Indie game media channel

[zoombapup]

I'm going to post an entry on britishindie.com soon, but wanted to get some feedback from people on here, because I think it is something useful to discuss internationally.

I was reading some things on Robert Pestons blog this morning and watching his interview with Martha Lane Fox

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8222873.stm

I've been reading some of the coverage of the various events at the edinburough media festival, a lot of the various things around digital britain and some of the more recent piracy and media divergence/convergence discussions.

I've long been a believer that traditional media (that being hugely monopolistic, large scale fiefdoms of the likes of maxwell and murdoch, but also things like the BBC) are definitely in decline. The news features about falling revenues from regional news providers and decline in viewing figures for TV just reinforces my view that actually once everything becomes available digitally, all gloves are off.

Britain is in a very strange position in all of this. We have a very good background in high technology, but a very poor record of actively encouraging innovation and acceptance. Which means we can produce great ideas, only to have them taken to other places (usually the US) to gain acceptance and commercial profit.

So getting back to the point. It strikes me that once all of this fragmentation happens, the net result will be that viewing figures of a particular demographic will gain increasing value. Specifically, once advertising revenues return, its likely they will return online and across a lot more channels than before. Inevitably there will be an attempt at consolidation because managing a lot of channels is a pain. But for now, lets look near term and consider the implications.

The main implication, is that any channel with enough eyeballs in the correct demographic will start seeing a boost in revenues if it figures out a way to put advertising in front of people. The other implication, is that the channel will have to have a very solid stream of content in order to capture and keep those eyeballs, with fierce competition occuring. More and more niche targetting is pretty likely.

What does that mean for indies?

Well, I just wonder how many of you feel that longer term you will start considering yourselves as "media providers" and start acting that way in your businesses. Rather than just making games, you are essentially providing content, much as a current TV production company does. Once you accept that premise that you are a media provider, you then have to consider the other aspects of business. Things like collaborations, funding matters, partners, franchises, IP ownership issues etc.

While there will be many who will say "I just want to make games". There are probably some who are thinking about how they are going to make out in this new digital content age. I can clearly see some huge benefits for the people who can get thier content out to an audience. I remember reading a piece about Gabe Newell (of Valve software, owner of Steam) and him talking about how the number of players playing valve games using steam at any one point being equivalent to the viewer figures for a small US TV channel. He didn't give any concrete information on his thinking in terms of monetizing those viewer numbers, but you could tell he had thought about it.

At some point, we will all need to grow up a bit and consider these things. Not least the traditional media, who have long held gaming in very poor regard and who often villify games. But I think very soon they are going to be scrambling to get into the "interactive entertainment" marketplace, because that is where the advertising revenue will lead. It has already started happening with sites like CBeebees. I can imagine a large number of the bigger media corporations actively pursuing purchases of sites like miniclip and newsgrounds.

Do you not want to take part of that business? Do you ever think about how you can reach and retain an audience? I think now is a good time to do so.

[PoV]

Well, I just wonder how many of you feel that longer term you will start considering yourselves as "media providers" and start acting that way in your businesses. Rather than just making games, you are essentially providing content, much as a current TV production company does. Once you accept that premise that you are a media provider, you then have to consider the other aspects of business. Things like collaborations, funding matters, partners, franchises, IP ownership issues etc.

I suppose I've been looking at my game making business from that angle for a while. One of the company names+dot com's I turned down was a little more blatant in this regard (Dried Media). When I eventually registered, I ended up going with the suffix "Entertainment" for this exact reason. "What if I release a comic or music CD later? A DVD?" Those types of questions.

Video games are the amalgamation of all other major entertainment mediums, so it's always been my opinion it's our responsibility to be experts in all sides of media and new media. What we do and don't do for a project is up to us, but they should all be considered. And as content creators, what other content can we provide?

Some developers already go above and beyond. The minimum, is you see us making gameplay trailers. What we can also do is stuff like video development logs or podcasts. Show the game in progress, show some cool bugs, neat things behind the scenes, etc. Blogging too is a form of modern journalism. Information and news from the perspective of those in the thick of it.

For us though, much of this extra content is released freely to promote ourselves and our products (as it should be). But there will always be little chances to make a few more bucks. If making an webcomic, allow people to buy a printed copy or deluxe edition including it. If you have music, make a soundtrack. You can give away a 128khz MP3 version, but consider offering a higher bitrate, lossless, or physical copies too. If you logged your entire development on video, consider offering a special edition DVD at higher quality than youtube (then get yourself on IMDB YO! ).

It should be pretty easy to find the many ways we are content creators. You just gotta do it.

[cliffski]

I think this whole topic ties in to the topic of portals. I have no doubt that in ten years time steam and impulse will not just be sites that sell games, but they will be streaming video of live matches, interviews with developers, organizing lan parties, and probably they will own a big chunk of the developers that produce content, most likely very episodic or even streamed from their servers.

It's also likely this will end up as a subscription service. People like the 'all you can eat' style unlimited games or movies contracts, and people like valve can supply that.

So where does that leave us? I guess that means we have to either become portals or end up working for one. I don't think many of us here actually have the money to start up portals of that size. Theoretically banding together can create an indie portal, but that never ever seems to really work.

So the solution (if you want to stay independent) is tricky at best. You have to offer something thats better and more interesting than the content available from the portal/tv-channels. Content that people will pay for even though the portals have more eyeballs and lower prices.

Not easy

[princec]

The solution is just to stick to what we're doing. If there's any sniff of a massive idea for making tons of money by pouring other tons of money into it, someone with tons of money will do so, and basically I don't want to compete with them.

Cas

[zoombapup]

But surely the issue is that as a media conglomerate gets bigger, it loses its edge. Innovative products and directions are what startups are all about right?

So the question is, is there anyone savvy enough to really get a grip on aggregating some truly unique indie developers under a single banner. Not like the hippy style "indie portal" but like a really true media company that is simply buying up content for its channel.

I guess then we get back into the same issue that always happens when someone owns the channel. They get bigger and everyone else gets screwed

But its clearly coming. The change in media of all types is coming. I really do wish a few people would start banding together under some kind of marketing umbrella. Not least because then they can collectively bargain for higher return from any single portal. I guess then you get into the realm of trying to set up a competing portal, which wouldnt work.

I've no real experience of other media though. How do TV production companies go about working with the bigger media outlets?

It feels like right now there is a ton of risk and uncertainty, which suggests that right now there are new opportunities to try and leverage something bigger than just the indie games we are producing now. But eyeballs are incredibly important and so is having a lot of very unique content. Of course the ad revenues are nuked at the moment, so its unlikely anything will be built up right now, but that will reverse in due course.

Sounds like being some form of platform holder/publisher is the more powerful position. Something like blurst.com but with tons of eyeballs is likely to be a very attractive proposition for buyout by some rich media corp. I think thats where I'm heading with this. How do you turn from being an indie developer churning out indie style games, to being a media outlet thats strong enough, but small enough, to by a good buyout target for a larger media corp trying to consolidate its position.

The other side to the coin, is to work on games as a technology platform. I dont mean game engine wise, I mean literally on things like streaming live video from gameplay (game broadcasting) and the like. That opens up completely new territory and definitely looks appealing to investors. Hell, look at onlive. We all know it cant possibly work (any network engineer will tell you it cant), yet they got some pretty serious round 1 funding for it.

Personally, I think game-based sitcoms and the like are probably going to be quite interesting. Any form of long term persistant world which has a more social feel to it and less of a gamey feel. Something people could WATCH and still enjoy. My research area is in digital actors for exactly that reason. I can see a time when we dont watch TV, but we watch virtual actors performing different narratives. We might even jump in an interact with em.

Interesting to think about.

[Obscure]

Rather than just making games, you are essentially providing content, much as a current TV production company does. Once you accept that premise that you are a media provider, you then have to consider the other aspects of business. Things like collaborations, funding matters, partners, franchises, IP ownership issues etc.

I have noticed that some teams I have worked went through a very marked evolution. When I first meet them they "just want to make games". With a little bit of pushing they realise it would be nice to "make games and get paid for it" (as in paid by the publisher). Then after a little more time (of getting burned by publishers/distributors/portals) they wise up and realise that they need to look after their own business because these other companies aren't going to. IP ownership, looking for funding, marketing, potential new markets - all these become things they actively consider in an attempt to get control over their own fate.

[zoombapup]

I have noticed that some teams I have worked went through a very marked evolution. When I first meet them they "just want to make games". With a little bit of pushing they realise it would be nice to "make games and get paid for it" (as in paid by the publisher). Then after a little more time (of getting burned by publishers/distributors/portals) they wise up and realise that they need to look after their own business because these other companies aren't going to. IP ownership, looking for funding, marketing, potential new markets - all these become things they actively consider in an attempt to get control over their own fate.

Yeah, I think thats really it isn't it. Trying to get some control over your own products. Selling directly does that, but obviously its a huge task to gather up enough paying customers to get there. Plus it will never scale too well if it's just a small company producing one game a year or some such.

I guess the other side is a service based game viewpoint making online games. But I feel like that is an even bigger task than selling directly.

What *might* be more do-able, is to get a whole bunch of indies to sign up to some media representative for PR and the like. Having a single company really flying the flag for the developers as a whole.

Weirdly it was that kind of thing that Gathering of Developers had as a plan if I recall correctly. Only, they didn't do it that well

I'm still at the "get a great product" stage myself so it's not a huge concern. But at some point I'm definitely going to employ a PR/Media person to push the product across as many channels as possible. Just seems to make some sense to me to do that.

[wazoo]

Weirdly it was that kind of thing that Gathering of Developers had as a plan if I recall correctly. Only, they didn't do it that well

I'm still at the "get a great product" stage myself so it's not a huge concern. But at some point I'm definitely going to employ a PR/Media person to push the product across as many channels as possible. Just seems to make some sense to me to do that.

Late to the party, but I was thinking "GoD" as I was reading down through the thread. Great topic.

I think GoD was an awesome idea, but I think the suits got involved and screwed it up royally by trying to stab each other in the back to be labeled as "The G" in "GOD"...

Almost everyone jumped into "Indie dev" to seemingly escape the rigors and controls, investors and publishers of the AAA industry, only to create the same box in the Indie world.

[gutripper]

Interesting thread. I think about this stuff quite a lot, actually, and have done for many years.

A difficulty I see is that going cross media can be quite expensive and needs expertise beyond just game development. I'd love to create an IP that works as a game as well as other entertainment forms, but my expertise is as a programmer, so to do something really appealing, I need expertises of a variety of flavours, such as writing & art.

These all cost $$. And the main sources of funding for such an endeavour at this point in time is...a publisher? Angel investor? not sure, but they all have a cost.

I think that if "somebody" make an indies media channel, there'd be two scenarios : there are no gatekeepers and the channel gets flooded with niche and/or sub-standard crap, and it's hard to find the good stuff. (Take XBLIG as an example). Alternately, there are gatekeepers that impose restrictions on quality and content (for example to ensure that a product has a potential audience), in which case, how is it different to the current publisher/portal model?

I'd like the see the GoD model done well. Working on an XBLIG at the moment, I've had thoughts about aligning with other 'quality' XBLIG developers to collectively raise the profile of our games. Haven't done anything about it yet though.

Even better I guess would be to gather some people from different media (game developers, authors, musicians, filmmakers) together to collaborate.

[Cevo70]

I'd like the see the GoD model done well. Working on an XBLIG at the moment, I've had thoughts about aligning with other 'quality' XBLIG developers to collectively raise the profile of our games. Haven't done anything about it yet though.

Even better I guess would be to gather some people from different media (game developers, authors, musicians, filmmakers) together to collaborate.

I've thought of the same. Honestly I am surprised it doesn't happen more often - when a couple of successful, like-minded developers get to together to combine/expand a fan base under one banner. It seems like that would be the starting point for expanding into other media as well.

[zoombapup]

What would probably be more beneficial, would be to find a PR/Media company contact and then try and gather enough interesting projects and people together under that one contact to give them something to push.

The biggest issue most of us have, is that we simply cant finish enough games at a quality bar high enough in a short enough space of time. But collectively maybe we can do that. At least from a PR sense, enough developers banded together might be able to pull off some modicum of organised press effort.

I'm sure this happens in other media industries. I guess a lot of that is partriarchal and you get someone like Robert Redford deciding to fund a bunch of film makers and setup the sundance festival. But we don't have the luxury of that kind of philanthropy in the games space (or to be fair the types of money Redford has).

But I do get the feeling that it wouldnt be impossible to at least raise awareness if enough people banded to gether under some overarching brand. But again, it would end up boiling down to ownership of said brand and eventually become a nightmare as more people want in, but some people want to veto etc.

Essentially, you'd have to strengthen it by giving some central agency negotiating power over the entire group, which I cant see happening in the indie space.

Anyone know indie film much? How do they go about it?

[gutripper]

I'm not an expert on Indie film, but I think they have more industry development funds and grants and the like. I know here in the state where I live, the state government has a film development body that can assist filmmakers to there productions off the ground. There is no such organisation for game developers (indie or otherwise).

Many of the larger studios have small satellite indie studios. Also, there are more "talent scouts"/agents looking for films to promote, and generally the channels to get the "product" from the creator to the audience are more streamlined. I think because film has been around longer, the indie side is more developed. Our "mainstream" industry is still < 20 years old, really, so the indie side has a long way to go before it's known exist to many people. (Though that does seem to be changing lately).

I do like the point about the central agency though. Hmmm.

[PoV]

Honestly I am surprised it doesn't happen more often - when a couple of successful, like-minded developers get to together to combine/expand a fan base under one banner.

It happens often enough. The problem is plans fall through... often.

Opportunities to brag about failed "alliances" don't really come up that often.