Can a Indie make it? a little MGT history.

First, I just realized looking back at my last post, that I have not done a good job posting every month :)

So as I sit here getting ready to head out the IGC, WOOT!!!!! I have been reflecting on how our business continues to evolve as we grow, so I thought I would share a bit of our history with everyone.

For those who read this and don't know anything about Max Gaming, we were first incorporated in 1998 when we were doing backend systems for our Mechwarrior community sites and automated Leagues. Also at the time I was getting into 3d game modding with the Mechwarrior series and Shogo: Mobile Infantry.

In 2000/2001 myself and Ed Gardner (whom not only took part in my MW leagues, but was interesting in some V12 engine that we were all waiting to see :) ) start writing a design document for a game called Critical Subterfuge: Arena. A persistent Sci-fi FPS, with players creating characters and stables that battle in online leagues. This game was pitched to some relatively large publishers with one spending 4 months talking about the game with us until the "What else have you done in gaming" question came up.

After this rejection, Ed and I sat back and realized that we were going to have to make a game on our own, get it released so we could answer that question in the future :).

We then enter the "Lore" years of Max Gaming, years where most of us worked part time on making what we intended to be a quick project, and turned into a persistent fast paced Mech game, DH: Lore and followed by a re-release DH: Lore Invasion. Looking back, this is the game that helped build the foundation of where we are today.

Interesting dates in the Lore history:

DHL IGC Preview (October 2003)
Dark Horizons Lore release (April 7th 2004)
Dark Horizon lore version 1.1 (August 2004)
Dark Horizons Lore: Invasion (March 2005)
Lore IGF finalist (2006)
Dark Horizons Universe RPG release (April 2006)
IGF Compilation Disk May 2006
Lore on Gametap November 2006

During this time we also worked on another project close to mine and Logan Fosters heart:

Realm Wars 2 (This game was extremely fun to play at IGF 2005, and hey my difs definetly got a lot better from my early Lore work :) )

Realm Wars 2 (IGF 2005)

In the summer of 2006, we were offered a small contract gig to do Desert Gunner with Digital Fusion. This came to light based on the work we had done in torque with Lore and Realm Wars, and allowed our first 2 employees to go full time and get PAID!!!! (Logan and I had been full time with no pay for almost a year at one point in time)

Over the last year we have had the fortune to work on two released projects, one our own property.

Kachinko (December 2006)

And the other contract work we did in conjunction with our development partners at 21-6 productions:
Evolver Multiplayer (July 2007) for Tabula Digita

And soon we are completing work on another serious game:
Fire Fighter Safety (TBD)

Looking back over these last 5 years, i realized we have "shipped" 3 Lore sku's, a pen and paper RPG, 1 casual game, a arcade game (with PC version), a educational game, and soon another serious game. Not to toot our own horn, but WOW!!! We did it!!!

Though the last 2 years has been mostly contract work, which allowed us to go fulltime, I have to say that we are living the dream.

I wake up every morning, go to the office, and do something in the realm of making games for a living.
How much better can it get? Well looking forward into the next 12 months, it gets a lot better, getting back to working on our own games more, continuing to build our contracting business and some other stuff I can't yet talk about is shaping up to be what Ed and I set out to do 7 years ago :)

So what was the point to all this self love? Well recently I have been reading some posts that almost discourage indie's from following their dream, one even suggested that no studios had been successful from the GarageGames community. Well I am not positive how others judge success, but I think what we have done is a good start not to mention the pool of artists and coders that I know have made a living off contract work, and the following great indie studios:

21-6 Productions
Prairie Games
Pocketwatch Games
Plastic Games
Synapse Gaming

These are just a few that I happen to be able to rattle off, so if I missed you please don't take offense I just don't know everyone like I use to.

In conclusion, if you have a dream or desire to make a living as a indie developer working for yourself or a small indie company then I encourage you to do what it takes to get there. Even if the money isn't always great to start, at the end of the day its worth it.