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Totally crazy, totally canceled indie games, and the people who made them
From World of Goo dev Kyle Gabler to Plants vs. Zombies director George Fan (and everything in between), GDC's "The Failure Workshop" panel was full of thrills. Each of the panel's developers brought a project that never managed to make our acquaintance, offering a detailed explanation of what went wrong. Gabler, of 2D Boy, kicked the chair out from under his studio's robot-based sidescroller Robot and the Cities That Built Him when he and his cohorts finally decided that it simply wasn't very fun. After months of mock-ups and brainstorming, the game was finally turned into a fairly basic prototype (playable here) that sealed the project's untimely fate.
Off-Road Velociraptor Safari HD development halted
As if attacked by some kind of predatory lizard, Flashbang's Off-Road Velociraptor Safari HD has been cut down before its time. The developer has announced that it has stopped work on the standalone sequel to the browser game Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. "We may still finish Raptor Safari at some point," Flashbang founder Matthew Wegner said, "although certainly not anytime soon (not this year, or even next year)," adding that it was "entirely likely" that the project will never ship. Development was halted due to a combination of budget constraints and malaise. "Much of Flashbang's revenue stems from affiliate programs in the casual market," Wegner said. "Many of these programs are either shuttering completely or have drastically altered their terms in punitive ways, probably as a result of the casual market itself being hurt by Facebook [and] web games."
Indie Fund created to help fund indies
A group of well-known independent studio vets has formed a new fund for other independent developers. Members of 2D Boy, Number None, thatgamecompany, Capy, Flashbang Studios and AppAbove Games have banded together to create the appropriately named Indie Fund, which they hope will become "a serious alternative to the traditional publisher funding model." The fund will ideally help independent studios "get financially independent and stay financially independent." The Indie Fund is already backing some unnamed projects, and the group plans to reveal more details about the fund at GDC next week. Specifically, 2D Boy's Ron Carmel will host a panel at the conference entitled "Indies and Publishers: Fixing a System That Never Worked." The panel will focus on the "adversarial" and "unhealthy" nature of the relationship between developers and publisher and, naturally, what could be done to improve it. Expect the panel to be included in Joystiq's GDC 2010 coverage, which begins next week. [Via GamePolitics]
