joystiq-indie-pitch
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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Plain Sight
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Robin Lacey, the managing director of Beatnik Games, about his company's brand new ninja robot multiplayer action game Plain Sight. How did Beatnik Games get started? Two years ago Damien (an old school friend) and myself got very drunk after work. After many beers we decided that life was far too short to be rotting behind a desk. Everyone knew a recession was coming, so we figured we might as well be poor doing something we loved rather than mundane crap. That was video games. For a few months we rushed around finding investment and building a team to join us on our hair-brained venture. In January 2008 we moved into our office and got started. Over the last couple of years our team has grown to eight people, all about the same age, all winging it in the same way. %Gallery-89844%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Mana Bomb
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Mana Bomb, two guys who didn't let their location keep them from pursuing their dream of being extravagantly rich game developers. How did you or your company get started? Dan Weatherman - Programmer: A group of friends were eating lunch one fateful day and between the fajitas and enchiladas we started brainstorming about a game we would like to play. By the time we were done, we had a good starting point for what turned out to be Colony Defense. I thought, "Hey, I can do that I bet" and Jason Boren (designer) said, "Well let's do this then!" Boom, Mana Bomb was born. Wow, we had NO clue how much work it would eventually take to get our game to the point it is today. It's probably a good thing too, as I don't think any of us just love a ton of extra work. But here we are and we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. Jason Boren - Janitor: I just wanted to do it, create something ourselves that we've enjoyed from everyone else for so long. I literally told Dan I would do anything to make it work, including being the janitor for our company. Nothing against janitors, but they really have nothing to offer a game company starting out who doesn't even have an office.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Promethium Marketing
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with former Xbox community staffer Chris Paladino, who's in the unusual position of working with a games consulting firm, Promethium Marketing, that decided to step out with a game of its own, an unusual hybrid of Twitter and tower defense called Tweet Defense. How did Promethium Marketing get started? We each got started in a womb, but the company got started in 2009, after "The Great Layoffs" at Microsoft. We all loved working together at Xbox, and decided to keep working together running a games consulting company. Why did you want to make games? One of our early projects was working on a social networking game for one of our big clients. We designed the game to drive a lot of social interaction between users. In the process, we fell in love with making games. We tend to think that all hardcore gamers secretly have at least one game they wish they could build. We ended up with the resources and the good fortune to actually do it. %Gallery-87791%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Gamedoctors
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Matthias Hoechsmann of German developer Gamedoctors. The studio (chock full of actual doctors) has just launched its first title, an iPhone/iPod Touch game called ZombieSmash!. How did your company get started? The Gamedoctors story is quite different to the much-seen "team of seasoned game industry veterans creating an iPhone game" story. We are, in fact, seasoned Ph.D-honored scientists who grew up with games and just want to bring our own fresh perspective to the iPhone and other platforms (get the company name, eh?). Why did you want to make games? There are a lot of ways to answer that question but I think when you boil it down, the "why" is much the same for everyone who got into this business. We love games. We have some ideas that haven't been done before, and we're taking matters into our own hands to make them come to life. Or, in the case of ZombieSmash!, unlife!
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Blackish Games
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Markus Hofer of Blackish Games. His studio's feeding that dirty little addiction you know you developed during the Winter Olympics with Age of Curling. Joystiq: How did you or your company get started? Markus Hofer: I had a pretty good job as a graphic artist, but I always rather wanted to work on my own stuff. I figured it would take me about a year to make my first game and so I saved as much money as I could. I looked into all sorts of tools, talked to a lot of people and once I was confident I had found everything and everyone I needed, I quit and got going ...
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Stargazy Studios
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Jeffrey Sheen of Stargazy Studios. Unlike some of our other devs, he's in the unique position of still crafting his first game, Huscarls. How did your company get started? I founded Stargazy Studios in September 2009 after resigning from my stable, well paid, successful (and centrally heated) office career. I've been infatuated with video games since my first rage quit out of Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II, and have always had my eyes open for potential ways to get involved in development.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Morsel
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Morsel, a studio that started with little more than three weeks of experience and the burning desire to get totally rich. How did your company get started? Lead programmer Matthew Stenback: Morsel started last summer when my final exams finished up and I was doing everything I possibly could to stay away from a fast food or similar dreadful summer job. I had never programmed much of anything before, and hadn't really considered the intricate mechanics of games. However, I decided that I was going to make an indie game, it was going to make me rich, and this would be the start of an awesome summer. Apparently though, programming a game is pretty complex (who knew right?), and I was ready to bail out more than a few times in the beginning. However, I was lucky to team up with a really talented artist and musician who just so happened to have similar goals. So there was Morsel - programmer, artist, and musician - total combined experience making games: 23 days.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zombie Cow Studios
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. To kick things off we're, unsurprisingly, turning to one of our favorite indie developers: Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow Studios. How did you get started? I started my career working in TV, and making games was my naughty little hobby on the side -- a way of expressing my creativity when my 9-to-5 was making terrible reality shows. When Time Gentlemen, Please! started to get great reviews, I took a good long look at TV and where it was likely to go over the next 30 years (with the death of the traditional broadcaster, and people on YouTube being exponentially more entertaining than most of the grot I'd been involved in) and took a good long look at where gaming's going ... and it's a pretty easy decision to leap from boat-to-boat.
