Gamesandbiz blog has interviewed David MacMinn from Play This! Studios, a new indie studio that we've just added to our developers listing only recently. Play This! Studios consists of experienced games industry staff with a history at Krome, THQ Studios Australia etc that have made the move to independent games development. In the interview, David provides his thoughts on the current state of games development, and how that as well as personal reasons heavily influenced his decision to go into independent games development.
David reiterates what we are all pretty much should be aware of by now, that the games industry has been shifting rapidly over the last few years, and that the traditional way of making games is becoming increasingly more difficult to sustain, particularly with outside forces such as the GFC and our rising Aussie dollar becoming huge factors for the larger companies in the local industry. Smaller, agile teams working on fast-turnaround games for a variety of different markets are a less risky and highly more sustainable approach.
From gamesandbiz.blogspot.com...
(David) I think those companies that are agile, and have their fingers in many pies are the ones that will survive and grow. I don't think in Australia, the old way of doing business where you have 80-90 people on a project to make a boxed product can continue.
I think some of the companies like Halfbrick have shown how a mid size company (40 odd) can develop lots of smaller products, for lots of different markets and be really successful at it.
Those companies that combine medium sized work-for-hire jobs, where they are not locked in for years and years, while producing their own IP, are our best chance of moving the industry forward.
David ephasises that game companies need to be agile to survive, and it's ever more evident in his plans for Play This! Studios with the aim of having a mix of work for hire jobs and original iP, with multiple 3-4 person sized teams working on small projects for a variety of DLC platforms (initially for the iPhone and iPad and then to XBLA, PSN, DSiWare etc).
Read the entire interview at gamesandbiz.blogspot.com