2D-boy posts

It's been nearly a year since some of the most famous indie game developers banded together to form the Indie Fund, an organization designed to offer financial support for select indie game developers. Today the organization announced that it has selected three upcoming indie games to support, two of which are due to be released this year.

However we still don't know which games have been selected for the honor. They will be revealed during a panel at next month's Game Developers Conference. In the meantime Indie Fund, which is composed of the two man team of 2D Boy and Braid creator Jonathan Blow among others, states that it has half of its funds waiting to be used. It is still taking submissions on its official web site for more indie games to be funded by the group.

Released over two years ago, the critical and sales success of developer 2D Boy's puzzle game World of Goo became a hallmark on the indie games scene, showing that a two man team could create a title that can reach a much bigger audience than the typical indie game. Now comes word that 2D Boy are thinking about doing a sequel to World of Goo.

The 2D Boy web site, as part of its announcement today that the original game would be ported over to the iPad, answered its own question of, "Will there be a World of Goo 2?" It's answer? "A second World of Goo is a possibility, and something we would enjoy working on." However it added, "A second World of Goo will need to feel like a perfect and appropriate continuation of the first game. No Red Bull Can levels or rapping Goo cutscenes, according to our official design doc."

Last March a group of successful indie game developers, including the two man team of 2D Boy (makers of World of Goo) and Jonathan Blow (the creator of Braid) announced plans to launch Indie Fund, a venture designed to help fund the making of promising indie games. Today the Indie Fund web site launched its application process allowing development teams to submit their games for possible funding by the organization.

The submission process requires not only a description of the game but also a video that shows in-game footage from the title. Indie Fund plans to give out money to five or six games over the next two to three years although the venture could raise more money for a second round of funding if the first is deemed successful.

The indie game scene is not only getting bigger it's also getting more incestuous. Witness today's announcement of the new developer Tomorrow Corporation. Besides having a cool name and retro logo, the new company was co-founded by Kyle Gabler, who also is the co-founder of the two man team at 2D Boy, makers of the terrific puzzle game World of Goo.

For Tomorrow Corporation, Gabler gets a bigger team; besides himself there is Allan Blomquist and Kyle Gray. All three men were formerly employed at Electronic Arts. There no word yet on what Tomorrow Corporation's first game will be like. There's also no word on what Gabler's involvement in his new company means for the future of 2D Boy.

A few months ago, indie developer 2D Boy started something of an experiment by offering their acclaimed puzle game World of Goo for any price that a consumer wanted to pay for it for a couple of weeks. The results were pretty successful and now another well known indie game developer is doing the same thing.

Crayon Physics Deluxe, the innovative puzzle game from one-man developer Petri Purho, is celebrating the first anniversary of the sale of the commercial version of the game with its own "pay what you want" plan. Pay one cent or $100 or anything and the game is yours. This deal ends on January 15 so you has better move quickly.

Download the Crayon Physics Deluxe demo right here on Big Download! (25 MB)

The great experiment is now over for 2D Boy and now that their "any price for World of Goo" sale is officially over the indie developers have revealed some more info about what happened during their unusual sales promotion for their acclaimed puzzle game

During the 13 days of the sale, the company sold 83,147 copies of the game on their web site. Sales of the Windows version accounted for 65 percent of the total sales although oddly enough people who bought the Linux and Mac versions paid on average more than the Windows users. The average donation actually went up after their first news post on the subject. By day 12 people were paying an average of around $3.25 for the game. Finally one person actually paid $150 for World of Goo, over seven times its normal $20 price.

How hard is it to get accurate sales on game downloads? Usually it's extremely hard but developer 2D Boy wanted people to know exactly how their recent "priced whatever you want" sale for their puzzle game World of Goo did. In two words, it was a "huge success" with 57,000 copies sold off the World of Goo web site. The average price people paid for the game was $2.03.

In a surprise, sales of the game via Steam went up 40 percent during the sale, and that was after sales went up 25 percent the previous week. 2D Boy has now decided to extend the World of Goo sale until October 25.
Download World of Goo Demo (32 MB)
Download World of Goo Mac Demo (32 MB)

We've written about how cool World of Goo is previously and if you haven't tried out this innovative and more importantly fun game from developer 2D Boy, you are really missing out. This week marks the game's first anniversary and to celebrate the dev team have a unique promotional offer.

From now until October 19, you can download and purchase the PC, Mac and Linux versions of the game from their site for any price you want. Yep, that's correct. You can pay as little as one cent or as much as $1 million; it's all up to you. We suspect that 2D Boy would like to have people pay as close to its normal $20 price tag as possible but hey, whatever floats your boat. It's all up to you.
Download World of Goo Demo (32 MB)
Download World of Goo Mac Demo (32 MB)

We've been covering the whole digital rights management debate for PC games almost since Big Download launched a year ago. This week Gamasutra takes on the issue with a feature article that shows that perhaps some big publisher are starting to relax their stances on putting DRM set-ups in their PC game releases.

The story looks back to September 2008 when Electronic Arts released Spore with a particularly restrictive online activation system that used SecuROM. It didn't stop the game from becoming the most pirated PC title in 2008 and many believe the DRM set-up was part of the reason. The Entertainment Software Association's VP Ric Hirsch still believes DRM is needed for PC games, saying, "There is little doubt that piracy would be far more widespread without game publishers' use of DRM."

Others believe completely the opposite such as 2D Boy's Ron Carmel who co-created the hit downloadable puzzle game World of Goo with no DRM at all. He states, "Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy. What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold." Even though World of Goo is in fact heavily pirated, Carmel states, "People who pirate the game are people who wouldn't have bought it anyway." Perhaps that's why EA has decided to to away with Spore-style DRM set-ups for both The Sims 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. Ubisoft also released the PC version of Prince of Persia with no DRM at all.

Most independent game developers would love to have a hit game like 2D Boy's puzzle title World of Goo. So with one half of 2D Boy speaks, people listen. That's what happened this week at the Game Developers Conference where the game's co-creator Ron Carmel spoke about their opinions on various subjects.

One such them was DRM set-ups in games. Publishers want to keep their games from being pirates but consumers just want easy access to their games. Carmel says the solution is simple: "Don't bother with DRM--it's a waste of time. You just end up giving the DRM provider money." Carmel also says independent game developers shouldn't bother with retail publishers for their titles, saying, "Go with digital distribution--you won't need a publisher for this. Self-fund your game--and when you get to retail, go for per-country flat-fee deals."