Manifesto Games Closes Shop

Who IS this Costikyan guy ? What has he done ? Evolution ? God, that was a badly designed game. Anything else ? Why does he thinks himself a game developer ? Computer video game developer, i mean.

He’s awesome as a tabletop RPG designer. Violence is amazing: http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf%20TARGET= and he worked on Paranoia

I never heard of Manifesto, but it’s always sad to see something die…

Also, about your comment on Castle Crashers being an indie game: what makes it an indie game?

I am not saying it isn’t, but it certainly is in a different situation than most indie games. Its development team is as large as some “mainstream” games’.

The only thing I see that makes it “indie” in the sense that most original games that are considered indie, is the fact that it is 2D and that its company is probably not funded primarily through their games. So is that enough to classify it as indie?

I know this is a bit off-topic, but I’m curious what people think about this matter. What do you think?

I always loved the concept of Manifesto! Games, still do in fact. It’s a big shame that it never quite turned out how I expected it to.

When it launched and turned out to be a pretty generic portal I figured “ok, not the best start, but early days” then every time I checked back it seemed that little ever changed. It needed some cool shit, I guess, and it never really got that.

I’m glad Greg is keeping up Play This Thing, his writing on board games and computer games is always a good read and it’d be a shame to see that disappear with the site. Sadly, it became the only segment I visited in the end.

@Skofo- The Behemoth doesn’t have a development team as big as other games… I’m not sure the actual number of full time developers but it’s between 3 and 5. They also had interns and one business guy. They weren’t funded by Microsoft, though they did have income from Alien Hominid. They certainly had more money and a bigger dev team than your typical garage indie, but they built the game independently and are certainly one of the biggest (if not the biggest) indie success story of all time.

Skofo, Castle Crashers isn’t an indie game?

Tom Fulp, the game’s programmer, started Newgrounds when he was still in high scool, and is still the site’s owner and administrator. He’s gone on to hire people who contributed to the Newgrounds community. Tom Fulp and the game’s artist, Dan Paladin, first game together was a short flash game called “Sack Smash 2001” where you play as a character with an enormous testicle sack.

Castle Crashers is entirely self-funded* through Newgrounds revenue the sales the game got from their previous game Alien Hominid (that started out as a small flash game), itself a small renassaince for 2d on next-gen consoles.

The music in the game was made by Newgrounds musicians. The voice acting was made by community members. The game was designed by Tom Fulp who also programmed the game (together with 2 more programmers and 2 “additional programmers”), by Dan Paladin who did all art (except character portraits which were done by a Newgrounds member). Is this a development team the size of a mainstream game’s team?

If Castle Crashers isn’t indie, I don’t wanna be indie.

*I don’t actually know this for a fact

Joking aside. I read the guy’s manifesto and holy crap I agree with the man and his comments about games being all about big budgets, etc. It is indeed about all about bigger rather than “better.” That’s not how things should be.

His heart definably was in the right place. Too bad what he tried to do with it, was a bit too little and too late.

I’m predicting that this comments thread is going to become huge.

I read the title banner as “Man Festo.”

What does this say about me?

Man im starting to get tired of people that disown something as soon as it becomes too succesful.

I think you guys need to look at “why” you like indy and stop arguing semantics.

Isnt the whole idea to promote more unique gameplay concepts and experiences that arent restricted in a mass market like they are in the pro league?

On topic, it seems sad to see this go down, but i would have to agree that they didnt advertise themselves well, im one of the many that had never heard of it….

“Isnt the whole idea to promote more unique gameplay concepts and experiences that arent restricted in a mass market like they are in the pro league?”

for me the whole idea is developers owning their own IP rather than publishers. developers having the creative control, and making games they enjoy rather than games publishers think will sell well. i don’t care if it’s unique or not, successful or not, etc.

whether castle crashers fits that, i’ve no idea. could they release it for PC if they wanted to? or does microsoft have that right? things like that are what make it an indie game or not, not things like its success or its uniqueness or its team size or budget

@Paul Eres reply,

Yep, I’d have to agree with Paul there. Do the guys that made Castle Crashers have full control of their property? If not, then they are not indie. Indie is as Paul stated, the ability to make whatever decisions you want without the need, help, or direction of a publisher (or investors). If you can develop a game and have the full say as to what, where, when it’s going to sell then you can check off the old “I’m Indie” checkbox. If, however, you’re forced to adhere to the marketing, publishing, and media tactics laid out by another company, (this also includes launch dates – if you have no control over WHEN the game is released then you really have no control) then you ARE NOT INDIE. Simple really. The word Independent is simple enough to look up online.

People can (and will) disagree – all they’re doing is living in denial.

Play This Thing! is awesome.

And Costikyan was involved with Paranoia and that scratchware manifesto I read years and years ago? Then he is awesome too.

I briefly browsed Manifesto Games but for some reason it just didn’t attract me. It’s sad it was closed, though…

@skofo – actually afaik valve still has some seperation into marketing d00ds and developers: the people that control the games are different from the people that make them. i haven’t looked that much into that particular company, but it’d surprise me if the developers (the people who actually make the game) have full control over their games and own the IP — as an example, let’s say the team that made portal wants to quit valve and make portal 2. could they, or could they not, because valve owns the portal trademark? if the developers doesn’t actually own the games they make at valve, i wouldn’t call them independent. of course there’s a lot of borderline stuff going on and this requires more knowledge than we have available to us, but it’d surprise me highly if there weren’t some guy in a suit and tie who was not working on the game saying ‘no, you can’t include this in your game, i’m the guy funding it and you just can’t do that, for marketing reasons’

Ahh, wait, no. I see what you’re talking about now.

Thanks!

they didn’t really have enough exclusives, yes. they should have, like, offered 85% to a developer in return for exclusively selling the game on their site. that would have brought some traffic if a few high-profile indies did that.

it was pretty high, i believe around 60%. which is a lot higher than you get from most portals: big fish games gives you like 20%; most portals take more than half, and that manifesto gave the developer more than half was a good deal

I think the easiest and most fitting description of indie is: if you have a publisher who controls your game, it’s not an indie game.

In other words, it has nothing to do with experimentation or artistic values, the size of the development team, if it’s online-distributed or retail-distributed (or both), and all those things. What matters is how much control the developer has over it, and of course if the developer is independent or not. Getting publishing deals doesn’t prevent your game from being indie, as long as you set the terms and don’t give them control.

“In the years since we started the company, there have been hopeful changes in the independent games market”

Calling the stuff I described above “hopeful changes” is a serious understatement.

“I suspect (and hope) that this will be true of independent games as well – that within four years, it will be a large, fast-growing, and highly successful segment of the game industry.”

If you read the paragraph before and after that, you’ll see that Costik’s point was that he hoped the potential he saw when he began Manifesto would be realized in four years from NOW. I thought I very clearly stated that I feel the potential he saw has been reached and that we’re only going higher and higher from that point. To be blunt, I think Costik was hesitant to admit that things have gotten good for independent developers despite the shuttering of Manifesto Games.

“Can we get a little positivity inside the ride please?”

I swear, some of you guys make assumptions about the mood of the site and where it’s heading based on only two or three posts…! I’m not sure how I could be more positive about indie games than I was up there, man.

I still have my old Paranoia book somewhere. I really need to get a session running with some fresh me… I mean, new players. :D

Ok, that was overly harsh – I do understand your point Derek. At the end of the day his opinion is going to be coloured by having a failed venture, but I think he was trying to optimistic despite this… His language was cautiously optimistic if anything, which is a lot better than ‘fuck you, indie scene’ which I kinda pictured when I read your post haha. I suppose it’s just after the Langdell Fiasco, the Xbox Indie Games palava and a bunch of reviews, the games of which didn’t hit the spot for your guys, it could appear that the scene’s not in great shape to readers of the frontpage.

But also I wasn’t specifically referring to you or the crew Derek, more a general bitchiness which seems to have descended on the scene as its grown. This is probably my own bugbear, and hence I’m projecting. So, sorry man!

@david – 40% to pocket is *way* better than most portals give though, including things like steam; i don’t know of anyone who would say ‘no, you take 60%, so i’m not putting my game on you, steam’

um, was this site hacked? am I the only one who saw a bunch of gibberish on this post and then a rather poor analogy about indie gamers and fish?

that’s a bug with the database or something, it happens occasionally; just reload and it fixes itself