mmmm - sad to a see a portal catering to non-casual indies go down.
"So as of today,
I'm shutting down Manifesto Games.
We started in September 05 because we thought that a combination of trends made it feasible to create a market for independently developed games outside conventional retail. The spread of broadband makes digital distribution even of quite large games feasible; growing disenchantment on the part of developers with the conditions of the mainstream industry mean many are looking for any possible alternative path to market; and the casual game market had already shown that substantial businesses could be built around selling games online -- games with characteristics quite different from those offered by the traditional industry.
Clearly, we haven't succeeded in realizing that vision. There are a host of possible reasons why; perhaps we launched with an excess of naïve optimism, through of course a surfeit of optimism is an entrepreneurial necessity. We did not achieve the critical mass of support by independent developers that we had initially envisioned (some of whom, bizarrely, viewed us as a competitor), though we appreciate the strong and enduring support we received from some. We always knew that the essential problem we were trying to solve was a marketing one, but we never figured out how to crack the marketing nut, at least with the minimal financial resources we had available. We failed to raise substantial venture money, despite engaging with many VCs over time. And of course, the recession doesn't help.
In the years since we started the company, there have been hopeful change in the independent games market; Steam has become a profitable and viable channel for some developers, XBLA and WiiWare for others, and the iPhone for still others. In addition, the casual game market has started to experiment with a small handful of titles that break the inordinately restrictive genre mold of that form. Attention paid to independent games by the games media has grown (though why is it that the Independent Film Channel covers the AIAS awards, and not the IGF awards?)
These are all positive signs, but they are dangerous ones, too; Apple, Microsoft, and Nintendo have complete, monopolistic control over distribution through their proprietary channels, and while they may, today, generously grant a high revenue share to developers who sell through them, developers are in the final analysis utterly at their mercy. There's no question in my mind that ultimately the channel owners will someday use their total control to demand an increasingly onerous share of revenues -- a pattern we've already seen in the casual game market, and through channels like IPlay/Oberon. The same is true, perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, of Steam.
In short, if a viable business ecosystem for independent games is to be established, it needs to be established on the basis of open systems and open markets, not proprietary channels. And that, I think, is inevitable; the whole history of the Internet shows that open systems and open channels rule.
Perhaps we didn't figure out the right way to crack this nut; and perhaps we were simply too early. "Being too early" is, in fact, much of the story of my career; I designed the single most successful online game for its time -- in 1989; and founded one of the first North American mobile game companies -- in 2000. In both cases, four years later would have made a world of difference.
I suspect (and hope) that this will be true of independent games as well -- that within four years, it will be a large, fast-growing, and highly successful segment of the game industry. In other words, Manifesto may be dead, but in many ways this is an excellent time to be an independent game developer, and the potential we saw when we founded the company remains.
I am grateful to all of the many people who helped us over the tumultuous years of our existence, but in particular to the people who worked directly with me -- Bill Folsom, Nathan Solomon, Eleanor Lang, and Johnny Wilson, each of whom contributed literally thousands of hours, almost all of then unpaid, to the venture. And also to Eric Goldberg and Kathy Schoback, both of whom were generous in sharing contacts and advice; and to our lawyer, Don Karl at Perkins Coie, who took us on knowing we were an unfunded and highly chancy venture and stood by us stalwartly.
To those who cheered for us and shared our vision of a thriving game market that rewards creative vision instead of licensed drivel and repetitive 'franchise' remakes, a place for exploratory design to uncover the true capabilities of the ars ludorum, a commercial channel where imaginative game creators can make a reasonable living on a far smaller scale than the conventional market, a future for more than the handful of genres the major publishers deem worth funding -- don't give up the faith. It will happen. One company's loss won't change that. The creative heritage of games will endure."