Over the years, I have been an indie developer on several different projects. Of those, only a few have been published, while most of them have gone by the wayside. So let's start at the beginning. When I first started teaching, my first graduating class reached out and asked if I wanted to work on a project for a video game. The team size was five people, including myself, with a good array of designers, modelers, and programmers. Our game idea was a simple first-person shooter (FPS). This project lasted less than a couple of months before people started dropping off. At first, it was one person who was too busy to attend a meeting, then another not meeting milestones, and then before long, nobody was working on the project. It failed.
Over the course of my time teaching, I saw many other students start game projects. Some made it pretty far, but most failed within a month because people had different ideas on the game functions, or said they would help but never did.
The next team project I jumped into was with a coder, with whom we decided to do a competitive tower defense/assault game for the phone. The game was quickly prototyped and developed, where we could both attack and defend, and even stand-alone game play. At that time, we used Unity to complete most of the game, but there were other problems lurking. The game wasn’t fun.
The programmer had a bit of OCD and was re-coding the engine weekly in order to create the best code. This caused him to get burnt out with very little desire to continue. We took a step back and decided to create a new Tetris-style game. We published it for iPhone and Android, and that alone turned into a nightmare. While Android was pretty straightforward, an iPhone needed a physical Mac computer, a complete re-coding in Xcode, and testing on an iPhone. This meant more work, which led to the team breaking up again because the coder burned out.
However, a couple of years ago, I joined a new team. One who had worked with established mods and was working on two separate projects, a FPS and a factory sim. I started on the FPS side. At this point, they had a near-functional game and were in contact with a publisher who asked for unified assets and more definitive gameplay. When I switched to the factory sim game as an art director, the main issue they had was that the art direction was not focused. They were using pixel art, realistic machines, sci-fi walls, cartoony art, and even AI characters.
Since I’ve started with the project, we’ve had about a dozen artists and programmers who wanted to be on the project, but quit within weeks. This included someone who joined the team, but then quit when they decided we were not close enough to being finished.
During this time, I’ve also created an art bible and unified the assets, including replacing them. I removed all of the AI since it isn’t copyrightable, and we still have a lot of work to do. This includes implementing randomization into gameplay, finalizing art assets, and promoting on social media. It’s a process, but one I am happy to be a part of.
So, here are some words of wisdom that I recommend to any indie developer:
- Indie development is a marathon, not a sprint.
- Start with a template instead of trying to code it all on your own.
- You need a leader with a plan, not just some cool ideas.
- You don’t want to burn yourself out, so take breaks.
- Hold yourself accountable. If you’re not going to follow through, then don’t waste people's time.
- Realize people have their own strengths and weaknesses.
- Have fun with the process.
I hope this has provided an idea of how most indie games are often developed. It typically takes a small team of passionate and dedicated people.