Cultural differences between indie gaming and emulation

[mankrip]

In the past years I've moved more towards the "indie" side of gaming. I've stopped trying out new emulators and keeping up with the news. This is due to personal life and also because I've always wanted to create my own games, which is… well, that's the question.

Lately I've been realizing more and more that the indie gaming culture is pushing itself away from the technology side. Design and art are being given more value than ever, while technical achievements are subtly being shunned.

The current free (as in beer) technologies have become satisfying enough for most people, and now most people seems comfortable enough in not trying anything new. Technical achievements that are not built upon the currently mainstream tech are seen with distrust. Trying out technical achievements built upon different approaches is seen as a waste of time. Computer code is being seen as just a way to deliver the experience, rather than being part of the building blocks that the experience is made of. Computer programming is being given less cultural value than ever.

On emulation, however, technical achievements always were the focus. Emulation deals with fixed sets of game design, artistic style and storytelling, so the focus of the development goes towards accuracy, compatibility, accessibility, reliability, and other strictly technical aspects. But I don't know if the actual interests of emulation users also reflects this.

I'm feeling that mankind is culturally inclined to confine the future of gaming to technological black boxes controlled by a few. That this is not just the wishes of corporations fighting for market share; it's also the wish of the people.

Independent game development culture is being directed towards using premade work. The labor of making things from scratch is being gradually shunned, and creativity is being confined to an assembly line.

[cube_b3]

I think this has always been the case back in 2008 or something GoatDan issued an open letter regarding the failure of all the games that were to be released by GSP. He stated everyone wanted to do the fun part of the game but difficult bits such as coding menus, bug fixes etc prevented any of the games to be released.

I don't plan on making games ever, but if I were to I wouldn't be interested in the technical side, I want to do the fun stuff too.

Look at Hollywood how many directors know how to make all the CGI or sets. They just have the vision. He'll most film makers don't even edit their movies, they hire an editor. I am talking about a day and age when all you need is just a software.

[Specially Cork]

I'm personally tired of pixel-art indie games.

Don't get me wrong - it's fantastic when "retro-inspired" is done right, but half the games I get through Playstation Plus are done this way and most of them aren't charming, they just feel cheap and lazy.

I know indie devs are often working on very tight budgets and often banking their livelihoods on their game being a success, but fuck me, another 8-bit retro platformer is no better for gaming than the next Call of Duty.

[mankrip]

I'm personally tired of pixel-art indie games.

Don't get me wrong - it's fantastic when "retro-inspired" is done right, but half the games I get through Playstation Plus are done this way and most of them aren't charming, they just feel cheap and lazy.

I know indie devs are often working on very tight budgets and often banking their livelihoods on their game being a success, but fuck me, another 8-bit retro platformer is no better for gaming than the next Call of Duty.

That's exactly my thoughts too. I like games where we can notice how much talent and effort was put into it.

[not just souLLy now]

I'm obviously a big fan of indie games and generally the thing that has attracted me to them over the years has been the unique experiences that absolutely would not have existed otherwise. No publisher could ever have justified funding games like Gone Home or Papers Please, that have no proven user-base. And even in the event of a miracle happening and they were funded- focus groups, corporate meddling and the additional pressures a publisher would bring would ultimately have diluted the pure, singular vision that is so evident in these games.

Things like Unity and other game making tools have really democratised the game development industry. They're relatively sophisticated tools that have lowered the point of entry so that anyone with some time and a good idea could actually make and release a game. Smaller teams with smaller budgets are common again, and because costs are lower, it's not such a risk delivering more unusual gaming experiences. Teams only have to find a small group of fans to make a project financially viable. This can mean the samey pixel art stuff that can be tiresome (sometimes not, Fez and Shovel Knight are incredible) but I definitely think art-direction trumps everything else anyway.

Look at the surprisingly bad reception to lots of recent AAA titles, Destiny, Watch Dogs, Duke Nukem etc. People want fresh experiences and the indie game ethos is now bleeding into mainstream gaming. Life Is Strange is a game that could not have existed without indie games proving there's a market for non-shooting stuff. Games definitely feel like they're maturing, I think the feminist frequency stuff is helping push things forward too. Mature games don't just mean bloody games now. There's a bit of variation in characters in games too, increasingly I don't always play as unfathomably muscular white men in their 30s now which is a refreshing change.

So yeah, shitty graphics suck, but the payoff of industry outsiders making new games has massively improved all types of gaming for the better, so it's worth it.

[Eviltaco64X]

There are a lot of me-toos in the indie scene because of the small startup nature of it. Despite a flood of "ironic" Zelda clones and weak 2D platformers, a lot of new ground has been seized by the ones that stand out from the crowd.

Price justifies the saturation a bit further (how many people think, "I just need to make one good $3/freemium game and sell a lot of copies and I'll be rich"). Game companies draw outrage, but they are never held accountable at large for releasing a terrible game for $60. There is this certain faith and devotion to large developers (even if the entire dev team that made their good games left years ago). Look at Sega. Even with the amount of flat-out terrible games they've sold at full retail price, they are always forgiven and many hope that they will only become better with time.

Meanwhile, a poorly reviewed $2 game can break an indie studio.