Show me the Games - indie gaming portal announced

by: Ben Berry - posted: 11/22/2010 7:58:00 PM

The biggest thing that indie gaming developers have going for them (complete creative freedom) also works against them (no expensive marketing campaigns). It's long been discussed that the varies indie developers should get together and build a portal to work essentially as a web co-op for their titles. That discussion has become a reality as ShowMeTheGames.com is now the place to go for dozens of games like AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! and other titles you may or may not have heard of. 

As an indie game developer, I've heard the discussion about how indie devs should start their own portal more times than I've had bacon sandwiches, and I finally got fed up with the debate enough to try and make a tiny nudge in that direction at last, and thus so ShowMeTheGames was born... (and is officially announced today!)

www.showmethegames.com



SMTG is a crazy plan to try and prove that indie game developers, despite theoretically being in competition, can come together as a group, throw some money in an 'advertising' bucket, and help promote each others games. It's true that getting indie developers to organise together is like herding cats*, but I've owned 4 cats over my life, so I'm not scared.
Using the amazing nasa-like technology of random numbers, the SMTG site randomises the games listing so nobody gets 'top slot'. This simple listing of games is hopefully just the start, there may well be competitions, discount bundles or all kinds of stuff happening on SMTG in the future. The main point is that we now have a fixed location to host that kind of thing.

For incredibly talented and remarkably good looking journalists such as yourselves, there is an additional benefit to SMTG. The website is intended as a perfect answer to the question "What are indie games?" and specifically "what are decent indie games on the PC?". For a long time, the answer to that question has been "Err... well there is that one, or this one" and now the answer is simple, it's SMTG.

(We called it SMTG as a homage to Jerry McGuire, a film about a corporate drone who cares more about his customers than his boss, so quits his job to run his own business)

*Actually it's much harder. Cats at least respond to food reliably.