The global economy may be in the gutter, but gaming continues to grow. According to gameindustry.biz, 2011 will bring more than 74 billion dollars to the game industry; that's over 861 billion pesos. With all that money flying around, why do indies even exist? Why isn't every game given a chance? I am sure there is a long answer for that on Gamasutra, but the short answer is people have to make money, corporations make choices (some good and some bad) How do independent developers get a piece of this pie and work for years on their labor of love game? Some developers like Team Meat borrow from friends and family and live on nothing, hoping to strike it big.
Some developers like Notch ask people to buy into beta or even alpha builds to help
finance their work. Interstellar Marine is one such game, but instead of boring you with the details, I will let the developer explain in this trailer/infomercial.
I don't remember when I first heard of Interstellar Marine, but I remember every day that I want to give them my money (I guess the infomercial worked.)
I am currently avoiding any and all coverage of Bioshock Infinite because I want to experience it myself. Almost all major gaming websites recently released the full E3 trailer which is about 15 minutes in length. I don't want to expect anything and I want to be completely surprised. This idea runs in stark contrast to what Interstellar Marine is doing. Interstellar Marine invites all to play a little for free and then buy into the game before it is released with the promise that you will be spoon-fed the game until its official release sometime in the future.
One of Rock, Paper Shotgun's many PC pet-peeves is the lack of demos; they go so far as make news when a game actually releases a demo. What Interstellar Marine appears to be doing is releasing several demos way before release and asking you to have faith in the product enough to pay for it. But instead of making you wait months (or longer) for the game to release, they will release snippets of the game to play. It's definitely a demo of sorts, but done very differently, and an argument could be made that it is better. That being able to sample several parts of the game instead of just one gives the potential buyer a better idea of what the game will be.
Like a tight-rope walker though, this is a balancing act. How much should they give before they ask for something in return? It can't be wise to give a starving man a meal and then ask him if he is hungry and would like to buy a plate of food. Demos are supposed to get you interested in a game; they are supposed to let you play just enough to want so much more.
Not to make the game itself a side note, but while this first person gun down game set in space certainly looks great, it appears that the biggest innovation is what was referred to in the video as "AAA Indie." By having the community finance the game, the only people that Zero Point Software is responsible to is the group of people that have purchased the game. Have you ever wanted to own a game? I don't mean in the boxed copy of digital rights sort of way, but really own the game as much like a developer as you can without learning code yourself. Then you owe it to yourself to pickup Interstellar Marine, or at least buy into the idea.
I like the commercials that say, please give me your money, but in a very earnest and well-natured way.
ReplyDelete