From Underground to World-Renowned:
Following Up on the First Annual Independant Games Festival Finalists
By Damon Brown
Gamasutra
October 23, 2000
URL: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001023/brown_01.htm

In the late-70s, early-80s, independent game develpoment was limited to high-tech college campuses like MIT and Berkeley, or to the basement of a hack who would give his "new-and-improved" version of Ultima to a friend - in a Ziploc bag.

In the 90s the Internet brought underground titles to the surface, giving isolated programmers and designers the whole world as their audience. The internet allowed "lone wolf" developers to form packs, and, in some cases, work together to make their dream game a reality.

The ultimate validation of the independent scene, however, occurred in 1999. That year's Game Developer Conference, with the Gathering of Developers, presented the 1st Annual GDC Independent Games Festival. Suddenly, it was publicly acknowledged that game development wasn't a hobby - it was an art.

The IGF is still an unrivalled annual event, going into its third year this March. At the time, however, the IGF was groundbreaking, for it gave respect to the game development underground while simultaneously maintaining credibility within the underground - no easy feat. Nearly 100 aspiring game development teams and individuals sent their projects, going for the six awards: Best Programming, Best Visual Art, Best Audio, Best Game Design, Audience Award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize Award.

The many submissions were narrowed down to 15 finalists.

After the fanfare and awards, however, each of the individual finalists had to come back down to earth and ask themselves: "Okay, we have earned this accolade. Now where do we go from here?"

One-and-a-half years later, Gamasutra caught up with the first-ever IGF finalists to find out what they have been doing. Like any form of expression that is wild and pure, anything can happen in independent game development. Some developers have continued independent game development, others have gone professional, and still others decided that the IGF event was enough for them. Here are their stories.

Joining the Big Leagues

Perhaps the most inspiring post-IGF story is of Vicarious Visions, whose IGF entry Terminus was published by Vatical Entertainment earlier this year. President and COO Guha Bala said that winning the Best Programming and Best Audio Award at the show contributed to his company's recent success. "The IGF prize convinced our publishing partners, Vatical Entertainment that the game would be a good bet. It also gave print and online media good reason to cover news on the game."

One of the many characters in Vicarious Visions' Terminus

"The biggest contribution of the IGF award to our careers was the vote of confidence the judging panels and development community gave to our previously unsupported hard work. The sense of pride that resulted helped to gel our team and our identity as group that could grow beyond our financial and geographic constraints." Bala also said, "The recognition the IGF allows for small, independent developers is an important factor in promoting competition and new ideas in an industry dominated by rigid brands and licenses."

Like many of the other finalists, Vicarious Visions had paid its dues before entering the festival. Around the time of the IGF, in fact, it was already looking into working on Nintendo GameBoy titles, among other things. Bala said the IGF was one of the major catalysts to put Vicarious Visions in the spotlight. "Prior to the IGF, Vicarious Visions had limited exposure in the industry, and non-existent title track record in North America. The IGF Award lent credibility to our ambitions of creating great industry leading games."

The once-small company now has more than 50 employees and has developed games for the Playstation and GameBoy Color, working with publishers ranging from Konami to THQ. As for future titles from Vicarious Visions, Bala said his team is "working on launch titles for Game Boy Advance, X-Box, Gamecube, and a second generation title for PS2. We follow a multiplatform approach to technology investment and focus on action and racing game genres."

Screenshot showing Terminus' NAVMAP interface.

Even with many games published and even more on the way, Bala said that his company still appreciates being connected to the rest of the game development community. "We still correspond with competing teams, and keep in touch regularly via GDC events. It is refreshing to know that we are not going it alone."

Fiercely Independant 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.

Screenshot from Cognitoy's Mind Rover.

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 it would take. 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."

Interface from Mind Rover.

It 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."

They've Seen Fire and They've Seen Darkness

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 eyeing 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."

Evergames' Fire and Darkness

The last-minute polishing of FND paid off. Evergames walked away with the First Annual Independent Game Festival 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 runaround 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 three-fourth of Evergames' desired starting base, with a commitment to at least two sequels. Heitner was quick to site an example of a best-selling sequel that came out that year (1999), whose writers "didn't see a penny of royalties. We didn't want that to happen to us."

"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."

Fire and Darkness

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 - in fact, it was 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 '99, 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 - not uncommon."

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 that bringing original titles to the industry is one of the positives about having the IGF around. "As for IGF ... 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 said that in the end it would be up to the industry to realize the potential which independent products that are not mainstream or cookie-cutters of last year's product present.

For right now, even though most if not all of the FND team members are working with 3D graphics in some capacity, there are no solid plans for the future of Evergames. And Heitner said, despite some tough lessons learned, 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."

Crime Pays

Some developers in the IGF were well on their way towards publishing success, with the GDC recognition speeding up the process. For Poland-based Techlandsoft, creator of the IGF Best Art Award winner Crime Cities, the difference in its organization after the award was as simple as getting more publishers to listen to them. The group remained realistic after the win, according to Andrew Beard, International Sales and Purchasing Manager.

"The version of Crime Cities on show at the IGF had stupendous graphics for it's day, coming from an unknown developer based in Central Europe," said Beard. "It was not, however, a complete game, so although in it's current state it might have earned a clean sweep of the prizes, at the time we felt honored to be considered for any of the prizes, no matter how good the 'game' looked."

Techlandsoft's Crime Cities

Techlandsoft has continued to work on Crime Cities since the March 1999 IGF, with two revisions to its in-house 3D engine, and better multiplayer modes and AI. "We are fortunate that we could spend the time creating a truly polished product, not just a graphical shell to hide behind," Beard said. Techlandsoft also continued to show the award-winning game after the IGF at other events, including the ECTS.

Their work ended up paying off: Crime Cities and another game from the company, Mission: Humanity, will be published by Eon Digital Entertainment in October. The 60-plus staffed Techlandsoft is also working on a racing game and an RPG, as well as games that will use the Crime Cities engine.

Regarding the benefits of the IGF win, Beard said "[Now we have] a nice trophy to go in our reception area, and it has played a part in getting a multiple-title publishing deal."

Beyond that, Beard said that the award made it easier for potential publishers to remember them, a silver bullet against a publisher forgetting about them.

"The IGF prize is something that lasts," Beard said. "Many trade shows can show your product to people, but a few months later they will have forgotten about it. The prize we won is as relevant today as it was then, and it is not only something linked with Crime Cities, but to the Techland development team specifically. They have created a game that won a peer voted prize for Best Visual Arts. It is one of the major prizes available in the industry, not influenced by advertising, sales figures, brands, PR agencies, politics or anything else."

Preparing Kids for the 15th Annual IGF

Most developers (who are, of course, gamers as well) will heartily remember his or her last really good game of Quake, but few will think fondly of their last exciting game of Mavis Beacon or Carmen Sandiego. Few games have entertained as well as they have taught, which makes it that much more of an accomplishment for two educational games, Morphonix' Journey Into The Brain and Whoola's Acidia, to win the respect of the IGF judges.

Morphonix President Karen Littman said that games are a great medium to educate kids through. "Computer games are uniquely suited to weave together two things that kids love: knowledge and games. When these can be woven seamlessly, content becomes play and play become content. That was our goal as we designed Journey into the Brain."

Morphonix' Journey into the Brain

The Morphonix' team had been creating kids' educational software since 1988, well before the IGF. In fact, the festival would be one step in a long list of awards. "Immediately after the IGF, there was no difference [in the company]," said Karen Littman, Producer and Lead Designer of Journey Into The Brain. "We continued entering Journey Into The Brain in other contests and traveled with it."

Journey Into The Brain went on to win numerous accolades, including finalist for the 1999 Educational Title of the Year (9-16 years) from The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and Morphonix found a distributor for the product.

There are parallels between creating a game for adults and creating a game for children. For example, Littman notes the importance of graphics to immerse the player in the game. "Testing has shown us that kids are initially drawn to the striking art in the game," Littman said. "As they begin to play, they become captivated by the characters and game-play, which inevitably leads them to interest in the neuroscience content."

The other educational game that reached the finals was Whoola's Acidia, an online RPG that teaches 30 basic chemistry concepts through interaction. Though Whoola's Sridhar Iyer said that the impact of the IGF recognition was less because of the educational focus of his company, he said the acceptance helped. "The IGF gave us some validation."

Acidia is still under development and Whoola is aiming to release it later this year. It is also working on "two online massively multi-user educational games."

As for Morphonix, it is not currently producing any software, though Littman and others are working as consultants to game, software and web developers.

A whimsical user interface from Journey into the Brain

Perhaps with Journey Into The Brain and Acidia, though, Morphonix and Whoola respectively have already left their mark on a younger generation of gamers. And, maybe, the next generation will be inspired to enter the IGF years from now.

The Mercurial Ride of an Independent Developer

Becoming an IGF Finalist was a dramatic turning point for NSP (Never Stop Playing) Games, creator of the tactical combat game Torune (formerly V.D.). "I remember checking our web page one day in early February (1999) and finding over 400 new hits since the day before. We hadn't received half that many in the 3 months that the site had been up," said NSP Lead Programmer Everett Bell.

The three-man group had been working on Torune for a little over a year when they heard about the competition, making progress on the game in-between work schedules. Things changed after they were told that their game made it to the finals, Bell said. "After being notified that we were selected as finalists, we devoted every minute we had to improving the demo for the game as much as possible, in addition to getting everything together for the conference."

It was good that NSP kicked things into high gear, for nothing was the same after the finalist announcement. "Before the IGF, we spent months simply trying to track down the right people to contact who could actually get us closer to having our game published," said Bell. "Within days of being announced as an IGF finalist, WE were the ones being contacted by publishers, agents, and the media, all wanting to know more about the game. The publicity we received for [Torune] even before the conference was phenomenal."

Like other finalists, NSP fanned the flames of publicity, creating t-shirts, demo CDs and other promotional items to foster the buzz. It seemed to pay off, for by the end of the week-long Game Developers Conference NSP had two great publisher leads for Torune: one well-known publisher and one entertainment agency. "We spent the next few months putting some hard work into polishing up the demo and bringing it up to the current technology standards," Bell said.

Bell said NSP continued to pursue its leads, as well as creating new ones, but by the end of 1999 the financial state of the company was brought to the forefront. "By the end of the year we hadn't received any concrete commitments, and had to seriously start thinking about bringing in revenue to keep the company alive. [Torune] has been put on hold while we work to complete a few smaller games to generate some cash flow." Most recently, NSP has partnered with Cydoor Technologies and has created two free, full-version logic/puzzle games, with a third in the works.

Though the journey for NSP to get Torune published is far from over, Bell said they feel that the IGF recognition has put them a step ahead. "Just having the ability to say that we were finalists at the first IGF has really changed the way we are perceived by others in the industry. There are a lot of people involved in game development who can't devote the time needed to really get a feel for the abilities and potential of a small development group. Having the IGF under our belts has made quite a few people stop and take a little more notice in us."

As for Torune, NSP still has its eye on publication. "We hope to return to Torune soon," Bell said, "and know that when it is complete, it will have been well worth the wait."

A Developer's Work is Never Done

One commonality among independent game developers, especially those with little or no outside funding, is the battle to balance two professions: your passionate job in game development and your "real" job. Put in this light, it is amazing how beautiful the IGF Finalists games were, including Flagship: Champion.

The real-time space combat game was put together in a schedule only a hardcore game developer could handle. "We must have been the shortest development effort," said Keith Nemitz, head of the Flagship: Champion team. "Three months total for the first submission and another month or two for the actual conference."

A well-earned IGF recognition, indeed. But not without a price. "We were so busy, our website missed the original press release. Otherwise, we didn't pick up many comments. I blame myself for not promoting it beyond the conference. My brain could have been served as gelatin dessert," Nemitz said.

Positively, Nemitz and company are still hard at work on a demo release of Flagship: Champion. As for Nemitz, he works at the 3DO Company, currently creating an interface for a PS2 title.

And the best thing he's gotten out of the IGF recognition? "A lot of respect at my new computer game job. Game people know how tough it is."

Let the Games Begin!

As heard straight from the horse's mouth, gaining entrance into the IGF finals is no small matter. The third annual competition, set for early March of 2001, will bring about more innovative and interesting games. Now, like the next cast of Survivor, independent game developers know what they're getting into. Or do they?

Perhaps past winners can give some insight.

"Make sure you have a demo that you can do in your sleep and takes no more than a few minutes. Have a longer demo for those people who are interested," said Cognitoy's Kent Quirk. "Test everything. A lot. You'll be amazed at how easily people can break your code."

The finalists also note that time is a big factor: even if the deadline for next year's competition has passed, it is never too early to get started on a game. "Plan to demo the product early, and prepare a convincing presentation. For an independent developer, demonstrating a near complete game months ahead of the competition is very challenging." Vicarious Visions' Guha Bala said.

"Start last year," said Keith Nemitz. "Have experience building games, and organizing projects. Otherwise, look towards IGF's years in the future."

Getting to the actual finals round is only part of the battle, notes NSP's Bell. "We made quite a few demo CDs to pass out, along with printing up T-shirts and other promotional materials for the game. We wanted to take full advantage of what we felt was a very important opportunity for us."

Quirk also reminds finalists to cover the basics. "Wear comfortable shoes. Bring extra shirts and deodorant." With the adventures told by former finalists, this would be sound advice for before AND after an IGF win.

Despite the challenges, Morphonix's Karen Littman recommends the experience. "I'd tell them to go for it. The exposure is great. It was a good experience."

A special thanks goes to the IGF finalists for sharing their stories with us.

The third annual Independent Games Festival is planned for the second week in March in San Jose, CA, as part of the Game Developer's Conference. More details on the festival and the conference can be found at www.indiegames.com and www.gdconf.com.

Copyright © 2003 CMP Media Inc. All rights reserved.