On One’s Own is a column about, you guessed it, independent gaming. The wayward wanderings of DIYGamer’s James Bishop might lead to probing art, gameplay, design, reception or a number of other aspects related to independent games. But you can rest assured that all things indie will be carefully considered on a weekly basis.

As anyone who reads our illustrious website is probably already aware, the definition of the term “indie” is a bit muddled and difficult to decipher. Does it refer to the style of the game, like hip-hop or rock with music, or does it refer to the conditions of the developer? Does it matter if they have a high-profile publisher with some major bankroll that can push their product to exceed normal limitations for a small company? All of these are good questions that, arguably, require different answers from situation to situation.

Possibly the most interesting of recent ones to crop up is that of Klei Entertainment’s indie darling Shank. Or maybe that should be former indie darling Shank. No, it has not been cancelled, but the status of its indie credibility is up in the air after a number of increasingly mainstream announcements. The question is, do these things change the nature of the game or are they simply fortunate circumstances in a post-Braid gaming scene?

First off, EA Partners signed on to publish Shank. At the time, this was announced along with the decision to publish Hothead Games’ Deathspank but even with the two-part news, it’s kind of a big deal. EA Partners isn’t some small division of Electronic Arts; these are the guys who sealed the deal to publish Epic Games’ Bulletstorm from the developer People Can Fly. Not impressive enough? Add Valve, id Software, Double Fine and the most recent addition of Insomniac Games to the list of developers that have seen publishing deals go down with EA Partners.

EA Partners has taken the stance of allowing developers to keep their own intellectual property and develop further on it in the future. In many ways, they have been dabbling in the business of laissez-faire economics. They keep their hands off of the development side and just try to market the game to as wide an audience as they can as best they can.

Overall, this seems to be really working out for them as they continue to pick up bigger and bigger developers. There were even some rumors floating around that Bungie might go the EA Partners route but, as we have seen, Big Daddy Activision’s pockets are awfully deep. So how is that a developer like Klei Entertainment—no offense to them, of course, as they might eventually read this—secures such a deal?

They do a damn good job, that’s how. You connect with the right people, pitch the right kind of game and have a little star power in your pocket. Though it may have only been recently revealed, Marianne Krawczyk, the dynamo writer behind God of War, has been onboard the Shank train since near the beginning. Some have confused the recent reveal with EA bringing in more talent to pump up sales when in reality Krawczyk and Klei Entertainment’s fledgling partnership goes back to 2008.

Jamie Cheng, CEO of Klei Entertainment, and Marianne Krawczyk met at Game Developers Conference in 2008 at the Speaker Party. According to Cheng, the two began talking about how they would love to work on an independent game where they could tell whatever kind of story that they could want to tell. When Klei was ready to begin development on a new title, Krawcyzk and they were reconnected and so they began to cement down what we know today as Shank.

And let’s be honest, keeping this somewhat startling information fairly close to the chest is a sound business decision on their part. An indie developer revealing that the writer for God of War will be working on their newest intellectual property reeks of overstatement and has a touch of vaporware to it. To phrase it another way, the big boys sitting in the penthouses may have considered Klei to be putting on airs, as it were, and biting off a bit more than they could chew. There’s probably room enough for another charming colloquialism but I’ll leave it at that. With a writer like Krawcyzk, and her professional history, expectations are naturally set high.

But to once and for all settle the rumors, it has been said numerous times in a number of places that Krawcyzk has been working with the team since very near to the beginning. So we have a few strikes against Shank’s indie credibility, what with the publishing deal with EA Partners, and now we come to find out that they have a big A-list writer with them who happens to be fresh off seeing her latest brainchild, God of War III, do extremely well on the market. It seems like all signs point to ditching the indie moniker entirely and becoming a mainstream game.

And so this brings us to the real question. As stated above, does it matter if a high-profile publisher signs on with an independent developer? The answer, at least in this specific instance, is… No. Just because Klei Entertainment has sketched out a deal with EA Partners doesn’t preclude Shank from continuing to be the indie darling that everyone knows and loves. Sift through all the muck and mire and you still have yourself a wonderful little gem of a game developed by an independent company with their own unclouded vision present in all aspects.

The way I see it, Klei just got lucky. They started a game with the right people and pushed it in the right direction long enough to interest someone who could fulfill the necessary monetary obligations of their operation. This way, Klei does not really have to worry about publishing, marketing and all those things that indie developers traditionally flub up in the process of getting their games to the masses.

Instead they can focus on what they do best: make games. If the creative direction, art, writing and overall vision isn’t compromised by the addition of a publishing deal, it’s merely a win-win for everyone involved including those that will later be playing the game. Braid would still be Braid, Flower would still be Flower and so on even if they were under the same conditions. It just so happens that more people would have known about them from the beginning.

Which is part of the issue as well. There’s a sense of “getting it” in the community that is disdainful of the general public. Anything at all attached to Big Brother is bombarded with suspicion until folks conclude that it must be so because everyone else is saying it is. Even if it could and should be considered indie, we’d rather wash our hands of it altogether. Well, I say, not this time. This time we should be thankful that someone decided to pick up an rock—a nice rock but still a rock—and help polish it into a jewel.

The guys at Klei Entertainment had the first demo available to play at PAX East, and it was a sight to behold. It takes you through a bunch of jobbers, a few bigger guys and one beast of a boss over the course of one stage.

The controls are simple and intuitive. You switch effortlessly between a knife, a chainsaw and a few guns during combos, and you can also pick up smaller enemies and smack them around with your various instruments of pain.

You also have grenades, which are a joy to use. You don’t lob them so much as fling them, kunai style, and they explode on contact. It’s tremendously satisfying, and the quickness of the strike makes grenades perfect for suppressing anybody trying to sneak up behind you.

The most satisfying thing to do after you run out of grenades is is to pounce on the enemies. I don’t think the pounce would work without Shanks fluid visuals, because when you land on people, they react like they’re being landed on.

Plenty of games have stellar animation, but I don’t think I’ve every seen a 2D game that shows the interplay between the player character and his opponents as well as Shank does. Clearly, after the boss, Toro, runs into the wall and stands stunned with a flashing button above his head, the game is waiting to run the animation of you applying a chainsaw to his neck. But the second you try to grab the boss when he’s not stunned? That’s a different story. Whether you pounce at him or grab at him, he’s ready to fling you away like one of your grenades.

The Toro fight is bookended by short, sweet cut scenes. Shank doesn’t say a word, and it conveys so much. Shank is so cool, it’s like they’re not even trying (Wet developers could learn a few thousand things from Klei).

One thing bothers me, now that I’m back home and no longer in range of a developer to ask the question, is that the game was ridiculously easy. The difference between The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and Shank was night and day. I watched a few people play through the demo and not one finished with much of a dent in their life bar. People playing Vampire Smile were lucky to get through the first miniboss. I should have asked if the difficulty was scaled back for the floor demo, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

The gameplay trailer at the end of this post shows off the moves of someone a lot more familiar with the game than I could get in 10 minutes, and it’s actually got me hopeful. The person holding the controller is doing some impressive air combos. So the more complex combat is available, if you want it.

Below is the official gameplay trailer and a video I took of someone fighting Toro, the boss in the demo. Pay close attention to the parts where the player tries to grab Toro. Those are my favorite parts.

On One’s Own is a column about, you guessed it, independent gaming. The wayward wanderings of DIYGamer’s James Bishop might lead to probing art, gameplay, design, reception or a number of other aspects related to independent games. But you can rest assured that all things indie will be carefully considered on a weekly basis.

This past weekend I spent an inordinate amount of time walking, reading subway maps and fiddling with my Pokéwalker. The first annual Penny Arcade Expo East was held in Boston and I was, of course, in attendance as I cannot manage to keep myself away from these things. And while on the show floor, I considered it my mission, my responsibility even, to play each and every independent game I could get my filthy mitts on while there.

And I so did. I managed to drag my tired body through the expo hall a great many times in order to play everything I possibly could. Before the article goes any further, I’d like to apologize to the creators of Miegakure. When I came past the booth, people were playing, the game was down or I was on my way to another appointment. I was unfortunately unable to play it so I feel like I somehow let the ball drop. But I did watch it for a good deal of time and feel like I got a grasp of what the game was about.

But even though I managed to miss Miegakure, I did find the time and energy to play (deep breath): Slam Bolt Scrappers, Dearth, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, Waker, Turba, Shank, Charlie Murder and The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. As well as a huge smattering of mainstream titles of which none will be discussed here.

But what kind of impression did all these games leave on me, in total? Well, it further cemented the idea in my head that indie games are necessarily quirky and their creators are, for the most part, human in nature. The product of the minds of a very small group of people tends to be more specifically unique than one that requires a bureaucratic entity to govern it and even indie developers want to play the next biggest game.

But those are all broad, general statements. The specifics are of far more interest to you, Constant Reader, so get to them I shall. The first annual PAX East was actually host to their very own Boston Indie Showcase, which collected a number of local indie developers together to show off their games. The first six in my list above, Slam Bolt Scrappers, Dearth, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, Waker, Turba and Mieagakure all sat together in a little circle near the edge of one of the halls. And, besides the previously mentioned Mieagakure, I played all of them over the course of the convention.

Of the six, the first I managed to get some time in with was AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! by Dejobaan Games. If you don’t already know what the game’s about, you’ve clearly not been kept up to snuff on indie game news. Sufficed to say, it’s been out for a bit and has garnered some positive reviews. If you haven’t played already, you really should.

In the game, you fling yourself from the top of a building of some sort and try to accomplish a number of tasks on the way down before gracefully landing in a predetermined zone. Hugs, kisses, flipping the bird and giving thumbs up to different sections of the level will net a varying amount of points depending on your timing. Like old-school arcade games, the point is to get as many as you possibly can. It’s fun, has huge replay value and one of the developers mentioned, off-hand, that he must have been drunk when coding one of the levels. I wasn’t actually sure if he was joking, but I like to think he wasn’t. It’s way more amusing that way.

After AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! came Dearth and then Waker. I lump the two together here as they were both developed by MIT Gambit Game Lab. If you can’t already tell, this means that both games have somewhat ulterior motives: academia. It’s all so ingrained, however, that you’d be hard-pressed to know that they were trying to gather data if they didn’t tell you so up front.

Dearth is full of sketched out Egyptian or Mayan imagery wherein you and a partner can control tiny fish people and run around in circles attempting to get the water beasts chasing you to crash into each other. You heard me. The express intent of the game is to reach the next level but the game is actually trying to gather data on how to make artificial intelligence. I’m not entirely certain how it works, but it does. And my playing through of a couple of levels with another human, dubbed Random Stranger #117, further proved to me that having two brains trying to solve one puzzle at the same time leads to confusion, hilarious confusion that has only bad consequences.

The second of the two MIT games, Waker, has two versions: one with and one without narrative. Otherwise, they’re exactly the same. The idea is to see if gaming narrative actually helps engage children and have them learn easier. The game follows a little black shadow of a thing with a tail as it tries to make it from one end of a stage to another. Imagine Braid but instead of time puzzles, it all depends on how fast your little creature is moving. The intent is to help kids learn about velocity and all that good stuff on a mostly observational level. See how it works, understand it better and therefore be able to use the concepts more easily later. You run, and drop the orb when you want to solidify the line you’ve created so you can traverse it to the next stage.

Turba by Keith Morgado was the second-to-last game I gave a go. It’s reminiscent of Bejeweled and a number of other puzzle games that have you match three but it has one little twist: the puzzle moves to the beat of whatever mp3 you happen to have available. Keith was luckily at the station as I began my play to Gorillaz, as I’m not exactly a puzzle game junkie, as he explained to me some of the more specific functions like clicking three of a couple different colors to knock them out at the same time and so on. I’ve never played a single one of them before so this was all new to me. After helping me to actually play the game, he admitted that he’d made the entire game in his room and that, due to using the player’s music, it avoided any copyright infringement. Either way, my time with Turba went entirely too quickly, but the timing just so happened to coincide with the line ceasing to exist in the booth right next door.

And that was rather fortuitous as the line had been going strong since the first day I’d put my eyes on it. Fire Hose Games had brought the best of the litter and the line to play proved it. They’d brought Slam Bolt Scrappers. The gameplay is an intoxicating mixture of a simple fighting game with a large dose of Tetris and some influences from the tower defense genre. You beat up enemies which then turn to a colored Tetris block, which you then drop on your team’s area in order to build up towers of the same color. Red makes rockets, purple makes lasers and blue makes some kind of shielding mechanism. The point of the game is to decimate your opponent’s tower and destroy their gold-rimmed blocks.

And goodness, did I destroy some blocks. I was teamed with an odd fellow who only spoke in broken English so we communicated almost entirely through yelps of joy and high-fives. The opposing team was composed of two middle-aged women. I couldn’t make this stuff up. Our first match started and me and my English-butchering partner won within three minutes. Our opponents had thought they were supposed to beat our two avatars up, not build a tower to beat our tower. The developers even let us play another round which wound up being pretty similar.

In the end, each game was quirky, imaginative, interesting, surprisingly addicting and just plain fun. After watching a good deal of Mieagakure, I can safely say the same of it as well. If these are the kinds of indie games we have to look forward to in the future, the future sure looks bright. Here’s to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle at the end of the year and its, hopefully, equally amazing lineup of indie titles.

PAX East wrapped up a few hours ago, and it was a awesome, tiring blast. There were new games to see, clever people to talk to and helpful strangers at every turn.

Over this coming week I’ll be converting video, deciphering notes and generally devoting more time to everything I got my hands on. But until I get home, here are some things I’m looking forward to.

Best Brawler

There were two great brawlers at PAX East this year: Shank and The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. Even without Shank’s visual style, I think the game’s combat would be very satisfying. But the original The Dishwasher is one of the most technically proficient brawlers I’ve ever played, and Vampire Smile seems even more refined.

In The Dishwasher, each basic enemy had specific ranges where they were most dangerous, and you had a lot of options for neutralizing enemies. That carries over to the new game, only now there are new weapons to experiment with and new bad guys to deal with.

Also, the levels in the demo have a more consistent flow to them. In the original, you’d come to a new screen. It would fill with enemies and you’d stay there until they were all dead. You’d do that for a bunch of screens then you’d come to a boss. Cut scenes and bosses are woven much more naturally into the level design of Vampire Smile, at least in the demo.

The game looks a little better than the first one, the enemies move more naturally and the cut scenes are more than manga panels. And there are little touches that really add to the characters you control, Yuki and the Dishwasher. If you pay attention, you can see a cat following Yuki and a crow following the Dishwasher. Vampire Smile will be on my Xbox when Ska Studios releases the game.

Best Local Multiplayer

Slam Bolt Scrappers takes a lot of ideas and magically fits them together. You and your teammate each control a large flying muscle man in a halo, sombrero or Viking hat. As the match progresses creeps descend from the sky. When you pummel one to death, it drops a building block — a Tetris piece — that you pick up and carry around.

You can rotate the piece and drop it like you would in a game of Tetris, or you can fly down and place it anywhere it fits among your base. But instead of disappearing whenever a line is formed, they transform into turrets any time you make a square out of the same color blocks.

Of course, as you’re trying to construct your base, the other team is flying around, fighting the same creeps in the same airspace. So it’s only natural that the players can attack each other. But fighting the other players is the weakest part of the game. There’s not much to do besides swing your fists, so whoever has the least amount of life gets to choose to stay and die or run away.

It’s pretty easy to get a handle on what you’re supposed to be doing, but actually doing it while another team is getting in your way and building their own tower is harrowing.

I had a ton of fun losing both games I played, so when Fire Hose Games releases it I’ll be trying to convince my friends to play this instead of Wii Sports or Rock Band the next time four of us are gathered.

Best Style

Once again, Shank is going to get passed over for another game. I nearly missed Limbo this year. I went to the Xbox booth in the last hour of the convention to get some time with Hydrophobia, but when I got there it had a pretty big crowd and I didn’t want to wait in line. So I wandered around the booth and saw Limbo. It still had a line, but I didn’t mind waiting for an IGF winner.

Limbo really is gorgeous. I knew that, obviously. It looks like something creators of the new A Boy and His Blob would make if the designers had no souls. But YouTube videos don’t really do it justice.

It’s also a cruel, punishing game that encourages puzzle solving through death. In one of the puzzles, there is small body of water you have to cross. There are two bodies in the water. I jumped on the first one, but I didn’t make it to the third, so I drowned. But I was able to see someone ambling my way. The next time, I jumped to the first body and waited. The ambler walked into the lake and promptly drowned to create the platform I needed to cross the water safely.

Did I mention it’s wonderfully morbid? Bear traps sever your head from your body, gears grind you to pieces and spiders happily impale you. The actions are surprisingly detailed for a game that lacks a color pallet.

Best Game I Know Little About

I was in line for a panel on the Death of Print (which I have some interest in because my day job is at a newspaper), and I found myself in line with an iPhone developer from the UK.

He said his primary influence was X-COM, and while I don’t have a clue how that style of game would work with a touch interface, a mention of X-COM is enough to generate instant interest from me.

His studio is called Stargazy Studios and the game he’s working on is called Huscarls. Huscarls was an Anglo Saxon bodyguard, so the game asks you take on that role, keeping important Anglo-Saxons alive as they go from place to place.

That game will take X-COM’s turn-based tactical gameplay, but focus on close combat. Of course, I haven’t seen any of the game yet, so the concept could fail miserably. But I’m an optimist and I hope the game is awesome.

Best Online Multiplayer

Monday Night Combat is probably going to be written off by some of those who see trailers as a less charming derivative of Team Fortress 2. And it’s true that the games share the qualities of stylized art and team combat, as well as a similar color scheme.

But Monday Night Combat takes some good ideas from DotA: Allstars, Heroes of Newearth and League of Legends. Each class has three skills, which can be upgraded during the match with the money players earn for performing various actions.

And the goal, aside from putting bullets into the other team, is to escort bots to the opposing team’s base, where they take down the shields of the Money Ball. First team to destroy the other’s ball wins. Keeping them alive is pretty important, so the support classes have more to do than in some other games.

I wish it were for PC, because I hate console FPS controls, but I may pick this up anyway when it comes out this summer on XBLA. The developer, Uber Entertainment, doesn’t identify as indie, but they’re privately held and don’t seem to have a publisher, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

and finally…

Biggest Disappointment

This is probably a bit unfair, but my least favorite game of the con, aside from some of the very experimental games from the MIT’s Gambit Game Lab, came from the same guy who did Dishwasher.

Charlie Murder isn’t finished. James Silva says the official word is that the band is on a break while the attend counseling to deal with conflict within the band.

When I saw the game was playable, I was really excited. It’s the first game I played at PAX, after we had finished setting up and before the doors opened. But the game was a huge letdown.

Characters run slowly and awkwardly across the screen. There are two attack buttons, but one of them is a limited special attack, so there’s really only one button to mash for most of the game. The characters are still people I want to play as, and I’m still interested in the band rivalry between Charlie Murder and (other band), but the gameplay needs to be there or I’m not going to play the game.

I’m still glad I got a chance to play the early build. If the released version is great, I’ll get to say I played the game back when it wasn’t awesome. Ska Studios put Charlie Murder away to make room for a second Dishwasher station by the third day of PAX East, and I think that was a good move.

…

And now it’s time for a long ride home.

Shank got a notoriety boost just before this year’s IGF when it was announced the title was picked up by Electronic Arts.  This publishing deal suddenly meant that this festival contender would find its way to XBLA, PSN and PC with a big name leading the charge.

But Shank made it into the IGF Showcase on its own bloody merits and I got some time to play through the demo, aided by Jeffrey Alaga who suggested various ways I should bludgeon my foes.

Jeff was the main artist on the project, and his lengthy background in animation, comics and television directing truly shine in the game. The setting is stylized and waiting to get coated in blood.

The gameplay includes three main forms of blood-letting: your shank, your guns and your chainsaw. Used in various combinations, you unleash messy combos that aren’t for the squeamish.

In addition to your main attacks, you can also use a ground and air grapple, which are ways to tackle your opponents while jabbing your shanks into their chest. Did I mention it’s not for the squeamish? Climbing and running along walls execute automatically, making movement a simple act. The level ended with a giant behemoth of a boss, who’d smack you down from trying to grapple him and you were forced to pound him with grenades, and leap onto his back while he was weakened. It’s a brutal fight that wasn’t necessarily easy, but ended with a satisfying cut scene that showed our hero jamming a grenade in the man’s mouth and shooting it from afar. The demo did its job in leaving me wanting more, I’m curious to see what’s next.

The demo level was the same one revealed in the PAX demo, so there wasn’t anything new to see. I discovered they had plenty they weren’t talking about, though. This included the story (“It’s a classic revenge tale”), the length (it will be a “full experience”), and what the other levels outside of the dusty town and the meat plant were. This leaves plenty of surprises for them to reveal in the future.

There’s something to be said for the level of action in the game. I had popped my voice recorder on the counter as I played so that I could capture and remember what Jeffrey had to say, but the entire recording was a mashup of violent stabbing sounds and bloody screams. But that’s the main thing to take away from the experience anyway: there will be blood.

On One’s Own is a column about, you guessed it, independent gaming. The wayward wanderings of DIYGamer’s James Bishop might lead to probing art, gameplay, design, reception or a number of other aspects related to independent games. But you can rest assured that all things indie will be carefully considered on a weekly basis.

As discussed before, a major problem with coming up with a definition for “indie game” really comes down to the single fact that larger non-independent publishers will occasionally pick up what some might have previously considered an indie game. Is Shank any less of an indie title now that EA Partners has teamed up to publish and promote it? Games like this continue to be indie titles, arguably, but have a major push in the public relations department.

But how does this relationship actually work? Is it really beneficial to both parties? It’s an excellent question that your average gamer might not even ponder about twice. In a way, it is comparable to how most goods tend to be made overseas and then packaged wherever they are going to be sold. For example, the shoes on my feet were made in Vietnam. The box, however, was made in the good ole United States of America. I have absolutely no idea how that all actually works, but I’m sure someone in Vietnam is getting the short end of the stick on that deal. (I paid forty bucks for these!)

Of course, the particulars are all different. I wouldn’t necessarily compare independent developers directly to sweatshop workers, exactly, but the situation is analogous. Your average indie developer signs a deal with the metaphorical devil in the shape of a publisher in order to fund and promote their game. This isn’t always the way that these kinds of games come to the attention of the general public but it certainly constitutes the majority.

This is not just an issue for indie games either as the entire industry battles with this sort of thing regularly. The recent hubbub at Infinity Ward stemmed partially from the fact that Activision publishes the games they develop. Per their agreement, it seems, the Call of Duty franchise essentially became an Activision franchise. All developers, mainstream or indie, need funding to either continue to work on their games, start work on a new games or promote their games in general. Which is typically how indie games become affiliated with larger publishers.

As briefly mentioned above, Shank from developer Klei Entertainment recently entered into a publishing agreement with EA Partners. And though this column is mostly about the negative aspects of the developer-publisher relationship, Jamie Cheng, Klei Entertainment founder, had nothing but good things to say about the partnership with Electronic Arts. Speaking with 1Up, he was quoted as saying, “We had a clear vision of what we wanted to do with the game, so we had an opportunity to partner up with [EA] and have their marketing muscle.” Perhaps his tune will change in the future but he certainly seems to be happy to be letting someone else do that pesky marketing.

And it is not just Klei Entertainment that holds this opinion. Other developers seem to share this same kind of hands-off approach to marketing with Jamie. If a super-giant publisher wants to promote it, that’s on them to do all the dirty work. Instead of a much smaller company funneling every last dime into a marketing budget, larger firms like Electronic Arts can step in and do that for them. That way the developers can focus on what truly matters to them: the game.

Which is partially the major disconnect between publishers and developers. The developer wants to create an interesting, fun game while the publisher wants to get as many people to buy said game as humanly, and sometimes inhumanly, possible. In a recent panel at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, a number of student and independent developers sat down with the stated goal of helping explain how to make a successful game like they had previously. It included members of the development team for Portal, The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom and flOw. Noticeably, it seems not one spoke of publishing agreements during their brief panel.

Picking up student games, or most indie games for that matter, and getting them out there is a no-brainer for publishers. In terms of monetary investment, would you rather spend five years or more developing a game and a total of two years promoting it… or just promote a game for two years that already has a niche audience but certainly has the potential to grow beyond being only niche? Keep in mind that the game that has been in development for five years might not pan out or meet the expectations set for it.

The choice is fairly obvious. In a world where iPhone games developed by a single person can make a profit of $250,000 in just two months with little to no promotion, cutting a deal with a student showcase winner or other game festival entrants is akin to planting a money tree or two. A small investment is likely to bring in large profits. Investing in games festival winners is about as sure a thing as it gets in game publishing.

It is not always love and sunshine in this relationship, though. There are the horror stories about publishers dictating design to developers, the obscene amounts of money that publishers make off the creative assets they manage and, of course, the ever-present worry of groupthink in the community at large. Don’t just take my word for it, though.

Timothy Ryan’s blog on Gamasutra includes an entry talking about just this sort of thing. Specifically, he looks at the way in which publishers can either be far too hands-off or become too involved in the minutiae of development. He focuses in on publishing producers and the role they play in development. Is it really so hard to imagine this happening in an indie developer situation? The answer: Not at all. In fact, it probably happens often.

As for the obscene amounts of money that publishers make, we need look no further than the president of Q-Games, Dylan Cuthbert. Speaking with Develop back in January of this year, he made a pathetic appeal (derived from pathos, people) in what may seem like an effort to demonize publishers who bankroll smaller developers. He notes that he could make the entire PixelJunk series over again just on bonuses that some executives at these publisher make on top of their salary.

The groupthink worry is best summed up, albeit unintentionally, in an article by Jim Sterling about art games and innovation. Though he criticizes indie games and innovation in general, the nugget of his argument seems to be that innovation and indie games are not innately good or bad. They can be one or the other, sometimes both, but it all comes down to the effort put in the end product. This too stems from the complicated publisher-developer relationship. Though Sterling seems to be hit-or-miss for me, this one is definitely worth a read and really speaks for itself.

Hope is not lost, however. It is not as if this problem has existed within a vacuum and gone unnoticed by those with the power to change it. A number of developers have actually gotten together to form the Indie Fund. In theory, it will function in much the same way as a larger publisher would by bankrolling initiatives but skipping the whole signing in blood part.

Nathan Vella, president of Capybara Games, spoke with Ars Technica on the subject saying, “The end goal of a publisher is to hit sales targets, make a return on investment, and generate profit for their shareholders… In literally every way possible, this can, and normally does, conflict with the end goal of developers. Especially indie developers. Sure, we all want a return on investment, but we want that ROI to come off the back of a project we are passionate about and a final product we love. Developers want to make games that, on a small scale or big scale, push the medium forward. There’s a really big conflict there.”

2D Boy’s Ron Carmel added, “Developers often don’t get publishers and vice versa. Neither is evil, but both are too caught up in their own needs to really see things from the other’s point of view.” Sure, some households might agree that Bobby Kotick is evil or EA is where developers go to die, but it is ultimately a two-way street. Maybe the Indie Fund is the first step toward building more of these streets and stimulation for more introspection on the subject within publishers and developers alike.

In celebration of the announcement that Electronic Arts will be publishing Klei Entertainment’s highly anticipated violent 2D brawler, Shank, the developer has revealed a brand new and gruesome trailer for the upcoming title. Shank will be released to the XBLA, PSN, and PC this summer and will also be available on the GDC showroom floor from tomorrow until Saturday (March 11-13). The exact time and location is listed below in their press release.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to embed the video but the gameplay trailer is truly something to behold. Therefore, I encourage anybody over 17 and even remotely interested in the title to check out the new gameplay trailer here.

What: Coming out of last week’s exciting announcement of a publishing deal with EA Partners to bring Shank to XBLA, PSN and PC this summer, Klei Entertainment released a video of its upcoming 2D cinematic brawler today, showcasing new levels, new moves and new bosses coming to the game.

This video supports its showing at this year’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, Calif. March 11-13, 2010. As one of the 2010 Independent Game Festival (IGF) finalists (and recognized for its excellence in “Visual Art”), Shank will be on display at the IGF Pavilion during regular Expo Hall hours.

When: New video available Monday, March 8, 2010
GDC demonstrations running Thursday, March 11 through Saturday, March 13, 2010

Where: Shank game kiosk in the IGF Pavilion, GDC Expo Hall (South Hall), Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Calif. during the following hours:

Thursday, March 11 10am-6pm
Friday, March 12 10am-6pm
Saturday, March 13 10am-3pm

Great news for a premiere indie developer, Klei Entertainment, today as EA has just announced a deal to publish their title: Shank! The deal is with EA Partners, more specifically, the same publishing arm of EA that handles Valve’s software and the Rockband games. While the game is set for a Summer release onto both XBLA and PSN (as well as PC, but there’s no mention of EA having anything to do with that title), there is currently no hard release date yet.

We wish Klei Entertainment the best of luck and look forward to playing it when it’s released.

P.S. Speaking of Xbox 360s. Did you know we are running a contest right now where you can win one? Check it out!

While the judges at IGF have already named their nominees/finalists, we at DIYgamer are still sifting through the list. Last year, we began a countdown to the Independent Games Festival. The way this works is easy: we simply select games at random from the lengthy (306 total) list of IGF submissions and discuss what they’re about and how they play. For this week’s column, I played once through a humorous platformer, You Only Live Once, and actually didn’t play the second title, Shank, but instead enjoyed some eye-popping videos of it.

Before starting this I want to emphasize that this is only meant to give you my impressions and perhaps that extra kick to try out some of the IGF submissions, whether they be these or any of the other 306. I assure you, you will discover that there is something unique about each and every game. And hey, if you’re lucky, some of them are even playable for free! All right, without further ado, here are this week’s picks.

Why is this title so goddamn literal!?

In You Only Live Once, you have one chance to save your girlfriend from an evil lizard. Yup, just one chance. The game is actually extremely similar to Mario and clearly draws certain characteristics from the popular franchise (e.g. girlfriend gets kidnapped by a monster, jumping on enemies’ heads will kill them, etc.). However, you don’t play a plumber; you play as a regular dude. The beginning scenes of You Only Live Once will make you laugh but the game gets even better when you die and attempt to play it again. I refreshed multiple times…it still said I was dead. As a matter of fact, each time I refreshed I would see a different animation. Can you play it again? I’m sure you can find a way but I was fully content with my experience!

The controls of the title work easily: move with the arrows. It works just as any other platformer but it has a distinct home-made style and feel. The title was made by Raitendo. You can visit his official site here. You should stick around and keep pressing “continue” to watch every bit of the story’s unveiling after your death.

Oh, and I just checked…I’m still dead. Maybe you’ll fare better than I did.

When Indie Turns to Beauty

I’m not going to lie: I’m an unforgivably shallow man who judges everything by its looks. Sometimes it pays off, like when I stumbled upon Shank. I haven’t even played this game but knowing it has gone into the final round of IGF reinforces my presumption that this game will blow your face off. Why? It’s an action brawler that looks downright amazing. Klei Entertainment, Inc. has ensured that the game follows its 2D graphic novel inspirations and animates smoothly. When it debuted at PAX 2009, it received total praise and is on its way to becoming an excellent indie hit in 2010. The sad part is I can’t give you much more about this game than the following video…which is pretty badass. So I guess, hey, that’s not as sad as I thought.

Okay…it’s beautiful. How long do I have to wait to play this!?

And that’s another week, dear readers. But it doesn’t end there: do some fishing of your own. Happy Monday!

Check out our Top 10 Break Out Indie Games of 2012!
Check out our Top 10 Break Out Indie Games of 2011!

Indie Games don’t get a lot of media attention. At least not from the big guys — IGN, GameSpot, Joystiq, Kotaku. However, every now and then an indie game will “break out” from obscurity and be fully recognized by the gaming press and the masses. When all is said and done I’d say only about ten indie games a year are ever really discussed and played by people outside of the indie gaming culture. Which is a shame because so many great ones come out each year!

Anyways, games like Trine, Machinarium, and Torchlight were some of 2009′s break out hits, but what about 2010? What do we have to look forward to for the upcoming year and what, if any, will get picked up by the mainstream press and the common gamer? Well, while we are no scientific analysts, here’s our prediction of the top 10 break out indie titles for 2010: