Andy Kearney - Producer at Supersecretgamedev

While Andy wasn't allowed to tell us about his current job, his experience working on games like Blur and Angry Birds justifies his position. His lecture covered the process of game development and his role as a game producer.

The cycle was applied to both independent and triple-A development, this report will cover whether the overall "quality" is compromised when choosing one way over the other.

Indie vs. AAA

There are two paths of development in games because each have their own pros and cons, but the main difference is the amount of money invested. Triple-A (AAA) is a title held for large projects that have big publishers or rich investors involved, and independent (indie) titles are for the smaller projects with little or no monetary investment.

A developer post on Gamasutra (San Filippo, 2014) talks about their way of making money from indie development and what contributes to that. It's useful to read because it touches on the topic here by discussing the increasing quality of indie titles with each year because each indie developer is pushing themselves to be above the competition.

Because of the popularity of indie gaming, the quality must come from the idea or experience rather than production value. However, in the same article the author mentions the increase in "indie publishers" and other ways of funding your project. If people enjoy indie games because they rely on great development rather than expensive development, why would there be publishers ready to fund these projects? Crowd funding also makes me wonder, with games like Star Citizen (KickStarter, 2012) receiving millions in funding, why is it still "independent development"?

To conclude, and get back on track, I don't believe adding more money to a project either increases or decreases quality, it just determines scope. Going back to Star Citizen, what starts out as a small independent project can easily increase in scope, especially with around $77,000,000 in crowd funding - but the quality will still be dependent on the developer. In the end, it is all about the passion of the people creating the experience.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

References:

San Filippo, Aaron. (2014) Making a living with indie games in 2014 (and beyond) [Online]. Available from: <http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AaronSanFilippo/20140110/208431/Making_a_living_with_indie_games_in_2014_and_beyond.php> [Accessed 28 March 2015].

KickStarter. (2012) Star Citizen [Online]. Available from: <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/video_share> [Accessed 28 March 2015].