game_industry

10. From the view of an (ignorant) outsider, it strikes me that there is no move to establish a centralised 'hub' to promote and sell all kinds of indie games, though there are conferences and sites on learning about and supporting indie development. Is there something I'm not seeing?

Well, at one point, we looked like we were getting one. Or three. Then they jacked up their royalties to the point where they are taking the lion's share of the profits, limited their games genres to just a few that brought in the most concentrated income, and left the developers with the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Not that I blame them - business is business after all.

But that's the problem with centralization. That's the opposite of "indie," really. When you've got some kind of centralization, it means you are surrendering power and control to those guys. And they can't possibly be all things to all people. For an indie, the whole point is to do your own thing. If it makes sense to work with these guys, great. If not - screw it, you can do your own thing!

11.How much awareness is there of indie games outside more dedicated gamers? What do your relatives or the people you meet at the bar think when you tell them you're an *indie* game developer?

There's not much awareness, at least not nearly enough, even amongst the gamers who *play* these games. The "indie" thing means something to developers. But does Joe Gamer, who plays Halo 3 on his XBox 360, really recognize this difference when he gets sucked into a flash game online? I don't really know. It seems like it's just not something think or care about.

I think they attribute the difference to technology rather than team or budget. They understand that you can't do Halo 3 in Flash. At least not yet. But even young, aspiring game developers get caught in this trap of believing that technology is the limitation, rather than budget, manpower, and expertise. They don't fully recognize that they can't just get some friends together and whip out a last-gen blockbuster or MMORPG in a few weeks.

That's a challenge to indies, because our audience doesn't judge our games based upon our budget. They don't care, and they shouldn't care. I can go out to Amazon right now and buy a new copy of Oblivion for $30. Or Final Fantasy XII for $19.99 - that's the sweet spot for indie game prices. Why should someone spend that money to buy an indie RPG from my site instead of either of those games? Indies have to be ready to answer that question.

(And they have... http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/02/why-indie-rpgs-indies-of-round-... )

On the plus side, I think that's starting to change a little bit. With indie games now becoming available for the XBox 360 and getting some attention in the press, I think people are starting to become aware of who we are, and what we offer.

12. How can indie game devs (and fans) raise awareness? You've said before that the "biggest problem indies have is exposure". What can be done about that, in today's industry?

The number one thing is to play indie games. It makes no sense to talk about something you aren't interested in and don't know anything about. When you can talk about games like Depths of Peril in the same sentence with Diablo 2, that means something. And that's really the point - games are meant to be played. If people are playing them, buying them, and talking about them, everything else will follow. Indie games are getting some "buzz" now in the press, something that was inconceivable as little as four years ago. Indie games need some good grassroots support from players.

The other thing we need is probably some more marketing savvy on the part of developers. That's tough. Most people get into indie game development because they want to make games, not because they want to market games. But really - we need more interesting stories to tell the press. I think the time is right, and the press really just needs something interesting to talk about from the indie gaming scene, plus a really good game to go with it, and they'll be all over it.

So play the games, talk about the games, and bug the magazines and your favorite gaming websites to tell you more about indie games.

Braid certainly got plastered everywhere, at least.

13. Is the Braid 'saga' something akin to what you are talking about here? What impact do you think Braid had on this whole area?

Braid has definitely had a ton of marketing power behind it, and it has kinda become a bit of an indie poster child. And deservedly so. Does your average player download Braid and say, "This is an indie game, what other indie games are out there?" I don't know if they do. But it has definitely garnered greater media and industry attention, which is great for us all.

The biggest victory of all for Braid and some of these other games is that there are these really successful games out there that are very fun, worth every penny of a gamer's hard-earned cash - but which are nothing like the technological powerhouses with hyper-realistic graphics and believable hair movements that the industry has worked for years to convince their audience is a necessary part of a quality game.

I think that shift in perspective is a huge part of the battle. The other part - for those of us making games for open platforms - is to help the potential audience look beyond publisher-dominated distribution channels for quality entertainment.

14. It seems to me that the big issue is how there might be hundreds or thousands of people who might play your indie game, but they just never find out it exists. Should/will indies start turning to more mainstream methods of 'exposure' marketing once they have the financial muscle? (e.g. Penny Arcade's Banners Everywhere, or hell, 'contracting' people for prettier websites and the like?)

You are right - that is a pretty big issue.

You make it sound as if the indies are some unified group that is gaining financial and political strength as one big collective. I mean, sure, many of us are getting smarter about what we're doing, and teaming up to try and tackle some of these jobs through cooperation that we couldn't handle on our own. But we're nothing like a united front.

Hopefully some of these more traditional marketing routes will be open to reducing some of their costs for indies. We're seeing that now in some other areas of the industry - mainly for development, with some companies offering a difference between an "indie" and a "commercial" pricing for services or whatnot. Which I think is kind of a weird distinction, because most indies do have some kind of commercial aspirations. But hey, it's an outreach program to help make life easier for indies. Maybe we'll see more of that in the marketing arena.

Another thing to consider is that indies are not just miniature mainstream game developers, and what works for mainstream by way of marketing may not work for us. In fact, in a recent interview with Nick Tipping of Moonpod (an indie game company founded by two mainstream veterans), Nick told me,"Things we thought would be invaluable turned out to be useless; Mr. Robot and Starscape got incredible reviews in magazines, but even the smallest website review has a much bigger impact than a magazine."

(http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/08/interview-with-nick-tipping-of-...)

So in a lot of ways, we're still figuring out what's going to work. Sure, more successful indies will have more money to throw at the problem, which will usually yield greater success. But since indies tend to "go niche" more than trying to compete head-to-head against the mainstream, I don't know if trying to directly imitate our mainstream cousins is a smart way to go.

15. What kind of impact can indie games such as Aveyond, Eschalon and your upcoming Frayed Knights make on the RPG market in general, and mainstream RPG designs?

Because of expense, mainstream games are becoming increasingly risk-averse. They want proven designs and properties wherever possible. I think in part, indie games may be proving that there's still a solid market for types of games that have lost favor as game design has been riding the coattails of the most recent best-sellers. Maybe a few successful indie RPGs will shake things up. Maybe not.

Really, I don't care if indie RPGs make an impact on mainstream games or not. While I wouldn't mind more mainstream RPGs that match my sensibilities, I'm pretty happy so long as there are indies out there making the kinds of games I want to play. I think doing just that - addressing the niche audiences - is the biggest contribution and impact indie RPGs - and indie games in general - can make for the market.

Is it really necessary to be able to sell a million copies to that theoretical "Mass Market" in order to stay solvent as a game developer?

The Bioshock guys certainly thought so.

16. Are we seeing a trend towards simpler, less challenging RPGs that 'hold the player's hand'? Where does your design philosophy, and Rampant Games titles, stand in relation to that?

Well, I appreciate some hand-holding. I've got a few games I've never finished playing that I could probably have used a little more hand-holding on.

But there's a sense of satisfaction that you can get from figuring your own way through devious problems in games. Doing your own detective work and discovery. If I had to pick one way or the other, I'd really lean more towards the more challenging, less hand-holding method. That being said, my ideal would be a happy medium where the player can work it out for themselves the hard way, but help would be available in-game when the player gets too stumped. Sorta like how Bejeweled might give you a hint if you spend too long not making a move.

17.How important is fan feedback for an indie developer? How much, and in what ways, does it influence the way you design and promote your games?

In mainstream game studios, you get pretty insulated from what people really think about your game. You are separated from your customers by a publisher and a distribution system two layers thick. You are cut off from your primary feedback mechanism, which is unit sales - you wouldn't know the difference between a hit and a flop until the publisher gave you numbers which might or might not resemble reality. You really aren't making games for players - you are making games for the publisher, usually meaning an overworked game-loving producer and a whole bunch of non-gamer marketers, bean-counters, and executives.

As an indie, it's a whole 'nother story. It's all about the players, and making them happy. They are the ones who pay for your game-making habit, one way or another. It's them you want to make the game for, not some dudes in a suit in some boardroom looking at numbers on a chart and trying to do remote committee-based paint-by-numbers game design. And getting that feedback from customers and potential customers - early and often - is critical.

One experiment I did this year was to release a "pilot" of my game in development, for the express purpose of soliciting that feedback on the direction I was going. It was a huge success. I found a lot of people complaining about the same things - things I can fix at this stage - and a lot of outstanding suggestions for improvement. It's that direct kind of feedback - and potential for improvement - of a work-in-progress that I just can't see happening through traditional, mainstream game development.

I think it's awesome.

A big thanks to Jay Barnson for this comprehensive look into the life and thoughts of an indie developer.

It's time for another interview (we'll see how long this frequency lasts), and this time it's with Jay Barnson, who's worked for years both in mainstream game production and running his own indie thing at Rampant Games. His blog, Tales of the Rampant Coyote, is always a great read (and he's not as lazy as me at updating).

The interview weighs in at 4,000 words, going over in quite some detail the various parts of indie game development, what it involves, where it's at, where it's going. It's pretty big, so I'm going to try dividing it in two and see how that goes.

Click here for Part One of the interview.

Frayed Knights, Jay's upcoming comedy RPG. (source)

In part one, Jay talks about how he 'went indie', the various challenges involved in indie development and marketing / promoting in the world of indie. Part Two should be up within a couple of days here at the Alley.

As always, comments are welcome!

Jay Barnson is an industry veteran, both as a mainstream developer the man behind Rampant Games. His blog, Tales of the Rampant Coyote, is always a great source of tales about life as an indie developer.

1. Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what is Rampant Games?

Well, I'm Jay Barnson - founder of Rampant Games. I have done my time off-and-on in the mainstream games business since the mid-90s. I've worked on some ancient titles you might remember like Twisted Metal, Warhawk, and Jet Moto. And even more ancient titles you probably won't remember, and in some cases I'd prefer if you didn't. More recently I've worked on a massively multiplayer RTS (yes, you read that correctly) called Saga, unpublished Wii and Xbox 360 games, and the upcoming multi-platform game The Tale of Despereaux. And when I'm not making games for a living --- I'm making them for fun, as an indie.

Rampant Games is a small indie gaming company. I originally founded it just as a tiny game development studio. Lately it's become something more, and I'm selling a lot of other people's games, and running the Tales of the Rampant Coyote blog where I discuss all aspects of gaming - but emphasizing indie gaming, computer roleplaying games, and adventure games.

2. You're a professional game developer gone indie. What was the reaction from the industry, your colleagues, to this jump?

There really wasn't much of a reaction when I left in 2000. I mean, with all the chaos and layoffs and consolidations and people changing jobs at the time, it wasn't a big deal. Some people didn't understand why I'd want to leave the greatest job in the world, but others did.

Nowadays, the indie thing is usually responded to by either enthusiasm or blank stares. Many of my colleagues don't understand the attraction of working on such low-key, low budget games. Others get really excited about it. So I guess you can't say there's any kind of typical reaction.

3. I understand that over the last few years, you have had to maintain Rampant Games as a 'second job', essentially, after a day at work. This seems to be something many indie developers have to do, until (if) their venture becomes profitable. Is this a big problem or challenge for indies in general, and how did you deal with it?

Based upon the overwhelming proportion of indie games that end up in the graveyard of unfinished projects, I'd say it's a huge problem.

I've found that the more I hate my day job, the easier it is to work on indie games at night. Not that I'd prefer a day job I can't stand just so I can have that level of motivation.

It's been a few years since I had a full-fledged commercial indie game release, so maybe I'm the wrong person to talk to. But for me, it comes down to commitment to the project, and discipline. I'm a terribly undisciplined person, myself, so for me I just have to make it a habit. When I get into the habit of putting 4 hours a night - usually between 9:30 PM and 1:30 AM - into working on a game, I get things done. When I fall out of the habit, weeks go by with very little progress.

Eschalon: Book 1, one of the RPGs hosted by Rampant Games.(source)

4. What are some of the key differences in the way you develop and work on the games now that you are indie? Apart from, say, graphics, are there differences between mainstream and indie games that stem from having a different kind of work process?

Indie games are probably closer to how mainstream games were made about twenty years ago, I'd guess. Most of the differences come from creative control and team size. In mainstream games these days, a big part of game direction comes from a number of people at the top who might not even play games. And while there's still plenty of creativity in the process, it gets diffused through a large team.

With an indie game, there's a much smaller team and creative control is down at the immediate level of the one or few people actively creating on the game. Everyone on the team has to wear multiple hats, is more heavily invested in the final product, so you don't get so much of a "factory worker" mentality.

I think indie games show much more of the personality of their creators. It's sort of the "garage band" effect - it's not been watered down by corporate demands. It's rougher-edged, but a little closer to the source.

5. One of the biggest challenges appears to be that you have to handle the more 'suit-y' side of management all by yourself: but at least you have total freedom. Can there be no compromise? Do you see any prospects for more collaboration or communication between indie development and mainstream developers or publishers, or does indie always have to stay 'one-man-and-his-computer' to retain its rougher, creative side?

I'm really glad you asked that. And no, I don't think the latter is necessary at all. We are already getting some collaborative efforts and joint ventures already, and it would be awesome to see more of it. As much as we make a big deal about "indie" versus "mainstream," it's still the same world.

It's just that the videogame industry, like most other media, has evolved in such a way that it is the middleman (the publisher) who is in the driver's seat now. They call the shots, decide what's being made, decide how hard its going to be marketed, decide when its going to be released (ready or not), what license it will use, and they'll play all kinds of weird marketing, political, and money games as they do it.

All being an indie really boils down to is rejecting this model of how the industry "must" work, and putting the game makers - and their customers - in the driver's seat instead. That's really all there is to it! And when they are done, if the publishers and mainstream guys want to get in the act, too, and the deal makes sense - go for it!

6. In your blog you have often stated that making your own game is not just about being creative: that you also have to learn to market your own games, and so forth. What kind of things did you learn or pick up as you built Rampant Games from the ground up?

I had to learn or re-learn everything from the ground up. I've written entire articles about this. I was totally clueless. Now I'm only mostly clueless. About the only thing I did know how to do was write game software, and see that through to the end of the project. I actually believed that this was at least 90% of what had to be done. Nowadays, I know better, and I mock my less experienced self. Fortunately, we're separated by time, so my younger self doesn't deck me for mocking him.

So what did I need to learn?

Starting from the basics of running a business - how does one form a company? What kind of company structures are there, and what do they cost? What are the fees / taxes / requirements in my city and state? How do I report it on my income taxes? What are the legal dangers a company can run into? How do I set up sales via the website? How do I even create a website that doesn't suck? What's a reasonable monthly cost for a server?

How do you manage a team? What do you do when there are problems, especially when you aren't paying your crew more than the price of pizza? How do you find an appropriate artist, and how much will they cost? How do you find "off-the-shelf" content that works for your game? Will the licenses for all your code and data libraries work together?

Who is your audience? What kind of video card are they using? How do you promote your game? Is advertising on site X worth it? How much should you charge for your game? How do you write a press release? How much gameplay should your demo offer?

These and a zillion other questions become apparent once you start trying to do this as a real business. And for every question you answer, you also discover two more questions.

Void War, Jay's 3D space combat game.((source)

7. Are you able to tell us about some specific steps you take to find out exactly who your 'audience' is and how to keep in touch with them?

I use the blog and my forums for that, really. For Frayed Knights, I've actually posted a bunch of design ideas to the community and received feedback directly on stuff I hadn't even put in the game yet. I even had people sending ME ideas for dialog between the characters - I think a couple of community members had a better handle on the "voice" of the characters than even I did.

It was really the most amazing, collaborative thing I've ever participated in - and I still have a lot more to do. But I think the game is going to be much better because of it.

8. What are some of the common mistakes indies make when promoting their game? Or things they forget? What, in your opinion, can indies do to try and reach more people that might enjoy their game?

I think the most common mistake is that they forget to do any real promotion at all. Or they wait until the last minute to start thinking about it. Or they spend their time telling their peers about it rather than their potential customers. Indie game developers rarely have enough money to buy games, anyway. :)

I think the most important thing - at least to start - is to network. This is pretty hard, as many game developers can be kinda introverted. But getting to know people, knowing who to ask questions of, who to contact for whatever situation you find yourself in, is pretty key.

9. Many Rampant Games titles offer extensive demos. You could pretty much play most of the game with Democracy, though with only one country. Eschalon Book 1 and Frayed Knights also have 'pilot' demos. So are 'big' demos a good thing, then?

From talking to a lot of people about this subject from different parts of the field, I can state definitively that "it depends." Ideally, the demo should be just big enough to suck the player in, and small enough to leave him or her hungry for more. For a lot of casual games, a sixty-minute time limit works great. For other kinds of games, limiting it by content might be better. Or by features.

It really depends upon the game and the audience. For something like an RPG, for example - an RPG is typically pretty huge, and it might take a little bit of time for a player to get used to the gameplay, and warm up to the characters and story. A big demo - like the kind Spiderweb offers with its games - might be perfect. Just as you are getting into your groove, getting invested into both the story and the characters you've been building - bam, you hit the end of the demo and you REALLY want to see what happens next. For a little casual game that you play in ten-minute snatches, a time limit or number of uses might work best. There are new pricing and monetization models coming all the time. Some games just let advertising subsidize your game-playing, and that may work great, too.

It's as much art as science.

The second part of this interview will cover the awareness of indie games amongst the public and the kind of profile they have, as well as whether games are becoming 'easier' and the importance of fan feedback. Check back in a couple of days!

The Fallout 3 saga in many ways embodies very classic arguments and lines of conflict in gaming culture. We've got the old vs. new, the fan vs. the anti-fan, the optimist's "they'll come through" vs. the pessimist's "no, they will eat a crate of epic fail"... usually not actually representative of the positions held by many of them, but they're floating in the air, nonetheless. One such familiar point is the discourses about the actual act of purchase. On one hand, you have many critics lamenting that despite the game's numerous flaws or its perversion of the original vision, the public will lap it up and cough up the cash anyway. On the other, you've got many 'apologists' of Bethesda asserting that for all the whining and crying, the detractors will go and buy the game anyway - which, it's implied, will cancel out all of their arguments against the game. How exactly that leap over the shackles of logic is made, I wouldn't know. So, either way, is purchase the ultimate equaliser against the neverending squabbles of fandom? How often do the clamours of fans eventually reach the corporate world and deliver accurate, representative kicks to the backside, and how often are they contradicted by their own purchasing patterns?

Let's deal with this one by one. First, we have the point that despite flaws or controversies that are so very big in the context of the industry and the culture, it's dwarfed by that ever-looming mastodon - the, gasp, silent majority - who will step on your puny arguments like the strong hulk he is, and buy Fallout 3. Or something.

S. Majority, artist's depiction

Alright. After spending a week blubbering like a fish, the flu has subsided and I have regained basic human faculties. As good a time as any to resume the proper update schedule. This one is going to be the first of several blogposts talking about Fallout 3 and the controversies surrounding it. I'm not really interested in declaring who's right and what's really Fallout: that's been done to death, and I'm frankly not qualified.

For those who spend their time hunting wild game and smoking out of long pipes instead of being constructive on the internet, Fallout 3 is the sequel to two highly acclaimed RPGs from the late 1990's. Rather like a concubine who's grown old and saggy, the father of the originals, Interplay, lost most of the folks who actually developed the Fallouts, made bad decisions resulting in various financial hemmorrhages, and ended up selling its best assets. The Fallout license ended up with Bethesda, famous for their The Elder Scrolls series. The long-awaited sequel is now nearly here, and the press hype machine has been winding into a frenzied click-clack of steam and soot.

Didn't anyone tell him he put his belt on backwards?

I've been struck down with some sort of bizarro cold keeping me in bed 18 hours a day, so let's keep this short: Vince D. Weller, at the helm of Iron Tower's Age of Decadence project, has kindly answered a few questions for the Alley. Find the link on the left... or, ah, here.

7. How much awareness is there of indie games outside more dedicated gamers? What do your relatives or the people you meet at the bar think when you tell them you make indie games?

I'm not sure that awareness is the right word. It's about the visuals these days. Some people take one look at our screenshots and lose their interest immediately. Hell, I've seen people complaining about Alpha Protocol's graphics calling it a "budget title".

No indie studio can match the visuals of mainstream games and since the visuals are the main feature these days, indie games would remain unnoticed by the majority no matter how aware people are about these games. So, indies are a domain of dedicated gamers and I don't think anything can change that. Considering that it takes 0.1% of mainstream development budget to make an indie game, we are more than happy with 0.1% of the audience.

8. The promotion for Age of Decadence has involved not only your ‘standard’ stuff like screenshots, but also ‘Let’s Play!’ threads where fans can indirectly ‘play through’ a portion of the game, picking dialogue options or what to do next. What’s the payoff? Why is it worth doing?

3 reasons: feedback, credibility, entertainment.

Feedback - well, that's kind of obvious. If not, see my answer to the next question.

Credibility - we are all accustomed to PR folks lying, exaggerating, and promising features that aint there. We promise quite a lot too, and I think it's important to show people that everything we promised is in the game. The "let's play" format - forumites make all decisions, developer just drives - is made for this purpose. Actually I wanted to show our assassins questline, but the forumites decided to do and try different things, which is great.

Entertainment - waiting for a game could be boring and uneventful. I believe that we owe something to people who supported us by joining our forums and taking their time to offer advice, so it was also a nice present. Thanks again, guys.

9. Checking in on the AoD forums, I found the ‘Teron’s Mine’ discussion very interesting (http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=337.0) – Oscar, one of your devs, posted screenshots of an area he had developed, then tweaked it about a dozen times to satisfy fan feedback. It was almost as if he was presenting a draft for everyone to polish together. Does this happen often with Age of Decadence? Does it ever get difficult or cumbersome to put so much emphasis on fan input during the creation process?

It's an acquired taste. Basically, we don't treat people who are interested in AoD as idiots. First, their opinions are important because we are making this game for them. So, what I think sometimes matters less than what they think. Second, you know that saying "one head is better than two"? Well, how about one head vs a thousand heads then? Listening to our fans allowed us improve the game greatly. Some suggestions were absolutely brilliant. Kind of like "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?", which is exactly the point. You can't think of everything. The only way to do that is to pay attention to what people are criticizing and suggesting.

It's not about designing by committee. It's not about being unsure and asking people to do your job for you. It's about presenting your vision to people and letting them help you polish it and make it better. We started showing everything and getting feedback from day one, and once we realized the benefits, it became our way of doing things. Pretty much every aspect of the game was presented to our fans who did their best to tear it apart (fucking savages) and help us "think of everything".

10a. Are we seeing a trend towards simpler, less challenging RPGs that ‘hold the player’s hand’?

One of them rhetorical questions?

10b. Is Age of Decadence a rejection of this recent trend, or something else entirely?

Rejection is too strong a word to describe our design philosophy. The mainstream is going one way, we are going the other way. That's all there is to it.

11. You’re known for being quite outspoken – not afraid to call things as you see them. Some might say that this is needlessly confrontational towards people who might appreciate the type of game you make – is that an issue?

I don't think so. I don't see "being outspoken and calling things as I see them" as a bad thing. The gaming industry suffers, in my opinion, from too many politically correct people. A GameSpot editor who gave more than 10 years to the site was thrown out because he dared to have an opinion about Eidos' Kane & Lynch instead of writing a paid fucking commercial (aka, a review). How fucked up is that? GameSpot had basically acknowledged that their site is a publishers' outlet and unless you are really interested in what publishers happened to think about their own games, there is no real reason to visit the site. Everyone seems to be ok with that though.

Anyway, I'm well aware that what I say may offend someone. That's the downside of having an opinion, I suppose. However, I'm making a game not writing a complete collection of my opinions on various topics. If someone is unable to understand the difference, well, I don't think he or she would enjoy AoD.

12. If the option was ever presented to you – would you take up mainstream game development as a career, or stick with indie?

The option was presented to me, but I had to decline politely. I'm afraid that games I would like to make won't appeal to publishers who decide what mainstream developers should and shouldn't be working on. I'm not trying to say that all mainstream games are bad. Far from it. I greatly enjoyed Mask of the Betrayer. I'm looking forward to Dragon Age, Alpha Protocol, Diablo 3, and Divine Divinity 2. However, I also like a different type of games and since nobody else wants to make them, it's my duty to mankind. Ok, it's my duty to a few hundred geeks who happened to share my thoughts on RPGs. We can't abandon them, can we?

13. I’d ask about the release date, but we know “it will be done when it’s done” – anything planned for the waiting fans in the foreseeable future, though?

That's what the foreseeable future is for, isn't it?

Many thanks to Mr. Weller for the interview - and, possibly, providing the first RPG worth playing to death since 2004.

The Alley has chased down Vince D. Weller of Age of Decadence for another delicious interview.

You can find out more about Age of Decadence at http://www.irontowerstudio.com/.

1. Let’s get the groundwork done – who are you? What is Age of Decadence? How did you get into indie game development?

Vince D. Weller, the lead designer of The Age of Decadence, an indie RPG.

The Age of Decadence is an isometric, turn-based, single-player role-playing game set in a low magic, post-apocalyptic fantasy world, inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire. The game features a detailed skill-based character system, non-linear gameplay, multiple skill-based ways to handle quests, choices & consequences, and extensive dialogue trees.

As for the last question, I'm a passionate gamer and I've always wanted to make games. Same goes for the rest of my team. Tools that are currently available to indie developers make it relatively easy to "get into indie game development". All you need is commitment.

2. Age of Decadence’s setting is a ‘fall of an empire’ scenario: what does this setting bring to the game?

Fall of empires is an interesting period. The old ways - laws, beliefs, ways of living, classes, even power - are falling apart to give room to something new or mutating into something new if they want to survive. Society is slowly reverting to the more natural, primal state. Power is starting to change hands, aided by assassinations, backstabbing, and plotting. As Glen Cook said: "Conspiracies and assassinations and naked power-grabs. All the fun of decadence.". All that forms a nice and colorful playground for your character. If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere.

3. You have previously described your team as “picking up Troika’s ball because somebody had to”. What is it about games like Troika’s that today’s RPGs aren’t providing, and why is it important to keep that flame alive?

I don't think that in the last 10-15 years anyone did as much to truly push the RPG genre forward as Troika did. Fallout and Arcanum are two of the best RPGs ever created. ToEE had the best and most faithful DnD turn-based combat and one of the best turn-based combat implementations in general. Bloodlines was probably one of the first successful attempts to fuse action with role-playing. Robust dialogue trees with skillchecks, focus on characters and dialogues, non-linearity, multiple options and paths, choices & consequences - that's Troika. We are influenced by Troika's games, by Troika's design philosophy, by Troika's ideas.

Troika's games were different. Troika's RPGs were actually ROLE-PLAYING games, not games with adjustable stats. Sure, they were buggy and often unpolished, but I'd rather play a brilliant, but unpolished game, than a well-polished, generic and uninspiring game.

Needless to say, we'll do our best to deliver well-tested and polished games for our audience.

4. What made you go for turn-based combat in Age of Decadence, and what do you have to say to those who believe that it is a relic of the past?

Real time and first-person view are as old as turn-based and isometric. Probably even older. See Diablo 3 "OMG! Why is it isometric?!" drama for more info:

“Camera is not technology,” says Wilson [Diablo 3 lead designer], clearly somewhat frustrated. “People associate the camera with isometric and say: ‘Oh, why didn’t you update the tech?’ Well, we did update the tech. The camera has nothing to do with tech, the camera is all about gameplay. Isometric gameplay is very different from FPS or over-the-shoulder third person – which is pretty much what the entire industry is moving towards. But then some of the biggest hits of the last year were Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and those were not high-tech games. Gameplay is what matters; it’s what’s always mattered to us.”

Similarly, turn-based isn't about tech, it's about gameplay. It can't be a relic because games like Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic still exist and aint going nowhere. To understand what TB offers, let's imagine RT Civ. Imagined? Well, there you go.

Turn-based gameplay is about thinking, considering your options, and using tactical advantages. Real-time gameplay is about clicking really, really fast (hence the twitch gameplay name). The fact that when developers want to offer you a bit more depth in your RT cereal they pause it, should tell you everything you need to know.

Why AoD is turn-based? Because we like TB games and we spit on your RT crap. What? The mike is still on. Oh, shit! Now we'd have to issue a press-release stating that RT games are as good as TB games and that we are all huge RT fans. Thanks a lot!

5. What is Age of Decadence’s target market? Will it be able to attract new, or younger, generations to this kind of RPGs? Is that your goal?

I have no goal in this regard and I don't target anyone. I'm simply making a game I would want to play myself. If it turns out that there is enough people who are interested in such games, the existence of market will be officially announced and we'll continue making games we like. Otherwise...

On our forums you can find many young players and many seasoned veterans who've seen many gaming winters. I don't think it's a question of age. It's a matter of personal preference.

6. What kind of impact can an indie game such as Age of Decadence make on the RPG market in general, and mainstream RPG designs?

Well, call me overly ambitious, but I'm confident that the impact would be zero. We're working hard to turn this dream into reality!

Click below for the rest!

First, a little bit of housekeeping. The alley is now 21 days old, which is nowhere as iconic as a month or a year or a hundred years, but why let abstract divisions of time stop us? I celebrated by doing nothing particularly productive today and drinking water with a piece of lemon inside.

.......

Anyway, on to the topic at hand. Nothing big today - just wanted to mention a feature on The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. The Witcher was released last year by Polish developer CDProjekt, with a lot of hype and marketing. It was, in fact, a pretty awesome game. The problem was that, being a Polish game, it was localised to English - and the localisation was crap:

Sometimes it's like Yoda wrote the dialogue in shorthand.

One of the newspieces doing the rounds this week is on Cliff 'cliffski' Harris's dialogue with people who pirate his games. Basically, he asked people to email him to explain why they did/were tempted to pirate his games. Reportedly, answers mainly revolved around price, low game quality, DRM and convenience.

The thing is, every one of those factors are something all of us can identify with. They're about as in-your-face as North Korean propaganda. Like the music industry, you can't help but think that the reason piracy such an epidemic is because the legal market is broken in several areas.

Come on, take a look. You want EA? We got EA. Sega? We got Sega too.