Seriously? You can almost win an award for THIS?!

[Halo Fanboy]

The attitude of some people in this thread is shocking. Why should the medium of video games (although that term could arguably be becoming completely outdated really) limit itself to what you personally want to see? What on earth is wrong with The Graveyard, other than the fact that you don't see it's value?

You really want to pretend that all the criticism of this game is people who can't see the value. People can see the reasoning behind it, they just think the game sucks. Ridiculously simple, bad graphics, bad music, oplinger even called it laughable, the game is not really praise worthy. Even from a purely story-telling perspective their are numerous books that tell the story of an elderly person with more character and more depth, if anything it shows what sort of pathetic results you can expect if a videogame tries to tackle a serious non-action narrative. If you showed this game to an art critic like Roger Ebert or Pauleen Kael they would laugh at it.

And yeah I'm not paying $5 to see the "ending" of a game which isn't even interesting.

 

[Rad Party God]

Well, I'm certain that you are not in the demographic this game is aiming for.

In the first place, you can play 95% of the game for free, but you have to pay to watch the old lady die. That's entirely up to you, it's completely optional. I downloaded this game and I didn't watched it as a game per se, as the description says, I watched it as an interactive, moving painting. For the record, I didn't liked this game. It didn't bestowed upon me any feeling or any emotion, there are certainly better games that can be emotionally moving, but there are people who see something within this game.

In fact, this game can join the discussion about games as art.

If you were looking for a mindless game, with someone showing up and shooting the hell out of the old lady with a fake russian accent and then bombing the cemetary to smithereens, then it will dissapoint you.

Or maybe you just mistook Black Ops for this game.

 

[Hiphophippo]

How about playing an indie game that's not 3D? Like Cave Story, Darwinia, Flow, Dwarf Fortress, Gish, Varicella, The Shivah, Toribash, Knytt, Frozen Synapse, Warning Forever, Facade, Peacemaker, N, Sam and Max, Kingdom of Loathing, Battle of Wesnoth, Fallen London, De Blob, Dungeon Crawl, Death Worm, The Chzo Mythos (Yahtzee's games), Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar, Robot Unicorn Attack...

And The Graveyard is actually a very good piece of programming. Whether it could be called a game is difficult, but it's certainly a powerful interactive experience.

Appreciate it when someone does my legwork for me.

This. All of this.

www.tigsource.com <----Go there. I maintain that the real innovation happens in the indie scene.

 

[Swifteye]

I know we all like to talk about art and stuff but doesn't a video game have to be some sort of interactive experience? If I wanted this I would have I dunno ordered a pack of those sundance film festival short movies but I wouldn't buy money to get a game I'll only play once and for that moment wasn't really playing it at all. I play all sorts of games Rpgs, shooters, platformers, Adventure, action, puzzle, and even sports and casual titles when I get wrangled by the folks. But I don't see ANY value in this as a game of any genre even the genre that heavy rain and indigo prophecy made.

This is the sort of thing that gets all the indie folks all a flutter but the rest of the world doesn't care because there's nothing in it for them. It's purely philosophical. And a item that only has philosophy going for it is. Dare I say. Just as shallow as a product that's only designed to be fun and nothing else.

 

[Drake_Dercon]

Wow... All humanity isn't identical.

Never woulda thunk it.

Are you seriously griping at a game because it wasn't the kind of game you liked? Yes, many games are knockoffs. That applies everywhere.

I'll first ask you to name what kind of game you do like, then promise me that 90% of the games in that genre aren't knockoffs of something better that's already been done.

Let me direct you to two games: Tower of heaven and Coma. They're both free on the internet (go and look them up) and both masterfully done. There's a lot of creativity in the indie gaming genre and I'm going to ask you to stop ragging on it because the most visible games are crap.

I suppose what irked me most about your statement was this:

I guess all of this brings about a more glaring question... do you play games for yourself or for the developer? Because this seems like a game the developers really made for themselves and we are supposed to interact with it and feel EXACTLY how they want us to. I play games to have fun and escape from reality for a while, i don't play games to feel emotions, that's what movies and books are for.

WHY THE HELL IS IT YOUR DECISION THAT PEOPLE SHOULD MAKE SOMETHING DIFFERENT? Emotions are the core of humanity and any medium where they can be shown should be a viable one. I will not complain on the internet that 50 cent gets his own game, I will not complain that Angry Birds is... well I won't complain about it. Suffice to say that even while I will not buy either of those, I will not complain about their existence of their style of gameplay. That is someone else's taste and note mine, therefore not my place to complain about a clear diversity that allows both what I appreciate and something so radically different from it to exist. Emotional connection is an enjoyable experience unto itself so, while you don't enjoy that, I respectfully ask you to recognize that other people do.

[/nerdrage]

Edit: It also has to be said that a game can't be boring. I don't think fun is quite the right word, but every single game must be engaging to play. While many indie games don't have this, many others do, just as in the AAA industry. Enjoyment isn't exclusive to where you chose to rest your feet. The first step out may not be great, but searching will bring you another place in time.

 

[saluraropicrusa]

excuse me, Ultratwinkie, but i'd like to point you in the direction of Valve. they are definitely not (or, not anymore, no company starts with a AAA budget) an indie developer, but would you honestly tell me that Portal is "more processed cheese based on an established series"? your view on the AAA industry makes me think you're looking exclusively at games like CoD. yes, these games sell a lot, because people ENJOY them. to say that gamers only want what's familiar is severely limiting, especially to the more mature of us. i would consider almost all of my favorite games to be at least as innovative as people think indie games are (Portal, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus... hell, when it first came out, Halo was doing things that people hadn't seen before). just because a game is made by a company with a big enough budget to make it look pretty does NOT mean it doesn't have room to be innovative, engaging, immersive, and any other word you want to use to describe it as excellent. an industry that can produce games like Portal and Mirror's Edge, and then give them enough to make a sequel, is hardly worthy of being completely overlooked as stale and cookie-cutter. oh, and series' like Mario and Zelda didn't start as AAA franchises. they survived to become this because they were good enough to gain a serious fan base.

also, why do indie games need to appeal to a limited demographic? how is it not possible for an artistic game to attract a broad audience? i honestly have no idea how you people could consider it a bad thing for a truly excellent, artsy game to reach an audience broader than the art snobs.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Just because something is interactive doesn't make it a game.

I can interact 60 seconds into my microwave, or 90 seconds.
I get different results for each.

It's not a fucking game, I just want hotter coffee (pun intended).

 

[TiefBlau]

Because this seems like a game the developers really made for themselves and we are supposed to interact with it and feel EXACTLY how they want us to. I play games to have fun and escape from reality for a while, i don't play games to feel emotions, that's what movies and books are for.

That's nice, but the rest of us play it for both. Just like we watch movies, listen to music, and read books for both. Just like we do FUCKING ANY FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT for both. You may only want it to escape from reality, and that's great, because you don't speak for everyone.

are there ANY indie games out there that blur the lines between AAA and indie? because so far i dont see any innovation in the indie scene. it seems to be just a bunch of sidescrollers and mario knockoffs.

i have yet to play a GOOD 3d indie game, or at least one that i would indeed enjoy for more than 2 minutes before i got bored and went back to Red Dead Redemption or Saints Row 2.

i really want to know if there are any 3D 3rd-person indie sandbox games out there... it seems like they are incapable of that (or even just good 3rd person in general).

and before you all go "SUPER MEAT BOY AND LIMBO!" on me, i played (and hated) both those games because i have no degree of patience for platformers, which it seems like every indie game is a variation thereof (or a Contra/Asteroids knockoff)

EDIT: Forgot about Minecraft and Mods. Because Minecraft is the only exception and everything else that's not a 2d sidescroller, run-n-gun, space shooter game is a mod. Oh, and please stop bringing up "Amnesia: Dark Descent" and Minecraft. I think we ALL know those are the VERY rare exceptions to the indie development scene, whereas the list of AAA games that nail fun on the head can go on longer than my arms. Say what you will about Gears of War and Halo for the trends they started and not being "artistic", but at least they know how to get that fun replay value there.

Sure, I guess you can say that. You could also say Red Dead Redemption and Saints Row 2 are GTA knockoffs, and Halo and Gears of War are all the same bland shooter games that haven't evolved since Doom. I can therefore conclude that any original AAA game is an incredibly rare exception and that there are no original games. What's that, you say? I'm missing the forest for the trees? Well, you are too, so...

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

excuse me, Ultratwinkie, but i'd like to point you in the direction of Valve. they are definitely not (or, not anymore, no company starts with a AAA budget) an indie developer, but would you honestly tell me that Portal is "more processed cheese based on an established series"? your view on the AAA industry makes me think you're looking exclusively at games like CoD. yes, these games sell a lot, because people ENJOY them. to say that gamers only want what's familiar is severely limiting, especially to the more mature of us. i would consider almost all of my favorite games to be at least as innovative as people think indie games are (Portal, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus... hell, when it first came out, Halo was doing things that people hadn't seen before). just because a game is made by a company with a big enough budget to make it look pretty does NOT mean it doesn't have room to be innovative, engaging, immersive, and any other word you want to use to describe it as excellent. an industry that can produce games like Portal and Mirror's Edge, and then give them enough to make a sequel, is hardly worthy of being completely overlooked as stale and cookie-cutter. oh, and series' like Mario and Zelda didn't start as AAA franchises. they survived to become this because they were good enough to gain a serious fan base.

also, why do indie games need to appeal to a limited demographic? how is it not possible for an artistic game to attract a broad audience? i honestly have no idea how you people could consider it a bad thing for a truly excellent, artsy game to reach an audience broader than the art snobs.

Well, as I mentioned before, Tale of Tales pretty much are snobs and I guess their audience follows suit. And to be fair Halo didn't do anything new at all at the time, Goldeneye proved console shooters could work, several shooters going as far back as the original Team Fortress mod for Quake 1 in the mid/late 90s had introduced us to team based gameplay, and Tribes introduced us to team based, open terrain combat with some vehicle action as far back as 1998. So... not really.

Ehem, but disregarding that, I do agree with your post. True and good art can touch almost anyone, as opposed to a bunch of beret wearing snobs who are in fact praising it for being absurd or abstract rather than genuinely artistic. Not that I'm saying that art can't be absurd or abstract, but there's a difference between doing so because it's part of the message or feeling you're trying to convey, or just because you want to be artsy and alienate as many people as possible besides the aforementioned snobs who probably wouldn't have gotten the message anyway unless the artist had elaborated on it for several paragraphs like in the previous green picture with the orange line.

 

[Twilight_guy]

So this is the game equivalent of the pretentious art house movie or high quality modern art... I can say here what I say for them... "I don't get it." Hopefully I don't get it for the same reason I don't get them, because I'm just not int he same cultural group and don't bend to the same notions of critics and what is "good." It's interesting to see how people translate the notion of art from other medias into games and its even more interesting to see the cultural friction that results when two notions of high art rub against each other. The odd thing and is that in this cultural friction we happen to be the art snobs and the dominant culture. This is a struggling group and we are trying to stamp them out to maintain and legitimize our own notion of quality in games. This requires more anthropological study! *Replaces Computer Science hat with Anthropology hat*

 

[Romidude]

I find that amazing, incredibly ethereal, and you must think of it in a literalistic sort of sense. What is she thinking? Why is she there? Does her past have anything to do with it? Go back to shooting foreigners in generic shooters.

 

[Archangel768]

I don't know how much fun that would be but, unlike you, one of the best things I believe games are capable of is making me feel emotion and is part of the reason I care for them so much.

 

[KalosCast]

I've noticed that "artsy" games are rarely art. And barely games.

I can't shake the feeling that 99% of them are designed by people who haven't actually played a video game before.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

This goes for most great indie games actually. If you're after AAA style games, you're going to have to go AAA. Indie games don't have the budget, time or manpower to match those standards, so they make their own. They're high-risk (non-financially) and unusual when at their best, because that's their sole area of dominance.

You seem to think indie instantly means it's not accessible towards a large audience, once again, snobbery. Games like Minecraft, Super Meat Boy and World of Goo have proven that you can touch loads and loads of gamers with an indie title, simply through giving solid gameplay, a personal touch, and, in some cases, a good narrative. Now I don't describe to the school of thought that all games should be "fun", or that you can't have a dead serious experience without any violence in games, but this in my opinion isn't the right way to go about it.

I should clarify, that was mostly directed at the OP. I'm simply trying to say that indie and mainstream development is very different, because they have different strengths and weaknesses they have to abide by. You can't expect an indie title to be indistinguishable from a AAA title, because it won't have the same resources or guidelines to follow.

The clearest example (but not really the best) would be graphical quality. Indies are required to be conservative or tricky in how they present their games graphically, because they don't have the time nor resources to create a full high-end HD environment of 8+ hours of exploration. They do things like 2d, backtracking, dynamic scenery etc to dodge this issue. But then, they don't have to have exceptional graphics because it's not what's expected of an indie game. AAA titles get a backlash for sub-par graphics, because it's expected of them to meet those standards.

I don't mean to imply that an indie game can't have mainstream appeal. They can, and evidently have been on occasion. Just as there's a difference between indie and AAA, there's a difference between mainstream and artistic. It's a separate sub-category that either side can go into, it's just that they tend to be more comfortable in one or the other.

Okami is an artistic title that is not indie; Super Meat Boy is a mainstream title that is. It's the same way that blockbuster films can be artistic, while the indie films can find an audience and become mainstream. I wouldn't say both have to appeal to different audiences as a rule, but they do develop differently and have different standards to meet as a result.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

EDIT: For clarity, the idea of The Graveyard is to be experimental. It's meant to be an interactive experience, rather than a game.

Isn't a game an experience that you interact with? I get what they're trying to do but in my opinion it seems like they sort of have an inflated opinion of themselves.

I can't argue about their opinion of themselves, I've not looked into it. It wouldn't surprise me though.

But while a game is an experience you interact with, not every experience you interact with is a game. Like how a book is something you read, but not everything you read is a book. It's debatable whether this counts as a 'game' or just something interacted with in a similar way. I'm more the latter, but both are legitimate judgements I'd say. Hell, even the industry itself can't come to an absolute definition of 'what is a game?'

 

[godfist88]

this is officially the worst game i have ever seen.

...of all time.

 

[Vibhor]

Okay found a few 3D indie games.
Narbacular drop, from the guys who made portal before getting "stolen" by Valve.
Gmod,another indie release which was later on supported by Valve
Penumbra series, made by the same guys as Amnesia but since you got a little "butthurt" over the mention of Amnesia, there you have it.
Overgrowth, a combat game that is still in development by the best indie developers evah!

and 2D games
World of goo, Seriously, how could you HAVE NOT HEARD about this game?
Gish, Platformer.
Dwarf fortress, Search "Boatmurdered"
Shores of Hazeron, Not entirely sure about this being indie as the development is quite dedicated. The game is like what people wanted spore to be.
Nethack, A game you would not want to play.(Puzzle game with some rogue like elements)

The list is bigger than this but these are what come to my mind in an instance

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

EDIT: I guess all of this brings about a more glaring question... do you play games for yourself or for the developer? Because this seems like a game the developers really made for themselves and we are supposed to interact with it and feel EXACTLY how they want us to. I play games to have fun and escape from reality for a while, i don't play games to feel emotions, that's what movies and books are for.

Consumer loyalty buys a company exactly one free pass. By this I mean that, if I really enjoyed the past works of a company I am perfectly willing to play their new title even if I know nothing more than the fact that said company made the game. An excellent example of this is Deus Ex and Daikatana. The first was incredible enough that I purchased the latter with no information on the subject. The latter was so bad that I never purchased an Ion Storm game again until long after they had been dissolved.

i could make that game in one day and it gets nominated for an innovation award? what's so innovative about making an old lady walk through a graveyard?!

I cannot think of a game that used this mechanic. If you can think of one that executed this very concept then feel free to point it out to me. If one simply cannot be found then it would certainly qualify as innovation.

are the standards for indie gaming so low that they would nearly award THIS with an award? Seriously.

I think they key is that it nearly won. The delta between nearly winning and actually winning can be vast.

are there ANY indie games out there that blur the lines between AAA and indie?

This is a difficult question because AAA, as a phrase, simply implies that a game had a large budget. There have been plenty of games developed by hundreds of talented people with budgets of tens of millions of dollars that have been terrible. There have been plenty that were developed with a budget of zero dollars by one amateur that were terrible. The only thing money really buys is time. What people do with that time varies enormously.

because so far i dont see any innovation in the indie scene. it seems to be just a bunch of sidescrollers and mario knockoffs.

This has been covered in depth already.

i have yet to play a GOOD 3d indie game, or at least one that i would indeed enjoy for more than 2 minutes before i got bored and went back to Red Dead Redemption or Saints Row 2.

Given that the word "indie" simply refers to a company not owned by another we have plenty of examples. Valve (Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2, etc), Id (they have yet to release a game since being acquired by ZeniMax and are known for the Doom and Quake series), Epic (Unreal and Unreal tournament. Later games are suspect as Epic eventually started acquiring developers such as Chair), Bioware (Baldur's Gate franchise, Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR were all made before their company was acquired by EA) and many, many others.

i really want to know if there are any 3D 3rd-person indie sandbox games out there... it seems like they are incapable of that (or even just good 3rd person in general).

How about a third person sandbox game that is also an MMO? Because I can point you to Eve Online.

and before you all go "SUPER MEAT BOY AND LIMBO!" on me, i played (and hated) both those games because i have no degree of patience for platformers, which it seems like every indie game is a variation thereof (or a Contra/Asteroids knockoff)

Personal tastes regarding a genre of game do not inherently make a game in a genre you do not care for bad. I don't like JRPG's but I do not for a moment believe this makes Final Fantasy VII a bad game. It just isn't a game that I like.

EDIT: Forgot about Minecraft and Mods.

Why should we forget this. Counter-Strike was a mod. Team Fortress was a mod. There are entire game communities built around the concept of modding. Why are we ignoring such a fertile ground? Are they not amateurs in most cases? Are they not restricted by problems of budget, time and staffing? Have they not produced things that went on to achieve critical and commercial success?

Because Minecraft is the only exception and everything else that's not a 2d sidescroller, run-n-gun, space shooter game is a mod. Oh, and please stop bringing up "Amnesia: Dark Descent" and Minecraft. I think we ALL know those are the VERY rare exceptions to the indie development scene, whereas the list of AAA games that nail fun on the head can go on longer than my arms. Say what you will about Gears of War and Halo for the trends they started and not being "artistic", but at least they know how to get that fun replay value there.

The existence of such exceptions demonstrates the fundamental flaw in your reasoning. Yes, the vast majority of the things made by the indie community is trash but why concern yourself with this when the community does, from time to time, produce a game that is absolutely worth playing?

 

[jjboat]

Interactive poetry? This is an extremely shallow attempt at emotional depth. If you saw a short film of the same thing, it would still be shit. A true game design artist would use gameplay mechanics integrated with his setting to tell his story.