indie-games posts

We hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. Some of us will still have a full week of time off before going back to work. For the rest of us, just keep working until Friday when you can let loose once again.

• As promised the fourth and final chapter of Doctor Who The Adventure Games is now on sale for non-UK residents via Direct2Drive for $4.95.
• Company of Heroes Online released a new content update this week with new heroes for both factions and more.
• Ars Technica has an interesting feature looking at the pricing of indie games and if sales on such games via Steam and other outlets help or hurt game developers.
• Minecraft does it again; someone has recreated Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past inside the indie sandbox title.
• A short but sweet Duke Nukem fan movie has hit YouTube.

It may no longer be the only indie game competition in town, or even the one that has the biggest cash prize, but the annual Independent Games Festival is still the one that all the indie game developers want to win. The 13th annual IGF will be held as part of the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco in early March and this week the IGF revealed all of the games that have been submitted to this year's event.

Over 400 games were submitted which is a new record. As usual it was a mix of previously released titles (such as Minecraft) and games that have yet to be released to the public such as Bastion, Skulls of the Shogun and Spy Party. The finalists for the IGF's various awards will be named in January.

Today seems to be a day for indie game development news. This morning OnLive announced that the streaming PC/Mac game service has opened up its SDK and development tools for independent game creators to get their game titles on OnLive's cloud servers. Developers interested in such a deal can email partners@onlive.com for more info.

In related news, OnLive will have yet another weekend sales deal starting on Friday at 5 pm Eastern standard time and running until 2 am Eastern time on September 20. A list of OnLive's indie games will be on sale at 50 to 75 percent off their normal prices for that time period. The games included in the sale are:

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Brain Challenge
Defense Grid: Gold
Madballs in Babo: Invasion
The Maw
Shatter
Trine
World of Goo

[Via email press release]

The independent game genre has gotten tons of attention in the past couple of years as titles like World of Goo, Braid and others have gotten the notice of mainstream publishers and high sales. However most indie game developers suffer from a lack of money and resources to make their games.

Today IGN announced an unusual effort to help promote the development of indie games with a project called Indie Open House. Basically IGN is inviting indie game development teams to come use office space at IGN's San Fransisco offices for free, including free internet kitchen and conference room use. Indie game teams can get input from IGN editors on their game ideas, get free licensing to use GameSpy's tools and more. IGN insists that this program is just for the support of indie game makers, saying, "We have no interest in owning any of the incredible content you create, nor binding you to any business obligations that prohibit your independence."

This weekend we wrote about how indie game developer Cliff Harris, the one man team behind Positech Games went on a rant on his blog site after Epic Games VP Mark Rein interrupted a panel at last week's Develop conference on indie games that Harris was a part of. Now the Develop web site has posted up an apology from Rein which he has sent to Harris via email.

In short, Rein states, "It was completely rude of me to interrupt your panel with my opinion no matter how well intentioned." He added, "But there's no excuse for bad manners. You called me on it and it made me realize that it is a behavior I need to try and change for these types of events in the future."

We don't know how your week has been but ours has been kind of crazy and its just the week before GDC starts. So like we always do around this time we like to sit back and relax with some games. If you are looking to do the same and save some money while you are at it, we have some suggestions for you:

• For this weekend only three indie game developers have put three of their titles in a special price bundle. From now until March 9 you can get Gratuitous Space Battles (plus its expansion pack The Tribe), Solium Infernum, and AI War (plus its expansion pack The Zenith Remnant) for just $49.99. Normally you would pay $90 to get all three games.
• Steam has a few weekend sales including Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for just $7.49 and the casual game Toki Toki for a mere $2.49. They also have a new Railworks bundle with the original game and four of its DLC content together for just $29.99, a 66 percent savings;
• Direct2Drive has put all of its Mac-based games on sale from now until March 11 with some games selling for 50 percent off their normal prices. They have also put their Sims 2 and Sims 3 bundles on sale for 50 percent off. Finally Flock is on sale for just $3.95.
• Impulse has quite a number of games on sale including sales of all of their Hearts of Iron related titles.
• GamersGate also has several games on sale including the original Condemned for just $3.79.
• GoG.com has put Real Myst and Uru: Complete Chronicles on sale for 25 percent off.
• Global Agenda's web site has cut the price for the recent MMO for this weekend only to $39.99. Also a two-pack price is just $69.99 and a four pack price is just $119.99.
• Finally Microsoft's Games For Windows Live client has put Street Fighter IV on sale for $19.99 this weekend.

Direct2Drive already has a nice indie games sales bundle in place, but now Steam wants in on that indie games sales action. From now until Thursday, Steam is offering seven indie PC game titles for just $2 each. The games are Gridrunner, Space Giraffe, Bullet Candy, Bob Came in Pieces, Altitude, Super Laser Racer, and Galcon Fusion.

But that's not the nice deal. That comes when you buy all seven games in a bundle on Steam. Then the price for the bundle comes to $9.99. That's far cheaper than the nearly $59 you would have to pay for each game separately at their normal Steam prices.

The 2010 DICE Summit is well under way and Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick just dropped a huge bombshell during his keynote addess at the event in Las Vegas. According to our sister site Joystiq, he revealed the company's plans to launch a indie games competition with a $500,000 prize purse.

That's all the info that's been released about the contest so far but you can bet that we will be emailing and calling Activision to get more details. Ironically, the DICE Summit is also the place where the Indie Games Challenge, sponsored by GameStop, is scheduled to give out their two $100,000 grand prizes later tonight.

Update: Activision has just posted up a PDF file which gives a little more info about the competition including word that the grand prize will be $100,000. Submissions for the contest will start sometime in early March.

Back in 2005, game developer Greg Costikyan founded Manifesto Games. At the time the outspoken Costikyan wanted to create a company where independent game company could find a way to distribute their titles via download. The company was co-founded by Johnny Wilson, who previously was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the now defunct Computer Gaming World magazine.

This past week, Costikyan announced that Manifesto Games was shutting down its operations. He cited several reasons for the decision (the recession, lack of venture capital funds, and "perhaps we were simply too early." Of course independent PC game developers now have a number of outlets to release their work so it's also possible that Manifesto Games simply wasn't as attractive a place for dev teams to spotlight their work.

We thought Valve was done with its weekend Steam sales deals this week with its Oddworld game discounts. Nope. Not a chance. Valve has decided to put every indie game in its library on sale this weekend as well, giving some not-so-well-known titles some needed attention.

While some of the games have just a 10 percent discount this weekend, others have larger price cuts. For example all of Meridian4's indie games have a 20 percent discount this weekend. Some titles are priced as low as 33 percent off its regular Steam price this weekend. Among those titles are World of Goo, Defense Grid: The Awakening and Audiosurf. So if you are ready to try out something that's outside the game norm, this might be a good time to do so.