First things first: hello.

My name's Paul Taylor, and five years ago I helped to start a company that makes indie games.

I didn't know what indie games were (or actually what a company is) at that point. But I helped to start one anyway because I wanted to be involved with making games more than anything else I could be doing with my time.

The first thing I ended up doing was audio: this is something I've done for years and it was great to actually get some experience working on a game. Then I realised that nobody was going to promote the game, and therefore, by extrapolation, nobody would get to hear all of the audio I'd done.

I've found that the best way of promoting a game is to 1.) make something really interesting and then 2.) tell as many people about it as possible in a personal, polite way. This seems to be something that a lot of companies don't really grasp - they make something and then try to tell everyone about it through lots of expensive advertising.

Big companies can do that because they have data to help them predict how well a specific type of game will perform: it's a straightforward investment proposition. However, a large number of these more generic big-budget titles are failures too, proving that either their data is flawed or not detailed enough; or that they're not acting on it properly.

As an indie, it's impossible to afford advertising on this scale: you can never sling enough money at the problem to overcome your obscurity. You have to rely on people getting excited about your game, and then make up the difference with as much advertising as you can afford.

Most indie developers hate advertising: it's difficult, boring and ultimately not very satisfying: you see the response from ads and think - "All of these people like the game: if only I could talk to them by some method other than pushing ads in their faces".

Now, the fact that there are a lot of indie games out there seems like a good thing for gamers, because it means that indies have to make good games to stand out.

Unfortunately, some gamers are demanding that indie games get cheaper all the time AND that they increase in quality. This greatly restricts the type of indie games that can viably be made. Short, very cheap, art-house style games are in vogue - great if you like that kind of game; a disaster if you want to make bigger, fuller, richer indie titles.

So, if you want to make one of these "medium-sized games" what do you do?

Here's Frozen Synapse, the game we're working on right now:



It's a PC tactical game.

To make this game we set ourselves the following...

1.) A small budget

You can't make a game like this with zero budget - it needs people to work full-time on it. Someone could slave away at this for five or six years while maintaining a day job, but as anyone who has ever had to split their time knows, things are better if you focus on them. We used the proceeds from our previous game, and money from contract work to try and make this game as good as possible - we're still young (inexperienced) and idealistic (idiots)...

2.) A quality target

We want this game to blow people away.

Our last game was completely divisive - some people absolutely loved it, some people called us very rude names on the internet because they hated it so much. The press reaction was similar ranging from "WHAT???" to "this is pretty good / admirable". One site gave us an award for innovation, another one said that we should essentially be destroyed.

So, this time around, we have decided that the game HAS to exceed people's expectations, and that's difficult, because people expect a lot. We're working on it!

3.) A promotion target: people will know it exists!

I'm trying to use every means necessary to get people to pay attention to the game while it's still in development. Major publishers do this for a reason: it takes a long time to build a community around a game.

And you know what? I really, really don't want to be a dick about it. I don't want to spam or annoy people (sorry if anyone feels I've done the first, or that I'm currently doing the second!); I don't want to have to buy advertising. I hope by writing this kind of more in-depth blog about it, people will see that I just want to get our game the audience I think it deserves by sharing some info.

Luckily, other people now share my belief that the game is worth talking about. We've had a great response on Rock Paper Shotgun, Joystiq, TIGsource, Gamespot and a load of other places.

What I'm trying to convey is that if indie games are able to reach fans without advertising (i.e. through communities dedicated to quality games) then prices don't have to be as high, and games can be better! When you're trying to be the good guys (putting game quality first ahead of marketing, listening to fans of your game, taking advice from experienced people etc.) it's sometimes hard to get people to notice you. If you guys think that people in the Destructoid community would like this game - please, please tell them about it.

Even if we can't reach the main page and get the attention of everyone (we have tried!), maybe we can find some individuals who are interested within the community - I hope you think that's a valid motivation for writing about our game here.

If anyone is interested in the game - feel free ask me anything you like!