Indie Developers Speak Out on PS4 Development
Three studios share their thoughts.
Indie developers seem to love the PlayStation 4. The flood of smaller, console-exclusive projects coming to Sony’s next-generation platform hasn’t gone unnoticed, and some watching from the sidelines have been quick to grant Sony the indie crown. But is Sony’s indie cred legit?
For more insight on the changing indie landscape, we reached out to PS4 developers to see what they had to say about partnering with a reinvigorated Sony Computer Entertainment.
“We had a lot of questions about the PlayStation 4 before we decided to make it one of our launch platforms,” said Greg Kasavin, creative director at Supergiant Games. “All that got ironed out quickly as we spoke with Sony, got our hands on the controller and dev kits, and so on. We didn't have any significant reservations going into those conversations since we were naturally interested in what the PS4 would be like, and how it would be different from its predecessor.”
Transistor, Supergiant Games’ first project to be featured on a PlayStation platform, kicked off the extended indie segment of Sony’s E3 press conference. That night, the team revealed the PS4 as one of its key launch platforms, and according to Kasavin, his studio has been able to take advantage of the unique features of the DualShock 4.
“We were quickly able to get our game working with the new controller and get some interesting functionality out of it,” he continued. “And specifically through the light bar that flashes in unison with the voice coming from the player-character's weapon in our game.
“There's no push to shoehorn proprietary functionality or anything like that, so don't expect weird gyroscope minigames or anything. Although we were interested to see what, if anything, we could do with the hardware that we couldn't do before and quickly found at least this one thing.”
New hardware gimmicks and additional controller functionality can be a plus, but it’s Sony’s arms-wide-open approach with indies that has developers like Phil Tibitoski excited. As the president and community manager at Young Horses, Tibitoski takes comfort in knowing that even a project as peculiar as Octodad: Dadliest Catch has a place on Sony’s newest box.
“The casual nature of it all has been super comforting. They treat their devs really well and if we ever have any problems, I can just text our account manager,” Tibitoski said of the Sony experience. “I don’t have to go through any bureaucracy to get the help we need. They’re the kind of people that will fight for you and your work.
“I think what Sony is looking to do is have a large library of games that come from varying walks of life. They want to bring variety to their platforms so that any audience could find something to love about it. I also think it was a smart move on their part with it being a new console.”
The opportunity to be featured as one of the leading indie games on the next generation of hardware was a big step for Tibitoski and Young Horses, but as a studio with no console-development experience, they had some reservations. The original Octodad was only released on the PC and Mac, so the team expected adapting to a new set of tools would be a daunting task early on.
However, the PS4’s parallels to PC architecture led to a playable build of Dadliest Catch in a matter of weeks.
“Our team doesn’t have much prior experience with console development and so we did worry a bit about our ability to port the game,” Tibitoski admitted. “We knew we could do it, but weren’t sure how long it would take. To our surprise, it only took about four weeks of part-time work from one of our programmers, Kevin Geisler, to get the game running on PS4.”
Young Horses is one of the many up-and-coming companies that Sony has pulled into its indie ecosystem, but the message that the console manufacturer is shouting from the rooftops has also reached the ears of veteran game creators. Lorne Lanning, the co-founder and president of Oddworld Inhabitants, has been one of the most vocal supporters of the PS4, as well as Sony’s new take on smaller games. Even with development chops dating back to the early ‘90s, Lanning asserts that his current partnership with the PlayStation maker is the best he’s experienced.
“Simply put, it’s the smartest development environment that we’ve ever seen,” Lanning said. “I believe a lot of that credit goes to chief hardware architect, Mark Cerny, who has an incredible depth of knowledge and long-time experience in developing games. Mark has serious knowledge – and I mean down to the machine language.
“If you take his decades of development experience in delivering hits, and then build a custom tailored development environment that’s designed to facilitate developer needs… then I think that’s the system you’re looking at.”
These “smart” people nurturing the Sony environment aren’t afraid to take risks, either, which is another reason why Lanning believes the console will succeed.
“This is a system that’s going to allow innovation to happen faster and cheaper, which is a great, great thing. Innovative work needs to be delivered with less friction and a lower cost, simply because it will require more product cycles before something new dials the playability into a new genre,” he explained. “There needs to be more room to take chances and fail at them but still survive. This system gets closer to that goal.”
One big financial risk smaller teams often take is agreeing to keep their creative work tied to a single console, as fewer platforms lead to a thinner revenue stream. Lanning, though, argues that Sony isn’t concerned with locking developers up and throwing away the key.
“Sony’s outward projection is that they are less concerned about ‘locking you up’ and more focused on what helps you to build a better business for yourself, and what will enable you to build the best games possible with your limited resources,” Lanning argued. “That’s a big change for any console manufacturer, and it makes a tremendous difference toward the positive possibility. They are making the process feel that it is less about them, and more about you.”
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty will come first to the PS4 and after a brief exclusivity window, Lanning plans on bringing the remake to PC, PS3, Vita and Wii U. Microsoft’s Xbox platforms are notably absent from Oddworld Inhabitants’ list.
“We didn’t witness much support for our games on the 360 digital platform. In fact, we got shut out, and nothing on that front appears to be changing,” Lanning reflected. “Clearly, the Xbox 360 turned out to be a great platform for some indies, but for others the policies and practices created significant incompatibilities that amounted to total shut out.”
Thanks to a developer-centric relationship, smart architects, and ease of development, indies seem convinced that there’s no better place to make console games than the PS4. It’s a new era for Sony and the PlayStation brand, but it’s one that Supergiant’s Kasavin believes will persist for the foreseeable future.
“As long as the guys we've been dealing with at Sony keep doing the good work they've been doing, Sony's drive to get interesting games from smaller development teams on their platforms will continue,” Kasavin said. “I don't think the effort is coming from just one or two people there either, and that at this point there are a bunch of good folks over there who really love this stuff, believe in it, and are pushing as hard they can to make it happen.”
At Gamescom Microsoft officially lifted the lid on its ID@Xbox indie publishing program for Xbox One, although indie games may not show up on the platform until 2014.
