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Indie developers discuss why they are the lifeblood of the industry

Or are they?

Indie developers discuss why they are the lifeblood of the industry

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:

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":

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.


Editor

Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.