As the third part in our series on hobbyist developers, we chat to Jonathan ‘Fritz’ Ackerley, the guy behind entertainingly Scottish Indie Games football title, Fitba…

What prompted you to get involved with Indie Games – the earning potential, career prospects, fun or something else?
I’d been a developer in the established games industry for 13 years before getting involved in Indie Games, I decided the time was right to go Indie, and the service seemed like a good channel to allow me to get my games out to reach a large audience, on console hardware, and with very low overheads.

Do you think the harsh press Indie Games has received has been justified?
Sadly, I think it has been justified, I think the interface in the dash is poor, and there haven’t been a large number of good quality games on the channel.

Are you surprised to see so many Indie Games developers struggling to recoup the costs they’ve sunk into their titles?
The numbers of people downloading games from the Indie Games channel has been extremely disappointing, even for the “hit” titles the numbers have not been that great. If you compare the numbers from a hit iPhone game to a hit IG game, you’d be very disappointed to be a CG developer.

Have the reported sales figures had any impact on your motivation to continue developing games for the channel?
They have been discouraging, but I think with the addition of user ratings, players will be able to find the quality games in the channel more easily and numbers will pick up. If you want to develop games to be played on console hardware, with a great controller and online play with minimal development costs, CG remains a wonderful opportunity.

Apart from Fitba, what piece of Indie Games software has impressed you most?
The games that I’ve enjoyed on IG so far are Miner Dig Deep, Johnny Platform’s Biscuit Romp, Easy Golf and Biology Battle. I’d recommend them to anybody who wants to get an idea of what’s available on IG.