There are many different places online for gamers to purchase indie games and indie developers to sell their creations, but there is one that stands out from the rest. A website that has spent the last year devoted to assisting indie developers get their products out to the fans, indiegamestand.com, has finally opened up a complete online store specifically for independently developed games. The site uses the popular and indie-friendly “pay-what-you-want” purchase model with daily deals and bundles mixed in to further sweeten the pot.
The site boasts a particular ease of use for developers. Developers can have their game available for purchase in a matter of hours. With less hoops to jump through than some of the other mainstream platforms available, we get to see some of the best and most creative titles get an opportunity to woo the gamers who want to try something different. Taken directly from the site’s mission statement, “Every developer out there deserves a moment to shine.” This is a great way to approach designing both a site and a working business model that will benefit the actual developers for their creativity.
2013 has seen some major changes for indiegamestand.com, a redesign of the store that takes some interface pointers from Valve’s Steam platform, a new checkout page that displays more information about the titles and developers, and recognition for top contributors. Allowing gamers to see how they actually helped with development works to bring the indie crowd closer and get more people interested in the work of some otherwise unheard of developers.
