While big companies like Atari, Midway and THQ have collapsed trying to get their games on shop shelves, independent developers have thrived on digital platforms. We spoke to the people behind some of the best Xbox Live Arcade games of 2012 to find out how they did it.
Pid, 800 MP[SUP][1][/SUP]
With clean-yet-bizarre art direction - papercraft meets the European equivalent of a Pixar short - Pid could easily pass as a portfolio piece from a graduate at one of Sweden's top design schools. It's actually the work of veterans of GRIN's Bionic Commando Rearmed. Might and Delight CEO Anders Westin describes his company as "an art-driven, rather than a tech-driven studio," adding "when it comes to philosophy we always put craftsmanship first", and that's certainly a point borne out by Pid's otherworldly premise.
The star is Kurt, a vulnerable young boy who must manipulate anti-gravity beams to explore a planet populated by robots. You're never quite sure where the game will take you. The surreal boss encounters are especially unique - among them a screen-filling butler and a plump old woman dubbed the "gourmand" - each of which offer a specific sort of mechanical approach.
It's like something out of a dream, for all the sci-fi trappings, something Westin ascribes to the choice of lead character. "Anything can happen in a dream, and even though the game isn't Kurt's dream - or is it? - you get the sense as a player that anything can indeed happen. And a lot of strange things do," he says. "I think that the magic is enforced by having Kurt as the playable character. He looks at the world with a child's eyes."
D3Publisher helped publish the Xbox Live Arcade release, but Might and Delight self-published on other platforms, and Westin sees more developers maintaining full creative control of artistic projects like Pid in the future. "On the business side it is very hard work to survive as an indie developer," he says. "Self-publishing has been important to give us control... even though it might also have made the process harder and longer."
Sine Mora, 1200 MP[SUP][2][/SUP]
Aside from its Grasshopper Manufacture-partnered art direction and tight shooter mechanics, what really stands out about Sine Mora is its layered narrative, a cynical, high-concept tale that deals equal parts philosophy, regret and familial revenge, care of a cast of anthropomorphic animals.
"The story is about my personal struggle with time," says creative director and writer Theodore Reiker. "As humans we have limited time to spend here on Earth. During our existence, we constantly face the most important question: do we spend our time here the right way? What if we don't spend enough with our kids and family, or respect the time our fathers and grandfathers spent to build their legacy?"
Throughout Sine Mora, the various narrators are forced to choose between equally unpleasant outcomes. "It's almost impossible to represent a 'neutral good' stance on most of the [game's] issues," Reiker explains. "This is of course truly anti-Hollywood at present. Without clear heroes and a happy end, Sine Mora may seem very 'European', but let's not forget that in the '80s, Hollywood was capable of producing Blade Runner."
Although Reiker and his team have since split from Digital Reality, he remains optimistic about future collaborations and his place as an independent-minded designer. An even more ambitious effort is already under way at his new company, Prior Games - we can't wait to lay eyes on it.
Trials Evolution, 1200 MP[SUP][3][/SUP]
It's everything we loved about Trials, plus an abundance of new outside areas and a wild new track editor. Motocross perfection, just about. "To see the huge outdoor areas unfolding for the first time in a really solid way during development was eye-opening," says Antti Ilvessuo, creative director at RedLynx.
"After release, just discovering and playing the mad stuff that people have created in the editor [was really interesting]," he adds. A look through the litany of user-created tracks reveals not just motorbike courses, but a number of non-biker creations including mini-golf, a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots-style brawler and a sniping game.
Interestingly, Ilvessuo feels that RedLynx has even more creative freedom as a Ubisoft studio than an indie. "When we were small, we had to do certain things just to stay alive. There were many moments when we had no freedom," he says. "[Now] we have a worldwide organisation to share the burden and the joys. It's an amazing place to be."
More and more indie studios are emerging to balance out the publisher-owned outfits, Ilvessuo argues, which will only benefit the industry. "Indie studios give new people possibilities to invent new stuff and learn," he says. "That's always a positive thing."
Dust: An Elysian Tail, 1200 MP
Dust has some of the prettiest assets and slickest animations around, all drawn by one, extraordinarily dedicated and mostly self-taught developer, Dean Dodrill. "I love traditional and 2D artwork and would like to leave a hand-made stamp on everything I do," Dodrill tells us. Inspired by Don Bluth, Disney films and classic 16-bit platformers, the game's titular animal protagonist is at once familiar and distinct - a Saturday morning cartoon after the heart of Shinobi. "I just like games with unique visual styles," he says.
Dust's aesthetic is particularly striking when it comes to the combo-juggling combat - sort of a lush hand-drawn mix of Devil May Cry and Vanillaware's Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Although Dodrill had initially only planned for a few months' development time, this soon stretched into a years-long project as he coded, created assets, worked on the script and worked with a handful of others for sound and music.
"As always, my goal was to learn, not to make a product. If I didn't do it all myself, I wouldn't have succeeded in my goal," he says. "Thankfully Microsoft was patient with me, even though I didn't waste any time or resources. It was a painful experience near the end [due to the hours], but one I'm glad I went through. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the medium."
Given the creative freedom he had making Dust, Dodrill worries he would have a hard time compromising with publishers in order to work on future projects, though he feels the bigger companies are beginning to appreciate the benefits of letting creatives take the lead.
"I think all of the major publishers understand how important indie development is for the future of the medium, and hope to see them take more risks on smaller teams," he says. "I certainly feel that indie developers have created the more interesting games this generation."
The Splatters, 800 MP[SUP][4][/SUP]
The eponymous critters generally have the consistency of rubber, and pulling off the stunt combos that are necessary to clear the screen of bombs takes real consideration. "A lot of the time, physics systems either feel like they're going in slow motion or the gravity's not quite right," muses Spiky Snail's Niv Fisher. "We modelled all of this to make sure it does feel right, down to the friction the Splatters have when they slightly scrape a surface."
"Our guiding light was to make a casual-extreme game," he says. "Everything's simple, there aren't too many rules - but it's actually a casual game for hardcore gamers, or people that are into skill games."
According to Fisher, one of the biggest challenges in developing an idea like The Splatters was trying to explain the concept. Everyone knows shooters, but "if you're making something totally fresh, no one will be interested from the get-go," he reflects. Still, Fisher believes maintaining indie sensibilities is important. "I like surprise experiences," he says. "I guess [moving forward] I'll stay with fresh mechanics, for better or worse."
Spelunky, 1200 MP[SUP][5][/SUP]
"I've always liked platformers and roguelikes," says Spelunky creator Derek Yu. "My hope was to give players a fresh way of looking at these well-trodden ideas." Anyone who's played Yu's creation, an exploration-based platformer that challenges you to find as much treasure as you can while avoiding the numerous traps and enemies across randomly generated maps, is aware of what a challenge it can pose.
What exactly each level contains - a giant spider, a distressed damsel or untold riches - is unknown till you enter it. Get hit and you lose a life; lose all your lives and it's back to the beginning to do it all over again with a new layout and hazards to uncover. Despite Spelunky's unflinchingly rigorous design, Yu says it's important not to treat players like dirt for the sake of it. "I want to respect the player," he says. "To do everything possible to ensure they're excited and learning the entire time they're at play."
Yu argues that working with a small team - Spelunky originally began life as Windows freeware - allowed him to make his mark on every aspect of the game, and he's reluctant to cede control. "I love getting my hands dirty with almost every aspect of game making - design, art, programming, whatever. It'd be unpleasant to have to give any part of it up."
Alan Wake's American Nightmare, 1200 MP[SUP][6][/SUP]
After the heavy narrative approach of the original, American Nightmare casts Wake as more of a B-movie style action hero, letting players experiment in over-the-top scenarios. "Much of the inspiration for [American Nightmare] came from B-movies, with a Quentin Tarrantino or From Dusk Till Dawn feel," says Oskari Häkkinen, Remedy's head of franchise development.
"When we made the decision to create an XBLA game, we knew the limitations in comparison to a triple-A boxed game. If we had tried to tell story in the same way, it wouldn't have worked," he adds. "In many ways this is an amazing time to be making games. The big blockbusters keep on breaking records and at the same time there's channels like XBLA which allow devs to create new kinds of experiences. Let's hope the trend persists."
Source: OXM
Join Our Facebook Group For All The Latest News[SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
Thanks to: Rheena.com
Pid, 800 MP[SUP][1][/SUP]
With clean-yet-bizarre art direction - papercraft meets the European equivalent of a Pixar short - Pid could easily pass as a portfolio piece from a graduate at one of Sweden's top design schools. It's actually the work of veterans of GRIN's Bionic Commando Rearmed. Might and Delight CEO Anders Westin describes his company as "an art-driven, rather than a tech-driven studio," adding "when it comes to philosophy we always put craftsmanship first", and that's certainly a point borne out by Pid's otherworldly premise.
The star is Kurt, a vulnerable young boy who must manipulate anti-gravity beams to explore a planet populated by robots. You're never quite sure where the game will take you. The surreal boss encounters are especially unique - among them a screen-filling butler and a plump old woman dubbed the "gourmand" - each of which offer a specific sort of mechanical approach.
It's like something out of a dream, for all the sci-fi trappings, something Westin ascribes to the choice of lead character. "Anything can happen in a dream, and even though the game isn't Kurt's dream - or is it? - you get the sense as a player that anything can indeed happen. And a lot of strange things do," he says. "I think that the magic is enforced by having Kurt as the playable character. He looks at the world with a child's eyes."
D3Publisher helped publish the Xbox Live Arcade release, but Might and Delight self-published on other platforms, and Westin sees more developers maintaining full creative control of artistic projects like Pid in the future. "On the business side it is very hard work to survive as an indie developer," he says. "Self-publishing has been important to give us control... even though it might also have made the process harder and longer."
Sine Mora, 1200 MP[SUP][2][/SUP]
Aside from its Grasshopper Manufacture-partnered art direction and tight shooter mechanics, what really stands out about Sine Mora is its layered narrative, a cynical, high-concept tale that deals equal parts philosophy, regret and familial revenge, care of a cast of anthropomorphic animals.
"The story is about my personal struggle with time," says creative director and writer Theodore Reiker. "As humans we have limited time to spend here on Earth. During our existence, we constantly face the most important question: do we spend our time here the right way? What if we don't spend enough with our kids and family, or respect the time our fathers and grandfathers spent to build their legacy?"
Throughout Sine Mora, the various narrators are forced to choose between equally unpleasant outcomes. "It's almost impossible to represent a 'neutral good' stance on most of the [game's] issues," Reiker explains. "This is of course truly anti-Hollywood at present. Without clear heroes and a happy end, Sine Mora may seem very 'European', but let's not forget that in the '80s, Hollywood was capable of producing Blade Runner."
Although Reiker and his team have since split from Digital Reality, he remains optimistic about future collaborations and his place as an independent-minded designer. An even more ambitious effort is already under way at his new company, Prior Games - we can't wait to lay eyes on it.
Trials Evolution, 1200 MP[SUP][3][/SUP]
It's everything we loved about Trials, plus an abundance of new outside areas and a wild new track editor. Motocross perfection, just about. "To see the huge outdoor areas unfolding for the first time in a really solid way during development was eye-opening," says Antti Ilvessuo, creative director at RedLynx.
"After release, just discovering and playing the mad stuff that people have created in the editor [was really interesting]," he adds. A look through the litany of user-created tracks reveals not just motorbike courses, but a number of non-biker creations including mini-golf, a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots-style brawler and a sniping game.
Interestingly, Ilvessuo feels that RedLynx has even more creative freedom as a Ubisoft studio than an indie. "When we were small, we had to do certain things just to stay alive. There were many moments when we had no freedom," he says. "[Now] we have a worldwide organisation to share the burden and the joys. It's an amazing place to be."
More and more indie studios are emerging to balance out the publisher-owned outfits, Ilvessuo argues, which will only benefit the industry. "Indie studios give new people possibilities to invent new stuff and learn," he says. "That's always a positive thing."
Dust: An Elysian Tail, 1200 MP
Dust has some of the prettiest assets and slickest animations around, all drawn by one, extraordinarily dedicated and mostly self-taught developer, Dean Dodrill. "I love traditional and 2D artwork and would like to leave a hand-made stamp on everything I do," Dodrill tells us. Inspired by Don Bluth, Disney films and classic 16-bit platformers, the game's titular animal protagonist is at once familiar and distinct - a Saturday morning cartoon after the heart of Shinobi. "I just like games with unique visual styles," he says.
Dust's aesthetic is particularly striking when it comes to the combo-juggling combat - sort of a lush hand-drawn mix of Devil May Cry and Vanillaware's Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Although Dodrill had initially only planned for a few months' development time, this soon stretched into a years-long project as he coded, created assets, worked on the script and worked with a handful of others for sound and music.
"As always, my goal was to learn, not to make a product. If I didn't do it all myself, I wouldn't have succeeded in my goal," he says. "Thankfully Microsoft was patient with me, even though I didn't waste any time or resources. It was a painful experience near the end [due to the hours], but one I'm glad I went through. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the medium."
Given the creative freedom he had making Dust, Dodrill worries he would have a hard time compromising with publishers in order to work on future projects, though he feels the bigger companies are beginning to appreciate the benefits of letting creatives take the lead.
"I think all of the major publishers understand how important indie development is for the future of the medium, and hope to see them take more risks on smaller teams," he says. "I certainly feel that indie developers have created the more interesting games this generation."
The Splatters, 800 MP[SUP][4][/SUP]
The eponymous critters generally have the consistency of rubber, and pulling off the stunt combos that are necessary to clear the screen of bombs takes real consideration. "A lot of the time, physics systems either feel like they're going in slow motion or the gravity's not quite right," muses Spiky Snail's Niv Fisher. "We modelled all of this to make sure it does feel right, down to the friction the Splatters have when they slightly scrape a surface."
"Our guiding light was to make a casual-extreme game," he says. "Everything's simple, there aren't too many rules - but it's actually a casual game for hardcore gamers, or people that are into skill games."
According to Fisher, one of the biggest challenges in developing an idea like The Splatters was trying to explain the concept. Everyone knows shooters, but "if you're making something totally fresh, no one will be interested from the get-go," he reflects. Still, Fisher believes maintaining indie sensibilities is important. "I like surprise experiences," he says. "I guess [moving forward] I'll stay with fresh mechanics, for better or worse."
Spelunky, 1200 MP[SUP][5][/SUP]
"I've always liked platformers and roguelikes," says Spelunky creator Derek Yu. "My hope was to give players a fresh way of looking at these well-trodden ideas." Anyone who's played Yu's creation, an exploration-based platformer that challenges you to find as much treasure as you can while avoiding the numerous traps and enemies across randomly generated maps, is aware of what a challenge it can pose.
What exactly each level contains - a giant spider, a distressed damsel or untold riches - is unknown till you enter it. Get hit and you lose a life; lose all your lives and it's back to the beginning to do it all over again with a new layout and hazards to uncover. Despite Spelunky's unflinchingly rigorous design, Yu says it's important not to treat players like dirt for the sake of it. "I want to respect the player," he says. "To do everything possible to ensure they're excited and learning the entire time they're at play."
Yu argues that working with a small team - Spelunky originally began life as Windows freeware - allowed him to make his mark on every aspect of the game, and he's reluctant to cede control. "I love getting my hands dirty with almost every aspect of game making - design, art, programming, whatever. It'd be unpleasant to have to give any part of it up."
Alan Wake's American Nightmare, 1200 MP[SUP][6][/SUP]
After the heavy narrative approach of the original, American Nightmare casts Wake as more of a B-movie style action hero, letting players experiment in over-the-top scenarios. "Much of the inspiration for [American Nightmare] came from B-movies, with a Quentin Tarrantino or From Dusk Till Dawn feel," says Oskari Häkkinen, Remedy's head of franchise development.
"When we made the decision to create an XBLA game, we knew the limitations in comparison to a triple-A boxed game. If we had tried to tell story in the same way, it wouldn't have worked," he adds. "In many ways this is an amazing time to be making games. The big blockbusters keep on breaking records and at the same time there's channels like XBLA which allow devs to create new kinds of experiences. Let's hope the trend persists."
Source: OXM
Join Our Facebook Group For All The Latest News[SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP]
[h=3]References[/h]
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- [SUP]^[/SUP] Source: OXM (www.oxm.co.uk)
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Thanks to: Rheena.com