Kotaku
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a great interview up with Cliff Harris of Positech Games (Democracy, Kudos, Rock Legend, etc.); it's chock full of interesting bits on his games, the makeup of the indie side of the industry, and how you can make money with indie development (the horror!):
I'm unusual because I'm genuinely interested in the business side of being an indie gamer. I love the whole entrepreneur thing, the setting the right price, getting expenses down and sales up, etc. My fave TV show is Dragon's Den for fucks sake. The vast majority of indie devs are programmers, and the C++ DNA seems to interfere with the DNA that makes people enjoy marketing or business. Most indies who make no money do very little marketing or promotion, because it terrifies them ... Marketing is a big deal. I know that Introversion put a lot of effort into marketing, and you can see the results there too. If you really are the typical shy semi-autistic sunlight-hating game coder, you need to get an outgoing biz/marketing guy to work with.
It's an interesting (and sensible) look at indie development; it's refreshing to read people being bluntly honest and not going off about the moral superiority of those who develop games for purely altruistic reasons.
Deserved Kudos: Positech's Cliff Harris Interview [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Comments
As Mr. Steven Pressfield said in his book "The War Of Art":
... A PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES HER LIMITATIONS She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one ...
Great interview.
I really like thinking about the whole marketing side on a game design myself. It's a mess and it's a whole lot more to consider, but trying to figure out a game pitch that'd be innovative, fun to make, fun to play *and* sellable is an awesome challenge. Sadly, it's far more fun than actually sitting down to make any of them...
What I love is how this guy's making games that don't need to start out as a sales pitch - he's doing them alone so doesn't have to convince anyone else to invest their time and money - but still seems to have nailed it with his first title. I guess that's the benefit of experience. I'm actually gonna have to pick up Democracy now!
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