Independent Games Summit: Daniel James On 'Making An Indie MMO'

Author: by Staff

The IGS organizers are continuing to put online key video lectures from this year's Independent Games Summit, which took place at Game Developers Conference 2007 last March as part of the yearly Independent Games Festival - and which will again appear as part of GDC 2008 next February. The eighth lecture is from Three Rings co-founder Daniel James, noted for his role in creating successful PC casual online title Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. His San Francisco-based company has also released Independent Games Festival prize-winner Bang! Howdy and is working on the user-created online game experience Whirled. This talk features James' caustic, battle-tested opinions on a variety of topics around online games and being an independent operator in the game business - and goes into notable detail regarding Three Rings' monthly revenues and splits between products, as well as methods of growth and mistakes not to be made. Here's a direct Google Video link for the lecture, plus a higher-res downloadable .MP4 version and an embedded version: Here's the original session description for the session, which was run by the CMP Game Group (also owners of Gamasutra): "The business and creative mind behind games such as Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy discusses the practical logistics of handling heavily invested online game players as an independent developer, discussing elements such as when and how to update content, community management and keeping players interested, how to approach Beta tests, technical support, and much more - a key hands-on lecture for all those considering making an indie online game." (Other IGS 2007 videos posted so far - mirrored on CMP's weblog site GameSetWatch.com - are the indie innovation panel w/Mak, Blow, Chen, Gabler, Swink, and Matt Wegner on physics, alongside the Gastronaut founders on 'Small Arms' for XBLA, the Telltale folks on Sam & Max/episodic gaming, Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman on 'The Casual Cash Cow', and Braid's Jon Blow on indie prototyping, as well as Russell Carroll on 'indie marketing'.)