Can Small Game Studios Make Great Games

Of the surface it looks like it is too hard for small developers to keep up with Big GameDev.

We don’t have the gaming media in our pockets, we don’t have their marketing expertise (and contacts), and most importantly we don’t have their budgets.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to suffer the neglect of large game development companies.

h2>What Are the Differences Between Small Game Studios and Larger Ones?

The downsides of small companies are:

• Budgets – this is the big one. We just don’t have the budgets that Big GameDev does
• Therefore, we can’t afford to pay for large teams
• Therefore, we can’t afford to pay $500,000 in art/music/sound effects.
• Therefore, we can’t afford to pay games ‘journalists’ millions in advertising or send them lots of freebies to get inflated reviews.

But there are upsides:

• We make the games we want to make – more passion
• We are more able and likely to take risks which improves innovation
• We are more likely to be gamers ourselves and want to make awesome games
• We are more accountable to our gamers
• We don’t need games journalists in the age of the internet – almost no-one listens to them anyways

So for smaller game development companies we have to know our strengths and weaknesses and play to them so that we can make great games.

What Makes a Good Game?

For me the keys to a good game are:

1. Fun – if the game’s not fun, don’t release it
2. Replayable – people need to keep playing it
3. Challenging – not dumbed down
4. Depth – has a passion and love put into it that shows through in everything
5. Memorable – this is related to depth, the game should have something to cause it to stick out fondly years later
6. Moddable – people should be able to extend or change it to suit their needs, gaming style and to maximize the game’s re-playability which increases the value the game is for the player

When we know our strengths and weaknesses and know our target (great games) we can come up with a plan on how to meet that target.

What Can We Do?

I think smaller, indie companies can make a go of it, and make the kind of games that hardcore, old school gamers want.

Creating games on a shoestring is hard to do though.

The economic equation is certainly against indie companies. We have to be smart with how we spend our money, be agile and be risk takers.

We need to stay true to our passion and our principles.

This will give us a big advantage in the long run.

We should build our games on the side and then look to avenues such as Kickstarter and IndieGogo to finance the parts of the games that the core team cannot handle – for my team it is usually art, music or other asset creation.

We should use social media to bypass expensive marketing initiatives.

We should use independent publishing platforms like Steam, Amazon and GOG.com to keep publishers as much as possible out of the equation so our games are affordable and offer more value to gamers.

As indie game developers it is our responsibility stay true to our roots and not sell out to the dark side of Big GameDev if we have some success.

We need to make sure our passion for classic games shows in what we do, so that gamers can get CRPGs with depth to them. We need to support other indie developers, pass on what we have learned and keep building an indie gaming industry that is sustainable.

In our case we all work full time ‘day’ jobs to pay the bills. So building games on the side is our passion, there’s a market that isn’t being serviced and we’ll do our best to serve the needs of gamers who are hungry for fun, enjoyable gaming experiences