There was a time that making and selling games was simple. puf�. old times. The last years opened several options. The amount of variables now can be a bit overwhelming and inevitably will make people get the wrong conclusion. A lot money to be made and to be lost!

Indies

The indie movement is officially in vogue. World of Goo, Limbo, Amnesia, Darwinia� they made, together, quite some revenue and receive amazingly good critics. The small financial risk, the creative independence to explore some bold choices are all elements of its rise.

A important part of the emergent trend of indie games is the access of good middleware. Unreal released the same award winning engine that power AAA games in an indie-kinda-friendly license. UDK, its name, is impressively complete. Torque continue to expand. Unity 3D 3 is better than ever and even big fishes are using it. The cost of AAA tools reduced so much that the “limited only by our imagination” clich� is now more true then ever.

Handheld

Recent data indicates that the handheld (game-only devices) market is in decline, mostly because the smartphones are now powerful enough to host not only Tetris and Bejeweled but full featured 3D games. Some games for iPhone and Android are really impressive. And because the distribution costs are really a tiny fraction from a full console distribution (Apple store and Android Market only charge a small percentage), the market is dominated by indie companies, that have a better development cycle ans scale.

Browser

Zynga, by generating more revenue with FarmVille than Facebook entirely, proved that casual gaming can be lucrative and be a big-company business. But like the new handheld scenario, it’s flooded by low quality titles made by indies. Zynga also proved that micro-transactions can be considered as a serious option. Several big 3D engine suppliers are creating browser plugins so more high quality games can be placed in an internet only environment.

Consoles

With the new motion controllers and online strategies, consoles are living a new good era. The prices are going down and they are getting even more popular on south american, asian and eastern european countries. The problem in this segment is the high competition in the AAA tier. The production cost is so high that is getting more and more common to read about studios being closed or rearranged after one single bad-selling project.

Cloud

The most surprising things on gaming, almost unbelievable, is the use of external computing for gaming. OnLive (defunct) is already live and sells games as service: they run the game in their computers and you only need a monitor and joystick/keyboard. No need for a top-notch computer or console. The games could be even played, at full power, in a tablet or old computer.

The amount of computing power needed is enormous. And I mean it: I cannot think that they invested less than billions of dollars in several data centers. The paradox is the servers are all in US, the very market that games prices are lowest and piracy is not a major issue. Brazil, Russia and Europe would be much more receptive to this model, but I don’t think the cost would ever pay off�

The bottom line is: for major companies, the “several studios working on a single franchise ratter than several franchises being developed by a single studio” mantra will still apply. Call of Duty and GTA will continue to generate millions. But I foresee the rise of several small and mid-sized companies that will focus on niches pointed above. Zynga is one of them. I believe that there will be a quite a number that will make the break even point and grow simply because the market size expanded and entry barriers lowered.

Good luck.

Edited 2022-07-13: Torque

Started recently to play with Unity 3D, an IDE/Platform to develop games. I’ve heard about it because they recently decided that the indie version to be free. And because this version is quite similar to the Pro version and the Pro version is affordable, I decided to give it a try.

I am really impressed with the package. It is solid in features but what impressed me most is the easy user interface. Generally, programs that strive to be easy to use also make things too restrictive. Unity 3D is not one of them. It is a super intuitive IDE but also can be changed through code.

As I discussed before, the competition of engines should be irrelevant to game makers because we have a lot of data demonstrating that while the technology might help, the actual implementation is what matters. Good games with old/bad engines and Bad games with state-of-the-art engines are quite common.

The main reason to choose one is� current knowledge. Learning things all over again is costly, and Unity address this by adopting several standard technologies. For scripting, you can use C# (very close to Java and C++), JavaScript or Boo. For 3D models, it imports the most used formats (3DS, Max, Ma, Blender�). The same goes for 2D (which also includes importing Photoshop native files), sound and music. All that means that your workflow and suite of programs will remain basically the same.

With the indie version being free, a huge increase of documentation and community support is expected. The same for professional assistance. I’m happy to move from Torque (which uses several conceptual dogmas that I’ve never liked) to Unity.

PS: with the web player, its possible to create games for web pages just like Flash� take a look in the demos.

I could not (but I really wanted) play Heavy Rain. The core feature is the very flexible story. Players can end up with a very different experience. It’s focused in the storytelling and reviews say that the lack of game over� the story always progresses.

_Lack of game over? Where is the challenge?__ ;Ok, here we go: Heavy Rain is a game? A more profound question: what is a game? This is the difference between a game and a puzzle? Or a simple challenge?

So let me define:

• Movies and books are not games. Games are interactive
• Jigsaws and puzzles are not games. Games must have multiple players;(even if they have different role). Not that we could assume that an AI could be considered a player as well
• Racing and swimming are not games. Gamers must interfere in the performance;of the other players
• Toys and sandboxes are not games. Games must have rules and objectives

So, games should be interactive, multiplayer, competitive, defined by rules and they have a goal. Clark Abt defines _“A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context”.

The curious thing is that if we take this concept to actual games, mane famous video games are not� games. Sim City, The Sims, Monkey Island, City Ville, Portal, World of Goo and Heavy Rain and several others fail in at least one aspect that makes a game.

Knowing this is a good way to correct position products against each other.

2009 was a great year. I had the opportunity to watch/play/read/listen several great games, films and books. This list is what I could remember.

Games

Most, but not all, I finished

1. Braid - PC
2. Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Wii
3. The Beatles: Rockband - Wii
4. Dawn of Discovery - Wii
5. de Blob - Wii
6. Dragon Age - PC
7. Drakensang: The Dark Eye - PC
8. Machinarium - PC
9. Neverhood - PC
10. Planescape Torment - PC
11. Race Driver: GRID - PC
12. Torchlight - PC
13. The Witcher - PC

Movies

1. 5cm Per Second
2. Akira
3. Amadeus
4. Army of Shadows
5. Citizen Kane
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
8. Doctor Zhivago
9. Drag Me to Hell
10. Ghost In The Shell
11. The Hangover
12. Helvetica
13. Home
14. The Hurt Locker
15. Lady Vengeance
16. The Manchurian Candidate
17. Oldboy
18. The Sinning
19. Star Trek
20. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
21. Tokyo Godfathers
22. Up

Books

Some of them I used the audiobook

1. David Allen - Getting Things Done
2. David Allen - Making It All Work
3. Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point
4. Malcolm Gladwell - Blink
5. Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers
6. Peter F. Hamilton - Fallen Dragon
7. Peter F. Hamilton - The Dreaming Void
8. Peter F. Hamilton - The Temporal Void
9. Ray Kurzweil - The Age of Spiritual Machines
10. Stephen King - The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands
11. Stephen King - The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass
12. Umberto Eco - Foucault’s Pendulum

And 2010 might be even better.

200 megabytes is the size of the entire game. And yet, probably one of the most surprisingly good games in some time.

Braid tells the story of Tim and his journey to find the princess. It’s a basic platform game, with the controls just like old Mario, except one thing: you can control time. By pressing a button (and further in game, by some other situations) you can turn back time. Even after you died. If the controls are similar to the famous plumber, the game dymaics is completely different. It is a puzzle game.

Braid is an action-puzzle game about manipulating the flow of time. To rescue a princess, the player journeys through a series of worlds; in each world, time behaves differently. The game provides a mind-expanding experience that is filler-free, treating the player�s time as precious.

The puzzles are very well designed and the difficult progression is a state-of-the-art. Considering that it is an one-man work (Jonathan Blow. did it alone, except for the music, which he licensed, and graphics, which he hired a guy for the job), it’s amazingly good.