This is a story from our community initiative to promote indie game development in India – Indie GameDev India.
NimbleBit is an indie development studio started by 3 friends, for whom, having a good time is as important as to make games. We talked to them about why Indie and how has been the journey so far? and discovered a lot of Indie wisdom. NimbleBit has been making waves with their multiplayer karting game, Zero Gear, and had some interesting insights to share. Brian Cronin did the talking on behalf of them.
NimbleBit, the Team [From L to R: Brendan, Gabe, and Brian
InGDIn: How do you define yourselves as indie developers?
I view myself as an independent developer in the sense that I depend on no outside funding or influence to make the games I make. I use my independence to simply make fun games that I myself would like to play. I don’t care much about “innovation” or 2D pixel graphic platformers. Fun and execution are first and foremost.
InGDIn: Tell us a bit about your company. Where you come from and where do you want to go? Why Indie?
NimbleBit is David Marsh, Ian Marsh, and myself. We all worked together at a couple other companies that went under because of the normal publisher/developer problems that always seem to happen. We just wanted to make games and not have to worry about all the BS. Naive I know, but so far it has worked out well enough. Bootstrapping it and going independent seemed to make sense.
InGDIn: What has been the driving force for NimbleBit?
That is a good question and one we haven’t really talked about as a company. I suppose my driving force is to make bigger and better games. Just the idea of all the games we can make is enough to keep me driving forward.
InGDIn: Tell us a bit about the games you have developed? How have they performed in the Industry?
I have made two games that have been released commercially. The first was a mobile phone (not iPhone, well before the iPhone existed) game based on the Da Vinci Code book. The second I am much more proud of and it was just released a month ago: Zero Gear. It is a physics based realtime kart combat game for the PC on Steam. It was a fantastic challenge to develop (taking about 2.5 years) and the finished game is actually pretty fun! It has been doing decently enough on Steam for the month it has been out. Another game I just made recently at the Global Game Jam is Path of the Monk, which is also a lot of fun.
Everyday getting to work on my own games is the biggest high by far!
InGDIn: How has been the experience so far? Some lessons learned?
So far the experience has been both very rewarding and very, very stressful. I work alone at my house which may sound neat at first but it quickly becomes a challenge to not become distracted and clean the dishes or take out the trash. It can be pretty annoying and takes a lot of self discipline. There were many technical challenges in the project as well. The biggest challenge being synchronizing a fully simulated world between 8 people that are geographically separated by any number of miles. However, finally finishing and releasing Zero Gear was awesome and something I won’t soon forget.
Most of the lessons learned so far have been how not to do something next time. I have learned a ton about the overall game development process such as how long something will take or how to simplify and automate the project. Everytime I learned one of these little lessons during the development of Zero Gear I would write it down and save it. I am already applying these lessons to my next project.
InGDIn: Tell us about your business model and how things fit in?
We don’t really have a business model. In fact, we actively avoid business whenever possible. Generally it is to make games and sell them on various digital distribution services such as Steam, our own website, or the iPhone app store.
InGDIn: How has social media helped you?
We definitely use social media like Twitter or Facebook to promote the games. We try to not make it spammy though. We only post things that are actually interesting and only post it once. We also make sure to communicate with the people playing our games as much as possible. I also like to use Twitter to communicate with other developers. It is really handy to be able to post a technical question out and get a response from another dev in a few mins.
InGDIn: What are the highs and lows of being an Indie Developer?
Having very little money is definitely a low. But then I get to learn how to cook a lot of interesting food at home instead of going out to eat a bunch, so that is nice. Having a flexible work schedule is a high but I usually just end up working a lot, which for me is also a high strangely enough. Being tapped into a great community of other independent game developers locally in the Bay Area, CA and over the internet is a great tool. Independent developers seem to generally want to help each other out.
Everyday getting to work on my own games is the biggest high by far. Realizing that I am depending on these games for my own well being is sorta a low.
InGDIn: Do you think the Indie Game Scene feels something like the Renaissance?
I don’t really follow the indie scene but I think it is great that people are making the games they want to make. However I only really play multiplayer games with friends and there aren’t too many indie scene games that are multiplayer so they don’t interest me. I wouldn’t compare it to the Renaissance.
The only advice I have in regard to getting rich is don't make games
InGDIn: What would you suggest as the model for indie development? How to survive in the industry?
My only model has been to save up, live cheaply, try to make a fun game, and hope for the best. If you can go on very little money then you can survive a surprisingly long time.
InGDIn: What should we expect from NimbleBit in the days to come?
You can expect more updates to Zero Gear and more iPhone games. That is the short term plan. I don’t even fully know the long term plan, haha.
InGDIn: Self publishing, Digital distribution, no more middle men? Any word of advice to up and coming Indies who have dreams of selling their games and getting rich(only to keep themselves in computers, internet and pizza of course)
There are always middle men. Some are better than others. One piece of advice for somebody thinking about going independent is to make a game at home after work. Something small. If you have the motivation to complete small games after work on your “free time” then you can probably do it if all your “free time” ends up being dedicated to making games.
The only advice I have in regard to getting rich is don’t make games.
With this post, we are starting a series of interviews with various indie developers from across the world. If you have a question you want to ask these developers leave a comment below.
We are soon following up with a review of Zero Gear, keep watching!
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