What would it take?

[particle]

What would it take to create an open source centralising download and installation package for indie games? Like an Itunes for games.

Seriously, what would it take?

I look around and see all sorts of opportunities for game development slowly getting strangled one after another as large companies who control access, portals, hardware formats and all those other choke points first get sweet on the idea of indie gaming to help boost their rep, license a few lucky devs, and then either pull the gangplank up after them or squeeze their revenue model until devs basically get screwed again. It happened with Real etc, it's happening with Live, it'll probably happen with Steam eventually.

So what would it take to band together and stop this kind of crap from happening? It strikes me that the indie devs are always hampered by a lack of awareness on the part of the public. Nobody knows that they're out there.

So, what if there were a centralising app that handled all the crap that they, the public could use as simple as Itunes to download and play games. BUT this app is not owned by any one company, see. It's a common standard, an enabling standard that does four things.

1. It offers a handy aggregating site for indie games. It has rankings, 'things you might like', all that stuff.
2. It handles the downloading of said games. No going to lots of individual sites etc.
3. It installs of them invisibly. People double-click on the game, it appears on their machine. Bish bash bosh.
4. It handles the financial transaction side all in one central place (but doesn't take 800000% of the money for doing so).

Seriously. What would that take?

[Ricardo C]

Basically, Indie RealArcade? Not to be a downer, but I think it would be a dreadful thing to have to deal with. When I get games, I want to go to a website, and download with a minmum of fuss. Which is why I don't shop at RA at all.

[electronicStar]

It would be like one super portal. Except it would be more arrogant than a portal because it would own the hardware rights of entry and it would not be so great for the indie dev. Unless it is done by a company with moral principle but stop dreaming, this isn't how economy works.
BTW isn't that what XBOX live is already doing?

[Sillysoft]

Originally Posted by particle

Seriously. What would that take?

It would take somebody to spend the time and effort to develop it. If somebody made a post here saying "Here's the open-source code that I have written for a game distribution client" then I'm sure people would check it out, and maybe it would gain some traction. Until that happens, it's just idle talk (and it's the same "let us all band together in harmony" talk that has been discussed many times in past threads here, with no resulting actions that I have seen).

[Nexic]

Sillysoft is right, you can't do something like this without investment from someone to kick start it, and when that happens chances are that person will want to recover their costs (as they should rightfully be allowed to do). Then we bascially have another portal unless this person is INCREDIBLY generous.

[particle]

Not even just some sort of aggregating tool like an rss/podcast reader?

[Ricardo C]

But... Why? Who would be interested in an RSS aggregator for indie games? Us. That's pretty much it. The converted. The choir. The idea is to reach the legendary "mass market" the portals have all but cornered, yes?