Profile of 2008 IGF finalist: World of Goo

by Christopher Grant { Dec 31st 2007 at 10:05PM }

The indie game scene is hotter than ever, with recent darlings like flOw and Everyday Shooter making their way to consoles while Narbacular Drop was gloriously reimagined as fan favorite puzzler Portal. That's why we're always so excited about GDC's Independent Games Festival (confession: this blogger is an IGF judge).

The folks at Gamasutra aren't just coordinating the festival, they're profiling each of the Grand Prize winners. Most recently profiled was the lovely World of Goo (already profiled: Audiosurf and Noitu Love 2), which is coming to PCs in February of next year, and Mac and Wii "slightly later." Our favorite quote from the profile: "The community of lovable and terrifyingly capable indie developers is steadily making big budgets irrelevant." Ya hear that big budget titles, you're on notice.

Tags: 2D-Boy, IGF, Indie, World-of-Goo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

LaughingTarget @ Dec 31st 2007 10:08PM

Holy crap, that looks freaking sweet. I could easily get into a game like that.

Yoshi Likes Boys @ Dec 31st 2007 10:40PM

The indie game scene is NOT hotter than ever, three examples of successful ones does not make up for the fact that most gaming is occurring on closed ecosystems where big companies decide what gets through and the PC gaming world is hurting bigtime. The indie game scene is actually a bad place to be right now unless you have a focused plan. Years ago, when the PC was the place to be for gaming, indie gaming was in GREAT shape. That's how we got to this point.

Christopher Grant @ Dec 31st 2007 10:52PM

I see tons of financially viable models to distribute games, thanks to the prevalence of the internet, computers, and an increasingly savvy audience. Look at XBLA, PSN, and Kongregate for examples of solid distribution networks for the best of the best. Like blogs have done to writing, anyone with game design chops and an internet connection can get their game out there, in front of the entire world. I'm not worried about closed console ecosystems when I'm typing this to you on a Mac in a standards-compliant web browser that plays many of these indie games just fine.

Yoshi Likes Boys @ Dec 31st 2007 10:59PM

Well, this is a topic that actually interests me. How many IGF winners (or the teams therein) have actually gone anywhere? As a judge, I'd hope you'd be able to identify that. I'm not saying that they don't go anywhere, far be it, I'm actually asking.

I mean, I look at PSN and XBLA as platforms with a couple of "indie" games and a large amount of major corporation lower scale type games getting through. Is the ecosystem really open when you're talking about a downloadable arena still with only a select few companies making the decision as to what gets through?

I was more harkening back to a time when PC gaming was "all indie," so to say.

Will @ Dec 31st 2007 11:15PM

Why do they have to be financially successful in order to qualify as "hotter than ever"? Is Sweeney Todd a bad movie because it's doing poorly in the box office?

Besides, if they DID get endorsed by major companies and go mainstream.. they wouldn't be indie!

Joystiq isn't being published as a magazine, and they don't have a TV show, but I think they're doing fine as a blog. Just the same as these indie games will have fun and do their thing as.. indie games.

Note: Using Joystiq, a company owned by AOL, was probably a bad example on my part. Ah well.

Boostjunkie @ Jan 1st 2008 10:46AM

I think it depends on what you mean by success. I love the indie game Knytt Stories, it will even play on my low end laptop. Some people might view success as having a loyal group of users that love their product and making a little money on the side. Plus, I know who makes that game, I can't think of one persons name I know at Bungie.

Hung @ Dec 31st 2007 10:59PM

I wants.

DBuck_Eye @ Jan 1st 2008 1:07AM

Seems loco....Loco Roco!!

Capt. Castellanos @ Jan 1st 2008 4:40AM

sounds like an intro to a Tim Burton movie.
weird angles and echo-y(?) music.

movie-jabber aside, this looks promising.

Geist @ Jan 1st 2008 5:09AM

Uggggh why does this look soooo damn familiar? I feel like I've seen it somewher, notably the blobby-building mechanic, but I just can't place it. This is going to bug me for some time.

SeriousKriss @ Jan 1st 2008 5:56AM

Armadillo Run? Pontifex?

Geist @ Jan 1st 2008 5:58AM

Nah, I remember the goo thing especially. The best I can come up with is that I must've seen some sort of preview for this before, or some sort of demo version.

Iceman346 @ Jan 1st 2008 6:05AM

Probably because you played Tower of Goo which, judging from the video, had basically the same gameplay but the only objective was to build the highest tower possible and was released some years ago.
I guess it was made by the same people because it also looked quite similar, but on the homepage for world of goo it isn't mentioned anywhere.