Exposure is the holy grail of all up and coming indie developers. It's what they rely on to get their name out there for people to try their bizarre and often fantastic creations. With the launch of Steam Greenlight, indie developers have more ways than ever before to garner that exposure. However, Michael Gnade's IndieGameStand looks to one up the competition by introducing a perpetual 'pay what you want' service that does more than Steam Greenlight could ever hope to.
Michael Gnade interview
IndieGameStand is a service that launched this week which provides indie developers of both finished and unfinished games to showcase their product. Every four days a new indie game will be spotlighted and will be available to everybody for whatever price they feel it's worth. The people paying the average price or more will unlock additional content such as soundtracks, artwork, etc, but that's to the discretion of the developer. As a matter of fact, everything about IndieGameStand caters to the developer at absolutely no cost.
Projects like the ever popular Humble Indie Bundle are great ways to get the word out on amazing games for a very acceptable price, but more often than not, these games are already very successful. While it's not uncommon nowadays to see triple-A developers leave their studios to do something more independent, these developers, like Supergiant Games, are often backed by multi-billion dollar companies and that's not what IndieGameStand wants to focus on. Amazing as titles like Bastion are, IndieGameStand wants to provide quality indie games that haven't ever had a chance or limited exposure to the general public. As Michael Gnade says in our interview, some indie studios are one-man teams that aren't good at marketing and/or simply don't have the time to promote their games the right way. IndieGameStand is changing that.
Escape Goat is pretty damn cool. Try it in your browser right now!
For $100, Steam Greenlight allows indie developers the chance to get on Steam as long as the public believes it's worth their time. Without paying a single cent, indie developers have everything open to them on IndieGameStand and can even reward the people who purchase their game months after they've committed. Say you bought the overlooked Escape Goat on IndieGameStand right now, well, it currently isn't on Steam and that's unfortunate. However, once it gets through the community on Steam Greenlight and actually appears on the Steam service, the creator of the game, Ian Stocker, can simply upload codes to IndieGameStand. By logging into your account, you can painlessly retrieve the code and use it as you will. Factually, this also goes for anything any developer wants to upload including keys to multiple platforms. Pretty amazing sounding right?
According to Gnade, submission to appear on IndieGameStand is painless and each submission is reviewed by himself and/or his team. They want to make sure it's a quality game instead of a sloppy rush-job. However, he did state that IndieGameStand allows for Beta and even Alpha builds of a game to be showcased. So if you're an indie developer who's low on funds and want to share what you already have, IndieGameStand wants to see that.
The idea behind this site is incredible and since there's no risk because of the payment plan for everyone. Simply put, indie games of all kinds can flourish here. Saying that, there's still a day or so left for the amazing Escape Goat. Check it out at whatever price you feel is fair!
Here's some screenshots of what the developer portal allows developers to do. Enjoy!
Gnade and his hard-working group at IndieGameStand are constantly looking for insight into how to make the site better. So if you have any kind of suggestion, they want to hear from you directly.
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