With the video games industry becoming increasingly consolidated among a few large publishers, it's become harder
and harder for small, independent developers to remain profitable without the help of one of these major publishing houses. In fact, it's virtually impossible to get your homegrown title distributed on a home console, no matter how well it stacks up to the titles the big boys are making.On the PC side, the situation for indie devs isn't quite so dire, thanks to electronic distribution of these smaller titles being a much more viable option. Companies such as PopCap and WildTangent have found great success selling their smaller titles for under $20.
The burgeoning MMO market has also become quite a boon for small dev houses. San Francisco-based Three Rings Design is perhaps the best example of this, with their quirky MMO Puzzle Pirates becoming a large success for the company, despite their small amount of development
and marketing capital. With only three full-time employees working on the game during most of its development, Three Rings managed to successfully develop and launch Puzzle Pirates in December 2003. The game now has over 9,000 paying subscribers.Although the title falls into the MMO genre, you wouldn't know it at first glance. There are no levels to gain, no stat-boosting armor (or stats at all, for that matter), and no complex quests. Even combat has its own twist. As the name implies, Puzzle Pirates is all about the puzzles. Manning the bilge means matching up shapes in groups of 3 as fast as possible. Sword fighting becomes a head-to-head puzzle match up in the vein of multiplayer Tetris. Other puzzling tasks include sailing, and carpentry. As a crew, cooperation becomes necessary to survival.
We spoke with Three Rings CEO Daniel James about the story behind Puzzle Pirates, the future for indie developers, and where
the MMO market is headed.GameDAILY BIZ: How large is the Three Rings team? What previous experience does it have? Daniel James: The crew numbers eight full-time mates and eight part-time contractors, mostly in customer support. My background is very much in MUDs; my CTO Michael and most of our engineers came from a web services and classic games background. Only a couple of us have worked in traditional games companies, and I sometimes think that this is an advantage. BIZ: How did Three Rings fund itself for the couple of years before PP launched? DJ: Founders, friends and family. We were lucky to have enough money to see the game through to a reasonable point of risk-reduction such that we could persuade some friends to invest. Thanks to them, we finished her!Note also that we kept costs very low during development, ramping up from 3 full-timers to 6 during the first year and
a half, then staying at that level until quite recently. BIZ: What are the biggest advantages or disadvantages to being an indie developer? DJ: Firstly, I should say that I believe that Puzzle Pirates would not have been funded by any publisher, so the game owes its existence to our indie status.Beyond this, the principal advantage is that only you can make bad decisions. Working as a developer with external publishers or management removed from development, you have a client whose interests are not necessarily aligned with making the game better. Such relationships are prone to what I call 'Make it Pink!' syndrome, sometimes to be followed a few months later with a contrary 'Why is it Pink? It should be Blue!' Having control of your own destiny allows you to keep a singular vision and work efficiently to achieve that vision.That said, this luxury of self-determination is a sword that you can fall upon; we certainly made Puzzle Pirates more complex than we should have, and more external influences might have helped to focus the game. Many development companies (not just in games) with independent funding crash and burn due to lack of market focus or other kinds of kool-aid hubris.Disadvantages include having to risk your own money, having not very much money, and lacking the immediate distribution and marketing push that a publisher can provide. The latter has been our issue. BIZ: What is your ideal team size? Do you always want to remain small, or could you transfer the Three Rings philosophies to a considerably larger operation? DJ: Our intention is to keep the development teams on individual games small, but to grow the company with multiple games. Along with staff in customer support, marketing and so forth, we could get quite large over time.
BIZ: Do you feel that there is a "roadmap to success"
for indie dev houses? Any major pitfalls that need to be avoided? DJ: I don't think that there is such a roadmap; it's tremendously difficult. Certainly there are pieces of the puzzle, of which I think the primary one is choosing your battles carefully at the design stage, focusing on a project that is achievable with your resources and marketable.My two cents at the moment would be to create a title that slots into the $19.95 downloadable game category that is being aggressively marketed by the casual games portals. There's a glut of product in this market, but I think there are nonetheless tremendous opportunities and designs remain achievable for a small team. I would not advise new teams to start with an MMO unless they have mates on board with the technical and design experience.The pitfalls are many. Assuming that future funding will come along is the bane of many a start-up. Being over-enamoured of technology and convinced that some particular engine or widget is going to make everything wonderful is one that I've fallen into in the past. Technology does not make fun. You have to go for fun first and foremost, and then source the technology you need to create that fun. BIZ: How does a small operation like Three Rings market their title? I've seen ads on Penny Arcade; do you run ads anywhere else, or rely on a quality product and the word of mouth it brings? DJ: Most of our customers have come from word of mouth. We have distribution with shockwave.com and Popcap Games, and we hope to announce more online distribution deals soon. We are also working on a retail distribution deal that should be announced soon, along with more aggressive advertising campaigns for 2005.
Ye towne squareBIZ: Do you think the MMO market explosion has helped or
hurt Puzzle Pirates? DJ: I don't really think of us as directly competitive with 'core' MMOs. We may have lost a few players to World of Warcraft, but most 'core' players who play Puzzle Pirates enjoy it precisely because it's not whacking Orcs and leveling.This comes back to choosing your battles wisely. We make no attempt to compete with the key features of new MMOs like incredible graphics and production values. Our visual design is deliberately timeless, and our game design focus is on fun game systems (like, uh, puzzles) rather than content. BIZ: Why did you decide to eliminate the concept of "level" from your MMO entirely? How could you be so confident that that idea would be successful? DJ: Well, we've not eliminated it entirely. We do have experience and standing (competitive ratings) titles for each puzzle, but we eliminated any numeric levels. I was confident in doing this because, having
played them since MUD1 in 1982, I am personally thoroughly sick of level treadmills. In the end it was a gut belief that many other 'core' players feel the same way, and non-core players would never miss the level concept. Indeed, the absence of it makes the game more fun.We've not yet proven that the idea is successful. If we reach 50,000+ subscribers I'd consider it proved. Arguably UO (which lacks overall numeric level) proved that this can work a long time ago, however. BIZ: Do you think alternative MMO titles like PP or Ultimate Baseball Online (every player on each team is a real person) will eventually drive the MMO sector, or will "traditional" titles remain on top, with smaller companies carving out their own niche? DJ: I believe that the MMO sector has to move away from the traditional MUD formula to realize the ambitious dream of becoming a mass-market entertainment medium alongside television, movies, and the 'webternet.' If we don't diversify the gameplay experience and bring in new audiences I do not foresee a rosy future for MMO games. I believe that mature markets like Korea are already demonstrating this. Given the risk-aversion of the traditional games industry, it's up to smaller companies to drive this change. BIZ: Where is Three Rings headed? Over the next couple years we'll see further enhancements to the Puzzle Pirates experience, but
can there be a pirate-free Three Rings? DJ: Hah! Once ye've had the wind in yer hair and fresh-pillaged gold in yer hands, ye'll never ferget the pirate's life!We expect to keep expanding Puzzle Pirates for many years to come, but we also hope to start working on new games early next year.BIZ: Thanks for your time, Daniel. Looking forward to hearing about what else Three Rings has coming.
Article Source: www.gamedaily.com.
