The flagship effort in this campaign is the $20 million Pub Fund which Sony unveiled in 2011 in the hopes of enticing developers onto the PlayStation Network.
One indie that made the jump was US-based Muteki Corporation, the developers behind the retro RPG hit Dragon Fantasy Book I.
We recently caught up with Muteki's creative director Adam Rippon - who was featured in Sonys Gamescom 2013 press event - to talk about his company's experiences with Sony.
Pocket Gamer: As a small indie, how do you feel the market for the types of games you make has changed since 2006?
Adam Rippon: Interesting that you should pick 2006, which is the year Muteki was founded!
The launch of the iOS App Store in 2008 was the biggest change, and it was what inspired us to spend less time with contract work and more time making independent games. We had reasonable success with many of our indie titles on iOS, but by the time Dragon Fantasy Book I rolled around, the mobile market was such a crowded place that we couldn't get the attention that we needed to survive.
Thankfully, Sony is running their marketplace in such a way that professional independent developers can release their games at reasonable prices and with excellent marketing, yet not have to worry about a marketplace full of cloned, cookie-cutter, free-to-pay games.
Some degree of curation is absolutely critical to keep a store from drowning in its own products, and Sony seems to have found the perfect balance, in my opinion.
In terms of mobile games, you've been firmly on the side of paid games. Is that a religious rejection of free-to-play or just the way things have panned out to-date?
I'm not opposed to the concept; there are many free-to-play games I enjoy, and if I ever had the right idea for one, I would do it in a heartbeat.
The issue I have with these games is that nearly everyone in mobile focuses solely on free-to-play. I think that not only devalues games in general, but also limits developers to only making certain types of experiences. Artificially tacking a monetization mechanic into the types of games I like to make would just feel dirty and wrong.
Dragon Fantasy Book I was originally released for iOS in 2011. How did it perform?
Reasonably mediocre! It never hit a point where it was even close to sustainable, but it was enough that the whole team wanted to keep working on it.
Suffice it to say that if Sony hadn't stepped in, our whole team would have been up a creek. Selling a game that took as much time to build as DF1 for just $2.99 was suicidal, in retrospect.
What was the background to your initial move to PSN?
We were all intensely stressed out and frustrated at the time. Bryan and I went to talk to Sony and honestly believed that nothing would come from it.
We'd been burned and hammered so many times that it just didnt make any sense to us that Sony wanted to talk to us. But after that first meeting, we came back to the team with cautious hope. It was only a week later we had a deal!
How much work was it to port the mobile version over, and was the audience reaction different to what you had received on iOS?
Not too much work, but our engine was designed for portability from day one. We had our initial port running in 7 hours on Vita and 8 hours on PlayStation 3.
Of course, that's not to say we didnt have issues - our Vita version was basically solid, but our PS3 port had everything go wrong that could possibly break: issues with our audio driver, issues with supporting different kinds of televisions, etc. But those hiccups aside, we were received very enthusiastically by the PSN audience and I'm extremely happy to be making games for them!
Do you think you would have been able to develop Dragon Fantasy Book II without the support of the SCEA Pub Fund?
No. Sony saved us from the brink of death as a studio.
Were you surprised how open Sony is to indie developers?
I was very surprised initially, yes. Now that I've gotten to know so many people there, I'm never surprised by the good things they do - they're all just genuinely good people who love games.
I have no idea how that culture formed so quickly, but I am so glad it did, because they have changed the conversation in gaming for the better.
Do you think PS Vita still has a future?
I do, very much! I love the hardware, and there are a lot of truly excellent games that come out on it.
Based on our own sales data, I'm quite certain that the people who have Vitas agree whole-heartedly. I think there's just a relatively high barrier to entry for a portable at its current price point, so I feel like as soon as that changes well see a ton of renewed interest.
How would you compare your experiences developing indie games on the App Store with developing them for a PSN release?
Developing for the App Store (and mobile in general) is like being an unsigned local band, while developing for PSN feels like being a rock star playing a stadium.
Both are great, and I love and plan to continue to support mobile, but we could never have sustained our work with mobile sales alone.
Thanks to PSN, we're all able to eat.
Thanks to Adam for his time.
You can check out Muteki Corporation's website here.
