A site dedicated to Retro/2D indie games?

[Nightcrawler]

An idea came to me, but I wasn't sure if there were any similar sites out there or not. It seems there are few people these days developing retro looking and/or 2d indie PC games. Being of the old school variety, these types of games appeal to me most and I'd love to see a central site covering these kind of games. Kind of like the old 'The Second Dimension'/the2d.com was.

Certainly covering the freeware variety would be cool, but how about providing a commercial platform as well? Assuming the site grew, it could offer these indie devs much exposure and a centralized community home focusing on these types of games. Maybe the developers and the site could make a small penny off selling them via the donation/set your own price system or other small fee. The idea would to grow a notable platform for independent game developers creating 2D or retro style PC/console games that are otherwise a niche group nobody knows about, brushed under the carpet by most publishers.

Are there any sites like that that exist? Or how about just a site focusing on these types of games with news/downloads/resources etc? I haven't really seen too many, definitely not any that cover all of what I envision.

I'm thinking ROMhacking.net for 2D/retro indie gaming developers, except full legality for all. RHDN does much for exposure, community, and platform for ROM hackers. The same could be applied to 2D/retro game developers. I know it's a small market, but so is ROM hacking, but more and more people keep popping up.

Just doing some thinking and looking for some similar natured sites.  

[ultpaladin]

I've been playing this old school RPG for XBox Live that was developed by an indie developer.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585504bd/

Of course there are also a lot of RPGs being made for RPG Maker some of which are being sold like Laxius Force and 3 Stars of Destiny.

[Princess]

The new site you have in mind seems like it could be beneficial to a number of different people. I'm still amazed at how much RHDN has grown and expanded over the years. It would be great to have a similar site available for game developers.

[Nightcrawler]

I did some searching and I found nothing. The closest thing I found is this site and it's really just a news blog site, but the focus is at least the same:

http://www.retro2dgames.com/

And of course, the current top general game development site. Not focused on retro/2d at all, limited in scope:
http://www.gamedev.net/

It definitely seems like there is a potential market available for the site. With that, I think there's a unique market to tap into here in general. A community waiting to be built to shine some new light, and usher a resurgence to retro style or 2D gaming.

I was thinking the site could be a central home encompassing all aspects of game development. Artists, writers, composers alike. It would serve a few purposes. Three Tiers. One would be to be a news and resource site. Resources for programmers, artists, writers, game designer, level designers etc. Second would be the community aspect where these groups of specialized people could come together help each other out or form some small teams. Third, would be the commercial platform as a vehicle to push and sell the games as a stepping stone until a real publisher would take notice for these indie teams or jobs were offered etc.

I'm trying to make it a win/win. Indie developers would ideally want to use the site to give their game and team recognition and exposure from a central site like this. A stepping stone on to bigger and better things if possible, while at the same time make a little bit of money on the site to fund and hopefully grow as a commercial platform of some sort for this market. The direction would have to be determine as the site matures. Who knows, ultimately perhaps the site could turn into some sort of publishing house.

In the meantime, we'd generate a great intermediary community and wealth of information and freeware, donation-ware, or cheap indie games.

We'd have so much more freedom and flexibility than RHDN since it would all be fully legal. I would certainly have to look into applicable laws for the commercial aspect of the site. But everybody starts somewhere with an idea, right?  

[Next_Gen_Cowboy]

This does sound like a very cool idea, The Second Dimension was an all time great site, and I was sad to see it go. I am glad you brought it up =)

When I was a newb to the internetz it was D who gave me an avenue for writing reviews for awesome oldschool goodness that really helped pique my interest in writing, and the romhacking community.

With limiting yourself to this I imagine you will run into the same walls that he did. It is very hard to garner support for this sort of thing from any serious amount of people, its slow to take hold and keeping your footing is hard.  Getting user generated content is difficult. Then again you have already overcome many of these hurtles with that one little site =p

I like it, mighty glad I stopped by today.

[Gideon Zhi]

There's Pixel Prospector, if blog format is your thing. Personally, I think blog format is overrated, but it gets the job done, I guess.

[Nightcrawler]

That's an interesting site. No resources of any kind on game making nor a community, but nice collection of information on these kinds of titles.

I also notice the majority of the games listed are all made with game makers. I have always been a bit sour on them and don't look at them as 'real' games. It's kind of like ROM hacks trying to be new games (Mario Hacks come to mind). Yes, some good ones are out there, but the majority can't escape the confines of the engine they are built on. I wouldn't go so far as to call them cookie cutter, but it takes much effort to make a standout.

I'm a little torn on if I would welcome those kinds of titles or not. The volume of these titles could easily snuff out and 'take over' the site. I think I want my focus to be on full indie game development and have a good chunk of resources for programming and game engines more along the lines of Gamedev.net. They don't seem to deal much with game makers.

[Nightcrawler]

Digging this up because I came across this site thanks to a link I saw on RHDN. It seems this site has a similar focus of what i was thinking of with retro style indie games, but very different in execution.

http://retroremakes.com/nostalgia/competitions/

[D--]

Wow, someone remembers T2D.

The big problem, aside from what Next Gen Cowboy mentioned, was that there just wasn't all that much to write. While I did manage to rope a few people into offering reviews, almost all the news content was written by me: something like 130 blurbs of at least 150-300 words over the course of two years.

Not being able to rely on anyone else meant my time was so tied up in moderation and hunting down news that I couldn't put my focus on the things I really wanted to do, like getting interviews with some of the people still working on 2D game development and people who were dedicated to preserving the medium.

It would be nice to see someone start a similar site. Given the revival in 8-bit gaming during the past several years and the emergence of smartphones as a serious gaming platform, I'm sure there would be much more material and support today.

[Nightcrawler]

That's why if I were to do it, I would probably set it up similar to RHDN, where the content is user submitted. It's the old staff bottleneck issue. It's too much for one person, or even a group of volunteer staff. I understand the side effect is a reduction in quality compared to a group of good journalists with a unified voice. However baring a paid staff, it's the only way to ensure longevity and continued content so the site doesn't go by the wayside.

RHDN is about to turn 6 and I think it's been a good experiment with these principles. I believe it is probably officially the longest lasting active ROM hacking specific site of it's kind. It got that way because it didn't die from the typical overloaded staff, staff losing interest etc. that killed all the rest. While I made it a point to reduce staff functions to mere screeners over the years for longevity, I have been frustrated with the amounts of lower quality submissions and news articles you end up getting from the public. You can't reject them all or you have no content. There's some good ones submitted too though, and the end result is productivity far exceeding an overworked volunteer staff alone.

This whole thing stemmed from an interest to get back into game development myself. I would much more willing to gather and produce some content for the site if I were actively working on some 2D game development again. More importantly, at this stage in my life, if I were to do it, I'd like to have some kind of light business model for it relating to indie developers selling games on the site. It's a chicken and egg though and the site needs to be able to offer reasons the developers would want to use it. I'm also not sure of the legal and tax implications of having a site selling software. That probably means I need to start a business and register a company.

[A]

I've been following your translation team for awhile and I am sure you have heard this all before but thank you. A million thank you's would not be enough for the dedication and success you have had thus far in bringing to the fans awesome games that never saw state side releases.

That website idea you are throwing around would have great success, even if you only had one or two indie dev's on it too start.

I'm very interested.

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

Well, I host a general RPG discussion board, and I'd be happy to host forums about Indie games, I love them.

Also looking for some DW/DQ fans to come and discuss the greatest commercially-released RPG series of all time!!

http://kalisiin.proboards.com/index.cgi