Independence

September 23rd, 2008Blog0 comments

Independently developed games are emerging as an incredibly exciting part of the industry. Games like Braid, Castle Crashers (which I love, and I wish would be patched soon so I could keep playing it), and this new game The Maw are doing things that the big studios wouldn’t and couldn’t touch. Stuff that doesn’t seem marketable or cinematic enough. I love the DIY spirit.

I’ve also heard that certain indy dev iPhone games have been making buckets of cash. I also find this to be extremely awesome — and it really makes me want to develop an app for the iPhone.

We live in a capitalist society. People vote with their dollars. I think that most art needs to be commercially viable. There’s always room for non-commercially viable art — like if painting pictures of wombats in rainbow wigs is your thing, then you should definitely go for it (although I myself would totally buy a painting of a wombat in a rainbow wig). But why not create commercially viable art in your spare time?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did it with Sherlock Holmes — that was essentially his fuel source while he wrote his “serious” novels. Of course, no one remembers any of his serious novels. All they remember is his commercial art.

What I think is really cool is when chefs will make their money cooking for the masses, and then after work host a gathering of other chefs and cook for them for free. Just to show them their skills, what they’ve been working with, what their mad science experiments are producing. You sell the mainstream product to the masses, and you share the special, super neato goods with your peers — really, the only people who would get it/appreciate it.

In other words, you sell your commercial art and you give your high art away. That sounds like a cool way to live.