In part two of the interview, Cat talks to Eitan Glinert, Fire Hose Games Fire Chief, about VR, the accelerator program that incubates indies, and gauche money stuff.
CAT: What are your thoughts about VR? And developing for Oculus?
EITAN: I was skeptical until I tried out the Valve test kits, and they converted me to a true believer. I still think we're still a year or two away from VR really penetrating the marketplace, but I think that by the later part of this decade we'll be seeing some really incredible VR games that will blow the current stuff out of the water. And I'll definitely want to make one or two of those games!
CAT: What does being an independent developer mean to you? And what do you think of the current indie scene?
EITAN: Indie to me means that you aren't getting paid to make your game, and that you're risking your own skin to create the game you're working on. I don't like the other definitions of indie because it gets bullshitty fast when you try to say who is and who isn't indie.
I think that the current indie scene is both fantastic and terrifying. It's fantastic because I've never seen more innovation in games, and I love playing games that feel genuinely creative and original. The quality of indie games feels like it's going up too. It's terrifying because I think it's a bit of a gold rush, with tons of people rushing to get "into" indie gaming, only to discover that it's incredibly hard to be successful.
CAT: Can you talk about the financial realities of being independent? I know that after the release of Slam Bolt Scrappers, things weren't always easy.
EITAN:As a lot of folks know it's very tough to be indie. Making video games as an indie has become something of a gold rush, there are a ton of aspiring developers flooding the market for attention, which makes it even harder for the average indie to make a buck. People who want to make an indie game need to have a plan nowadays beyond just "I'll spend a few months and make a great game" if they want to have any chance of success. You asked about Slam Bolt Scrappers, that was a sad story for us. We bet a lot on the game and had a lot of buzz around it going into launch. However it really underperformed, especially on PS3 due to the hack which caused the store to go offline for 2 months right after we launched. It even led to layoffs here at Fire Hose. That's the sad truth about indie development, usually it's not nearly as glamorous as you'd hope and there's a lot of failure!
CAT:Talk a bit about your accelerator program?
EITAN: Only because you asked me so nicely :) Our accelerator program is designed to help mitigate the gold rush problems I mentioned above for developers that work with us. The core idea is that talented developers work at Fire Hose with us on a daily basis and we help them make their game a reality, providing minimal financial support, networking help and guidance, and the resources necessary to finish the game. Then when the game comes out we take a cut of the royalties. It's different from traditional publishing in that we actually work in house with the developers, and we're developers ourselves!
CAT:Is it the first of its kind - why *didn’t* this exist before? And why were you the folks to notice and do something about it?
EITAN: Nowadays there are more people doing this sort of thing so it's not quite as rare as it was when we started a year ago. At the time I got the idea from the work I had done co-founding the Indie Megabooth - I was amazed at seeing what indies were capable of doing when they banded together and worked towards a common goal. I figured we could go the next logical step and actually help people make games, and that's how the idea was born!
CAT:And how do you go about funding the accelerator program, what has that been like?
EITAN:We're funding the accelerator with our own money, and now we're using Kickstarter to get our first accelerator game (Catlateral Damage) off the ground. I've been trying to raise investment money to bring on more teams, we'll see how that goes. If it comes down to it we'll just bootstrap the entire program with proceeds from our games and contract work.
CAT:Is this the future of Fire Hose Games? Will there be “Fire Hose” games or are you transitioning to solely incubating?
EITAN: That's a great question! I suspect we'll do both? I don't see us not making our own games in the future, and we're definitely going to be doing the accelerator. So a little of both I guess!
Day 6 | Fire Hose Games
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
This is why you get the GOG version on gog you can select the version of the game to download.
On pc fallout 4 fallout new vegas and skyrim are all broken on steam because they all got the same "next gen" update.
Skyrim dec 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/sky...
Can not find new vegas but anyone that modded it knows the script extender there was also broken
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
There doing the same on starfield with a mods store and blocking mods
There goal is like blizzard and what they did with fallout 76 you make mods they can sell and you become a slave.
On skyrim they have "trusted" mod devs now basically a badge that lets your mod on the store you get a crumb of the sale when someone buys it.
lol to the disagrees, the last Skyrim update broke mods too. They've been trying to kill mods to monetize them in creation club for years, it's not a stretch that they purposely put out patches just to break free mods.
The disagrees are from people who have common sense. They aren't trying to kill mods. Most mods for any game will break with a new update because they rely on files/code that have been changed. This isn't new. Even with Bethesda this would happen way before the creation club. Mod support is literally one of the things that got Bethesda to where they are, and they're one of the only devs that releases comprehensive mod tools for each of their games.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
LOL people are actually expecting massive improvements or something? From Bethesda?? the same people who released Skyrim multiple times and the all look like shit? THAT Bethesda? are people for real?
The ps5 version doesn't change a ton but from my small playtime it's enough to make me want to replay it just to have it running at 60.
A side note to this my PS4 version no longer boots after it's "update" so I guess that's what it feels like to own a Bethesda game on PC
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
Eventually they’ll realize the value is with the employee not the company. Buying an IP means nothing if the people who contributed are let go. They’ll get it one day.
tech is different because they buy threats and then kill them. Twitter bought Vine and did nothing with it. Despite people seemingly liking it. Could've had tiktok a decade before bytedance. go figure.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.
The Locust trilogy concluded with Gears of War 3. I don’t get how Gears 4 and 5 are “woke” .
So sad to hear about Slam Bolt Scrappers, especially the layoffs
wish nothing but the best for the team
I kind of hate that the indie scene has gotten so over saturated with people wanting to make a quick buck now, it kind of takes away from the guys who really put in hard work, time and effort trying to create something amazing or trying to be innovative. There is a lot of good that can come from indie devs, but the sad thing is that the mainstream gaming media; the ones who should be paying the most attention, usually aren't.
Retro gaming experiences would be completely dead in my opinion if it wasn't for the indie scene. That whole PSN situation long ago was a pretty bad situation it's unfortunate the team had to get hit with that hopefully the future will be brighter for them.
Definitely want to hear more from you guys in the future! Keep going strong.
I truly hope this team can find financial success with these endeavors.