For the final panel of the Indie Appocalypse, Unity evangelist, Oscar Clark, sat down a handful of indie developers to talk about why indie is the lifeblood of the mobile industry.
The panel consisted of:
- Danny Goodayle, Co-Founder & CTO, Just A Pixel
- Gina Jackson, Managing Director, NextGen Skills Academy
- Jana Karlikova, Project Manager, Stugan
- Kacper Gorski, Owner, Liberty Games Interactive, and
- Russ Clarke, Co-Founder & Studio Director, Payload Studios
Jackson's contribution to the indie scene is in providing decent training to young people, whom Clark spoke highly of based on a presentation he gave to one of the studio schools where he received the "toughtest, most interesting questions I've ever had."
Speaking on why making things that are fun matters, Goodayle spoke about the sense of "achievement" in even small chunks of time spent, which provides happiness and joy to all those who take part.
Gorski's experience of the importance of games is perhaps more interesting, as he says he "learned English just from playing games", and can therefore help in ways more than simply providing entertainment.
Jackson said that "as an indie you can take risks", which is the whole point of remaining independent as the major companies wouldn't want to work on games that aren't a sure bet, but she did want to dispel the "starving artist" myth of game development, saying "it's OK to want to make money."
The floor then opened to a couple of "indie heroes":
- Richard Franke, Director, Magic Notion*
- Ricardo Flores, Co-Founder, B5Studios
Franke asked the panel what opportunities for crossovers and different ideas, which Clarke responded to with his experience of "creating our own kind of theatre" by livestreaming development of the game and "dramatising" the whole project.
Flores asked what kinds of different marketing techniques could be used, outside of the normal YouTube and Twitch avenues that are available, to which Goodayle responded that it "doesn't make sense to compete with triple-A marketing" in doing interesting PR stunts as the budget is simply too high on such things.