Bit.Trip.Core

Mike Roush, the artist of Gaijin Games, got things kicked off at the indie game summit with his talk on Holistic game design.  The core takeaway from the talk was that the team at Gaijin Games (game designer, artist, and programmer) all have input into every aspect of the game.  This three parts: Concept (Alex Neuse), Programming (Chris Osborn), and Art (Mike) when approached holistically can make a game greater than the sum of its parts.

Gaijin holds brainstorming sessions to get everyone on the same page and allow everyone to contribute.  Ultimately, each person is the expert of their field and gets the final say.  Their first game concept was ‘Pong with Music’ and they planned over 30 levels.  Ultimately, when their publisher gave them only 3 months they decided to scale back the game and its price to $6 and about a 45 minute experience.

The 2 big takeaways from this panel were:

1. If your an indie with a team, make sure your team works together and you accept input from one another.  I would even advise you take it one step farther and accept feedback and input from the public during development as well.
2. Tailor your game to the development time you have and the price it will sell for.  Don’t spend 2 years on a casual game that Big Fish will sell for ony $7.

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