Indie godfather Cliff Harris

Yeah, yeah. What is Show Me The Games? Hmm. What it isn't is Steam, and it's not an attempt to be an indie Steam. Because I've been around indie game development forever, roughly every year someone new comes along and says "you know what we need? An indie version of Steam!" Then everyone rolls their eyes and says "yes, we've had this conversation a dozen times." The problem is independent developers are independent. It's like herding cats. There's always this kind of hippy commune idea that we can all come together in this brotherly love thing and create an indie version of Steam. Not to compete with it, but for the games that don't get on it - which is quite a few. It never happens, it always crashes and burns. The last time it happened, in a little foot-stamping rant of my own, I decided that the only way anything like this will ever really happen is if someone acts like a sort of dictatorial bastard and says "this is how it's happening, and if you don't like it f--- off." [Laughs] And I thought "that sounds like something I would do."

The other problem is people always make a huge list of features for their perfect indie website, and they always bite off more than they can chew so it never happens. So I thought if I could just get even a dozen developers to just agree to having the same size screenshot, that would be progress. So Show Me The Games is basically an online directory of indie developers who sell direct. You can sell on Steam as well or wherever, but it's where the option exists to buy direct from the developer. It's kind of an experiment to see how much we can get indie developers to put their trust in a single person to manage something like that.

The thing that is real triumph about it, to any extent, is that it's also supported by advertising. What happens is all of the developers who want to contribute to the advertising put money in. They all give it to me and I spend it and that promotes their games. I really like that, because there are so many indie developers who don't know anything about the business side at all, and certainly don't know anything about running ad campaigns. As a result, they don't get a lot of attention at all. Show Me The Games is kind of a vehicle for me to manage stuff like that. It might grow into more than that, I don't know. It's kind of limited by the amount of time I have available, which is none.

Yeah. Welcome to capitalism, baby! That's how it works. And a lot of the problem is that many people don't realise that. It does come down to one screenshot - and you can really tell if you swap the screenshot for another from the same game, sometimes it makes a major difference, it really does. We live in a world of stupidly short attention spans and you have to realise that when you're making games. Sadly - it'd be great if everyone had loads of time to read up critical analysis and artistic values and stuff like that, but the reality is people go "look! Explosions!" It's tragic really.

We've done three ad campaigns and there's going to be a fourth one next month. It works really well for some people and it's a catastrophic failure for others. It really does depend massively. It's very tricky because you have to advertise on sites with people it appeals to. With indie games you've got a vast range of stuff, so it's very difficult.

Basically, we started it with $50 each and said "we'll do this and see what happens, and if you don't think you've got $50 worth of traffic then leave." So some people did, but others said "yeah, let's do it again, and with $500." It works, but it doesn't work for everybody, which is what we expected to happen. Hopefully it'll get more and more accurate and more and more helpful as there's more data. The website itself looks rubbish, it's getting completely redesigned next month to look like a proper website. That was the whole point - to start with nothing, just the simplest co-operation, and if it works then we build it up, rather than aiming high and crashing and burning, like so many of those websites have.