If you haven’t heard, we are in the middle of an apocalypse. It may not be the type you’re thinking of; it doesn’t spell doom for the indie game scene. This is a monthly collection of all-in-one games in a conveniently packaged digital magazine, from a diverse range of creators. That Indiepocalypse.
Indiepocalypse includes 10 games per month, one of which was personally commissioned by Editor-in-Chief Andrew Baillie. Starting in February 2020, the magazine has managed to collect 22 issues, as well as several bonus issues. You never know what problem you’ll run into from one problem to the next, each laying the foundation for potentially unsuccessful minigames elsewhere. There’s also no exclusivity clause, meaning developers are free to do what they want with their games outside of the magazine. Most importantly, every developer included gets paid. Baillie talked to me about how and why Indiepocalypse started.
Making a game is extremely difficult – so difficult that even releasing it, whether it works well or not, is something of a success. But when you’re an indie developer who’s spent hundreds of hours on a game, only to have no one buy it because it’s too short or weird, it might not feel exactly the same. Baillie was feeling this disappointment. At one point, they made short games that they thought were great, but they understood that for the games to work well commercially, they needed more than hours. It’s disappointing that there’s no way for shorter games to get attention, and Baillie thought it would be great if someone could sponsor and support a game. And then they think, “Well, what if I just did that? And then I just started doing it.”
The monthly issue has a unique cover that the artist can work on (“I just say ‘write Indiepocalypse on the cover, then really do whatever else you want.’ I really don’t care. heart.”). There aren’t any rules about what the game should be. “I wanted to be like chaos in a way,” Baillie said. “Whenever you get an Indiepocalypse issue, you never know what you will get.”
Baillie wasn’t wrong. November issue there’s a visual novel in which “a useless lesbian tries to get a girlfriend” (Flickering, Passionate, Phenomenal and quite frankly Yuki’s Mastery Quest for a Girlfriend (hot) ) !!! by milkkylemon, seen in the title image), while another edition features a game where you play as a grandma trying to retrieve her favorite book from a 1000-year-old skeleton (Astrid & The Witch by leusyth), and another about a trans woman who only worries about whether she’ll pass (I’m passing by Taylor McCue). The apocalypse is the embodiment of chaos, and the Indiepocalypse is no different.
Indiepocalypse was born not only from wanting a home for lighter games, but also out of frustration with the industry at large, including game festivals. Festivals often require you to pay a fee to submit your game, a standard that confuses people early on with Indiepocalypse. “Some of the first problems I get are people emailing me and saying ‘how do I pay you to be involved?’ and I was like ‘what, no, I pay you, that’s not how it works.’ “Baillie said.
Paying people for their work is super important to Baillie, even if they can’t pay much. Baillie went public about the fees and included the details in the journal: $20 upon acceptance, then 5% of all sales before the problem broke even, and 8% after. The reason Baillie is so adamant about paying people is simple. “You need to normalize the payers for smaller games,” they said.
Earlier this year, solo developer Emika Games announced that they will leave the game industry “indefinitely”. This is because players took advantage of Steam’s refund policy and refunded Emika Games’ Summer of ’58 because it’s under two hours long. There’s nothing Emika Games can do about it, and this is exactly what Baillie is talking about.
‘Players’ can generally identify with the idea that the cost of participating in a game should be correlated with the number of hours played. This leaves the most independent indie developers able to only support each other. “[It’s] Baillie says the indie indie developer’s idea is just to trade the same dollar back and forth. “And I like to think we are now trading between $20 and $50 back and forth, because of Indiepocalypse, but that’s still what you know.” It’s still something. Even if $20 is constantly trading, it can sustain someone for a short time and reinforce the idea that minigames are worth paying for.
“I like to think we’re now trading $20 to $50 back and forth, because of Indiepocalypse.”
However, ensuring that those dollars are moved is not always an easy task. Baillie is the sole organizer of the magazine, which means all the translation is left to them. At any given time, they’re dealing with three separate problems: running the game for a two-month break, paying people, and compiling PDFs for the next magazine and magazine ads. most recently released.
“The hardest part is really just getting people to notice it and care about it,” says Baillie. Marketing is a rough gig, and it’s even harder when you’re an advertiser of a niche product, and Baillie says that even if Indiepocalypse gets shared more widely, people don’t seem to really be. interact with it. One of the main ways Baillie tried to get more attention on Indiepocalypse was simply by emailing people to see if it would interest them. It has yet to prove to be the most successful tactic to date, but that doesn’t mean Baillie doesn’t have other plans.
“Now that other events are opening up, I think that’s how I can better connect with people,” they told me. Part of the inspiration for Indiepocalypse was comic anthologies. Anthologies are far more common in comics than in games, and something you’ll see at conventions very often, along with small, homemade comics that are just being printed at home. “I never really grew up in an area with a magazine fair or something…” Ballie explained. “The main inspiration for making a magazine was actually seeing self-published comics at the Toronto Comics and Arts Festival (TCAF) and the Massachusetts Independent Comics Exhibition (MOUSE). ”
TCAF organizers have also hosted an event called Zineland Terrace in the past, a tree-planting fair first introduced in 2018, where no limits were placed on the idea of u200bu200bthe idea. about what trees could be. Even outside of the magazine fair, just look at all the posters for TCAF in the past and how diverse they are, is easily comparable to Indiepocalypse covers. There’s a strong sense of DIY at comic festivals, something Baillie wants to emulate with Indiepocalypse.
Ultimately, however, the goals for Indiepocalypse are simple. “I don’t want to lose money every month,” Baillie said. They don’t necessarily want Indiepocalypse to be a major breakout, but at least they want it to be financially stable. this is a Patreon that it all comes down to paying people for their work in the magazine. Baillie is also interested in larger preservation works, comparing it to what the Criterion Collection does with film. They project commentary and interviews with people affected by the game and make weird or confusing headlines more accessible.
Indiepocalypse is many things. It is a collection of ideas from people from all walks of life. It’s comic presentation and writing and art. It was chaos. But really, Baillie was happy because that was what it was. They said: “I have always wanted to include this home for the non-luxury. And if it gets super popular, it’s not like I’m going to start including more famous developers. It just means I have a bigger platform to support anonymous people.”
