Indie Game Development

Indie game development refers to Independent Video Game Development:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_video_game_development

So my experience with developing independent games is probably very similar to many hobbyists out there. I started by exploring the oodles of game building tools currently available. After several sessions with game engines like Allegro, Torque, and A7, I settled on XNA (a Microsoft engine). I banged out some game prototypes that had potential.

But at that point, how do you get your game distributed? And what if you want to build your game in an agile fashion, adding game features one at a time across several weeks? What if you don't want to commit a lot of time before finding out if the basic gameplay is fun?

With Metaplace, you can put a game out once it's roughly playable, and get near instant feedback. You can even allow folks to stop by and chat while you are coding it up on day one.

In Metaplace, I am building a tower defence game. After getting the game roughly playable, I posted to the forum for folks to review it. Within days I had several suggestions about how to make it better. I can now incrementally add those features and change the gameplay, then get quick feedback on it. If the game is fundamentally broken, it can be scrapped quickly without wasting a lot of energy.

Also, this doesn't apply to just developers and their games. An artist on Metaplace created a world just for the purpose of having a place to critique her trees. People would stop by the world, check out the trees, then post comments and suggestions.

So this, then, is one of the benefits of Metaplace. Rapid prototyping coupled with active feedback loops for the developers. And for the players, the ability to influence the game while it's being created.