Another part in our now semi long-running series comes as we grill Daniel Jones, the talented fellow behind Clover. He’s got a bushy moustache, so that means he can be trusted…

What prompted you to get involved with Indie Games– the earning potential, career prospects, fun or something else?
Back before Indie Games was announced, I started getting myself familiar with the XNA tech for the fun of it – I am a nerd by profession after all! As soon as the opportunity to get games to market was announced, it became more about trying to make a living doing something I wanted to, rather than working in my intensely dull and stressful job surrounded by the inept in finance. If I’d chosen to go down the traditional development/publisher relationship, I would have had to spend months creating a prototype that may or may not have been picked up by a publisher. With Community Games, in the same amount of time I could create a full game that could make some return on investment, give people lots of fun, and also then be used to attract further attention from bigger fish in the industry. At the very least, it’ll look good on my CV.

Do you think the harsh press Indie Games has received has been justified?
For the most part, yes. For every professional and semi-pro developer creating titles for the service, there’s 20 hobbyists who just want to share their latest experiment. It’s such a shame as there’s some genuinely great games out there – Weapon Of Choice, Halfbrick Echoes, Zoomaroom, Biology Battle, Miner Dig Deep to name but a few.

Are you surprised to see so many Indie Games developers struggling to recoup the costs they’ve sunk into their titles?
Disappointed, but not surprised. With my business hat on, it was quite a risk investing in starting up as an indie dev and as such with high risk you prepare yourself to lose everything. Clover cost around £16,000 to make, and via Indie Games alone we’re not going to make that back. Luckily Clover has received enough critical acclaim to lead me to further opportunities, but I was talking to one chap whose company had spent over £30k creating an as-yet unreleased Indie Games title. I feel very sorry for him!
The market’s a hell of a lot smaller than anyone expected. There’s 20,000,000 Xbox LIVE users out there, 20% of whom buy content regularly. We’re seeing even the best-selling Indie Games titles sell in the low five-figure numbers. You’ve got to blame this on lack of marketing from us developers, Microsoft, and also on the dirge of massage ‘games’ that dilute the brand’s message.

Have the reported sales figures had any impact on your motivation to continue developing games for the channel?
The size of the market has definitely made clear the lack of financial viability in Indie Games. If there was as much money to be had as there was in the iPhone scene, I’d quite happily stay on this channel as it’s a fantastic deal. At the time of writing 8 of the top 10 titles are applications like music makers, aquarium simulators and music visualisers. The marketing message clearly hasn’t gotten to the people that want to play games, and so one has to question if there’s any point making games for a service that gamers don’t buy from.

Do you think Microsoft’s user ratings system will prove the silver bullet for IG’s problems?
I think the ratings system will help users immeasurably. Before I got to know a lot of the other developers and their titles myself, I’d look at the channel and think “What? Is this any good? Is this a great game with pants box art, or is the whole thing made by a gibbering talentless 7-year-old?” Being able to list games by rating will be great, but there’s still a lot of work to do in educating LIVE users about that Indie Games is about.

Apart from Clover, what piece of Indie Games software has impressed you most?
Calculator360. The guy behind it is a genius. Create the most pointless, ill-suited application for a games console ever and make hundreds from a weekend’s work. I wish I’d thought of that one. Ideas for future titles in the back of my mind are Ultimate Toaster Simulator, Paint Drying Observer Pro, and maybe Eggtimer360.