Being an indie developer is never easy. Being a successful indie developer (ie being able to support yourself, and your team) is even harder. The web is chock-full of articles warning about the pitfalls and difficulties facing indie developers. They advise not to expect to make much money. In fact, the most common advice given is to not quit your day job at least until you have a product to release.

In spite of all this, right now is one of the best times to be an indie, be it small one-man teams all the way to startup studios. Changes in the market, new tools and new means of distribution have come together to create one of the most exciting periods for indie development. And we’re here to run through all of them.

First of all, we’re not alone in this assessment; several other prominent developers (both mainstream and indie) have noted the potentials currently available to all indie developers that want to grab them. In a recent post, Introversion (young British indie developer of Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon) notes that it’s “one of the best times in the past few years” to become an indie developer. Peter Molyneux (famed Lionhead Studio Boss) brings a similar assessment of the industry when commenting on the recent release of XNA Game Studios Express (more below):

“You’re lucky bastards, because the web is a fantastic place to get your ideas out there. If XNA really is going to be the YouTube of game design then that will be a brilliant, brilliant thing.”

For developers, it has become much easier to get noticed and picked up by publishers due to a whole plethora of mature tools.

Last month, XNA Game Studio Express was finally officially released. These XNA development tools effectively open up the Xbox Live platform to any hobbyist or enthusiastic programmer. Being able to produce a demo that you know will be able to run on a console is a huge milestone for the indie industry. The ability to show a prototype (or a finished product) directly on your target hardware dramatically increases your chance of your game being published. Once again, Microsoft should be applauded for their efforts to open up their platform and help indie developers.

Complimenting the XNA is the work the folks at GarageGames have accomplished the last 5+ years. Their Torque engine has allowed them to offer up multiple development solutions at a low price to indies. Furthermore, they’ve officially released a 2D engine solution which already supports XNA, with a further promise for 3D support in the works. The Torque engine is a solid framework powering dozens of released games, and will only make life easier for any developer considering developing for XNA.

On the PC platform, development frameworks continue to mature and cut down on development costs for hundreds of games. Many casual and small indie games make use of PopCap’s Developer Program, or Blitz Basic, or the just-mentioned Torque engine. The tools are out there, are very solid, and are easy to pickup. This comes as no surprise, as the PC platform has been the primary development platform target due to its openness (and the lack of accessibility to consoles).

Sony has also taken a more open platform stance to their latest console, the PS3. While the approach is vastly different from Microsoft’s with XNA, the opportunities for indie developers are just as plentiful. They have chosen to fully support Linux on their platform. Having previously offered limited Linux support on the PS2, Sony has decided to roll in Linux support from Day 1. Now, any interested consumer can directly install various Linux distributions on their console and still retain all the features available of the PS3 (the PS2 version required you to purchase a separate PS2 which contained a development kit and a hard drive and was incompatible with games). Sony has even teamed up with Terra Soft to release an officially supported distribution for the PS3.

While access to the RSX (the graphics chip on the PS3) is not available yet, developers have full access to the main processor and all the SPUs. This again means that indie developers and enthusiasts can directly write for their target platform. This is also a plus for Sony as the at-large community is sure to find various innovative ways of making the most use of the plentiful processing power offered by the Cell chip powering the PS3.

Another important factor working in favor of indie developers is the rise of digital distribution in the games industry. We’ve discussed this subject before but it does not hurt to go over some of the many avenues available today.

The Steam service (brought to you by Valve) has helped propel various indie studios (such as the aforementioned Introversion). The casual games market is well provided for by various website portals such as Real Arcade or Big Fish Games (which publishes a new game every day). In fact, casual games are almost exclusively distributed digitally, due to their smaller nature (both in size and in content). Casual games are also starting to spread to the consoles (on XBLA and in the future on Sony’s own digital service). Distributing casual games has become so easy, that now the challenge lies in distinguishing yourself from all the other games out there.

Another distribution portal entitled Manifesto Games specifically aims to publish fun and innovative indie titles which would not normally get picked up by the mainstream games industry. Greg Costikyan (founder of Manifesto Games) wants “to create for games what indie music and movies provide: an audience and market for creativity and individual vision, defying the big publishers’ mediocrity and hype”.

It’s definitely a great time to be an indie.

We do re-iterate that indie development is still very challenging, on many levels. It takes a extreme dedication and a lot of hard work to even hope to break even. No set of tools will ever replace the hard work necessary to make great games, but if you are willing to invest yourself, the opportunity to be successful has probably never been so strong. We’d like to hear from any indie developers about how they’re faring in today’s challenging market.

Posted by Raoul on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 12:47 pm.