So what happens when indie and METAL collide into an awesome game? Would you still play something that has this?:Paya Chin said:
If that game get anymore METAL it may as well be the 3rd Apocalipse of Zoroastrism as spoken by Zaratustra
Why is there such a kneejerk reaction to "indie games"?
- Thread starter Andy of Comix Inc
- Start date
If that game get anymore METAL it may as well be the 3rd Apocalipse of Zoroastrism as spoken by Zaratustra
Games I'd compare to...Vault101 said:
Modern AAA:
Firefall
Hawken
Natural Selection 2
Old AAA:
AM2R
The Iconoclasts
Mega Man X Corrupted
Owlboy
Retro Blazer
There are a couple of other games that look good but don't remind me of AAA, like Castle Story and Starbound. This list seems to grow every other month too. For example, yesterday I discovered Retrovirus. I'd put that in modern AAA. It's in the alpha stage, so there are plenty of opportunities to screw it up, but so far it looks promising.
You may as well start discussing the psychological aspect of the human mind where EVERYONE seems to always blame ALL the aspects of one culture/religion/hobby just because one, JUST ONE asshole spoils all the fun.Andy of Comix Inc said:
One crazy murderer comes and.....well, murder a tons of people and CLAIMS that he trained with videogames and EVERYONE marks games AND gamers as monsters.
And just because some idiot in the indie department thinks he is the messiah of gaming then everyone thinks that indie games are shit and full of pretentious assholes? Seriously people, i may be a really fucking old mad alien with 999 personalities but you humans takes the cake when making batshit insane conclusions, specially when you all deprive yourselves of this kind of awesome games:
All your GOOD games are belong to us now
Where do you expect them to get money to even license a engine of a AAA worthy game?Vault101 said:
I don't expect them to be like AAA games or do anything different to suit my paritular tastes...somone needs to do somthing differentDioWallachia said:
think of it as a backlash of a backlash
every person "oh AAA games are bad/unoriginal/brown shooter...thease indeeeeeeee games are quirky and artistic! haw haw!" <-and to that I say fuck off...sure its agressive and illogical but damn does it feels so good to say...
"indie games are the only good thing in this sea of shit"
"FUCK OFF YOU PRETENTIOUS TWAT!" see? that just felt so [i/]good[/i]
ok, I'm getting off topic here, what I'm saying is we all have our tastes and "indie" stuff isnt "good/bad" it just isnt really to my tastes
I hate to use this, cos it sounds like "oh I haven't seen it, so it must not exist!" (barf), but... I haven't observed enough of this to say that this is the case. Certainly it exists, but from the kind of stupid people whose opinions you give no weight. I guess most people operate, quite rationally, under a "credit where credit is due" mindset.skywolfblue said:
That being the case, a one-man team turning in a product that shames the majority of AAA efforts is worthy of more praise than a AAA effort doing the same. Take Super Meat Boy - a better platformer than most recent Nintendo efforts. That's the kind of thing that's worth paying attention to.
I think a lot of people confuse praising underdogs for their efforts with... praising underdogs. A lot of people are raised up on a pedastool, yes, but they're done so because they are in a separate league to "big" developers, and they deserve the extra credit. That doesn't mean they're not being judged fairly, just on slightly different standards - as people. The products are judged solely on their own though, I've found. A good game is a good game is a good game. You praise the efforts and development of the games above professionals, not the game itself. That seems rational to me.
Oh my god. You win the thread. Take it all. Take all the pie. /shoves pie into Scrustle's faceScrustle said:
Same thing. People take both indie worship and indie hatred to extremes. There is a middleground, and it's fantastic and interesting and fascinating one to be apart of. The indie scene isn't as interesting to me as games with faces behind them. I could care less if they had artistic cred or not.Vault101 said:
Which leads me to my point - "indie" is not a genre. Indie is a kind of development. If there's honestly not one independently developed game to your tastes, I'd be honestly surprised. And if it isn't to your tastes because someone arbitrarily stapled the term "indie" onto it, well that's just sad.
The way you put it, it seems that its just the classical problem that EVERY fanbase has: "MY GAME IS BETTER THAN YOURS AND WAS MONEY TOTALLY WELL SPENT.....dont look at me like that"Vault101 said:
To be honest, it seems that the second videogame crash is about to become a reality if these assholes in the top of the food chain keep thinking that abusing the same formula over and over (and expect to actually sell MILLIONS of copies).
"Because the other crash was just ancient history, i am right?? is not like it happened like 20 YEARS AGO, we are totally not doing the same mistakes here.........oh wait"
And to be fair, its kinda easy to see the appeal of having FULL CONTROL over your creation. Just look how far Orson Wells went to get "Citizen Kane" done and pay off in the end (then again so did Ed Wood and his "Plan 9 of Outer Space")
And i kinda see why people have reasons like doing the "retro" look. Take for example this sample of music of a NES game called "Batman - Return of the Joker":
When a game THAT old sound this good, it seems like an perfect excuse to see how far one can actually push the boundaries of music in an outdated hardware.
In short, as long you keep it cool and check out a few videos of the game that everyone and their mother keep bitching about of how GODLIKE it is, then it should not get into your head the desire of Falcon Punch these smug idiots.
yeah, indie doesnt only mean "indepenantly made" anymore...much like Anime doesnt really mean "the japanease word for animation" to most peopleDioWallachia said:
"indie" is often associated with a quirkly little game with a unique premise and cutsey little artstyle and [i/]sometimes[/i] said game goes out of its way to be all "artistic"
no problem with such games, they just don;t interest me
as I said, the games themselfs are fine, I just like my mass apeal crap betterDioWallachia said:
See, I think stuff like that is a matter of perception/projection. I didn't read that comment as "Amnesia is good because it's indie," I read it as "Amnesia is better than Dead Space so you should play it. In case you don't know what it is, it's an indie game." I totally didn't see "it's better because it's indie" in that comment. It seemed to me more like they mentioned it's an indie game because there are plenty of people out there who have not heard of Amnesia and don't know that it's an indie game.Terminate421 said:
As for the OP: I don't really get it either. Sure, there are some indie devs who come off the wrong way, but I don't know why that's spread into "all indie games are elitist." Sometimes the creators just don't know how to interact the right way socially. And the funny thing is that there are plenty of people like that in AAA game development, too - they just get reeled in by marketing and PR and get that desire to say anything smashed out of 'em by the greater company culture. But there are plenty of big names in AAA that put their foot in their mouth all the time - Warren Spector, Cliffy B, Daivd Jaffe, and even Wil Wright have made comments that have made people think that they're pretentious. And yet nobody thinks all AAA game devs are pretentious asses, but for some reason with indie devs they feel justified in pointing to a few individuals and saying "look at those guys."
It's the equivalent of blaming the entire medium of gaming for idiotic crap that a handful of gamers do. You shouldn't miss the forest for the trees, and yet people do it all the time. I guess it doesn't happen with AAA games because people have more exposure to them and thus understand that those individuals aren't the norm, and yet they don't have as much exposure to indie games so when they do hear a noteworthy comment it's usually a bad one. But it's still an incredibly flawed way of thinking and you shouldn't make blanket assumptions like that. And yeah, a lot of indie devs have had some very bad experiences with publishers, so you can't blame them for saying bad things about that whole process and why it's better to be indie.
I mostly don't like how The Cool Thing To Do is to back any indie game specifically because it's indie. Why, when someone asked an entire panel at Pax East, did like 6 developers answer that all their favorite games, music, etc. was from tiny indie things? Are there *really* no good large-scale games? Does no one appreciate HUGE EPIC GRAPHICS and HUGE EPIC GAMES anymore?
I know I do. I really like games with the graphics quality of movies. I want my games realistic, unless there is a very good reason besides "low budget" that they shouldn't be. I think retro games are kind of boring.
I know I do. I really like games with the graphics quality of movies. I want my games realistic, unless there is a very good reason besides "low budget" that they shouldn't be. I think retro games are kind of boring.
I don't think it's a reaction to the *games* themselves (which one often tends to lose sight of). I think it's more of a reaction to the people who are vocal about them.
I try (not always successfully, I'll confess) to keep my considerations to the game itself - I won't overlook a PC game just because PC elitists are odious individuals who need the phrase 'dumbed down' branded into them somewhere painful, and I won't overlook a console game just because of the twitching, frothing 'It sucks if it isn't made of GUNSSSS!' crowd. Neither group deserves enough of my consideration to stop me enjoying a game I might like on either platform, and I like to believe that both groups are actually fairly small, only magnified in appearance by their dominance on the Internet, which is the only place anonymous enough for them to open their mouths without getting immediately punched.
If the game is rubbish, that's another thing. Then I will dislike the game on its own (lack of) merits - and that goes for 'indie' games as well. I won't get something just because it's 'indie'. Likewise, if I don't see some reason for me personally to get the latest AAA title, I won't buy that either. It's the same for some older games - nostalgia is a powerful force, but no-one's going to convince me that King's Quest III (for example) was anything other than total dreck.
Having said all this, I don't begrudge anyone else the right to like/dislike a game/developer/genre. I just try not to let their preferences determine mine.
I try (not always successfully, I'll confess) to keep my considerations to the game itself - I won't overlook a PC game just because PC elitists are odious individuals who need the phrase 'dumbed down' branded into them somewhere painful, and I won't overlook a console game just because of the twitching, frothing 'It sucks if it isn't made of GUNSSSS!' crowd. Neither group deserves enough of my consideration to stop me enjoying a game I might like on either platform, and I like to believe that both groups are actually fairly small, only magnified in appearance by their dominance on the Internet, which is the only place anonymous enough for them to open their mouths without getting immediately punched.
If the game is rubbish, that's another thing. Then I will dislike the game on its own (lack of) merits - and that goes for 'indie' games as well. I won't get something just because it's 'indie'. Likewise, if I don't see some reason for me personally to get the latest AAA title, I won't buy that either. It's the same for some older games - nostalgia is a powerful force, but no-one's going to convince me that King's Quest III (for example) was anything other than total dreck.
Having said all this, I don't begrudge anyone else the right to like/dislike a game/developer/genre. I just try not to let their preferences determine mine.
Torchlight reminds me of a team fortress Rpg I didnt say it was a bad game just yet another kiddy game. Perhaps if it was more like Diablo 1 and less like Sacred 2 (which shits all over torchlight in terms of gameplay with that cartoonish feel) I would be more inclined to agree).TheKasp said:
Binding of Issac, yes what have you 2D graphics? I mean really some of my favourite games are in 2D but I download them for free not buy them. Bastion, yet another cartoonish Anime game with Final Fantasy characteristics.
Trine is perhaps the only one worth mentioning on your list that is actually a decent game. Its not cartoonish but uses the bright colors and enviroments with good gameplay.
You talk about all these other games like they are special indy content yet you did not address the underlying point of my origonal comment which is that there is not enough "western styled" you could say darker indy games that do not mingle with survival horror.
Games like the Witcher which would be branching out of the indy area come to my mind of a great game. Not some Kirby Nintendo game brining me back to the early 90's where pokemon was the in thing.
I think that the same thing can be said in the opposite direction, though. I should know, because when I first read the thread name, I thought that that was what this thread was going to be about.
I thought that you were talking about people giving automatic praise to a game just BECAUSE it's an indie title. When I'm listening to someone talk about a game and then hear "it's an indie title," it automatically goes up five points in my book, even though I know that it's biased.
People are biased, OP, but I personally see the pro-indie camp to be a bit more vocal and present than the anti-indie camp.
I thought that you were talking about people giving automatic praise to a game just BECAUSE it's an indie title. When I'm listening to someone talk about a game and then hear "it's an indie title," it automatically goes up five points in my book, even though I know that it's biased.
People are biased, OP, but I personally see the pro-indie camp to be a bit more vocal and present than the anti-indie camp.
The Witcher as in, a game that actually branches out its story from EVERYTHING you do at the beggining to different endings? rather than the Deus Ex 1 approach, where you can do lots of neat stuff that will eventually you get called for (like killing someone relevant a long time ago and the story follows up that, unlike other games where it WONT let you do that kind of input because it will ruin their story) but the endings are just the same regardless of what path or decisions you made during all the game (not as egregious as Deus Ex: HR, of course)kingthrall said:
Or what is it exactly?
EDIT: And what is wrong with The Binding of Isaac? It actually has better RPG elements than Diablo 3, and that is SAYING something when even Yahtzee backs it up.
While there are some excellent indie titles, sometimes I just log into Steam and my face automatically hits the desk. It's ridiculous how some devs stretch the concept of 'innovative'.
Oh look! It's Bejeweled. With zombies! *facedesk*
Oh look! It's Tower Defense! Again! *facedesk*
Oh look! It's Bejeweled. With zombies! *facedesk*
Oh look! It's Tower Defense! Again! *facedesk*
The majority of my personal skepticism toward independent games is the overwhelming disregard for a solid gameplay experience in favor of making one's game into some kind of art project. I was looking forward to this upsurge of independent development being a departure from cheap thrills and attempts to impress us with the superficial rather than just making a good freaking game that can stand the test of time, but most independent games, made by people who experienced an era of simplicity and examples of how much you can do with so little are among the most superficial of all, seemingly completely missing the point of what good games teach us, or worse, not caring in the first place in an effort to shove how pretentious and full of themselves they can be in our faces.
I'm also getting fed up of the "retro" hook that ends up consistently being an excuse to shovel the above while also making it look and sound like shit, because that's just how the developer thought things looked back then. Many of the things that endeared people to many games of the past - engaging gameplay, testing the player's knowledge of what they were capable of, scaling difficulty, memorable compositions, making the most of the technology available, and so forth - seem to be lost on the very people who experienced the era, and the results are often unsavory to people who appreciate more than "Look, I made a video game that looks kind of like the games you used to play, but it's dark and brooding and shit!"
On that note, I'm sorry, while it's neat you made a game and got someone to publish it and everything, and you spent more than half an hour writing the story, that in and of itself simply doesn't impress me; there's got to be some meat in there too, something I should be able to judge on level with anything else, not "for an independent game". And before you say "these games can't possibly compete with big budget block busters!", most big budget block busters are garbage, and those that aren't aren't so because of the money behind them. Incidentally, most independent games are garbage, and those that aren't aren't so because they're independent, so as it turns out, they can compete fine on equal footing. Of course, I'm willing to admit I may have different standards than most; I never asked for cinematic cutscenes are gritty realism in video games, and those aren't the things that win me over when a game featuring them turns out to be something other than garbage.
Regardless of my tastes, the question developers should ask themselves, independent or otherwise, is "Is the player going to want to play this thing again when they're done? Is there anything to bring them back?", and the answer is usually "No, there isn't". The gameplay is not a vehicle for the plot, or the setting, or any such things; the gameplay is in the driver's seat, and everything else is in the back seat and maybe picks a radio station now and again, and if your first priority is "a moving tale" when developing your video game, you're doing it wrong, period. If you insist on making plot a focus, it should either be "an exciting experience, featuring a moving tale" or "the player is the driving force of my moving tale". Not "the player character". The player. They and the gameplay should be the catalyst for the development of the experience, and a few floating platforms and switch puzzles between bits of broody dialogue don't cut it, sorry.
I don't get off on raining on peoples' parade - I want these games to be largely great because they have the ability to take video games away from the spectacle they've become, to make us learn and grow throughout the course of an experience, to be challenged by adversity and come out on top with our own hands. That's what I truly love about video games, and I feel the player is being taken out of the experience more and more as time passes, being robbed of those challenges and those triumphs, that exhilarating feeling of "Yes, I did it!", or "God, I was awesome just now." Video games are becoming cold and lifeless to me, and the people who should understand what makes them unique, makes them special as a media are just largely contributing to the problem. Granted, that may just be my problem, but I still think we'd all be better off if the focus on making the player the center of the experience returned, rather than just the thing scrolling the text or moving to the next cutscene. I'm not even saying the flashy lights and plot focus need to go altogether; I'd just like to be enjoying myself in the meantime.
I'm also getting fed up of the "retro" hook that ends up consistently being an excuse to shovel the above while also making it look and sound like shit, because that's just how the developer thought things looked back then. Many of the things that endeared people to many games of the past - engaging gameplay, testing the player's knowledge of what they were capable of, scaling difficulty, memorable compositions, making the most of the technology available, and so forth - seem to be lost on the very people who experienced the era, and the results are often unsavory to people who appreciate more than "Look, I made a video game that looks kind of like the games you used to play, but it's dark and brooding and shit!"
On that note, I'm sorry, while it's neat you made a game and got someone to publish it and everything, and you spent more than half an hour writing the story, that in and of itself simply doesn't impress me; there's got to be some meat in there too, something I should be able to judge on level with anything else, not "for an independent game". And before you say "these games can't possibly compete with big budget block busters!", most big budget block busters are garbage, and those that aren't aren't so because of the money behind them. Incidentally, most independent games are garbage, and those that aren't aren't so because they're independent, so as it turns out, they can compete fine on equal footing. Of course, I'm willing to admit I may have different standards than most; I never asked for cinematic cutscenes are gritty realism in video games, and those aren't the things that win me over when a game featuring them turns out to be something other than garbage.
Regardless of my tastes, the question developers should ask themselves, independent or otherwise, is "Is the player going to want to play this thing again when they're done? Is there anything to bring them back?", and the answer is usually "No, there isn't". The gameplay is not a vehicle for the plot, or the setting, or any such things; the gameplay is in the driver's seat, and everything else is in the back seat and maybe picks a radio station now and again, and if your first priority is "a moving tale" when developing your video game, you're doing it wrong, period. If you insist on making plot a focus, it should either be "an exciting experience, featuring a moving tale" or "the player is the driving force of my moving tale". Not "the player character". The player. They and the gameplay should be the catalyst for the development of the experience, and a few floating platforms and switch puzzles between bits of broody dialogue don't cut it, sorry.
I don't get off on raining on peoples' parade - I want these games to be largely great because they have the ability to take video games away from the spectacle they've become, to make us learn and grow throughout the course of an experience, to be challenged by adversity and come out on top with our own hands. That's what I truly love about video games, and I feel the player is being taken out of the experience more and more as time passes, being robbed of those challenges and those triumphs, that exhilarating feeling of "Yes, I did it!", or "God, I was awesome just now." Video games are becoming cold and lifeless to me, and the people who should understand what makes them unique, makes them special as a media are just largely contributing to the problem. Granted, that may just be my problem, but I still think we'd all be better off if the focus on making the player the center of the experience returned, rather than just the thing scrolling the text or moving to the next cutscene. I'm not even saying the flashy lights and plot focus need to go altogether; I'd just like to be enjoying myself in the meantime.
To answer this particular question: Because that's generally what happens when games are go to console. For whatever reason, there's a trend to simplify the gameplay in console ports of PC titles (ala Witcher 2).Doclector said:
On top of that, it's a demonstrable fact that PCs have faster/more responsive/more intuitive controls than consoles, as evidenced by the very brief time one of the Halo games had cross-platform multiplayer, and so in comparison the console versions always seem sluggish and faulty.
The change isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does happen just about every time there's a PC and console release of the same game. In short, the Amnesia fans you mention here just don't want to have their holy vision of the game sullied by the shame of a console release.
OT: Indie games get a bad rap because the most well known developers of indie games are pretentious, arrogant douchebags. There really isn't anything more to it than that. If the majority of well-known indie devs were likable human beings, the attitude would likely be entirely different.
Extra Credits (which isn't on this site, btw, try penny arcade) is about game design and the business of games/gaming. Indies have a lot of momentum currently. Minecraft is a lot of it, built by one guy and made millions, so AAA is this huge business that suck upwards of $100M to develop a game, forces DRM and poorly done DRM at that, down our throats. Then regular like clockwork buys and then fires entire studios, wants you to buy $60 games then another $50 of DLC and claims that the right of first sale doesn't exist. The clowns that made Heavy Rain actually blame used games sales on their inability to run their business correctly not to mention it is a single play through game so why keep it?Terminate421 said:
Then we have indie studios. They have a few people. That is it, a few people. EA has more in marketing at one event then most Indie teams have period. So that is part of it. Tired of the corporate schlock and scum-sucking fools (Yes, Bobby K. I am talking about you) well Indies for all their pretension are a breath of fresh air. Like retro, cool - we have some of that over here. Like arty - just down aisle two. Want someone that is really excited about a game that they breathed life into - pretty much all of these guys.
So that press is better to write, easier to read and it is about people that are way more interesting the EA fops going on about how they could market Minecraft better then Notch.
Dead Space 2 was okay, but so much worse then the original I never finished it. Amnesia was a non-starter for me.
Sorry you got Indied by an Indie-Fan but everybody gets excited about their own crap. You were excited about DS2 and he is going on to his buddies about how the industry sucks because it has all these sheeple going on about DS2.