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When I wrote about the gaming social networking site The Great Games Experiment, I got more than a few responses from the people at GarageGames, the indie publishing label and game engine developer that is building GGE.

One of the responses came from Jeff Tunnell, co-founder of GarageGames (and incidentally the producer or designer of numerous games including The Incredible Machine and Starsiege: Tribes). Curious about the plans for GGE, I asked Jeff if I could send him a couple of questions. He was happy to oblige.

Q: GarageGames is known for making game engines and publishing and distributing indie games. Why start a social networking site?

Getting games made is only half of the problem. Finding an audience once you have sweat out two or three years of development is extremely difficult. Even as big as GarageGames is, our audience is small compared to many of big web properties. Getting a lot of “eyeballs” to look at your game is important, and social networking sites are a method of allowing a community to create its own content and momentum. Having indie games presented side by side with commercial games should get more recognition for the indies.

Q: If I’m not mistaken, game pages on GGE are each maintained by a single fan (or a developer or publisher if they choose to take over). What happens when a game page is being neglected by its owner, or if he/she does a poor job managing it in general?

We have just instituted our first set of “section editors” that will look over different tags. Jay Barnson got RPG and Bjorn got the Free tag [the free games section]. These people have admin rights over their tags. We also have a bunch of people inside GarageGames that have admin rights, so we can transfer ownership of games. In addition, anybody can sign on to help maintain games even if they were not the original poster.

Q: Would GGE allow a developer or publisher to take over their game page(s) and remove information that is negative or critical?

We would hope that the information presented about a game stays neutral and factual. Reviews, however, can be as editorial as the poster wants. Facts can be changed to make sure they are correct. Reviews cannot be edited except by the original poster.

Q: The “buy now” button is now a user-contributed link to an arbitrary online retailer (Amazon, EB, etc.) unless it’s a game carried by the GarageGames Store. Will more advanced ways to purchase games be implemented on GGE?

Absolutely. That is a future method of monetizing the site. However, we have a bunch more functionality to add before we worry about the ecommerce features.

Q: Beyond expanding the MySpace-like functionality, what game specific features are you planning?

One of the first things we intend to implement is the ability for developers to more easily manage the prototype and testing phases of their games. Our Torque Technologies from Torque Game Builder to Torque Game Engine Advanced will all support “one button publishing” onto the GGE site. Imagine having a bunch of testers lined up on your developer account that are ready and willing to help you test your game. Finish up a prototype, and then click the OBP tab and, your game is instantly in front of your testers. On the back end, we will have forums (just finishing up) and bug tracking, so feedback to the developer is immediate.

We are also working on beefing up the Group tools, so gamers can easily build their tribes, clans, and teams on GGE. We will have forums, file hosting (for mods and levels), and many more features to easily allow a community based around a game to freely start and run a group, fan club, or community.

Q: When do you expect GGE to graduate from beta phase?

Web applications are never done. We will remove the closed Beta tag on March 5th, 2007. Once we are open to everybody, I would imagine our Beta status will stay in effect until Fall, 2007. Once we are done, we will still keep a full group of web developers on the project. We feel very strongly about the need for something like GGE, and will keep working on it for the foreseeable future.

Q: Finally, what are your thoughts on the current state of the indie scene in general, as well as your expectations for the next few years?

The industry is finally starting to recognize the Indie scene. GarageGames has been working for this since 1999, and as new people come in the market, they act like they are the first to recognize the market. But, everybody that comes into the market makes it stronger, and I think Indies have a bright future. However, not everyone will make it. In fact, it will be extremely difficult to make a living making games, but it is possible and will become even more possible for people that understand the huge amount of work involved in making a career of making games.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under Game Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.