successful though (Paradox got the publishing rights for it) and there are probably more examples of indie games that ended up in the hands of a publisher before they became famous.

So I've established that I can't do it on my own.
How many people at least, does it take to make a game? Say for example Doom or the 16bit Final Fantasies or better yet, Earthbound-but in today's standards.
What divisions are there in that said group?

Great news! you don't need a team to make clones of any of those games! Various versions of Game Maker (for example, RPG Maker VX for the Finl Fantasy clones) will allow you to do so on your own with time an effort. Their built-in scripting can also act as a beginning to learning programming. Plus, you'll often need additional artwork, so you can either work on making your own or finding someone to help you. For most (some?) versions of Game Maker, you can sell your product. So, you would gain all the experience you're asking about just by making one game with any form of Game Maker.

Otherwise, you're asking about how to build a car from the ground up with only raw materials without having ever even turned a wrench before.

People aren't telling you not to assemble "Superforce GameDev Team Go!" because they don't want you to accomplish your goal. They're telling you to grasp a reasonable goal first so you can one day actually realize your dream.

At the same time, though, none of us think you will attain your dream. To us, you're just yet one more in an endless, massive horde of people who just really like video games and want to make their own.

Don't worry! If I were to make a, "I'm a total newbie and I want to break into the industry but know nothing about anything," post, everyone would think the same of me! And, they'd be right! So, no big deal.

Have you ever walked up to a little kid playing a sport, such as baseball or basketball and asked them what they want to be when they grow up and they say, "a professional ball player!"

You know that's not going to happen.

I'd say there are less members of the core game development world than professional ball players of any given sport. That's a cold, hard reality for people who want to break into the industry. But, an indie developer with a smash hit? Chances are way, way, way slimmer than that kid's of becoming a pro ball player.

But! Prove us wrong! Work hard and all that and one day, years from now, you can re-visit this old thread and update it with your latest breakaway hit!

Not trying to be hard on you. Just saying.

Good luck on whatever path you chose.

1) You NEED to know programming to make a game. Because you are going to need to write your own engine(see Question 2)

2) You should definitely write your own engine. It allows you to be in full control of your game, no licenses to worry about, no profit sharing, no having to worry about what features the engine does or does not have...it is all about what you need. All the successful indies write their own engines. Frictional, Mojang, Wolfire, John Blow, the list goes on and on...


3) I don't personally do art, but I'll try my best on this one. Indies can, and often do have art that is just as good as the big boys. It takes time to learn the modeling software (lightwave, 3DSmax, maya, zBrush, ect), but once you know what you are doing there is nothing stopping you from making some truly beautiful art. I'm assuming you are referring to 3D art, since 2D is pretty self explanatory. (not dissin' the 2D, though) One of the main reasons AAA games have such nice art is because they use lots of maps, normal maps, specular maps, ect. You can google those to have someone much smarter than me explain what they do.

4) I'm not sure I totally understand the question, you just need to work hard and have original, innovative ideas to make it big.

Un-numbered question) My team is only me (programmer) and an artist. We split the sound design 50/50, I do sound design, my partner does music. We also both share general concept and design between the two of us, so we have great creative freedom. I think 2 is an ideal team...keeps profit splits high and gives each of us someone to bounce ideas off.

2) You should definitely write your own engine. It allows you to be in full control of your game, no licenses to worry about, no profit sharing,

Ima go ahead and contend this. You know what happens when you write your own engine? You have less time to make the game. You do realize how many games have used things like SDL, ODE, Bullet, Box2D, Chipmunk, FMOD, OpenAL, SFML, TinyXML, zlib, etc, right?

no having to worry about what features the engine does or does not have...it is all about what you need.

Ima contend this too. If you write an engine, you have to worry about what features it does or doesn't have a lot, because you have to write them.

All the successful indies write their own engines.

Ima call BS.

Those are Libraries, NOT engines...I'm talking about Unreal, or Unity, or Game Maker.


If there is a feature you want for your game, but you can't do it under what a third party engine supports, you are out of luck. If you wrote your own engine you just have to implement it.



Name some successful indies that use a third party engine.

Those are Libraries, NOT engines...I'm talking about Unreal, or Unity, or Game Maker.

In that case, I apologize for taking your statement a little too far. But still, by simply including a few of those libraries into your game, you've got a "game engine" even though you haven't written anything.

If there is a feature you want for your game, but you can't do it under what a third party engine supports, you are out of luck. If you wrote your own engine you just have to implement it.

Chances are you can still implement it, even if you're using a third party engine.

Name some successful indies that use a third party engine.

No Time To Explain (assuming you consider Flash a "game engine," which you might as well if you consider Unity or Game Maker a game engine), Nord (jMonkey Engine), Garry's Mod (Source Engine), Reflexions (Game Maker), etc.

Personally, I don't use something you would consider a "game engine." I honestly don't think you really even need a game engine for a game. I just use a collection of libraries and write the game. I don't think there's a lot of sense to worrying about an entire engine developed in house for an indie game.

[edit]

I guess I should clarify what I mean and just say that I'm advocating just writing the game and not worrying so much about writing a game engine.

I guess I should clarify what I mean and just say that I'm advocating just writing the game and not worrying so much about writing a game engine.

I agree that one should definitely worry more about writing a game and not an engine, thought if you write your code with the idea of an engine in mind, you can create a great infrastructure that will make future games much easier, since the work will already be done.

My main reason for disliking game engines is they allow people to make games too easily, now there is nothing wrong with that, but it allows for young devs to rush. Then they make bad games and think they will never be any good, and quit game design, or even worse continue to make bad games. All you need to do is go to the yoyo games website and see all the useless shovelware on there. What's worse, their peers praise them and try to ignore the glaring issues, making them think there is nothing wrong with that they are doing...

That said there are good games made with engines, just very few, and they are seldom successful.

That said there are good games made with engines, just very few, and they are seldom successful.

Most successful games are built on existing engines. And I'd go so far as to say that most successful indie games are built on existing engines.

Just look at the top game charts for the iOS app store - at least half of those games are built on either Unity or UDK.

[quote name='spooderw' timestamp='1322945481' post='4890215']
That said there are good games made with engines, just very few, and they are seldom successful.

Most successful games are built on existing engines. And I'd go so far as to say that most successful indie games are built on existing engines.

Just look at the top game charts for the iOS app store - at least half of those games are built on either Unity or UDK.
[/quote]

I disagree. Amnesia, Penumber series, Minecraft, Overgrowth&Lugaru, Gish, Nitronic Rush, Orcs Must Die, Frozen Synapse, Terraria, Atom Zombie Smasher, Voxatron, VVVVVV, Revenge of the Titans, Super Meat Boy, Natural Selection 2, Legend of Grimrock, Braid, The Witness, Shadowgrounds series. ALL build upon custom engines.

Only indie I can think of that DOES use a third party engine is Project Stormos, and that has yet to be successful. Sanctum as well I suppose, I think Sanctum was a pretty big commercial success.

I can't speak for IOS.

I can't speak for IOS.

That's exactly my point.

MineCraft is the top selling indie game on your list, with about 3.5 million units sold. By comparison, Angry Birds has over 500 million sales - and that is jut one of the many successful indie games on iOS.

(and yes, Rovio *is* an indie company, at least up until the financial success of Angry Birds - it was formed by 3 college students with no funding or prior business experience)