Just got back from an excellent talk by Tom Fulp opening the interactive stream. 26-year-old Fulp took us through how he co-founded the San Diego-based Behemoth indie game development studio to turn his hit Flash game Alien Hominid into the console game Alien Hominid.
Take aways:
- self-funded; initially through one of the founders mortgaging his house and later by them selling Alien Hominid merchandise.
- hard to get the console dev-kits if don't have a publisher already. Microsoft and others have a program for unpublished game developers but still hard to get without previous game development experience.
- initial negative responses from publishers largely based on view that 2D games were not hot.
- one of the few "original" console games released in a year of sequels and movie tie-ins.
- they went with a publishing deal that meant less money but they retained rights to characters, sequels, etc.
- suggestion that sequels often come about because of extra ideas that couldn't be fit in the original rather than merely trying to cash in on the original success (expect a sequel to Alien Hominid but not as next game from studio)