Bill Harris and Inkblots
Bill Harris recently wrote about the evolution of indie games in a post entitled “The Inkblot.” Here’s an excerpt:
…if the community around the game is loyal, and if the developer is loyal to the community, someone will notice. And since just about everyone in the gaming press seems to know each other, if even one writer tries the game and likes it, he or she will tell other writers, and they’ll try it as well.
Seepage, in other words. Discussion of the game spreads outwards.
If the game is really, really good, all these people trying the game and talking about it reach critical mass, and suddenly everyone seems to be covering it at once. That’s how games with zero marketing budgets get attention.
On a personal level, this inkblot approach has always had a deep appeal to me, because it distinguishes games from any other kind of media. Could you ever imagine a book or film getting released, then continually being revised and polished based on end-user input? How about an artist having twenty revisions of a painting based on early viewings?
Great stuff, and another reminder that I need to poke my head into the indie scene more often.