Pixelate:Issue 10/Thinking Indie
From Allegro Wiki
| Thinking Indie | |
| Original author: | Jonas Kyratzes |
|---|---|
| Website: | http://jonas.gamedeveloper.net |
| zip: | |
Sadly, this month I have nothing particularly deep for you. I've had no new insights or anything. But there is something I want to write about. It's the importance of being unique.
It's nothing new, really. I'm not going to pretend that I came up with this idea, or that this has never been talked about before. But it's something that we indies need to consider when designing our games. One of the biggest problems with the indie scene is that there are about a million clones (and new shipments are on the way). We have more clones that the Jedi. Seriously, every other indie developers is cloning Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger - or Space Invaders. I've already said (in Thinking Indie #1) that we need to start developing more original games. Many of you agreed. But this is not what I'm talking about when I say 'being unique'.
Not every game can be revolutionary and totally original. Let's take a look at the indie movie scene: is every movie as original as Donnie Darko? Definitely not. Are there many movies that are not original? Definitely. Do they all suck because of that? No. You see, not every movie/game has to be original and revolutionary to be good. But there is one thing every movie or game needs to be in order to be successful. It needs to be unique. It needs to stand out.
Very often this uniqueness can be found not in the overall gameplay, but in the details. There are very many space/trade games out there. Let's say a player downloads a demo of ten different space/trade games, an has to decide which one to buy. Which one is he going to buy? Well, it depends, but one of the factors that will influence his decision is how well he remembers each game, how 'unique' each game felt. When choosing the game he will buy, what will influence him most is how each game 'felt', not how many features it had.
Let's say games 1 to 7 were terrible. Now he has to choose between games 8, 9 and 10. 8 and 9 have plenty of features, but the interface is very generic, just plain old 3D buttons. Game 10 on the other hand, while having the same features, has organic-looking buttons which produce a squishing sound when you click, and sometimes ooze a little green fluid. Then a funny-looking little creatures comes along, sucks up the fluid, turns around to look at you and grins.
All three games have the same features. But when it comes to choosing between them, which one is going to stand out in the player's mind? Imagine you were the player.
Games 8 and 9 were those that ... well, those that were set in space, and you could buy stuff. But game 10, that was the one with the cute little alien! It was so funny when it looked at you and grinned.
I realize that this example is kind of simplistic and a bit overdone, but I hope that you get my point. Even an 'unoriginal' game can stand out if its presentation is unique. The big companies don't care about that. They can advertise a game so much that everybody will have heard of it. But we indies can't do that. Our games are swimming in a sea of clones. If we want to be successful -even with freeware games- we need to make our games stand out.
Please remember that I'm not advocating appearance over content. Content is the most important factor of all, always. But making your game unique is something very important (IMHO). Not only because it can make your game more popular and easier to remember, but because it also gives your game a different feel. For example, take all those console-style RPGs being made. It's not that they play the same way, many people like that and that's the reason that a lot of people download them in the first place. But they all look the same, too. And feel the same. That is very bad, because often when I'm playing such a game I feel that I'm playing a 'generic console-style RPG', and not a specific game. I'm just playing something. But there are a few games among these which are more unique. When I play them, I feel "ah! I'm playing this game". And that really makes a difference.
Well, all I can say is please think about it. It's often those little things that make the difference between failure and success.
Jonas Kyratzes is an independent game developer. He lives in Thessaloniki, Greece, from where he hopes to take over the world by creating mind control software disguised as games.
