WiiWare is a lie redux
The saddening thing about the WiiWare rejection is what it really means to be an indie developer. It appears that unless you have an ‘office’ location they won’t consider you. This means you have to have funding, how else are you going to be able to afford to rent or own an office? This is totally contrary to the speech given at the WiiWare summit and contrary to all the previous hype about developing for WiiWare. When I first heard about WiiWare it seemed like the ideal platform for the indie developer, it was certainly being touted that way even to the point where Nintendo claimed they were going to make it easier for developers to get hold of dev kits. The Wii summit only reinforced that view.
I like many indie developers before me started out in the games industry. I have served for over 10 years in various companies ranging from Kuju Entertainment to EA with my proudest achievement being the networking code for Mutant Storm Empire for PomPom. I learned a hell of a lot during that time and thought it was time to break free and give being an indie a go. I got a little side tracked from this and found out the hard way that unless you have a lot of funding you need to work for other people while working away on your own business - which is what I did.
I am not the only one in this situation. I know of at least one other indie developer who has far more experience than myself who is also expecting a rejection because of the office issue.
The most ironic thing is that in a home office you are pretty much going to find somebody there all the time whereas at an office it’s going to be vacant for most of the night and prime target for break-ins. In fact, at one developer I worked for we were encouraged to take the computers home at night because they kept being broken into.
I have since been told that the rejection letter I got was a blanket letter they send to all rejections.
Nintendo are obviously using this as a “cut off” point for developers - maybe they see the lack of offices as a sign of commitment?
I think it’s a bit harsh as some of the best games and most innovative code has come from indie developers.
I’m with you brother and I 100% feel your pain there.
I went to Apple instead for IPhone/ITouch in the end (the potential to be the DS killer at least).
I can’t believe Nintendo’s policy, especially when as you say you have developed on Gamecube etc. Nintendo for the indie developer, I don’t think so.
I’m kind of surprised myself. I’m no developer, but even I had read on countless Nintendo fan sites that it was an “open” concept and Nintendo was almost totally hands off. As time has gone on (and before I read this) I have noticed it seemed less and less likely — there’s clearly been some preferential treatment given to big developers/publishers and Nintendo still has full control over the release schedules.
Do you think things like Microsoft’s upcoming Community Games feature on the 360 might be a better chance at allowing smaller developers to create games free of these constraints? News like this makes me concerned that Microsoft is over promising too lol.
Yeh, talk about sending mixed messages.
As much as I find Microsofts offerings generally lacklustre, from what I’ve seen. the Xbox 360 Community Games is very likely to remain more open. Shame the only choice is to use XNA. (It seems alright as a framework, but I’m not a fan of being locked into one platform).
The danger is that Xbox Live Community Games will become a cesspool of rubbishy and broken games, but Microsoft seem to be trying to create a decent community-based ‘peer-review’ so that the broken ones won’t launch at all, and the best ones will filter to the top of the list. Hopefully other developers (eg Creators Club members) won’t use this peer-review to knock down good games that they see as competition to their own sales. As long as the community is big enough, that shouldn’t cause a problem.
I suspect one thing Nintendo is paranoid about is that WiiWare could have too much choice too early, splitting the gamers time and dollars away from their and their ‘friends’ offerings. It seems dumb though, they could always allow anyone to develop, but make no promises about what they will actually release on WiiWare (the risk being your that your indie game may never see the light of day if Nintendo don’t like it). Then it would just be up to indie developers to make such a great game that Nintendo couldn’t possibly refuse releasing the “next big hit”.