I had wrote this a while back about last year and I put it on a other site. Now that site is gone. So I felt like putting it back up again on my Site. This was my final essay for my English class so have a look and tell me what you think. Some of you might of read this before.
Independent Gaming: The New Future?
In recent years independent gaming is having an uprising surge of sales. More of the people playing games nowadays are turning to independent games for a new experience. Many of the corporate games that are developing are not bringing a lot of new experience to the players. People are still buying the big budget titles, the few major titles are selling in the multi-millions. A normal corporate game is selling high numbers, but the rate these games come out is turning away its customers. Some of the sales of indie games are putting a challenge to the corporate games. So why are corporate games not selling?
How come then corporate games not selling as much. Corporate games are working hard to focus test their games. Focus testing is just like how the movie industry or any company will conduct test. They will ask a couple of people who may play games or may not play games, and ask them a series of questions about their game. What they like what they don?t like about the game, if they can change anything what they would change. Corporations are spending thousands of dollars to try to get people to buy more of their games. They are looking at indie games and seeing what is it that is their hook factor, what?s making people play these games. People are not buying their games at sixty dollars apiece each week. So many corporations are putting out titles every week that the market can?t keep up with buying each title. At least once a month there will be two major titles that will be released that gamers will want, and spending over a one hundred and twenty dollars plus tax. Gamers are jumping from one new game to the next each month without enjoying a product. That is why cheaper games like the independent games are selling.
The very first video game was an independent game. A Galaxy war was a game that two guys made together. Before that, there was no such thing as video games they created the first. Corporations didn?t think of making video games, they were created by college students who had access to super computers. They wrote some code that helped them pass the time and have fun with each other. It wasn?t until they put a video game in a part of the school and made people put in a quarter for a chance to play. Later on the students decided to sell the video game to a major corporation and went off and started their own company.
Corporate gaming took off faster than a bottle rocket. In the 70?s & early 80?s gaming companies where starting up all over Silicon Valley.? Much like many companies they wanted games to be made as fast as they could and each one had to be unique.? This was the arcade era of gaming and it was expensive to make a game. The arcade era was the new sign of the future, it was something that allowed people to have a good time and it was cheap to play only .25 cents play. Everyone played these games from children to adults would spend nights in the arcades. From business men hanging out to try and beat each other?s score to mom?s playing a game to get closer to their child. It was becoming a social norm in which they wanted people to come and see something new and fun. The bad thing was that when something cheap and exciting like the arcades ruin the market. Corporations where making something new as soon as possible and flooding the market. They were making so many games at one time and charging thousands of dollars for an arcade cabinet. In the 80?s the get rich quick theme was start an arcade. When they started to put arcade?s in a mortuary it was a sign of it not being fun anymore.
The 90?s brought on a new outlook of the video game market with the compact disk drive (CD rom). Now it was becoming easier to program games and cheaper, because of the boom of the home personal computer (PC). Gaming companies where able to hire on higher quality audio teams and graphic programmers to bring three?dimensions (3D) animation to the screen. No longer would people have to deal with a two dimensions (2D) environment. 3D gaming brought a new depth and feel to the game. One major part of corporations were doing with PC gaming was that they created online gaming. Playing with other people from around the world was the latest and greatest. If you and a friend that lives back east can play together, then that was two games sales that spawned from one person.
Online gaming was a major selling factor for the 2000?s. With the advancement of graphics cards, the internet and home consoles this was a major selling factor. With the help of the CD-rom from prior years now came the DVD-rom drives which along with a graphics card, was a visual delight. ?Video games were better looking and allowed you to interact with them more. Corporations were putting bigger budgets into the game studios, graphics teams where the hot jobs. With the surge of game console sales, every game that was made brought in a lot of money. The major developers were raising the budgets into the low millions. By the time of present day independent games where coming into the scene, not as fast as a bottle rocket but it has a great power pushing it.
The first video games were considered independent games. It wasn?t until the early 80?s where independent gaming really started to take off. The home PC was expensive but the few people that owned one understood how to use it. Then a few bunches of those people understood or taught themselves how to program on it. They sold their independent games at computer repair shops on floppy disk. Some of these games where in zip lock baggies, with a piece of paper on it with the programmers contact information on it. People liked the fact that they could buy a game for 15 bucks, take it home and play unlimited times without having to pump quarters into it. Also games like ?Sid Meier?s Pirates? brought a level of humor and fun to games and some of the games that where coming out where a big craze in the Dungeon & Dragons community. Dungeon & Dragons where a table top game in which you needed at least one other person to play with and games took a long time to get going. People where making their independent games and you can play them by yourself. These homemade games did the entire math that you need in these types of games.
In the later 90?s video games where having a resurge of excitement in the console market. Video games across all platforms where selling, especially the PC market. In the PC market the games where the entire buzz was happening at. Games looked better and with the internet starting to take off with the home PC gamers were playing online with friends around the world. Independent gaming made a big turn in direction, called moding. Moding (short for modifying) was when a programmer would change the code in a game to change an appearance, or change how the game is played. For example an independent programmer would change a level of a game that had fantasy in it to a Star Wars theme. Instead of shooting bows and arrows at each other, or having a sword fight, programmers would change the arrows to a blaster gun, and the sword fights would become a light saber. Independent programmers would upload their modifiers on the internet for people to download them for free or they would charge a small fee to download it. Around this time in the 90?s a game came out called ?Half Life? which was a futuristic first person shooter (which is a shooting game from the eyes of the player). A few independent programmers unlocked the code of the game and changed the level design of the program.
Changing the level design of this game they made a whole entire new game called ?Counterstrike?. This was the modifier of all mods, the programmers change the way the weapons looked and how the level was designed. Instead of you playing against a bunch of AI characters you played online or in a LAN party with friends. Now you are playing as best as you can against friends or people from around the world. At first the game developers of ?Half Life? where upset with this, then what they did was later hire the programmers and gain the rights to the game ?Counterstrike?. Since then the company called Valve which made ?Half Life? made their game Open source, which is letting programmers use the code to make the game. You can?t sell your game because you are using their game code but you can share it on their web site.
Late 2000?s with this current gen consoles independent gaming is at an all time high. With the way the internet and technology is nowadays, programmers are able to share their game with many different types of medium. Programmers can upload their game to Facebook, make their own web site. Even now a programmer can upload their game to consoles. Xbox 360 has a section on its online store for independent games that everyday people make. The programmer will charge whatever he likes for his game, if he feels it?s worth a dollar, then that?s how much he can ask for it. Microsoft will ask for their percentage for uploading it to the store. Sony Playstation 3 is doing something similar but the difference is they will publish a higher quality of independent games on their online store. The reason being is Sony is not afraid to put an indie game right next to their high quality game to generate sales for them. Xbox has their own indie arcade section but it?s off to the side where most people don?t bother to look at it. These mediums have generated a surge of sales for indie games. Even spawning an Independent gaming expo where companies such as Microsoft and Sony will come and purchase game titles.
In some of the indie games you will not have to dedicate as much time to play a game. This will make it easier for new comers to pick up and play. You will not have to be a great at games to play a game like ?Limbo?. In ?Limbo? you have to solve a puzzle to find your sister. Many of these puzzles are done by trial and error. Compare to some games like ?World of Warcraft? (or WOW for short) were the player will have to spend hours and hours of game time. Playing a like WOW is still consider casual and slowly teaches the player as they level up how to play the game. Most people don?t have time to play as much.
Indie gaming is almost like the 70?s & 80?s era of arcade gaming. Each programmer wants to bring something fresh and new to the game and because they are working for themselves they can spend the time to figure something out. Where as a corporate gaming company may not take the risk that an indie developer might. Take the game ?Plants VS Zombies? where it is bit of an indie game but from a company that is becoming a corporate. They take the game idea of a tower defense, which zombies are attacking your house and you plant different plants that attack. The art style is drawn where it is not upsetting to players and is made to be played in short burst.
Are Indie games going to take over it all? Both sides of the industry are saying that they will or they won?t, but people?s feelings will change with each generation. Indie gaming has proven that it can compete in the gaming market with the larger bigger budget titles. With greater ways of dispersing their content on the web, consoles, phones, tablets and PC games. Indie games are something someone should not over look. Even though a person will say that they are not a gamer or they don?t play any consoles doesn?t mean they are not a gamer. Playing an indie game or major company game on Facebook every day or every other day is still considered a gamer. You just choose a different medium than I do.
There are people that will say that indie gaming is the next big thing and nothing can stop it. These people feel that corporate gaming is not bringing anything new or exciting to the game industry. They will still play corporate games but they prefer to play all the indie games.
The same thing can be said for people who only like corporate gaming. These people feel that they don?t want to waste their money for a game that is not that great looking or something that may not run as smooth. These are the people who will only buy major titles, they play only the sports games such as ?Madden Football? and ?Call of duty?. Which are good games but they limit themselves to just that.
So can the two different types co-exist? I say they both need each other. Corporate gaming is an industry that is always trying to gain that new hook. They want to get as many people playing their games as much as they can. They will play indie games in a focus test to see what they can do to keep people playing. Sometimes when you stop and play a different game from time to time you will look at your own game from a different perspective.? The same can be said for indie games. Programmers will look at how the corporate games will implement a new game type. It may be something that video games have been doing something for so long, but they change a few things and it?s the new trend. For example a power-up (a boost of power for a short time) has been in games for a long time now. A corporate game made it so that if you get three kills in a row then you got a power up which made the player try harder.
So both sides of the game industry can benefit from each other. Saying that one is better than the other won?t hold water. Each one will push the limits of each other and teaching each other something new as well. So the next time you play a game you should think about the people who made it. Also think about why you like the game, other than the fact that it?s fun, what is it that you really like about it? Try to play a game that you would never usually play as well. You may find something you might like.
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References
Thompson, Jim, Barnaby Berbank Green, and Nic Cusworth.?Game Design. Hoboken,
New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2007. Print
Indiegames.com. UBM TechWeb, n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2011.
<http://www.indiegames.com/>.
Source: http://www.blankyourgame.com/independent-video-gaming/
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