Dramus post=6.69741.672066 said:
He brought up something that ticks me off, and that's the notion that indie games are somehow better just because they are indie. In fact there are probably just as many shit indie games out there as there are shit mainstream. There are a huge amount of copycat indie games that blatantly rip off other game's ideas (I know because I played all the shift knock offs on onemorelevel (and since shift is a portal knock off, it's like doubly unimaginative). The only difference is that indie games are not hyped (at least not usually), and so if one sucks no one cares because no one plays it. The only indie games most people play are the really good ones, so people get the erroneous idea that all indie games are super creative and good.
This is where you might have misunderstood Yahtzee's (and other's) point of view:
I think he meant that indie games should get more attention of the broad audience, not because they are generally better, but because they have more potential of innovation which can cause them to be better. Of course, the word 'better' in this regard is dependent on the subjective notion of quality that everyone defines for oneself.
So this statement holds mainly for people who see innovation as a huge quality feature like Yahtzee and many others including me.
Now the potential of a title created by an independent developer comes from his absolute freedom to build a game that is really different. Actually an indie developer - assuming that one of his goals is the attention and interest of others for his game - is not only more free to create something unique but is also driven to do so, since indie games, as you implicitly stated, don't get any attention if they are unoriginal.
In contrast, innovation gets thinned out in big commercial titles on a broad, average scope. The reasons are manifold. To name only two of them:
1.) The complexity of the decision and communication process in huge productions with a lot of people involved
(Just like in any other project, a large size makes it less flexible and unwieldy.)
2.) The necessity to please a large audience to be able to amortize monetary investments
(This can also be generalized to represent decisions that are driven by monetary ventures and interests of people in control within the media market, for example publishers.)
Of course, even huge productions can set themselves above this causality sometimes but sadly this requires much more effort and bravery. On the other hand indie developers, along with their creative freedom, have the freedom of producing crap and spreading it on the intertubes since there is absolutely no instance of quality control involved.
This whole mechanic is nothing new and can be observed in the entire media culture.
P.S. Sorry if this sounds too smug.
