Rise of the Micro Studio: Unreal arrogance

16/07/2010 in News

I’ll be posting lots of coverage of Develop Conference in Brighton 2010, which I just got home from, over the next few days. But this panel was one of the most interesting of the whole conference for me. It was compered by Will Freeman of Develop Magazine, and the panel was made up of: the highly articulate no matter what he says, Sean Murray from hello games; Captian of the illustrious Introversion, Mark Morris; ambitious newly opened studio, Beatnik‘s Robin Lacey; and rounding it up is Cliffski, the Trekie Uncle of the UK indie scene.

Each of the speakers had a wealth of interesting things to say, and all gave a different perspective on the topic of discussion.

Sean talked a lot about why being self published is so important for them, and their plans post Joe Danger. Mark discussed how Introversion nurture their community, and how selling direct is a big part of Introversion’s DNA. Robin told Beatnik’s origin story, and the challenges for an indie releasing a multiplayer centric game. Cliffski explained that games are amazing value because he paid £75 for some jeans.

Whilst discussing the topic of web advertising, which only Cliffski does, someone in the front row interrupted the discussion to tell him that he was wasting his time, because having just one person working on advertising a game is pointless when big publishers have much much more than that. He told them that if they wanted to be successful that they had to expand and hire some marketing staff. It turned out that it was Mark Rein Founder/VP of Epic Games, aka the bloke that had been rude to me in the bar at 2am the night before. Everyone on the panel was completely taken aback. Throughout the conference there was often banter between speakers and the audience, but always initiated by the speakers. This was just impolite and unprofessional.

After the panel, Mark was eager to show off his ipad/android tablet Unreal engine tech demo. It is a boring as fuck looking first person shooter thingy, that looks like it controls horribly. Almost as if it is entirely unsuitable for the platform it is on. He also said that he predicts it is not long before indies are going to get entirely pushed out of the ios app store, because big publishers with (the most important thing in the world) large marketing departments are getting their act together on the platform.

Cliffski very obviously loves being an indie. He loves being in complete charge of his games. From the first line of code to the font used in the logo, he decides everything. He is making exactly the game he wants to make. He does not have a boss, he offers industry leading customer service, he is well respected by his peers and his customers, he is critically and commercially successful, and he owns a kick ass pair of jeans.

Mark Rein, I ask you this: What might you have achieved with Epic if you hadn’t sold out quite so much? What wonderful creative and intelligent works could you have made if the dollar bills and ambition for a very narrow definition of success weren’t making all the decisions. You’ve obviously got a lot of money at Epic Games, but don’t for a second think you are better than the little guys. These guys, the ones you turned up just so you could look down upon, are at the creative forefront of the video games industry. These Micro Studio’s, and the hundreds like them across the globe are highly responsive to changing market conditions in ways that a company like your’s can never be.

In the two years that the iphone has been out, you’ve still not released a single game for it. Why not? How come all those people wasting their time without marketing departments have sold lots of games on the iphone before you’ve sold any?

You’ve made lots of games about a guy with a gun that uses the gun to shoot the baddies. Well done.