Tristan Clark, one half of the two person independent games development team, Launching Pad Games, has written a great article over at Arstechnica on the trials and tribulations of an independent games developer in New Zealand going at it on their own. Tristan describes the isolation of working as a small independent developer in New Zealand which at times can seem to be a world away from the important connection and relationship building opportunities in events ike the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Launching Pad Games has had to think local, reaching out to local developers like Sidhe and attending conferences like AnimfxNZ to connect with like-minded developers.
While they develop for a global audience through digital distribution, they've found that they're highly bound and influenced by the U.S market. As they target the iPhone for their development platform, they've had to concentrate on the U.S region purely because the sales numbers there outnumber other markets by a large margin. And like many local games developers can attest to, they are at the mercy of the U.S currency exchange rate and have had to adhere to the odd time zone and culture differences.
However, in the four years they've been operational, they've learnt a lot of things. One of those is to "emerge out of your shell" and to connect...
(Tristan)...business really is all about making connections with other people, so we've learned to prioritize those connections...
...if you’re a struggling indie game developer anywhere in the world, do me a favor: find those around you doing the same thing and talk to them. Everything good that has happened to our company is because of the people we’ve met.
A great write up. Read the article over at Arstechnica!