Brutal Gamer Interviews Arcen Games

[cupogoodness]

Originally posted: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2011/05/brutal-gamer-interviews-arcen-games.html

Brutal Gamer's Amy Nelson followed up her Tidalis review by interviewing us on all things Arcen and indie games. We discuss several topics including potential consoles/handheld devices we've considered for our games, as well as our selling points for A Valley Without Wind.

Here's one of the questions and responses from the piece:

"AI War: Fleet Command is a RTS, Tidalis is a puzzle game, and A Valley Without Wind is an action adventure. You seem to be hitting on all the popular genres. What do you have in store for us next?

Chris: Well, these are the genres that I have a lot of personal interest in — my goal was to never be thought of us “just a strategy game developer.”  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I have broader interests than just strategy games, and part of the freedom of being an indie is getting to pursue your interests.  I think we’re going to be busy with AVWW, and expansions and free DLC for both it and AI War for another year or two — ideally, anyway.  Beyond that it’s hard to say with any clarity, but we’ve got a lot of game designs floating around the team.  If there’s one thing we never have a shortage of, it’s ideas!  I think perhaps the most popular next project idea at the moment is a very streamlined turn-based tactics game built partly on the AVWW engine."

And here's a portion specifically relating to AI War:

"Arcen Games is a fairly new company, coming on to the scene in 2009 with AI War: Fleet Command, which has had 3 expansions since then. Were you surprised by the popularity of the game?

[chemical_art]

What is so difficult about being an indie game is simply getting the word out of your product. Part of the problem is that "indie" has the connotation of "bad" for many due to their horrible experience with the apps that phones use. They think all indie products can only be a cheap shadow of a AAA product, so never bother looking for gems.

I bought games for a decade from mainstream sources because the indie games would always be on the cheap rack of the store and they looked like they were made as cheaply as possible. It wasn't until I needed a fix of 4x that I bought Sins of a Solar Empire out of the box in a Best Buy. It was an amazing game, and thankfully came with Impulse which in turn showed me where all the good indie games were hiding. Since that time a year ago, most of my gaming money has gone toward indie games with only the best AAA games being bought from more mainstream sources.

Indie games remind me of games from the 90's : They take a cool concept, make it work, and then gather followers on their unique concept. Much better then the big studios policy of appealing to the lowest common denominator, in my opinion.

[Ozymandiaz]

Indie games remind me of games from the 90's : They take a cool concept, make it work, and then gather followers on their unique concept. Much better then the big studios policy of appealing to the lowest common denominator, in my opinion.

Totally agree! That is how all the best games I have played have been. Heck even now a days I lost interest in dragon age origins in favour of dwarf fortress that I have spent far too many hours on already and I am not sure I wanna go finish DAO again either...

Thats why I like arcen as well. Just making good games.

[Red Spot]

I partly agree, I dont think Indie games, by definition, remind me of 90s games. But they do tend to come with new, often groundbreaking aproaches where they show they do can think outside the box. Where the big, clumbsy, companies tend to just push out the graphically loaded games for € 50,-(+) a piece, where part 1-2-3-4-5-... are basicly 1 and the same game. Weird thing is, reading how people get annoyed by certain things, is that that seemingly does sell