Utah Area Indie Night - Thurs. Apr 27, 2006

[Greg Squire]

To All Utah Area Indie's,

Our next Utah Indie Night will be held on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 7 pm at the Ninja Bee offices in Pleasant Grove. (Kudos again to Ninja Bee for hosting this event). Email or PM me if you need directions to get there.

Format will be much like last time, an informal get together to chat, eat pizza, talk about the industry, see what others are doing, show off your current project and get feedback from the group, etc. Also, If you can, please bring some cash to chip in for the pizza and munchies.

The event is open to anyone with some interest in Indie Games, so feel free to pass the word along.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. Hope to see everyone there!

[Coyote]

I am planning on it. With a game demo. The last ones have been a BLAST.

[Greg Squire]

Looking forward to seeing more "Apocalypse Cow"! It's shaping up to be a fun game I think. Some come the 27th, I'll be asking, "Where's the Beef!" -- okay I had to "milk" that one a little. :D

[Coyote]

Man, I knew working on a game built around that kind of humor was going to lead to all kinds of punishment from the masses. Should I just cower in udder fear, or just steak it out?

[mrimer]

Hi, I'm Mike Rimer. Erik Hermansen and I are partners in Caravel Games and work on DROD together. He pointed out this get together to me and I'm happy to come to meet everyone there. I'm planning on coming with Adam Peterson, who's a school buddy and another guy who works on DROD. We need directions to the place, so I'll PM Greg.

[Greg Squire]

Mike, I just sent you a PM with directions. I hope to see you there. I really like the DROD series, and I look forward to meeting you guys. :)

Thanks also for "bumping up" up this thread, to remind everyone. Two days away everyone. Hope to see everyone there! ;)

[Coyote]

We had WAY more people there last night than we'd had at previous meetings. It was amazing. Nearly 30 people showed up, and I felt like I could only see about 1/4th of what was going on, because we were spread across multiple demos and conversations in two neighboring offices.

LOTS of networking, rants, demos, discussions about game design and marketing, and much more.

I blogged a quick take on the meeting (at least the parts of it I was able to be involved in):

http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/04/utah-indie-game-developer-meet-spring.html

Some of my take-aways:

* I really admire Headgate Studios for having some REALLY sharp guys working there, and also for being cool enough to allow them to work on indie games in their spare time, AND for not sucking the love of games right out of these guys.

* The desire to get back to doing games as an artistic endeavor, and create something where you aren't just a replaceable cog in the game-making machine is growing.

* The QUALITY of indie games getting created is steadily increasing. Just because of the talent and effort, not necessarily the budgets.

* The IS NO SUCH THING as an "average" indie game developer. Everyone is doing it for different reasons, and have very different goals. Some just seem to be scratching a creative or programming itch. Some are more financially motivated. Some are brand new at it, some are old industry hands who entered the business back when the Atari 2600 was the hot thing. About the only common elements was that they all seem to love making games - even (in some cases) the games that they personally aren't so much fond of actually playing.

[Greg Squire]

I was amazed by the turn-out last night. It was AWSOME! I am impressed by the kinds of people we have in Indie Game Development, right here in Utah (who would of thought). ;)

I put some of my thoughts about the evening here (http://monkey-time.blogspot.com/2006/04/indies-unite.html) in my newly created blog.