What makes you say that? He did sorta try to resurrect The Bards Tale. It was poorly done though. The humor was on the mark, imo, but the game itself was not what I expected.

Resurrect The Bard's Tale? He made a bad hack'n'slash and used an old name to drum up some promotion.

As for Wasteland, obviously this is just my cynical opinion but so far their games are…

The Bard's Tale (but lets be serious - there was nothing even vaguely related to the original)
Linerider
Linerider 2
Fantastic Contraption
Shape Shape
Super Stacker
Hunted (looks OK for the MP crowd, I guess)

I see no sign of taking on a serious, large scale, hardcore RPG after eight years in business.

To me its natural. The only "big" thing in it is its publisher.

Meanwhile Devil Whiskey became forgotten too soon.

Didn't even know he made those others. Truthfully, I have forgotten all about Inixile since The Bard's Tale.

There is no way he could have made another game like the old Bard's Tale. No one would buy it now except for a few of us old timers. They would take on look at that combat style and say "ITZ NOT TEH NEXT GEN!" However, he sure as hell could of made it more like an rpg.

I'm not sure what he would do with Wasteland, but he's an idiot for just sitting on that IP when Fallout has reinvigorated the apocalyptic setting. Wasteland was one goofy game. If he redid that one instead of The Bard's Tale then people might not have come down on him so hard. Wasteland was silly to begin with.


The thing with Devil Whiskey is the devs screwed up big time. They went to all this trouble to make the game and got it into the brick & mortar stores for what? It probably cost them more to put it in the stores than to leave it online. That was their first screw up.

The second one was when they started charging yearly rates to be able to download the game. This was beyond contempt for the people who bought the game and I still have no idea what they were thinking when they came up with that idea. The thing was still buggy, too. Yet, the patches were slow in coming.

The third and last screw up is that they ditched the game. Just *poof* gone. Not sure what happened there, but now it's owned by decklin who WON'T charge you a yearly rate to just download the game.

If they had left it just on the internet then things might have turned out differently, but I suppose they lost a ton of money making all those boxed versions of the game and then just getting them into the stores. Indies are not AAA publishers. They can't expect to act like them.

There was a loophole where he could use The Bard's Tale name, but he couldn't make it related to the original.

Blame EA, if you want, they're the ones who own it.

Woo thanks for the links, I haven't yet read them not even your post or the thread, but I'll read those articles, then your post and the thread and will come back for commentating my relatively recent huge gaming change because of the iPad. No I don't have any solution nor certitudes.

Question on the comment about indi's being made by 'just one person.' Is that correct? IIRC, Vogel said he has 2 or 3 other people that work with him, and I can't image that Eschalon is made by just one person.

One person + subcontractors……

Art is normally handled elsewhere. From what I've read from various indie developers art is extremely expensive for them. For most of the indies I've been talking about the majority of the game is made by just one person, with a few subcontractors thrown in for good measure, just like GG said.

It sorta has to be this way. Indies can't hire on additional people in the beginning. Jeff Vogel being the exception to the rule rather the rule itself because he's been doing this for so long and has established a name for himself that he can afford a few other workers.

Armageddon Empires by Vic Davis was mostly made by himself. The art was handled elsewhere, can't remember who did the art at the moment.

Frayed Knights is being made just by Jay(I believe). I don't know if he is getting the art done elsewhere. I don't believe he is.

Think about all those mod projects that had a bunch of people helping out and yet died because of too many problems with too many people. Plus, I believe it would be very difficult for any indie to survive if there were additional people being paid by the revenue generated by the sales of the game.

You're welcome. There was an excellent interview done by N'Gai Croal over at Newsweek on Armageddon Empires. In the interview Vic Davis explained his approach to selling/making his game. N'Gai made a business model on the independent game business based upon Vic's interview and frankness with the sales generated for the game. Unfortunately, after N'Gai left Newsweek they took down his blog and I can't find an archive of it anywhere. It's not even on "The Wayback Machine" :)

The only reference about it I could find was my posts about it here.

I knew I should have saved that page. It was the best report on the indie business I've ever read. It really sucks that N'Gai left gaming journalism.

He has artists he pays with beer……

Argghhh you had to post that before I could fix it ;)

Oh and lot and lots of beer make for happy artists :)

If there are larger teams it seems to usually be part-time people or students trying to get a foot into the industry, e.g. Iron Tower or the guys making the Broken Hourglass. Read: enthusiasts not getting proper salaries. Broken Hourglass… hmm, that reminds me, haven't heard from them in ages.

I forgot about Iron Tower. I think the sheer willpower from Vince is what kept them going. :) I have no idea since I haven't followed them as closely as some of the others.

Broken Hourglass, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. They're still going strong as far as I can tell. The updates are recent. That's always a good sign.

Which is why I'd prefer doing text-adventures for myself.
I'm a little bit good at writing, but I just can't do anything in terms of drawing.
I have to draw a map for my newest story - but I just don't know how. I have never done it, and I just don't know what I could do and where to begin.
Plus, my fear to be laughed at (in this) is a great hindrance, too.
Which is the reason why I just stopped doing things I had the feeling I wasn't good with.

Or use an engine where you don't need to do the art. Example would be Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures. They have a ton of art for it now. Neverwinter Nights is also good, but it's not as easy to make adventures for that one as it is with FRUA.

This is, of course, if you didn't mean to sell it and was just making the game for fun.

My first steps would of course be for fun. ;)