I am currently developing a space strategy game. I always keep up-to-date with the A-list/grade games that are being developed.

I check out their sites, I then go back to my game, play it a bit, but I realise its no where neer as sophisticated as what's currently being released and developed.

My problem here is that its very crushing to see all the fancy tech and super amazing graphics that they feature. I could never keep up with that.

What do you think about the A vs Indie game scene?

*insert* give me moral support to continue... :)

You should read Dan MacDonald's summary of "Birth of the Indie Games Movement" here. (http://www.rainfallstudios.com/Articles/BirthOfTheIndieGamesMovement/summary.aspx) Basically, you shouldn't try to compete with the big publishers because you can't. The idea is to cater to a different market, and make smaller games.

Here's the relevant quote:

Step two is to keep it small and find a niche. “You can’t take on the majors for a core title” said Jeff; they have too many resources at their disposal for you to be successful. “Look at doing games for the MAC”. Another suggestion might be to make small games that target bleeding edge features of the new video cards and attract the hard core gamers who like to see what their hardware can do. Jeff acknowledged that “Publishers are leaving bigger and bigger crumbs, 30,000 unit to 50,000 unit titles are being ignored because publishers can’t make a profit developing them.”

I sort of agree, but dont automatically assume you cant put together a game with dcent production values.
Addmittidly you cant always compete on 3D graphics, but you can compete in other areas.
Many games have a crap interace, make sure you have tooltips, a decent contectual help system, hotkeys for everything etc (this stuff is time consuming but not too hard to code).
Make sure your game offer plenty of gameplay. depth is something lacking from most big games, and gameplay code is easier to compete on than Vertex shaders (whatever they are).
Remember that Rollercoaster tycoon is done by one single programmer/designer.
If you dont own a copy of that game, then as an indie gamer, you owe it to yourself to buy it. You SHOULD aim to get a similar quality look and feel.

Originally posted by Nick Bischoff
I am currently developing a space strategy game. I always keep up-to-date with the A-list/grade games that are being developed.

My problem here is that its very crushing to see all the fancy tech and super amazing graphics that they feature. I could never keep up with that.

What do you think about the A vs Indie game scene?

I feel that indies still rate when compared to the A titles out there. Look at games like Star Shatter, They Came From Hollywood, the upcoming Battlecruiser titles, and some of the other games currently being worked on. They are all being worked on by very small teams (by a single person in one case), and they look as though they will be great.

Then there is always the idea that you don't need to compete. Use the advantages that you have as an indie and exploit them. You have more creative flexibility than you ever would in a big studio, you're closer to your audience, and whatever money you make on it is yours(for the most part).

One thing that might you feel better is to see all the people from the industry doing their own thing as indies either full time or in their off hours. The guys from Digital Eel, for example, hail from studios such as Looking Glass Technologies, Ion Storm, and Valve and yet they still make quirky games that aren't going to win any awards in the graphics and sound department.

When I think of the "A vs. Indie" scene, I can think of many things that are just as important, or even more important than cutting edge graphics. Many are perceptions that you want the player to feel while they are playing (listed in no particular order). They can all be achieved without having the best graphics in the world.

Take a look your game and see what you are actually providing. Does the player have good control over their character, ship, armada, interface, or whatever you've allowed them to possess? Maybe you have a storyline. It could be interesting and well paced. This can get the player attached even with modest graphics. How about variety? Do you have weapon upgrades, or new ships? This ties into surprise. Do you have anyway to surprise the player?

Okay, now we're getting into power. Perhaps the player is rewarded with something after a difficult struggle. They are surprised. Let's say it's an upgrade that doubles the fire power of the entire fleet. They use it in battle and are even more surprised at how powerful they've become. This brings on a lot of feelings. The player may feel pleasantly surprised that they were rewarded, they feel powerful, they are excited to exercise that power, they feel they have gained some status because they've earned something, and they even have a sense of accomplishment.

There are even more examples, such as making the player feel challenged, smart, dexterous, but do you see how quickly these elements get intertwined? They can complement each other and feed the player's interests. Think about other games where a chain reaction of these feelings occured while you were playing. Some games concentrate on a minumum or specific gameplay trait while others try to balance them all. Sure, it would be nice to have"X" million polygons on the screen, but as long as you have some modest graphics there are dozens of other ways to engage the player.

When I think of the "A vs. Indie" scene, I can think of many things that are just as important, or even more important than cutting edge graphics. Many are perceptions that you want the player to feel while they are playing (listed in no particular order). They can all be achieved without having the best graphics in the world.
While gameplay is the singlemost important feature in making a good game, it sadly isn't the most important for making a successfull game.

The problem is that people won't realise your game has great gameplay if they never play it. If I could get 50 million people to play the shareware version of Fitznik I could probably retire quite happily off of those who registered it. (I havn't thought of a good way of acheiving this yet. My idea with the nuke and the death machine for Mr Bond didn't pan out)

The pretty graphics, the magazine hype the ads everywhere for Retail games are all there to say 'Look at how cool this game is, you want to buy it!'

Actually, When I said above that gameplay isn't the most important feature. For Indie stuff, it's more like a co-factor. Your income will be a result of the weakest part of your Draw/Gameplay compination. If your game doesn't draw people then they wont register, but even if you do draw the players. if the game isn't fun then they wont register.

I believe that this this is largely similar for retail games. You tend to get distracted by the huge amount of crap that is out there, but when it comes down to it, The games that sell really well are the ones with good gameplay. The just happen to have huge advertising budgets and pretty graphics as well.

I certainly can empathise with Nick though. I Go through game stores and seegames and alternate between thinking 'I just can't compete with this' and 'This really sucks, I could do much better'.

There's that quote by the article that came out a couple of years ago: "Don't read beauty magazines; they'll just make you feel ugly." I have that sort of relationship with most of the game mags these days... there's so much hype and so much crap that it makes for depressing and frustrating reading.

There are things indie developers have going for them: speed, clarity of vision, and the ability to roll the dice (so to speak) on a title that may sell fewer than 100K units. The major studios are without exception extremely slow, have many many people competing to establish the vision and gameplay of a product, and they won't look at it if it's not going to crest at least 250K units. OTOH, they do have one thing: money, and the resources it can buy.

So if you're going to compete with the big studios, don't worry: they're not really any smarter than you are (there are some very smart people in these studios, but this is offset by the lower overall 'group intelligence' that predominates), and they can't execute as fast. Just don't try to go up against them in retail presence, mainline marketing, glossy magazine ads, super-cool boxes, or high-end 3D graphics. Be strong where they are not, and you stand a better chance of having a game that sells well enough for your needs, if not one that blows them out of the water.

Disclaimer: I'm just getting started at the indie side of this too, but I have spent six years in various medium and large game studios.

BTW, if you've read this far, here's your (dubious) reward: I've opened up the games on my web page: you can play the first (um, fun but shallow) version of Cave Dweller and the current version of Chrysanthemum by going to Online Alchemy's projects page (http://www.onlinealchemy.com/oaprojects/projects.html). The third game (and others) will be coming soon. (Comments are welcome on these btw -- send email to mike@onlinealchemy.com.)

There are some things you can do to make your game look as professional as the A+ games. This is usually in the realm of polish, extra blinking lights, some cool effects on the menus, little effects and things (maybe background sound effects to your menus) to make it seem as though it's more professional than it is.

I've got a couple of people who told me that my tetris clone looked nicer than my action retro-style arcade game. This is because the tetris clone had a few extra's in it, that for some reason I couldn't do in my action game. Such as as starfields in the menus, they're pretty to look at, and they didn't take all that long to create. I added changing starfields in the games levels, where it would also change to a new color and change the starfields direction. For the blocks in the game (these were little 4 sided gems) I used a little bit of palette animation to make them glow a little.

I also could easily do fades in palettized mode, and did so, this also made it look more professional.

My action game had none of these (partly to do with the bit depth I was using and the fact I had no experience in doing little effects for it)... It did have some other little thingys, but all-in-all my tetris clone was better looking just for those little things I mentioned... little things that add little or nothing to the gameplay that have the same effect on people, as really cool 3d graphics do on some other people. The little thing that says "hey this is professional, this person spent some time on this"...

Just something to keep in mind when you're thinking you can or can't compete with the big boys... You can in a way, it's just all about how you present yourself.

By the way, I didn't decide to continue working on my action game mainly because I had to determine a point to cut off and say, 'it's finished' and to move on, so that's what i'm doing moving on to my next game, however i'm going to add the little things to give it that polished look.