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Talking Ouya and indies with Kellee Santiago

The Ouya may not be a runaway success, but Santiago talks about how it's still important to indies.

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We caught up with former ThatGameCompany profile and current "developer's best friend" at Ouya Kellee Santiago in the IndieCade booth to talk about Ouya and indies.

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Santiago detailed the Ouya strategy of both directly supporting indies by matching kickstarters and direct-funding as well as offering an open platform for painless self-publishing. We asked her if she felt that Ouya was contributing to other platforms (such as PSN and Xbox Live) opening up more, this is what she had to say:

"It's so awesome to see the attention that indie developers have got even this week at E3. But the business model from their perspective, from the other console manufacturers, is still the same. It's still people that have proven track records. That have experience in selling games in many, many units in their sales records. And it's still hard for a new developer in the independent scene. I think it's harder than ever, because it's getting so saturated. There's so many independent developers, which is fantastic but also problematic. So I think Ouya is a great platform to learn and grow on and we're really building out the support that we can offer developers..."

Later on, Santiago talked about how the vision for Ouya isn't all about creating a successful platform, but also helping indies on the platform gain visibility.

"One of our main goals is also to help developers find players that they can engage with and find their community which is so critical to building up... both making your game better but also building up awareness and attention so that you can go as some developers have get a lucrative deal from another platform manufacturer or launch on Steam with a higher profile. Or get Greenlit which many have as well as a result of building that fanbase and community on Ouya."

When asked to highlight one game out of Ouya's line-up of upcoming titles for us to keep an eye on Santiago picked That Dragon, Cancer.

"It uses in that same way [as Thralled] interactivity and the game medium to create greater empahty with the story and characters than you really could otherwise."



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