Monday, May 18, 2020

Indie Developer Rebranding/Company Image/Acquisition/Buyout Ramble




So I saw the news about the rebrand of Mojang Studios today, and it has me reflecting/reminiscing  on how much their studio (and ours... and me) has evolved. The year Notch released Minecraft to alpha was the same year me as a college student decided to work on games under an (at the time) unofficial "Whim Independent Studios" label. That year was 2009. Due to the original founder's racist, sexist, and homophobic thoughts and opinions (and he has long since left the company), Microsoft made the move to largely downplay the founder's involvement in making it the success that it is, and I understand their decision on that. I would have done the same thing. That being said, I still wonder what he thinks about his indie creation blowing up into this giant phenomenon. While Mojang Studios is now a money-making machine for parent company Microsoft, whimindie is a small indie studio still done largely in our moonlighting time while we work our day jobs.

With the cross of indie games becoming mainstream successes, bigger companies are making pushes to buy out the indie and call their successes its own successes. Well, that's how most acquisitions are supposed to work, anyway.

Some background: As a gamer, I was really saddened by what happened to Rare when they got purchased by Microsoft in the early 2000's. (Rumor has it that Microsoft was even initially celebrating that they got the rights to Donkey Kong. Oops!) Either way, the Rare that existed after Microsoft's acquisition no longer had Nintendo's golden hand in creating the franchises that brought them to the fore-front, and it definitely showed in what I feel was a large decline of their games quality in the years passed. A lot of their awesome talent left, some of them went freelance or banded together and spun off into what's now known as Playtonic. And their games have gotten a lot better and I feel they're underrated. (I'm a huge fan of Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair BTW)

My initial thoughts when forming "Whim Independent Studios" in 2009 was not that it was after my last name or even that we were an indie game developer. Nothing was thought out like that. I gave it that name because I just thought of games on a whim and started creating them, and if one of them became enough of a success that a company would want to acquire the company, good luck, because we're independent. No one was going to take my company and my games away from me and ruin my franchises and company the way Microsoft did Rare. Can you tell bitter 18-year-old me didn't have the long-term business mentality?

It's been 11 years since then, and now I feel like I'm in a crossroads. We're making awesome games, we're making awesome content. What if we were offered a buyout in the future? Would I be willing to part with my stake and have a big company muddy my original visions of my games?

Maybe that viewpoint is still a bit unfair. The Microsoft we see today is a lot different than the Microsoft that existed in 2002. They have had many successful acquisitions since then and know where to leave them alone. They've also embraced cross-platform even more than Sony at this point. I really appreciate them allowing 'Cuphead' and 'Ori and the Blind Forest' on the Switch. Two really awesome games.

There's also the inevitable comparisons that any weird creative pursuit I have after that initial one will always be compared to the one that was the breakout success. Also the concern that what I'm making is on-message or on-brand as a subsidiary or with someone else pulling the strings, and that's almost antithetical to the mindset of an indie game developer. I don't want whimindie (or myself) to be known to just make one type of game. We should be able to make any type of game we want as long as it's fun and multi-platform. (Or maybe that is our message to stick to those two "defining" principles.)

I see things a bit differently now. If someone was willing to buy out my game franchise/company/ideas, I feel like I could eventually go on leave and try something else independently. When I was younger, I was so concerned about someone stealing my concepts or my games that I wouldn't tell anyone about them. Now I'll freely tell my stacks of ideas and diagrams that I know would be successful but no one really cares about doing them. And I know they won't. The really creative people I know have their own ideas and their own pursuits. I don't have time to do my other ideas/plans right now. Maybe I won't have time to ever get to them. I'm still working on finishing a game that was based off a mentality I had 10 years ago, let alone making a game that matches the tastes and views that I have now. Games take a lot of work to do. If someone were to capitalize on only one of my pursuits, I have many more I can follow.



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