Posts Tagged ‘indie’

Indie Bits features

Monday, May 21st, 2012

We were recently featured twice on local indie support site Indie Bits. The aim of the site is “to help people go indie in the games industry and make a living doing what they love”. It’s a great site full of case studies, guides, workshops, book and tool resources and even a few rants. All designed to help the indie community in their quest to make games for a living.

This site is useful whether you’re thinking about starting up a games company, have just done so or even if you’ve been going for a few years. Take a while to explore the site and see how much it has to offer. Follow its creator, Epona Schweer, for a constant source of useful information on going indie.

In the first Nnooo feature, Epona interviewed Nic for a startup case study. She wanted to know about Pop on WiiWare, the first game we released. She also wanted to know why Nic went indie and what lessons we learned from making Pop. There are some useful insights here for aspiring developers.

The second feature is a video interview with Nic at a local IGDA Sydney playtesting event. There’s also a Developer Data Box, which details some useful information on the company, including how much it cost us to make Pop and how much revenue it generated in the first year.

E3 Diary (part 1)

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

After the positive reception we received from our GDC Diary blogs earlier in the year, we decided to write another covering our experiences at E3 in June.

The Kings of Geeks

In the weeks before the conference our focus was to get our games into a state where we could showcase our latest builds. We had to ensure that all the new features we had in Spirit Hunters Inc were coded into a playable state. As escapeVektor: Chapter 1 was being bug tested, we were keen to have all bugs fixed so that we could show the final version in LA.

Unlike GDC, there were no formal press interviews being set up but we were still keen to show the press the latest builds of our games. Renting a booth at the show is way too expensive for a small developer like Nnooo, and if we were to do this we would need to have someone staffing it at all times which is just not practical for us. We needed another way to reach out to our press contacts which would not cost an arm and a leg. We also wanted to meet up again with the other Nintendo indie devs who we met at GDC. We thought it would be cool if we brought everybody together in one place. Then we could show everyone what we were working on and introduce our indie mates to some press contacts. (more…)

Rip Ten’s Impressions of escapeVektor: Chapter 1

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

We went to E3 in LA to meet the major console manufacturers and check out the latest video game developments, including Nintendo’s Wii U. On the night before the conference we held a drinks reception for press and some of our closest Nintendo indie developer mates. Justin Berube from games site Rip Ten came along to our drinks and took a look at escapeVektor: Chapter 1. This is what he thought. (more…)

Nic’s interview with MMGN

Friday, May 27th, 2011

When the guys from Australia’s MMGN website got in touch for an interview, Nic was there to answer their questions on being an indie developer, the state of the Australian market, and of course Spirit Hunters Inc & escapeVektor: Chapter 1. See and hear what he had to say to Stephen Heller from MMGN.

Indie Dev Insight – Nnooo

It takes drive, motivation and a creative flair to be successful in the games industry, and Sydney-based developer Nnooo have all of its bases covered. With a successful game under its belt and a series of popular applications for the Nintendo DSi to their name, we recently had the chance to catch up with founder Nic Watt and discuss his thoughts on the industry, and find out a little more about their upcoming projects. (more…)

The Indie Games Channel interview

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

We were recently contacted by the Indie Games Channel for a written interview. As well as asking Nic about the background to escapeVektor and Spirit Hunters Inc, they were keen to learn more about the game development process and the challenges of making games for different platforms. Finally, Nic has some advice for new development studios. (more…)

GDC Diary (part 2)

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Wednesday March 2nd – Frankenstein Creations and Positive Vibes

Our first full day at GDC started with Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata’s keynote conference speech. His theme was “Video Games turn 25” and it was fascinating to hear him talk about his experience of working with Shigeru Miyamoto, how the industry has developed over the last 25 years, where he thinks it will go from here, and of course that well documented dig at mobile games! It was a nicely balanced talk, about the good and the bad of the video games industry, made all the more impressive by the fact that English isn’t his mother tongue. You can see the whole talk here. (more…)

GDC Diary (part 1)

Monday, March 14th, 2011

We know you enjoy keeping up to date with what we’re working on and checking out what we’re up to when we attend conferences, so we thought we’d give you an insight into what exactly we got up to when we went to GDC in San Francisco. Here’s a little run-up info followed by a day by day account of our fun but hectic trip. (more…)