One of the developer sessions on-stage on this last day of EGX was an interview/ Q and A session with Indie developer Mike Bithell, known for 2D puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone and more recently stealth game Volume.

Bithell was very talkative about the indie game scene, saying that checking out the new games and new small studios exhibiting there was one of the things he most looked forward to about attending gaming events such as EGX and others. He spoke about his history and how Indie Game: The Movie filled with what he considered the “first generation” of Indie Devs had inspired him and others to create their own games and therefore become the “second generation” to inspire the next wave of developers and so on.

On changes to the scene he said that now it was a lot easier for Indies to get noticed than it had been 3 years ago when Thomas Was Alone was released, partially due to the fact that Indies were now taken more seriously by the gaming community, and thanks to bigger publishers being willing to take chances on small, quirky games that might not have cost a lot to make but target and resonate with their niche audience well. He also mentioned that while he had to call in a favour to get Thomas onto Steam, nowadays Indies found it a lot easier to get into the big digital distribution market of Valve’s. He did note though that work was still required to have a hit on your hands, and that developers still needed to promote their game and get it into as many hands as possible to hopefully build their audience.

When asked on future projects Bithell said that while he and some of the team who had worked on Volume had a number of ideas he wasn’t yet going to reveal any to the public although he did note that after two years of developing Volume he was thinking about doing something smaller again before the new big project.