Once economic analysts and social experts weathered the shockwaves of video games’ assault on our culture, they began to look at the nuances of the industry. For several years, there wasn’t much product variation outside of shooting games, fantasy role-playing games, and sports games. The Sims brought some variety and broadened the player base to more mature “casual players,” but for the most part, the games have been for the young.
That is beginning to change. Independent game developers catering to a more dedicated gaming community have worked under the radar, for the most part. They are starting to get the recognition they deserve and that, in turn, is expanding the number and complexity of game genres that are finding their way to market. Big game companies like Electronic Arts and Nintendo continue to churn out sequels to their big money generators like Madden’s NFL Football and Zelda. Its sales are still huge, but as its audience matures, the market finds room for games that go beyond sports, warfare, and wizards.
Indie games are developing their own distribution channels. Valve, the company that had great success with Half Life, now distributes its games through its own online service, Steam. It is sold directly to the player and provides the servers for the users of its game to play individually or in multiplayer format over the Internet. Their games come from a variety of developers and range from black cartoon mysteries to empire building and more standard fees. Steam provides an outlet for some indie games to reach a wider audience.
Manifesto Games is a website dedicated to the support, promotion and distribution of independently produced video games. The site has game reviews, provides a sales mechanism for various producers, provides a list of the top ten current indie games, and has a Soapbox forum for comments, recommendations, complaints, etc. of active players.
Manifesto’s game review categories include some standards like Adventure, RPG, and Sim / Tycoon Games. But there are also categories like Schmup and Turn-Based Strategy, categories that major producers don’t promote and, in Schmup’s case, probably don’t understand. It’s a term that seems to generally refer to games that recreate early spaceship shoot-em-ups, but with much cooler graphics and lifelike storylines.
Many of the games found on Manifesto follow mainstream game profiles such as war games and RPG magic, but intersperse some element of human reality or complexity not easily found in the standard game fare. There is a simulation game available on the site called Democracy. It is not a concept that matches the standard for testosterone-based video games.
By virtue of distribution channels like Manifesto and Steam, independent developers have an opportunity for commercial exposure and hopefully some commercial success. This foot in the door of a huge commercial monolith has generated outrageous creativity by expanding game genres to more original and complex formats.
It’s like good new bands that outperform the record companies, perform on YouTube and MySpace, and sell their CDs online. Independent game producers have created a market that allows for product creativity and honesty.