Re: [GD-Design] Indie games?

[Brian H. <ho...@py...>]

>Actually, I think there is one genre where one person could do=
 a
>great game: strategy games.

Absolutely, and there are indie developers that are doing pretty=
 well 
in that area.  BattleFront, StarDock and Strategy First all come=
 to 
mind.  However, titles of this type -- turn-based strategy, 4-X 
games, etc. -- do not tend to sell particularly well, but maybe 
enough to sustain a very small team of developers.  Maybe.

Even so, the cost to develop games of this type are far from=
 trivial. 
 Even accepting that "design > tech/art", you still need a lot of=
 
content.

The one area where maybe you don't need nearly as much content is=
 
when you build "toys" instead of "games", i.e. think in terms of=
 The 
Sims, RC Tycoon and what not.  Also, competitive on-line play=
 lets 
players effectively provide their own content.  It takes much,=
 much 
longer to develop a 20 hour single player game than it does to 
develop a decent competitive on-line game, at least in terms of 
content.

Hell, on-line games have a lot of things about them that make it=
 even 
easier -- no need to support save games, pause or even AI (unless=
 you 
support bot play or want NPCs thrown into the mix).

-Hook