Going indie!

Okay some people may think I’m a bit crazy for doing this right away but I’ve decided to go indie right away instead of first gaining experience in the game industry. While I certainly think industry experience would be beneficial, I want to give it a try first and if things go badly start thinking about what I want to do. Right now I’m learning Unity and determining if I want to use it or XNA, which I’m more familiar with.  The plan is to do as many rapid prototypes as possible to get used to using Unity and post the decent ones on web portals that support Unity to see what people think.

I’ve been going to the Vancouver Indie Game Developers Meetup for the last few months and I always come home more motivated than ever. The meetup yesterday was amazing with  over 70 indies showing up. Here’s a picture with Samppa (left) and I (right) at the meetup. I met Samppa at university and he’s been making a lot of Flash games for a couple years now. Be sure to check out his games at Overworld Labs.

3 comments ↓

#1 Andrew on 01.06.11 at 5:10 pm

Can indie games be built on existing engines? like the UDK?

I don’t know a lot about it….. just our minecraft server, heh

#2 Eric Raué on 01.15.11 at 8:27 pm

Hi Andrew, there are quite a few game engines that are friendly to indie game developers such as UDK as you mentioned, and Unity 3D. Being an indie developer just means supporting yourself financially and keeping costs to a minimum, which is why many developers do not go for the more expensive engines that could cost in the thousands to license. It’s also a matter of picking the right tool for the job and for smaller budget games the cheaper engines will certainly do.

#3 Andrew on 01.16.11 at 2:52 pm

That’s quite cool. Always thought they HAD to make their own engine. Cheaper I guess, but every choice is a double edged sword…… Self made engine, not well known, and could be very buggy. pre-made engine (e.g UDK) Most gamers know it, and if they know it they usually like it….. but costs are involved somewhere along the line.