Utah Indie Developer Night, Winter 2007
So what did I learn last night at the Utah Indie Game Developer Night?

We had, for the first-time, fewer people than the previous event at our Utah Indie Game Developer Night. The principle loss came from not having the ITT Technical Institute guys this time, and an extremely tiny contingent from the company formerly known as Headgate. Now that they have become EA Salt Lake and cracked down on indie game development, I don't expect to be seeing so much of them anymore. I expect that the fact that it was well below zero when I left last night didn't help any, either.

Still, it was well-attended, with 29 people showing from all kinds of different walks of life. We had our token game reviewer (Jana, AKA "~J" of Eeps, Meeps, and Ipes), the folks working full-time making games and part-time making indie games (like me), a couple of guys who've left mainstream game development on consoles to make casual PC games, some students, a writer, a couple of wives of game developers "just along for the ride," and some other "curious parties" who just wanted to see what it was all about.

Apocalypse Cow
I got to demo Apocalypse Cow, and received a bunch of feedback. People were throwing around cow jokes like crazy - I wished I'd been recording everything folks were saying. The big thing almost everyone told me was that the key selling point - to them - was the humor. Picking on poor cows (particularly when they shoot back) is just funny, and the more over-the-top silliness the better. People were extremely positive, though I also found several points (and key bugs) that need to be addressed before I get the first alphas in the hands of testers. I'll be working on those over the weekend.

CaveBug
Brad Edwards, an old co-worker of mine from the Warhawk / Twisted Metal / Jet Moto days has formed a new company called Cavebug. He and his partner, Josh, abandoned work on high-end console games to go make console games for the Mac and PC, using the Popcap framework as their core engine. It's been a bit of a shock for them switching gears like that, but their first game, Pathstorm, is now at the "RC2" stage (the second release candidate --- if it proves to be clean enough, it will be the final version). They are currently offering it for a discount price of only $12.95, to go up to $19.95 once it goes final.

EA Games and Indies
The three attendees from "EA Salt Lake" explained their situation now with EA Games. They are pretty much forbidden to work on making games for sale in their off time. One of the developers is - and always has been - working on a non-profit game engine (useful for hobbyists and students) called Flat Red Ball. So EA gave him their blessing. Another had EA re-classify what he's doing as "educational software" for children so he could continue work on it.

And Mike Smith - well, he's pretty much hosed with his work on Caster. It's a game, and it's for profit, so he had to cut off development on it. He showed us what he was able to get done do prior to Headgate's buyout. There are some new special effects, including a really cool motion blur when your caster races ahead along the battlefield. It looks good. Hopefully he'll find some way to continue development on it and get it released in the future.

Other Game Progress
Mike Rubin talked to me a little about Vespers 3D progress, though he didn't demo it this time. They ran auditions for voice actors, and got the principle NPC modeled, animated, and did his voice-over recording. They've still got a LOT of content to do, but dang this project sure sounds awesome. I can't wait to play it.

Mike commented that they were originally just planning on doing the first 'day' of the original text adventure (er, "Interactive Fiction") as more of a proof-of-concept thing. But they realized that people would really, really want to play through the whole adventure after the first day, so they changed their plan to include all three days. Unfortunately, the second day has twice as much stuff going on as the first, and the third is even larger. So it remains a big challenge.

Herb and Dan Flowers demoed Link Realms again. The big addition since last meeting was dungeons, though they were unfortunately buggy. One thing I note is that they really seem to enjoy playiung their own game. That's a good sign...

I also got a sneak peek at the upcoming third game in the Deadly Rooms of Death series. I think it can be summed up by: Improved Graphics, New Puzzles, Same Great Gameplay.

Portals
Wrangling a conversation about submitting a game to a portal, I was reminded of the following bits of advice:

* Many portals have different audiences. A game might sell great on one site, but horribly on another, just because they cater to a different audience.

* Some portals charge you to host your game. Some portals charge you a lot. If you have a game with one of these companies that is NOT a good match for their audience, you could end up losing most of your meager profits to hosting and bandwidth fees.

* Portals partner with each other , creating a chain of royalties that steadily decrease the trickle that goes back to the developer. While it's not a bad thing for you, the developer, to get your game out to as many sites as possible, it is best to do the legwork yourself and work directly with all the portals you can prior to allowing them to do this.

* Portals will do a minimum amount of work (initially) marketing your game. For the most part, they'll throw it up on the "new games" page and let it sink or swim. If it does well, THEN they may spend more time pushing it to maximize their profits. But it's not in that top ten percent or so, they're happy to let it fade away into obscurity while they are looking for their next hit. So it behooves you, as a developer, to really maximize your game's chances every way you can, and not rely on the portals to do your job for you.

Summing Up
Well, that's about all I can think of for now. There were lots of conversations going on, and I was able to chat with a lot of very cool folks. As usual, it was an awesome chance to network with people, see what cool stuff people were working on, and to get inspired. And in this case, I was also able to get some of the first "post-alpha" feedback on Apocalypse Cow, which I will be taking full advantage of this week :)

I hope to see some FINISHED games this spring at the next one! (Including my own!)

(Vaguely) related Ye Anciente Articles:
* Utah Indie Dev Meet, Fall 2006
* Utah Indie Dev Meet, Spring 2006
* Utah Indie Dev Meet, Winter 2006
* Utah Indie Dev Meet, Summer 2005

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Labels: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism

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