Five golden rules (for newbie indies)

Yes, and you could even convert her into a game designer for higher incomes, no?

The french wikipedia page has it, scroll down a bit for the chart (it's in french but very easy to read)

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaire_minimum

(It's not *net* income)

 

What building is yours?

 

"but I prefer she stays with me and cooks delicious food and take care of pets, etc."

I couldn't get away with that line of thinking at my household.

 

well, it depends on the talents and inclinations of one's spouse, obviously!

I suppose I could badger my husband to cook for me more, but while he's a decent cook our food tastes are sufficiently divergent that we eat most meals separately.

 

It's less built up where I am

 

Pfft. The only window view i care about most of the time is of those on my monitor .

Although if i decided to actually look outside, there is a big window in the next room from which i can see almost the whole city (and the sea) .

 

The south of france is a great place to go on holidays, but a terrible place to live in, pollution galore, unpleasant people, high criminality, 1h to get somewhere, 2h to find a parking spot... + extreme racism (tons of FN supporters in the south of france for some reason ) if you're not white. (my case so i know what i'm talking about )

For having living there for a couple of years, I don't understand why people think it's so great...

Jmc.

 

I am also from the French riviera (I am on holiday there right now) and I kindly disagree with your statement. Racism and pollution in Paris is way worse. People are friendly when you get to know them. And nothing beats 200 days of summer, BBQs on the beach, and 1 hour drive to go snowboarding on week ends.

Then again, I am caucasian, so I can't speak for the racism bit, but I prefer living here than being stuck in Paris...

 

It's illegal to do a barbecue on the beach on the riviera... Anyway most beaches have been privatised by the restaurant and club "mafia", and you can't even go freely on public domain...

Jmc.

 

It's illegal to do a lot of things in France, yet you can still do them if you know what you are doing. Anyway, you seem very biased towards our region, so I think you have made up your mind, I'm just letting other people know that they should take your opinion with a grain of salt...

 

Would you believe that I read every post? I am late to the thread, but thanks Jack. Good list. That list can always be expanded I bet, but those are some good core items from my point of view.

I am so glad I listened to #5. And one that I personally use that has nothing to do with success, but I wish all indies would follow:

Be original, defy norms, break convention.

Without that, it seems like a cardboard existence that can be had in any number of industries with the same moderate level of satisfaction.

I am definitely confused on the definition now, however. I thought once you developed and published a game independently, you might loosely hold the title of independent game developer.

You can certainly qualify that definition with adjectives like hobbiest, successful, profitable, or struggling...etc. You're not an author if you wrote and published a book that's for sale? It has to be profitable and the only thing you do? Missing the logic there...

 

This pretty much covers it:
Independent Film Made By Dependent 27-Year-Old


(And, not the view from my window, but the view from the hill I walk up every day on my commute from the bedroom to the study:

)

 

Releasing a book would make you an author. Releasing a game makes you a game developer.

And what's wrong with being a game developer anyway?

You can't claim to be independent if your game wouldn't get a publisher (or some other significant funding whom you would depend on to get the game done).

If your game is so small that you can do it on the weekends, then once again you're not independent. Where would the dependence otherwise factor in?

This can apply even if you're actually successful. A multi-million grossing iPhone game isn't an "independent game" either. There's traditionally no publishers involved so you're not indpendent of them. What you are in this case is a wealthy and successful game developer.

If "independent" no longer means "... of publishers" then perhaps someone could tell me what it /is/ meant to be of. Because every guy with a copy of devstudio seems to apply it to himself these days and I really don't know why.

 

The class of people who inhabit this board, myself included, would probably be better rounded up under the term "boutique developer" imo if they're doing it in a professional capacity. They're doing what larger companies are doing - developing games - just in a smaller and scaled down way.

That's also a pretty vague term, but at least it's vague in a way that doesn't give a built in misunderstanding. "Independent developer" is as rare in games as it is in films, but visiting the internet one time would leave you thinking that my mom is an indie.

Those doing it in a hobbiest capacity or not for profit don't need any classification at all. They're "printers" or "accountants" because when people ask "what do you do?", they're really asking about how you make your living, not what your hobbies are. You can tell them "I write games at the weekend" later, and you'd be amazed how few people would give a shit.

 

darrrrr

But I am curious then. If you go play a game (made by a boutique, or hobbiest or whatever you would consider them) you won't call that game an "indie game?" Would you first have to check the credentials and life background of whoever made that game?

"Or sorry, you worked as a waiter while you developed that game, so your game is actually a boutique game and you can only call yourself a waiter because you can't be two things. Or we can just call it a 'game' if you prefer - sorry but we have to keep in it broad and undescript so we don't confuse you with the real indies."

Sorry - some extrapolation there...but the question is honest. What do you call all of those games? And gamers who play them? 'Indie' seems quite fitting to me. A bit gray, granted.

 

I'm using the term "indie" because it lowers people's (gamers') expectations when it comes to visuals and makes them less resistant to gameplay mechanics not used by "AAA"/mainstream developers .

So why fight it? It has a positive connotation for us "indies" .

 

I always thought of indie just being a term used by someone who has their own company compared to working for someone else. Size shouldn't matter, because there are certainly indies making alot of money and those that don't.

 

About France (off topic), I have a friend(Asian) who went to France last year for business trip. He requested for a train ticket in counter with English. The worker basically ignored him and refused to sell him any ticket (At first). I'm not too sure if this is the problem of skin color or language use (most likely) but that was not the first time I've heard Asian tourists having "similar difficulty" in France but not so in other European countries.

If I visit France next year, I wish people will at least pretend to be nice (like the Japanese/Taiwanese ) even though I can barely speak French and do not look like French. Bonjour