"Against the cult of simplicity" - Craig Stern on how the indie clique hates complex games

[Lyric Suite]

The main problem here is that what's basically a financing model, "independent" as opposed to publisher-funded has been hijacked by a group espousing a certain design philosophy.

Indeed. If big business is preventing developers from making the games we like, than an alternative financial model is more than welcome, and we'd all be willing to accept certain drawbacks due to budged limitations, if the games are good.

We certainly didn't ask for this self-indulgent crap from pretend "artists", and we certainly didn't ask for shitty political messages and other bullshit of that kind.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Bit by bit, I have seen our community growing, broadening, opening. For years, narrative titles fought a long and bitter battle to be included in the indie scene, and now we honor games like Gone Home and Depression Quest. We fought about whether games needed to have challenges and goals in order to be games, and now we honor titles like Panoramical, Dear Esther, and The Stanley Parable.

This. What the fuck.

 

[Lyric Suite]

who come up with original ideas

This is another thing. Why do developers always have to come up with something new? What's wrong with reusing well established formulas, perhaps with some improvement or some creative quirk? Take PoE. Did any of us ask for Obsidian to try to reinvent the wheel?

 

[Trash]

This is another thing. Why do developers always have to come up with something new? What's wrong with reusing well established formulas, perhaps with some improvement or some creative quirk?

Call of Duty franchise sounds right up your alley.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

This is another thing. Why do developers always have to come up with something new? What's wrong with reusing well established formulas, perhaps with some improvement or some creative quirk?

Call of Duty franchise sounds right up your alley.

That's not what he meant, and you know it. Yes, far too many games are made nowadays that take the basic old formula and only make a slight adjustment here and there. Sometimes that's a good thing if the formula hasn't been used in a long time (like Legend of Grimrock) but most often it's just Generic First-Person Shooter 2: Electric Shootaloo starring Vladimir Shootin.

But what about those cases where a basic idea is spun around to be its opposite? What if, say, instead of playing the hero that raids the dungeon, you build and manage a dungeon that lures the heroes to their deaths? Dungeon Keeper became a classic as a result.

Sometimes all you need to get a game up and running is take a pre-existing idea and approach it from another angle. That naturally doesn't mean that you should devote an entire game to that one gimmick, the classic games are classic because more often than not they combined several ideas and gimmicks. Which is why 99% of the Indie games being developed these days will be discarded and lost as time marches on.

 

[Delterius]

Does anyone know of any forum where members and fans of the Artsy Scene can be linked to this article? The butthurt must flow.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's not what he meant, and you know it. Yes, far too many games are made nowadays that take the basic old formula and only make a slight adjustment here and there. Sometimes that's a good thing if the formula hasn't been used in a long time (like Legend of Grimrock) but most often it's just Generic First-Person Shooter 2: Electric Shootaloo starring Vladimir Shootin.

The fallacy with his comment is that the Call of Duty formula is shitty to begin with. Do you think anybody here would complaim about a Wizardry clone done right?

The issue is that many people seem to think creativity and originality are an end to itself. As if when a developer hits on a good new idea, the worth of that idea is in its originality rather than on it being a good idea in the first place.

 

[Infinitron]

I think "innovation" or the lack thereof is a red herring. The issue is dumbing down and simplification, plain and simple.

 

[Trash]

This is another thing. Why do developers always have to come up with something new? What's wrong with reusing well established formulas, perhaps with some improvement or some creative quirk?

Call of Duty franchise sounds right up your alley.

That's not what he meant, and you know it. Yes, far too many games are made nowadays that take the basic old formula and only make a slight adjustment here and there. Sometimes that's a good thing if the formula hasn't been used in a long time (like Legend of Grimrock) but most often it's just Generic First-Person Shooter 2: Electric Shootaloo starring Vladimir Shootin.

But what about those cases where a basic idea is spun around to be its opposite? What if, say, instead of playing the hero that raids the dungeon, you build and manage a dungeon that lures the heroes to their deaths? Dungeon Keeper became a classic as a result.

Sometimes all you need to get a game up and running is take a pre-existing idea and approach it from another angle. That naturally doesn't mean that you should devote an entire game to that one gimmick, the classic games are classic because more often than not they combined several ideas and gimmicks. Which is why 99% of the Indie games being developed these days will be discarded and lost as time marches on.

Yeah, I know. I made a little fun of the fellow because I already see him gearing up to turning this interesting thread into another one of his endless pseudo-intellectual rants on liburals, Truth, relativism, Schuon and bitches. Regarding the rest of your post, I don't care if a game is a genre binder, a truly new thing or a fully original take on an old idea. I care about whether or not I enjoy it. The issue at hand however is not that. It's what PorkyThePaladin describes so spot on:

I have great hopes for the indie scene as one of gaming's saviors, but there are almost two completely different indie scenes. One is not really a scene at all, and is just an abstraction of small independent developers who come up with original ideas and make impressive games. The other is this "indie scene" of artistic hipsters who instead of games (as I understand the term) make weird artsy stuff that some people consider to be games. The former often make really complex stuff with emphasis on gameplay (think Dwarf Fortress or No Man's Sky), while the latter usually produce the video game equivalent of that early 20th century unicycle wheel upside down on a stool. I generally don't follow the latter, and happily ignore them, but the only problem is, when I talk to people about indie games I am excited about, they think I am talking about that kind of crap.

Indie games to me are the ones made from small independent developers who make the games they really want to make. To find that what I see as the 'indie scene' and was hoping to be a breeding ground for talent and incline has turned into a hipster clique is galling. To say the least. Especially with the latter hogging all the media attention.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It's like that thing that the Insomnia dude was talking about years ago.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Indie games to me are the ones made from small independent developers who make the games they really want to make.

Or the games they think they are going to be praised for making.

 

[dryan]

I actually liked the Stanley Parable.

 

[Dexter]

Did they just seriously made a game about being a mountain?
I consider Indie devs to be the ones that does their own publicity. Cause it's really what differs being a humble guy making games from being an actual company.

I think it has no interaction whatsoever and seems more like a Screensaver: http://store.steampowered.com/app/313340/



It's what we've fucking come to. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=274135797

 

[pakoito]

I actually liked the Stanley Parable.

It's not bad for a choose your own adventure game. Some of them aren't. The critique is about trying to make them into the paradigm game.

 

[TheGreatOne]

Bit by bit, I have seen our community growing, broadening, opening. For years, narrative titles fought a long and bitter battle to be included in the indie scene, and now we honor games like Gone Home and Depression Quest. We fought about whether games needed to have challenges and goals in order to be games, and now we honor titles like Panoramical, Dear Esther, and The Stanley Parable.

THE POTENSHUL OF OUR MEDIUM!!!

Fuck these people


Interactive screen savers, choose your own adventure books and hiking simulators are not games. Games are about learning game mechanics and using them to overcome challenges designed by the creators. That's why I hate the modern obsession with non linearity and sandbox games as well, because usually that translates to developers not having to bother with designing compelling levels, encounters, bosses (remember when Western developed games still had those?), story structure etc. There are examples of succesful nonlinear design (mostly in old CRPGs) like Fallout or Ultima, but games like Thief and Deus Ex (which are often seen as the antitheses of modern linear AAA shooter garbage) were still very structured, well designed experiences. They had emergent gameplay which allowed for interesting situations specific to individual play through, but they were still meticulously crafted experiences, where as modern indy garbage, stimulation&sandbox games and certain WRPGs drop you in the game world and use terms like emergent gameplay and nonlinearity as excuses for not having to design proper video games.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Indie games = Obama.

So much hope.
So much disappointment.

 

[pakoito]

Who had hopes for Obama? You though someone could make president promoting real positive change? Is America collectively 12?

 

[dnf]

Indie games = Obama.

So much hope.
So much disappointment.

This says more about the public lack of intelligence than indie game quality

Who had hopes for Obama?

The people who gave him a nobel prize for being an somewhat educated progressive negro muslim?

Anyway the problem with indie games is called modern/post-modern art:

1- Choose a gaming genre;
2- Dumb it down his mechanics ad infinitum;
3-Put a gimmick so it can attract manboons(sound, graphics or some "new" mechanic);
4- Add a twist/"message" as a criticism bitch shield(2deep4u);
5-???;
6-Profit

Art games are the urinals and shit canned work of art for games. The degenerate version of Super Mario World is called Passage. The degenerate version of flight simulators is called Flower.

 

[J1M]

I too am sick of this type of bullshit. The types of games that gamers like are not being made anymore. It is insulting to be asked to make concessions and room for more watered down products when the founding audience remains unserved.

So no, Stanley Parable and whatever else is not a game, and I don't need to support it or act nice when people talk about it. When games like those that existed before 2000 start being made again in any degree of quantity then, and only then, we can have a discussion about attempting to include other audiences and products.

 

[Gregz]

Seems to me games are just shit and pointless at heart.

Bingo.

If you guys believe that, what are you doing here?

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I too am sick of this type of bullshit. The types of games that gamers like are not being made anymore. It is insulting to be asked to make concessions and room for more watered down products when the founding audience remains unserved.

So no, Stanley Parable and whatever else is not a game, and I don't need to support it or act nice when people talk about it. When games like those that existed before 2000 start being made again in any degree of quantity then, and only then, we can have a discussion about attempting to include other audiences and products.

Me too. Hence the reason I enter the world of indie dev.
My job as a freelance finance programmer is enough to feed me so there is no reason for me to pander for cash.
This snapshot of my blog should explain more of why I am still trying to make a good indie game despite everything.
Yeah the graphics going to suck balls, but give me a break, I am making do with what I can get

 

[buzz]

Meanwhile the RPGCodex's favorite RPG is the storyfaggy one where one of the main draws is that "you can skip most of the combat!!"



Really, there's no one to really blame for our situation than ourselves, and by that I usually mean the late 90s/early 00s kids and teenagers, who felt in love with storyfaggotry instead of actual games.
You know what I'm talking about: adventure games, IE engine RPGs, action RPGs with muh atmosphere and immershun, muh immershun FPSes, jRPGs, survival horror, stealth games and so on.
Sure, those had gameplay and were very fun to play. But you have to be obtuse to not have realized that when Half Life 1 started with a 15-20 minute no-gameplay section where you just walk around and shit, someone would eventually make an entire game out of that. People PRAISED THE SHIT out of that level where you just sit in a fucking tram than walk on some corridors and push a fucking cart, and 15 years later you are reaping what you sowed.

Don't start taking the higher ground because your game has a bit more gameplay than theirs do. Storyfaggotry has become such an issue in RPGs that often-times I get flamed and called a troll on other sites (even 4chan) if I argue that RPGs are not about the story.

Look at the fucking numbers, story-focused RPGs about "muh immersive setting" and other bullshit like Torment, PoE and W2 got millions of kwabucks. Jagged Alliance Flashback by comparison got less than 400k. Look at the thread of the Flashback, see all the butthurt individuals "not trusting the company" or bitching about the possibility of a multiplatform release. Yeah, because inXile was totally not a shady shovelware company before all of this and because consoles are the last place a turn-based game could sell.

That's really the problem in here, people who actually care about gameplay are too much of a minority and have a stick stuck up their asses. Leaving the hordes of immershun and story faggots to take over.


Look, if we think of adventure games as the basis for story-based gaming, then that shit runs deep, old as the industry itself. Zork was released around the same time Pac Man was. If you ask people what is their favorite Infocom game (well, all 50 that played one of it anyways), they will usually say A mind forever voyaging ... the game which has ONE FUCKING PUZZLE and is all about politics and meaningful themes and shit
If you ask about the population at large about their favorite adventure video game, they're not usually going to say Quest for Glory, or Riven, or some old-school Sierra game (again, I mean my generation, not the one before that) ... they will usually say The Longest Journey or some LucasArts adventure game. Oh, you mean the adventure games with simplified interface and no ability to actually get a game over screen? Yeah.


Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty as fucking charged of this. I remember being so ecstatic about Gothic because I could sleep in it, and people were sitting by the campfire and I could cook meat in some pan and TLJ is by far my fondest memory of adventure gaming back in those days, and I loved Half Life when I first played it.


You've seen Avellone playing Arcanum and how shit he is at it. That's pretty much the target audience for this type of games, people who want story and "meaning" out of their virtual toys but without the hassle of solving puzzles or combat. It's just the next step from what we praised ourselves when we were younger.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Small, strategically chosen moments of immersion such as sitting around a campfire in gothic make a wonderful form of support to a game that has lots of crunchy, engaging, mechanical content. But I've never liked games where immersion is the #1 focus.

 

[Gozma]

A lot of it has to do with an internet critic - developer symbiosis where the developer wants his game to get pushed and a critic wants something he can easily write an enthused piece about. A dense, long, complex game particularly if it's in an established framework (like, say, a 4X) can't be given a pithy positive review. A mutually reinforcing critic-driven dynamic is dangerous because it's probably going to be mostly about the criticism, which then socially elevates stuff that wasn't ever actually designed to be sought out for its own sake, which ultimately alienates the critic from an audience and the whole thing can disappear into a cultural cul-de-sac.

 

[CyberP]

I'm a gameplay whore and always will be. Everything else is the icing on the cake.