Braid: The Tip of the Indie Trend?

Warning: This column contains the kind of linkbait that can waste entire days. While all links are technically safe for work, they are not safe for productivity.

Xbox Live declared this the Summer of Arcade, and we here at GamerDNA have been watching and thoroughly enjoying the action. And by "we" I mean "the other guys on the team" because frankly, I sucked at arcade games when they required me to pour in quarters, and I still suck at them. I have the reflexes of an elderly tree sloth, and the nervous system of a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The combination means that eight year old girls peer up at me in pity, and say, "Boy, you’re terrible," in tones that sound like "Boy, is that skin condition catching?"

But I digress. The point is, we’ve been watching the new user trends for the first week for each of the games but one in the Arcade Summer. (At the time that Super Steve the Dataman grabbed this snapshot, Castle Crashers had not yet come out.) We took a look at the number of GamerDNA users per day buying the games for the first seven days of each arcade game’s release.

The big news of the summer, of course, is Braid. Not a sequel, with a built in consumer following, its only advertising appeared on the Xbox live marketplace. That conspicuous placement was the only lucky break this game needed, because it was that increasingly rare creature: A game so well designed that it gained popularity through word of mouth. Its new users per day score actually rose as word spread that this was a great game.

You can see that Geometry Wars slightly more than doubled their total sales in one week. Galaga just missed doubling their sales, and Bionic Commander missed by a little more. Braid, however, tripled their sales. Also, notice that the difference between Braid and the top seller (Geometry Wars) is essentially the same as the first day advantage. To me, that says that the top seller is only the top seller after seven days because of the built in crowd – the people who bought on the first day, the people who would have bought it no matter what. Finally, check out the progression:

Braid was slower to flatten out,and percentage-wise is selling more each day than the top competitor.

What’s really interesting to me (besides a giddy sense of triumph when word of mouth accomplishes something nifty) is what the game was. It was that classic, historical archetype of gaming, the "two guys in a basement" design team.

What? We still have Horatio Alger developers? Didn’t they all die when when casual games TOOK OVER THE WORLD and made billions of dollars? Popcap is the giant in the market (even though they started as two guys in a basement). Big Fish and Green Apple are also in the market of quick/shiny/fun.

Popcap’s latest hit, of which I have often waxed rhapsodic, is Peggle. Okay, I know, I mention it so much that SOMEONE ought to pay me out of their marketing budget or at least send me Peggle swag, but bear with me, it’s relevant. Popcap might have started with two guys working out of their house, but Peggle had a producer, two programmers, three artists, a QA team of eight, fourteen people on the "special thanks" list (recently defined in my hearing as "anyone who farted in the general direction of the project"), and so many beta testers that I got bored and wandered away mid-scroll. They had a sound guy AND they farmed out the musical interludes. Finally, they used the Popcap framework to save time and energy (more on that in a bit).

That’s not two guys and a basement. Yahtzee over at The Escapist has something to say about that, and while I agree, it’s a shame that professional outfits like Popcap have raised the bar on games so high that two guys in a basement can’t break in, that’s the price we pay for polished, high quality games.

Only, there’s Braid. Further research shows it wasn’t exactly two new guys in a basement (the lead guy has been around for quite awhile), but it was a small, totally independent team making a cool game without resorting to focus groups, market testing, or endless committee meetings. Apropos of nothing, the credits for Braid are incredibly inclusive. Guess when you’re confident you’ve done something cool, you don’t mind giving a shout out to everyone who helped.

This summer hit could well be the final piece of the puzzle that spawns a new generation of independent development. The tools have been around for awhile, and so have the distribution channels. Every great advance for the industry needs a spark, someone to prove that success – dramatic success – is possible, and that executing a unique idea is superior to slapping a new skin on old meat.