It’s always fun to see the world change. Most changes of the last decade revolve around the Internet.
It’s hard to imagine the world without the Internet. Where would you be without email? Google? Wikipedia? YouTube? Most students don’t know how to use libraries anymore. If these websites were to suddenly disappear, we’d be screwed.
But there’s the thing. Libraries still exist. If the Internet died, we’d still be able to function, if somewhat inconveniently.
That’s not true with games anymore.
Ok, here’s some actual evidence of me doing something towards game development. A rough test animation of a character running, as seen below.
It’s a little better than how “James” used to look when running, but the legs/feet still aren’t quite right, and a few extra frames could do wonders. The top part of the body bobbing up and down is a nice touch, though. Not bad, but I should try again to improve this a little more.
Oh yeah, obviously this isn’t “James.” Who is it? Stay tuned…
Recently, “Titanfall” released. The poster child for Xbox One (despite still not really making use of that mandatory Kinect camera, and being multiplayer only), it’s certain to sell a few million this month. It’s also being released on Xbox 360 and PC, and according to recent articles, it requires about 48 GB of hard drive space to install on PC.
Similarly, Watch Dogs, Ubisoft’s newest action adventure franchise, is said to look fantastic on PC (with high settings), but requires a minimum of 6 GB of RAM, 25 GB of hard drive space, and a quad core processor to run.
These are large requirements. What happened to being able to run PC games with only 2 GB of RAM, on a Intel dual-core? Why do you need so much hard drive space, when most games used to require so much less?
Times are a ‘changing, folks. All thanks to next-gen.
Over the last few weeks I’ve adopted the motto of a new definition for “indie.”
“Indie” used to simply mean that you were independent, that no one was paying you to do something, that you were completely free.
And yet, we have multi-million dollar projects appearing on Kickstarter every year. Projects run by famous figureheads. Are these really comparable to the tiny developer spending their savings and their time into their work?
And thus, I repeat my new definition of “indie:”
True #indie: not paying yourself a cent until your product is released, putting all money and effort into realizing your dream.
— Dust Scratch Games (@Dust_Scratch) March 4, 2014
Kickstarter is a fantastic site. Crowdfunding is one of the greatest inventions of the last decade.
Many people use this as a method of getting extra funding for their projects. But how much funding is too much? Who should be using Kickstarter?
Dan Crawley of “Gamesbeat” writes a fantastic article about the subject, and how larger developers using crowdfunding can both hinder and help smaller bedroom indies. Larger developers, with better experience with PR and marketing, can get in most of the viewership they require. But despite this, their funding goals are sometimes too high, and they simply fall short of their goals.
Contrary to popular belief, this is not what Kickstarter.com looks like…
