Independent Video Game Developers on the Rise

In recent years, the video game industry has seen growth enough to make the movie and music industries jealous. In 2007, $18.84 billion was spent on games and consoles in the United States; that number crept up to $21.33 billion in 2008, while the movie industry saw only marginal growth and the music industry lost sales. Despite these terrific-sounding numbers, only 20 percent of completed games will make a significant profit. A game might cost tens of millions of dollars to develop; neither game companies nor developers are eager to lose money, so they will support and develop games that are similar to previous successful games. Sierra founder Ken Williams said in 2005, "Production values have risen to a level that games are starting to cost $3 million to $10 million to produce. Double this amount to get the true cost to a company, by the time they promote and manufacture the product. At this level, companies can't afford to take chances on defining new categories. You need to ship proven product into proven categories."

In an industry saturated with massive, expensive games and their colossal developers, it is difficult for a small-budget indie game to attract notice, never mind revenue. Traditional video game publishing is costly. Shelf space in stores is precious, and only about 15 percent of sales goes to developers: failure to make a big hit can mean loss of creative control or worse for a development team. But some changes in the industry are giving small developers a better chance at fame and fortune.

Most important is the advent of digital distribution methods like Steam and products like the iPhone, which can provide developers the means of publishing a game at a fraction of the cost traditional publishing requires, with a larger slice of sales goes to the source. Also important to the rise of indie games are numerous festivals. Several independent game festivals such as the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) give aid to small developers by giving them a chance to show off their projects to a wide range of people, and to provide advice concerning distribution and licensing agreements, should a member of the mainstream media take notice of a project.

An indie developer will not be able to compete on the same grounds as the giants - top-level graphics and audio are very costly to make - but they are free to explore creative avenues that large developers will not want to risk in their high-budget projects: with fewer people and less money involved, trying new ideas is less risky. As the support for indie games grows, big companies will take interest, and we will see bursts of creative output backed by near-unlimited funds.