Over the next few months, Nathan Blades will give you an inside look of the world of Independent Studios and Homebrew Gaming, with exclusive interviews and reccomended sites for your perusal. Better brace yourself…
This week, we have a friendly little chat with Tyvon Thomas, founder of the game making community, PixelxCore Independent Gaming. 
Tell us about yourself, and what ‘Indie Gaming’ is.
Well, I’m Tyvon Thomas, 19 years old. I’m a pixel artist of about six or seven years, and I’m an amateur independent game director. I’m also the owner and founder of PixelxCore Independent Gaming.
Basically, “indie” gaming is the creation of video games in small, simple groups. Indie games are, what I think, a good stepping stone into getting into major game developing and becoming an official developer.
These games are very low-budget, sometimes costing absolutely no money to develop at all.
I see! It’s been the dream of many gaming fans to make their own video game. Are you the same? What made you decide to go for it?
I’ve honestly been interested in making my own video games for about as long as I can remember, really. Ever since I got my hands on a Super Nintendo. People always told me that I was a very creative young mind, which influenced me to get into art and the entire idea of creating my own video games. I was never really a big programming buff, I’ve always been interested in replicating the animations in popular 2D games that you see today.
I’d have to say the one thing that made me actually pursue indie gaming as a career, however, was knowing a couple of people already in the business and talking with them about getting started. Shane Gill has probably been one of my biggest influences when it comes to becoming an indie game developer, and he’s even helped me out with some of my current work. He’s actually the one that referred me to Luc Bernard and got me to become the animator for Steam Pirates, one of their recent projects.
Ah, of course it helps to know people. What other projects have they worked on?
The Oyaji Games team has worked on the game Eternity’s Child (which unfortunately suffered from poor creation, and ended up a flop), and Mecho Wars, which, if I remember correctly, has sold about 20,000 copies in its 6-9 months of life, and a game that has been met with mostly positive reception. Mecho Wars is on the iPhone right now, and they are working on WiiWare and PSPMini versions of it, as well as Steam Pirates. They’re also developing what I believe is a “sequel” to Mecho Wars, called Mecho Tales.
Indeed, downloadable games have been very popular in the last two years. How do you think it’ll affect indie developers?
Honestly, downloadable games are probably the number-one reason that indie gaming is so popularized nowadays. It’s much more convenient than going to the store and picking up a hard copy, and it usually guarantees an infinite amount of copies since all you have to do is download the file(s) and run the game. It also doesn’t cost money for the producer to ship the game, since it can be easily acquired just by a simple download. Of course, the downloadable game system has its own flaws; it’s much harder for a downloadable game to be unsusceptible to piracy; it’s also much harder to control and regulate when a game is pirated. Another problem is that large games are hampered by long download times, but that’s a minor inconvenience at most– unless you’re still using dial-up or something, then it can be seen as a problem, haha.
Wow, dial-up feels like a distant memory to me now. How about the games you enjoy? What games do you think have inspired you?
There is an almost an infinite amount of games that truly inspire me to do what I do. I’m inspired a lot by the works of SNK, Konami, Capcom, Nintendo and Namco. I am generally “in love” with the “action” genre, and it usually shows in almost all of my projects. When I create a game, I like to consider my biggest influences from multiple games, and try to apply them all into one solid creation. Because of that, I come up with ideas all of the time.
That’s a very open look at things! A lot of indie games like to embrace ‘retro’ elements, but at the same time, games that attract more casual audiences are popular too. Where do you think you stand?
I like taking influences from games that could be considered as “retro,” while adding elements that would be considered more up-to-date. I personally think that most 2D games already have their own retro feels to them, since most major developers are sticking to 3D. I think indie developing is a great way to keep the “art” of 2D video games alive. They just have their own feel that 3D games just can’t replicate.
Very true – I’m rather partial to 2D myself. One last question: Where do you think you’ll be in one year’s time?
In one year? I’d like to have at least two or three games created and completed. Hopefully around that time I’ll have started making a bigger name for myself, PixelxCore IG will hopefully be more known around the Internet, and I’d like to actually become an “official” developer so I’d be able to get my games on WiiWare and PlayStation Network without needing an outside developer. I’ve got a lot of big plans that are gonna take a lot of effort, determination, and a strong community in order to accomplish.
Follow Tyvon and his projects at www.pixelxcore.net