Why it's all about the Indies

OK, cheesy title, but, in many ways it's that simple. I'm Ron Meiners, and my background is all in online community, starting back in the day at Mplayer.com.  I've worked with a number of communities, and this has led me into the twisted realms of culture and social dynamics, to try to understand how people get along both online and in general (cause they're basically the same... or very closely related).  And there are certainly exceptions, as there always are, and most indies don't have the kind of budgets that big publishers do for marketing campaigns...

 

But while all that's said, I also want to point at the ways that our social dynamics, the ways we're wired to interact, and the ways we've evolved, strongly influence our behavior in large groups... and why a small passionate team can often perform miracles while a high powered and experienced large company will still be in meetings.  There are reasons it works this way, and you just have to take a look at it to see why.

 

First, let's look at the evolution of culture, how people have evolved to socialize and why. Basically, I think culture is sort of an ongoing, very dynamic, discussion among individuals in a group, to collectively understand how best to survive: how to behave well, how to be successful in the group (ie., popular, ie., datable), and how each individual can fit in with the others.  With me so far?  And again, all of this has come out of my experience working with online community, and in trying to understand why people behave the way they do.  Most CMs don't think in these terms, but most CMs haven't been doing this for the last twelve years.  So back to culture: in small hunter-gatherer groups, the big advantage we have is that we work together in very sophisticated ways, constantly exchanging information that enables us to leverage the best expertise in the group, organize teamwork, etc. And for... millenia, that's what people have been evolving: the skills to collaborate with small groups, and the ability to incorporate the best thinking of that group into what everyone does, so that we all have the best possible chance to succeed.

 

Or at least that's the plan!  Because it's fairly well agreed at this point that we can only really track about 150 individuals at any given time (the Dunbar number, of internet fame and fortune).  And somewhere a few thousand years ago, people started gathering together in larger groups, that's the whole rise of agriculture, the city, the state, etc.  And the reason this is important is that the very flexible cultural tools people had used for thousands of years stopped working so well because there were too many people in one place to track. 

 

So we developed fixed organizations, hierarchies, laws, kings and queens, lots of ways of telling people what to do in broadcast ways, because we no longer had the 1-1 connections to do it any other way. Institutions to direct peoples' actions, fixed rules, roles, power structures, etc. etc. Eventually this gets into stuff like trends and marketing and celebrity... all, ultimately, ways to try to tell people how to be successful.

 

So the point here is that big companies have to evolve ways to organize all their people, in ways that small companies can do much more naturally. Big companies need to have departments, managers, cross-department teams, execs, dotted line reports, etc etc... a whole mishmash of stuff to get everyone on the same page. 

 

So, barring a charismatic and super successful design lead (Will Wright, for example) the decisions about how to develop a game project have to go through a lot of cycles in a big company.  Well, then there's the design question too... again, barring someone outstanding to call the shots, the whole design process is another potentially very hairy set of problems, with a number of people with different opinions all having to agree on something.  

 

So before you've ever even gotten started, a big company can't just "do it", they have a lot of hurdles to jump to make sure everyone agrees it's the best thing to do.  Sometimes they do jump them all successfully of course... but man, sometimes they don't even get close.

 

Which happens with indies too, of course.  But if you want to get something done, a small passionate team that's worked together for some time and can hit the ground running?  A close-knit group that knows the strengths of the team members and that they have to pull together to succeed? and they usually have a great time doing it?

 

See?  Hire the Indie, every time.