Do you think indie games are getting as stagnant as the mainstream?
- Thread starter AzrealMaximillion
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They can be hit or miss, but I definitely wouldn't say they "just suck" after having things like Binding of Isaac, Syberia, Tales of Monkey Island, Alice, Shatter, Hitman, Terraria, etc. recently. They're not good every day (or things everyone would be interested in), but there's still some genuinely non-crap stuff in there on a regular basis, along with the mid-week and weekend sales being a lot more frequent than they used to be. I have too big a backlog and too much other stuff to do to really pick up much new these days though...Crono1973 said:
Considering most indie games are basically saying
"remember Super Mario Bros? You'll love this!"
I tend to agree.
"remember Super Mario Bros? You'll love this!"
I tend to agree.
Of course there are a lot of platformer style games. Indie devs have limited resources, platformer style games lend themselves quite well to innovative mechanics, and you can't expect people to invent a new GENRE every time they make a game. But within the confines of genre (And indie games do create new genres fairly often) theres a great deal more innovation than in AAA games. Just recently, I got a puzzle game that acts as an allegory for sequential art theory, and a RPG style game about altering the memories of a dying man, raising existential questions. There is a LOT of interesting things happening in the indie scene, certainly more than is happening in the AAA scene. This doesn't mean that AAA games are BAD, mind you. AAA games have incredible polish, production values, and are tremendous fun. But credit where due, indie games add new things to the medium, and that is also awesome. They both improve gaming. Unfortunately, being, "Anti-hipster" is the new hipster. Both are insufferable. Weird, so called pretentious art games and generic power fantasies are both great fun. The only problem happens when indie games fail to learn from AAA games polish and production values, or when AAA games fail to learn from indie games attempts to push boundaries. Just keep an open mind and let the free market of ideas decide.
The issue, I think, comes from the fact that platformers are so easy and simple to make, so indie developers look at them and think "Well, we could build our game as a platformer and then have it focus on a 'unique' innovative idea." So there are a lot of 2D platformers with some sort of gimmick thrown it to set it apart from the countless other 2D platformers with gimmicks thrown in.
There are still interesting and 'different' indie games, like Intrusion 2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nriVSNmEU2g], Proun [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZElWj8UB9I&list=ELW3Mrbmtq_ek&index=11&feature=plpp_video], Defy Gravity Extended [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28lW5WE6dk&list=ELjRSZc0otj4c&index=1&feature=plpp_video], Really Big Sky [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJp1S74xwmo&list=ELjRSZc0otj4c&index=4&feature=plpp_video], etc. etc., but in all honesty I could probably pull out a similar sized list for 'different' mainstream games, so yeah, I'll have to basically agree with you, OP.
There are still interesting and 'different' indie games, like Intrusion 2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nriVSNmEU2g], Proun [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZElWj8UB9I&list=ELW3Mrbmtq_ek&index=11&feature=plpp_video], Defy Gravity Extended [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28lW5WE6dk&list=ELjRSZc0otj4c&index=1&feature=plpp_video], Really Big Sky [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJp1S74xwmo&list=ELjRSZc0otj4c&index=4&feature=plpp_video], etc. etc., but in all honesty I could probably pull out a similar sized list for 'different' mainstream games, so yeah, I'll have to basically agree with you, OP.
No. I do think that indie games are getting more expose nowadays though so people's perception of it is changing.
People are still buying Mario games with or without gimmicks (what is with all the free coins in NSMB2). Indie devs need to realize that "we have 8 bit graphics and our game looks worse than an NES game" does not make a good game. It is better to make a pretty platformer than an ugly one.
These days? Man, they did from day one. The only reason Steam even has it is because other stores -- notably Impulse and, if I'm not mistaken, GoG -- had it, and Valve didn't want to lose money to them. Problem is the competition was putting up old classics for a buck or two, while Steam usually throws up newer crap that they've dredged up from the list of poor sellers, and charges more like $10 or $15 for it.Crono1973 said:
OT: I wouldn't say that its gotten stagnant. The indie market to me has always been a few actual gems a year surrounded by a sea made up of two things: widely acknowledged crap, and pretentious crap that gets a lot of accolades from hipsters. The sad thing is a lot of the real gems are given away for free, while the hipster fodder makes millions. Some of my favorite games are indie games, but it's an NES or PS2 situation where the size of the library makes it so that even if 99% of it is crap, the decent 1% is still going to be a lot of games.
I think they always were more stagnant than the mainstream. The vast majority of them never make it past being some cheap uninspired knockoff, but since we hear about the wildly original ones a disproportionate amount of the time that we get a colored picture of the whole deal. Since almost no indie games are commercially advertised, it's far harder for an unimpressive game to get noticed relative to the mainstream industry (especially when you consider the sheer tonnage of indie games out there.) They must operate off word of mouth, so bad indie games make almost no individual impact upon the gaming community at all.
I bought exactly zero of them (although I've played a couple of them already), but just because they're not what I happen to want right this minute doesn't mean they're not good games that were well received and were at significant discounts. I'm pretty ok with the daily deals being mostly reserved for smaller stuff like that these days (and a decent amount of crap too) with the with the constant mid-week/weekend deals on bigger stuff, like the Total War one that just ended and the THQ one that just started. More different ways for things to be put on sale is always ok with me, considering the size of their catalog is constantly increasing, so only one sale at a time would be a much smaller fraction of things being discounted compared to before.Crono1973 said:
Or, you know, just check on somewhere like Slickdeals or CAG or something and grab stuff off Amazon and GOG and GMG and GG and Origin and D2D and GameFly and wherever else whenever someone happens to have a better deal if you're not happy with Steam's prices. I just got Spec Ops: The Line for $6 yesterday, not to mention all the indie games they practically throw at you nearly for free if you pay attention. Heh.
I'd really suggest you actually take a look at Kenshi before you judge. Just take a look. That game has a massive amount of depth when it comes to its gameplay. And its being made by one guy. This guy actually envisioned a unique world setting and built his own mythos with it. I'm not talking about finding a new genre. I'm talking about not beating the same 3 or 4 to death and calling them "creative masterpieces". Hell, even taking a few ideas that have been done and using them in new ways can provide a massively fresher game. Using older tropes the same ways over and over again is my issue.TrevHead said:
Oh believe me, I've tried games on many a console. And the problem isn't that mid tier games are favoured. Those mid tier games are the mostly stagnant games I'm talking about. And its not that the game I want isn't being made. I see newer games that I enjoy once or twice a week. I'm more not impressed with the constant praise by both journalists and the masses that goes towards unoriginal games. It gives people the wrong idea about indie games.
Take this site for example. You know how many articles about Cortex Command there are? 2. And not even about the game itself. Meanwhile we see 2-3 Minecraft related articles a day.
There's only 1 article that even mentions Kenshi and only mentions that its been Greenlit by Steam.
Its less the game I want being made, and more the games that are actually progressing the creativity of the industry being practically ignored for other, boring indie games.
and Lamulana also. They've finally got it on GOG which should give it a bit more press. It really is an amazing game. Just wish the trailers weren't awful Engrish filled nonsense. The English version of the game is thankfully perfectly translated.Hyderomastgroningem said:
OT:The problem seems to be that the more "interesting" an indie title is the more niche it tends to get and so the less likely it is to get press. I've found that the only way to find the true gems of Indie gaming is to spend a lot of time searching.
My personal favourite Solium Infernum practically glided under the radar with only a few sites even vaguely acknowledging it. Fortunately RockPaperShotgun did a multiplayer game write-up which helped a lot. Now that's a strategy game that really does things differently and came out amazingly well.
Got to agree with this man on the issue.Twilight_guy said:
I never used to hear about indie games, they were just those little side-projects people did before they could make big-boy games. Then, after a few wonderful gems came out from indie developers I took an interest in indie games and started actively looking for them. Then I realised there's a lot of generic old dirt alongside those indie gems and it's not just a treasure-trove of sparkling goodness.
I imagine many people did similar, since indie games really only became popular in mainstream gaming in the last five years or so, I'd say.
thing is, a lot of indie developers don't want to be innovative, per say, they want to make games they want to see made, often influenced by games they've played in their youth.
I am just quoting you to say how right you are. Thank you.Combustion Kevin said:
Indie devs (for the most part) make the games they want to play. Sometimes those games are innovative, other times they're just retro styled platformers to hearken back to their childhood.
You are simply finding the wrong indie games. With the sudden rush of course there will be bad ones.
I have to agree with the games based on nostalgia need to stop. It was cool the first few times now its getting old.
I have to agree with the games based on nostalgia need to stop. It was cool the first few times now its getting old.
We have to bear in mind that the majority of indie games are made by people with very little in the way of funding and resources. By nature 2D platform games are always going to be easier and cheaper to make. Also, the video game industry is still quite young so we're going to be seeing more and more indie 2D platform games incorporating ideas that we never saw before 3D gaming came to dominate.