This post is a collection of links to stuff that I mentioned during my visit at Kevin Schut’s class on Digital Games as Communication. The talk was, roughly, on creative process in the mainstream game industry vs that in independent development, plus a look at what the indie game scene is shaping into today (or at least the parts I’ve found out about so far).  If there’s anything I mentioned that you can’t find here or via Google, or if you have any other questions, drop a comment here or email me at: josh at the domain thoughtlost dot org.  (Does that even fool spambots anymore? I have no idea.)

Linkfest begins after the break.

The presentation slideshow (not terribly informative on its own, just here for reference)

Scene websites:

• TIGSource and a defining moment; also check out their B-Game competition (not all the games are recommended reading)
• Independent Gaming
• JayIsGames
• Manifesto Games / PlayThisThing!
• Shmups!
• Arthouse Games
• Grand Text Auto

Info, analysis and rants about the industry

• Death to the Games Industry
• Are Retailers Actually Screwed? (Costikyan on why video game retail is broken)
  
• Greg Costikyan’s blog
• also see the video section below (Jon Blow’s video especially)

Some Notable Indie Devs

• 2D Boy (Kyle Gabler)
  
• Jonathan Blow
• Introversion (the literal poster-boys for the IGF awards)
• Three Rings
• GameLab
• Jonathan Mak (check out the demo video for Everyday Shooter)
  
• Jenova Chen
• Rod Humble (link goes to the page for artgame The Marriage – give it a try)
• Kenta Cho (shmup legend)
• Jeff Minter (shmup madman)
• that kid down the street (seriously, these days, who knows)

Indie dev presentation videos worth watching

• Jon Blow’s talks on indie developing – especially the first one; the second repeats a lot and doesn’t have as much Massive Controversy goodness. Also, he sort-of demos Braid in the videos, which looks to be amazing.
• “Innovation in Indie Games” panel from IGF featuring Jon Mak, Kyle Gabler, Jenova Chen, and Jon Blow. Worth it just to see Jon Mak speak at this professional conference in a way that combines “Yikes what am I doing here” with an insane passion for the artistry of what he’s doing.
• Eric Zimmerman at IGF on Casual Games (and he talks a lot about what GameLab does in general – good insight into how an indie company can maintain creativity despite being mediumly-large)
• Daniel James on Indie MMO development

Games you should try (other than ones you can find by clicking on the dev links above)

• Knytt Stories
• Cave Story
• Nelly Cootalot
• Oasis

Some other stuff

• Gamemaker
• IGF
• Indie Games
• ShmupDev (note the shmup comp they had here – a great entry from this is Garden of Colored Lights)
• AGS – Adventure Game System
  
• Garage Games, makers of Torque Game Engines – recently announced a move to put their tech into browser-based games, if I followed the post-corporate-merger PR correctly
• Brass Lantern (adventure game and IF site)
• Interactive Fiction: the IFComp, the Archive, Baf’s Guide, Textfyre, IFWiki

Whew, maybe that’s enough for now.  If I think of any other must-see refs later on I’ll edit or add them as comments.