The Game Developers Conference wrapping up right now in San Francisco wasn’t just about rewarding indie video game makers with hype and awards—though a team of local designers did enjoy such spoils on Wednesday. No, like any good indie media conference, it was also a place for super-sized publishers to latch on and siphon away whatever cred they can.
Nintendo, for example, hosted a conference early this week in which they announced boring new games and talked about how successful the Wii was. Super. The next day, Sony revealed that they have begun funneling cash to indie game makers in exchange for PlayStation exclusivity, which is great news—if Sony’s desperation results in more weird games like Noby Noby Boy, I suppose it’d be wrong not to admire their corporate cash-grab attempt.
And today, Warner Brothers was on hand to finally show off videos of their new, far-from-indie, ass-kicking Batman game. (Let’s see if I can hit the “publish” button before Jonah e-mails me about this one.)
Fun! But not revolutionary. Seems like most tech outlets have ignored any huge indie stories on the GDC showroom floor, focusing on the forthcoming OnLive service—a great idea that is five years ahead of schedule, reasons why are here—and a bunch of iPhone games. The latter, from the sound of it, are mostly old, tired ports, but I like the bubble-wrap-popping one on the iPhone, so who am I to judge?
Any techies on Slog who made it to GDC, I’d love to hear about the interesting, forward-thinking games that outlets are ignoring in place of Batman pummelings and cloud computing hype. Share away?
I haven’t heard rumor one about new revolutionary game concepts or game consoles at all.
And the Sony bribe really doesn’t change the base developer cost for the Wii, which is a heck of a lot (think it’s like 25:1) less than the cost to develop for the PS3.
Getting a dev console and shipping a game is the base barrier to developer entry, especially outside the North American or European markets where programmers make maybe $3000 a year in India.
blah blah indie games
blah blah tired rehashes
blah blah.
Just play the fucking things.
If you’re gonna diss me boy, dis me to my FACE!
@1: I should’ve specified this is for PSN-only games, the downloadable ones. No distribution costs. No Blu-ray. Different dev kit.
There’s a bubblewrap-popping app? Good to know…
Uh, get a life?
@4 – so it’s crippled then? I mean, sure the PSN is a worthy competitor.
Hot pockets!
Hot pockets always lose to bubble wrap.
Not a psn game but “Dangerous high school girls in trouble!” was nominated for writers guild of America 2009 award for best writing in a videogame . My favorite overlooked indie game
Hey look! The Batman game is exactly like Metal Gear Solid
hopefully that’s a good thing though
I’m looking forward to the sequel @10, the Japanese version known as Kwanzai Attack Underpants.