Mode 7, developers of the rather successful Frozen Synapse, spoke to GI.biz about what it takes to make it in a sea full of Indie developers. Apparently, it takes just one essential ingredient: Steam.
"That’s one of the best things about Valve, they won’t say 'you are doing this' - which they could do very easily - they’ll say 'this is the kind of thing we want to do, this is why, how do you want to go about it?' It’s great, it lets you try stuff.
"We’re doing some stuff on Steam that people don’t normally do, like the free key for a friend thing, or offering the soundtrack as a separate thing you can upgrade to. They’re quite different, and Valve had to do some actual system-related stuff to allow us to do that. For an indie game that doesn’t have a lot of clout, they’re surprisingly flexible and that’s great."
"When you’re a company with that much power and that size, you have to strike a balance between doing things that benefit you and things that create a good eco-system for everyone," he added. "I think they’re pretty good at that, and they think very seriously about it. It is astonishing just how important they are in terms of the PC. Steam is really essential for indie games at the moment."
"We’re doing some stuff on Steam that people don’t normally do, like the free key for a friend thing, or offering the soundtrack as a separate thing you can upgrade to. They’re quite different, and Valve had to do some actual system-related stuff to allow us to do that. For an indie game that doesn’t have a lot of clout, they’re surprisingly flexible and that’s great."
"When you’re a company with that much power and that size, you have to strike a balance between doing things that benefit you and things that create a good eco-system for everyone," he added. "I think they’re pretty good at that, and they think very seriously about it. It is astonishing just how important they are in terms of the PC. Steam is really essential for indie games at the moment."
GI.biz has the full interview with Mode 7. In addition to the praise for Steam, the interview touches upon the success of Frozen Synapse, what it took to fund the development of the game, and more.