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For quite some time the world of video games has been dominated by the 800 lb. gorillas of the big companies. Most games have a Blizzard, Activision, EA, or a THQ label slapped on the back of the box. There have always been smaller developers out there, but traditionally they have produced much lower quality products than the major players. In recent years this has been changing, there are a number of small independent, or indie, studios producing high quality games.
Even though these games are produced by smaller studios a number of them have become big hits. How many of you readers have heard of a little game called Minecraft? This one is especially significant because it has made millions of dollars from people buying the alpha build of the game. The alpha build, not even the beta or release candidate! The developer appears to be averaging around $100,000 per day in sales; that is pretty darn impressive considering its still in alpha and from a very small development team.
This ballooning of the indie game industry has become possible because of a number of new technologies and services. Most of these games do not come on a physical CD or DVD but rather are downloaded. On the PC services such as Steam and Impulse have made it possible for smaller publishers and developers to get their product in front of millions of potential customers. The explosion of the smart phone market has led to many games developed for IOS and Android. These games are distributed through the Android Market or iTunes in a similar way that PC games are distributed through Steam and Impulse.
Along with digital distribution services there are a number of easy to use tools or graphics engines out there now to facilitate the creation of games. The Unreal 3 engine is very widely used in many games these days due to its ease of use, licensing, and great performance. I just downloaded the beta of a game called Sanctum last night, which is a First Person Shooter (FPS) Tower Defense game. This game is built on the Unreal 3 engine and it looks pretty darn good as well as having a number of advanced graphical features. Another engine is the Unity engine which comes a browser flavor and a console flavor. A number of new games are being released on top of Unity and they also look fantastic.
With the game market opening up to these smaller companies it is a great time to be a gamer. We still have all of the major titles being released by the big guys, but now also have a much wider selection due to the smaller guys entering the arena. To their credit, these indie developers are also pushing the limits of what can be done with games. Many of the indie games out there are quite innovative and a big studio like EA would never take a chance making them. So if you have some free time and want to try something new, browse through the Steam store or Impulse store and check out some of these indie games.
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