I'm not an indie in the manner where one actually makes money making and selling games, but I've made some freeware games so far that people seem to have liked.. (http://www.the-underdogs.org/search.php?search_designer=komppa) ..and I have some published mobile titles under my belt (www.fathammer.com). Anyway, I'm wondering, if I only want to concentrate on making great indie games, and not set up any boards, online stores, etc, what would be my options? Finding and partnering with some 'established' indie developer, and give him/her nn% of whatever gets sold is the best option I can think of outhand. As far as I know, realarcade and such are swamped with games and they don't really accept anything new, unless you know someone inside.
If you want to concentrate on making great indie games, keywords 'concentrate' and 'great', I don't see how you could go wrong.
Well, it won't make much sense for me to go through the effort of making a possibly selling game, if I can't get it anywhere to be sold. Thus, I'd have to get into creating sites with forums, online stores, etc, which I'd like to avoid.
I don't think that's the case. It's harder to get on portals because they are swamped with similar games, but there will be always demand for fresh ideas which fit to their audience. It's not easy to come up with new ideas, also the demand of quality games is continually rising (see the "what is polish" thread), but if you don't want to deal with the selling side at all, you better find a strong partner, which would be portals. There's also some press-release service available you could contract, but that's only a small piece of the whole picture. Just another 2c of a not-yet-published-indie-developer.
If you would trust your games to somebody - like saying we are - how could you be sure that they would spend enough effrots to sell your games by apporpriate way Sol? Note that we'd for example be insterested in exclusive deals only - we are not publishing but developing house. That's why your question is really hard to answer - you have pretty nice games at portfolio - but marketing requires amount of additional efforts. Being at your situation I'd probably run it through portals for beginning - you loose nothing at there - the worst thing they will not sell any single copy and use your games for promotion of their favorites. REM: Even after my always hate to current situation at portals Just my two cents...
There are a few indie devs who are also willing to publish other games. ZeeThree, which is a company started by John and Ste Pickford (who made Plok! on the SNES amongst others) are looking to go down that road. They haven't any website yet, not until they've finished their current game, but I'm sure they're not alone in that road. If you aren't interested in marketing or websites, and can't get onto portals, finding another developer to publish would be your best bet.
My rationale for this is that, a) they already have the infrastructure running, so they don't have to do much on that front. b) If this partner was a full-time indie, they would get games to sell with relatively little effort (i.e. the effort that it takes to get the game(s) to portals etc). I'd also provide any promotional material required (web contents, demo, etc).. Of course the deal would have to be exclusive, with a cancellation clause if things don't work out within some reasonable time frame. Just to clarify things; I don't have any game in works right now that I'd sell; simply mapping the options.
Well. We could try to help to each other to some of developers by such way. I'm speaking this specifically because this is not a real proposal but just kind of dicussion - OK? Otherwise we should start long discussions here at first with all our partners. In common you are right - it could be very helpfull and productive for us (for example!) as well. Right now we are loosing amount of our trafic and advertising for nothing - if people already came on site we could propose them another games as well. So... Not new (I was considering on this amount of times) but pretty nice idea.
I think it makes perfect sense to split the task of developing from marketing. At best, you have at least one person focussing of one part only, because both require 100% commitment. Personally, I like to do both, but I plan in the longterm to switch to one side and find a suitable partner for the other.
I'm of the opinion that marketing and developing your games comes hand in hand. Firstly, you would be the person to know about your target audience, and the best routes to go apropos of marketing. Secondly, as Eric Sink once stated, marketing and running ads etc, is the FUN part of doing business anyway. I don't know about you, but I'd rather create my own logo or website as a type of enjoyment, rather than pay someone $800 to steal my enjoyment. Jusy my 2 Cents worth...
Incidentally I'm wondering if uploading your game to a portal is such a good idea, especially if it's a good quality game that you take the time to devellop. I mean that when I look at a portal's page and I see approximately 50 different games crammed on one page it automaticaly decreases the relative value of each game. The consumer is not really compelled to invest more than a few seconds into each game. On the other hand, if you expose your few games on your own page and treat each one of them as a "complete" game with a shiny review and commentaries it gives more value to the game. Being an aspiring indie myself I have been thinking about the concept of sharing disttribution with an established colleague and it could be a great idea that would reward both parties but I don't know of any other devellopper wiling to do so for a fair price. Maybe they don't think it's worth the additional work.
Just to add one more comment. If we'd start such activity we'd obviously choose and accept only games going well with our specific audience. That's a big different from any portal - We have no power to promote any games - we just could collaborate with somebody appealing to our current audience.