Stealth Bastard and the value of free

The great platform game with a new name for the study of the curve was released for nothing. But what is the developer going out?

Last week, London-based indie developer Curve Studios has done something that many companies have been playing games with little - gave the new game for free. The title is invisible bastard 2D platform game brilliantly for PC downloads, full of traps and enemies, but also a mechanism of light / darkness that requires the player to crawl through the shadows to avoid detection. The team refers to his project as Super Meat Boy meets Metal Gear Solid and the legend of "espionage tactics, ass" really drums home the analogy. It's fun, it's a great challenge and, yes, it's free.

But unlike many social gaming experience and other casual these days, in fact it is really free. It is not freemium, which is not "free-to-play", not asked to buy bigger, the shadows behind or new clothes for the hero. It's just ... for free. As expected, taking into account the sales of this model with the title of the piece and invisible bastard concept of participation was very good, which attracts around 25,000 users in its first week of sale. So far, the early adopters have accumulated more than eight years of continuous play. ("They killed 757,864 times, which makes us chuckle," says the producer of fear, Ed)

Why a professional studio to put a gem for nothing? Curve has two titles on balance there, puzzle and platform of action WiiWare Explodemon flow, what is the problem of giving things away? "Well, it does wonders to get our name out there," says the director, Jason Perkins. "We have accelerated our" presence "in the industry with Hydroventure / Master - Nintendo released last year and have been very critical - and Explodemon, but stealth bastard has our name on the public indie PC Gamer, which is a group of people who traditionally have not heard of us. This helps us to promote what we do in the future, but our current projects will not be released until the end of next year, so it's a great way to keep us in the heat of projectors. "

The way the game is produced may also have contributed to the decision. Designer Jonathan Biddle was built in his spare time in 18 months, using the intuitive development package, Game Maker. "I have been using for almost seven years and really enjoy it," he said. "It's very fast and flexible, and surprisingly it is actually capable of. I think in some quarters there is a perception that only used by children with stupid gaming platform, but there are some brilliant games manufacturers around like Cactus and Derek Yu, who have proven capable of doing much more than that.

"I made a prototype with all the features of our degree of self-published, Explodemon! In Game Maker, but was never published. It's really the same situation, but we decided that this prototype has been polished enough to be in the hands of players, and would benefit too. "

course, now that the prototype of the invisible bastard is out there doing very well, there must be a way to make money with it? Apparently, members of the community of PC gamers have been emailing Curve, offered to donate money for their development. The model is therefore closer to the way we do things indie - prototype, and open house

• "I know that there is certainly much more than we like to do with the game in the future," said Perkins. "We are interested in talking with publishing partners, where we could go with this, and even some of the discussions have already taken place. Explodemon Then we realized that our strength lies not in us to publish games and everything comes with it - we want to create original games, create intellectual property, and then work with others to help shape the success of doing business "

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encouraging is an idea, create a good product and they will come. Increasingly, the development of digital games is courting a fan base rather than spend money on marketing and public relations, or looking to make quick money in new projects. As Perkins said, "Building a community, committed and enthusiastic people - it has much more value to us now earns $ 5 for each download -. especially when the number was much smaller than the barrier in place We must show that it is as bright as we think it is, and 24,000 people have registered to play are a brilliant job for us test right ... "

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