What is the future of indie games?
Warren Spector, a game industry veteran and the President of Junction Point Studios, had said “You have a zero percent chance of success.” when he was taking about the independent developers. He also added that “You can’t go make Bejeweled-a puzzle game and then tell EA you want to make Madden”. These quotes of Mr. Spector simply lighten the present scenario of indie or small scale gamers. Today’s gaming industry is preaching its pawns on newer era of big budget games and graphics. Industry has big production houses like Electronic Arts, Sony and Activision which give no space for indies.
In this era of gaming evolution indie companies may find it difficult to compete with big bosses of gaming, but still they have opportunity with online market places like Xbox LIVE and Nintendo’s Virtual Console for smaller games. But the reality is quite different, the era of geniuses like Richard Garriott and John Carmark of Ultima and Id Software respectively are over. They simply get skewed in the prism of their past projects and in turn hamper their future. One should always remember that no other small scale gamer has achieved the heights of Richard Garriot. This puts a big question mark on the future of Indie games.
Mr. Gordon Walton, co-studio Director at BioWare Austin, suggests that aspiring developers would greatly increase their chance of success in this field if they implant on their own ideas. Thus in a nutshell, the present of video gaming industry is twofold the one side is deep like ocean to explore and second side is of continuous development. As we should not forget that it all started with two paddles and a bouncing ball .