GDC 08: Indie Games' Uphill Battle
February 19, 2008 14:37
Indie Games' Uphill Battle
Introversion Software's Darwinia earned plenty of critical acclaim, including the prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival. The title established a strong fan following - strong enough that Valve decided to add Darwinia to Steam - and Introversion began using the game's sprite as its logo. While Darwinia is Introversion's most well-known title, it's actually not there most commercially successful title. Ironically, Vicky Arundel, Introversion's director of marketing and public relations, said the company's first title, Uplink, was more commercially successful than Darwinia, as was its latest title Defcon.
Speaking at an Independent Games Festival seminar on Monday about marketing independent games, Arundel told the audience that Darwinia took three years to complete but didn't sell well as Introversion's two other titles. Why? Arundel talked about the burden of content. Darwinia was originally supposed to be an 18-month project but because the project's scope was so large and its concepts ever changing, the game took twice as long to complete. She also said that Darwinia had much more content and complex graphics than either Uplink or Defcon, both of which feature simple graphics with minimal content.
It's also possible that one of the very things that made Darwinia refreshingly appealing - it's unique, original premise - also made the game more difficult to sell. Darwinia's high concept story involves a virtual theme park run by the mad scientist-like Dr. Sepulveda, who is trying to repel a deadly virus that's attacking the digital creatures. Compare that to Uplink (a hacker game) and Defcon (based on "WarGames" Global Thermonuclear War) and it's easier to see why Introversion's other two titles were easier to marketing and promote.
Another IGF Grand Prize winner, Bit-Blot, talked Monday about the challenges of generating content and then effectively marketing a game that's based on an original concept. Bit-Blot earned critical acclaim with its award-winning indie title Aquaria, a side-scrolling 2D underwater adventure game. Aquaria focuses on an underwater creature named Naija who is searching for her family while navigating through an unexplored realm. Bit-Blot's Derek Yu and Alec Holowka discussed how the scope and theme of Aquaria changed many times during the development process, much like Introversion's experiences with Darwinia.
Bit-Blot's indie hit Aquaria.
Bit-Blot ditched its plans for a text-based RPG because Aquaria was simply becoming too complex with more setup than actual gameplay. Both Yu and Holowka said the game went through some major changes before the design team settled on Aquaria's final look; they even put back the cooking system, which allows Naija to collect ingredients and make different types of meals that can grant her new abilities.
Once Bit-Blot got over the content hump with Aquaria, the indie developer then had to market and promote the game, which was released in late 2007. Bit-Blot had the benefit of winning the IGF Grand Prize, but the event had taken place back in March and was old news for the gaming media. So Yu and Holowka launched the "Seven Days of Aquaria" campaign, which used blog posts, concept art, videos and other content to help spread word-of-mouth for the game. Yu said the campaign was designed to reach the PC gaming audience on a personal level. Introversion's Arundel also talked about reaching the gaming media.
The indie developer staged a major launch party for Defcon in the fall of 2006, where the Introversion team dressed up in 1950s Royal Air Force uniforms. The team produced a soundtrack CD, posters and other promotional material to help spread the word about Defcon to both the press and the PC gaming audience. Introversion also set up LAN party competitions for Defcon and began using sleek metal business cards to help differentiate it from other larger developers (Bit-Blot also made custom-designed business cards with Aquaria concept art on the back for this year's GDC).
Arundel said that indie developers have to "find their inner media whore" to get attention from the gaming press. But she stressed that the point is to get the game into the reviewers' hands, not affect how the game is reviewed. "It's not about trying to influence your game's score at the end of the day," she said. "It's about trying to get your game out there in front of people." Introversion is currently working on a new project called Subversion, and plans to have a multiplayer version of Darwinina, dubbed Multiwinia, launched in the near future. Meanwhile, Bit-Blot is working on additional platform versions of Aquaria for Mac OS X and Linux.
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