Difference between revisions of "5 Minutes Worth of Observations about AAA Indie Games"

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I say that building awareness takes a lot of time, and so you have to talk about your game '''early''' and '''often'''.  Furthermore, when doing this, you have to play to your strengths.  I go into how three of these games did this.
I say that building awareness takes a lot of time, and so you have to talk about your game '''early''' and '''often'''.  Furthermore, when doing this, you have to play to your strengths.  I go into how three of these games did this.


Then I give an example from [http://spyparty.com SpyParty] of how hard it is to build awareness, and how long it takes.  This is what scares me so much about the iPhone as a game platform for indies, because the development cycles are shorter than the awareness cycles.
Then I give an example from [http://spyparty.com '''SpyParty'''] of how hard it is to build awareness, and how long it takes.  This is what scares me so much about the iPhone as a game platform for indies, because the development cycles are shorter than the awareness cycles.


Finally, I talk a bit about the press, and make two observations:
Finally, I talk a bit about the press, and make two observations:

Revision as of 00:25, 2 March 2011

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One great thing about doing a 4 minute and 44 second talk is that it takes very little time to sync to audio and upload!

This is my Independent Games Summit Microtalks lecture from this afternoon, entitled 5 Minutes Worth of Observations about AAA Indie Games. I talk about some observations I have about what I call AAA Indie Games, which I define as indie games that have three important characteristics:

  • Polished to Perfection
  • Clearly Contains Lots of Love
  • Highly Anticipated Before Launch

I list some examples, like Braid, Castle Crashers, World of Goo, Limbo, and Flower, among others.

I focus the talk on the last in the list, Highly Anticipated Before Launch, because I think it's often thought of as external to making the game, and is not well understood.

I studied these games, and came away with one common denominator. Every AAA Indie Game has:

A Long-term Slow-burn Grass-roots Awareness-building Campaign

I say that building awareness takes a lot of time, and so you have to talk about your game early and often. Furthermore, when doing this, you have to play to your strengths. I go into how three of these games did this.

Then I give an example from SpyParty of how hard it is to build awareness, and how long it takes. This is what scares me so much about the iPhone as a game platform for indies, because the development cycles are shorter than the awareness cycles.

Finally, I talk a bit about the press, and make two observations:

  • They are very indie friendly.
  • They want interesting stories.

Here is the synced audio and slideshow. This is from a rehearsal right before the session; I didn't tape the session since it was on somebody else's laptop.

Welp, the web service I was using for the slide syncing died, so I'll have to redo it on youtube I guess.

Here are the ppt and mp3.

This page was last edited on 2 March 2011, at 00:25.