2004: The year of the Indie
Nope, I didn't write the date wrong. I'm just slow to write about it.

When I was working in the PKI industry (Public Key Infrastructure), every year it was announced that the FOLLOWING year would be the Year of PKI. It would finally "catch on," and the world would be much safer with much less threat of spam, viruses, credit fraud, identity theft, and so forth. Next year we'd finally get 'traction', and it would be a new golden age... and make our companies a lot of money in the meantime.

It never happened. In fact, with the weakness in the MD-5 hashing algorithm, and the recent cracking of the SHA-1 (which was expected to replace MD-5), that year seems further away than ever. Not that digital signatures or Public-Key encryption aren't fantastic ideas... but it's just got a long way to go before it gains any sort of universal acceptance. It's still too difficult and cumbersome for the perceived benefits. It's more of a very slow evolution - we're seeing it now with signatures on websites and downloaded applications.

Around 2003 I started discovering the "independent gaming community." I read a few back-articles proclaiming that 2002 would be the year of the indie, or that 2003 would be the year of the indie... or 2004. When I began investigating what was available, I wasn't too impressed. There were definitely some great titles out there (Orbz amazed me with it's simplicity, originality, and playability - and of course everyone knew about the incredible games from PopCap. And then there was Savage, the "independent" game with a development price-tag approaching a AAA game's).

It may have just been my deepening involvement in the community, but it seemed like things really began kicking into high gear in 2004. First you had the "discovery" of the rabid growth of the casual games market by an IGDA paper - and it seemed like 1-2 fiscal quarters later, everybody and their cousin was getting a business plan funded to create the new casual gaming portal that would, twenty years from now, be the new Electronic Arts. I lost count of the number of new portals springing up. Some are willing to cater to "non-casual" independent games. Others are maintaining a very strict focus of appealing to the stereotypical "soccer mom" demographic of 40-year-old females.

Then you had some really powerful exceptional titles released. If you look at the top 5 games in every category of Game Tunnel's 2004 Indie Game of the Year awards, you'll see some really fantastic titles that should give the AAA publishers a pause (or make them get greedy). My own personal favorites (besides Void War, of course) include Outpost Kaloki, Starshatter, Ricochet Lost Worlds, Anito: Defend a Land Enraged, and Raptisoft's Hamster Ball.

I was also very impressed with games like Aerial Antics, Gish, Alien Hominid, and Lore: Dark Horizons. I think these games all demonstrate that not only are Independent games not confined to 2D puzzle games or clones of ancient arcade games, but that the top indie games can have great quality and production values.

Finally, you had the big deal with Valve releasing Steam and working out a non-exclusive agreement (with much legal wrangling) with Vivendi so that they could also self-publish their game in an online-only release. Bioware is doing similarly with their release of premium Neverwinter Nights modules, and recently Irrational Games released their sequel to the stellar "Freedom Force" game online - the indie way, with no traditional publisher.

The trends that began in 2004 (and earlier) are gaining steam (no pun intended with Valve's delivery system). In my opinion, 2004 was our year - but it keeps getting better. The revolution happened. The fighting continues (and always will), but we're winning. Our time has come. The changes are here - they just need maturing. Let's make the most of it.

Labels: Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 3:42 PM (Permalink)