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Fiercely Independent to the End
For some companies the IGF changed everything -- and nothing. While most were impressed with the amount of exposure the festival gave them, many acknowledged that they were just as focused on game development as they were before receiving the accolade. One prime example is Cognitoy, producers of the IGF finalist Mind Rover. Best described as a futuristic 3D racing game featuring programmable vehicles with artificial intelligence, Mind Rover was the result of years of development. In the end, Cognitoy did not land a big North American publishing deal. Instead, it decided to self-published Mind Rover. "Ever the fierce independents, we did not sign up with a publisher. We designed and published the game and a 252-page user manual, and set up our website to take orders," said Kent Quirk, CTO and game architect for Cognitoy.
As with most independents on a mission, Quirk and company quickly learned how much passion they had for their game, and also how difficult self-publishing would be. The biggest problem with selling Mind Rover was the enormous advertising campaign required. Most of Cognitoy's budget was spent on making the product itself. To help get the product noticed product, Cognitoy relied on a grassroots advertising campaign: pushing game websites and magazines to review Mind Rover, using word-of-mouth to spread information about the game and selling its product at a special introductory price. Cognitoy took advantage of all the methods that have been used by independent game developers for years. It finally released Mind Rover in October 1999. According to Quirk, sales were up and down. "The first month was great, it sold very well, but rather cheaply because of our introductory sale. After that, sales trickled off for a while, and then started to pick up again as the word got out." One of the ways the "word got out" was through Cognitoy's IGF position. "We did use the 'Finalists in the IGF' phrase often, especially when we were looking for publicity," Quirk said. "It did provide a sort of instant credibility with editors and reporters that had been lacking to that point."
Cognitoy used Mind Rover's IGF credibility and positive reviews to get a deal with EBWorld.com, not only for online sales but also for its' retail stores. Cognitoy also found a distributor to work with directly to make its' game available at Babbages, Best Buy and Circuit City by the holidays. "We are very excited about that!" Quirk said. Currently, Cognitoy is gearing up for the release of Mind Rover 1.07 for both Windows and Linux. It is also working on new game designs for publishers as well as Java-based games for an online game site. And, despite Cognitoy's obvious conviction to remaining an independent, Quirk admits that the IGF not only gave its' product credibility to the gaming public, but also to the development team. "IGF gave us a boost in our own minds that made us feel like we were really doing something worthwhile - someone had noticed us."
For Evergames LLC (formerly Singularity Software) winning the IGF Grand Prize and Audience Award for its 3D RTS game Fire and Darkness (FND) was another big step in its learning process. FND had been a product Evergames had been hoping to publish since they were seniors in high school a couple of years earlier. In fact, they didn't hear about the IGF until late Fall '98 -- a month before deadline. "Dave Rosenthal and I spent the last few days of [winter] break in a mad rush to get the entry together, with editing assistance from his girlfriend," said Evergames member Ari Heitner. "We figured if we could make the final round, we'd get enough buzz to make the whole thing worthwhile."
The last-minute polishing of FND paid off. Evergames walked away with the festival's top prize. "We were pretty damn excited to win IGF. And the immediate aftermath lived up to our expectations: tons of media attention, huge interest in [Fire and Darkness], and great momentum. After years of screwing around with various paths of the retail publishing industry, we thought we had cracked it." According to Heitner, who says he does not speak for Evergames nor any other members of the company, Evergames was given the run-around by quite a few studios before winning the IGF. "We had been pushed around by too many different studios. We thought we were finally ahead of the game." The members of Evergames took the hard-earned victory in stride. They hired agents and, used the buzz created by the IGF, went to wheel-and-deal at E3 a few weeks later. "We showed up at E3 that spring, hyped up and ready to go. FND was on the floor at 3Dfx's and Creative's booths. We were always good at adding flash for the tradeshows, and the E3 version of FND included some cool stuff that wasn't even in the GDC version," Heitner said. When considering publishing deals for FND, Heitner said his team was fair in their expectations: a good starting base, flexible on royalties, no commitment to sequels. "That all seemed reasonable: after all, we were taking away a lot of risk from the publisher's perspective, since we had a nearly-complete product. Our agents were confident we'd get what we were looking for -- the magic offer we couldn't refuse." However, according to Heitner the best offer given was just three-fourths of Evergames' desired starting base, with a commitment to at least two sequels. "In retrospect, the situation was clear. Retail game publishing is a lot like retail music. Shelf space is expensive -- there goes half the sticker price. Advertising is expensive, especially when competing against all the noise of the rest of the industry -- there goes the other half of the sticker price. What's left isn't much profit."
Heitner continues, "In that environment, publishers are extremely risk-averse. Read: They want more of what sold well last year. The result? Terminal fear of innovation or originality." The experience was not all negative - - far from it. Evergames had the press' attention, the gamers' attention, and they were ready to continue working on FND. "We figured we would continue development for the summer on our own, hedging our bets: either a good publishing contract would come through, or we'd look into doing an online-only version," Heitner said. Evergames went on to create a solid business plan: FND would be self-published and the first of a series of multi-player online games. It created new rendering software for later games. That summer it also was officially changed to Evergames LLC (from Singularity Software), expanded from six to nine people and raised an initial round of funding. Development slowed by fall 1999, however, as most of the members decided to return to college. This continued into 2000. "The hope was that with enough venture funding we could drop out and continue work, bringing more people to meet our aggressive development schedule," Heitner said. "But by winter break we didn't have the magic amount to drop out and continue work, and no one was willing to take a chance on a company with barely enough cash to continue for six months." Heitner said that the conflict at the time was the result of three factors: investors, school and Evergames. "Investors weren't interested in a company without a steady team of employees, and we weren't interested in being employees without strong investment. We all came back to school that spring, and the company was put in deep freeze. I have to admit, what finally stopped us was the conflict between work and continuing school, and school won out." He sites bringing original titles to the industry as one of the positives about having the IGF around. "When I first heard of it, IGF wanted to be like Sundance for independent films -- a way for unknowns to get some attention, and an attempt to fix some of the 'same-old, same-old' feeling among game enthusiasts forced to live with the studios' crap." Heitner believes that in the end it will be up to the industry to realize the potential of independent products that are not mainstream or cookie-cutters of last year's product. For now, even though most of the FND team members are working with 3D graphics in some capacity, there are no solid plans for the future of Evergames. Despite some tough lessons learned, Heitner says that he wouldn't mind giving game development another shot. "Speaking in general for FND team members, I think we have a strong feeling for what it takes to bring a game project to completion from the development end. If I was confident in the team, and knew the funding was there, I'd be very interested in taking another game development job." Heitner adds, "But I'd want to see a much higher level of maturity from the industry before I got involved with any of the old players." ________________________________________________________ |
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