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icarus
Troll
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Location: Tacoma Washington
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 Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 2:39 am Post subject: Thought for the day 2: Indy gaming is not Punk Rock. |
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It seems the the indy gaming community thinks it is some kind of counter culture. At least the fans do. The seem to prefer the Idea of the renegade indy Dev who sticks it to the man by making hardcore 2d games that are "W4Y B3T3R TH4N 4NYTH1NG M1CR0$$$UCK C0ULD M4K3!" and long for the days when games were somehow more fun just because they were simple. They would rather worship this Ideal than face the reality that Indy game devs are normal guys who make games without funding or control from a larger company.
Indy does not mean,
Rebellious, Original (to... many... Bejeweled... Clones...), 2d ,Retro ,Hardcore, or simple.
It simply means that no larger company had any say in making it.
Any thoughts? |
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Konedima
Grammar Police
Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 1068
Location: Sydney, Land of Censorship
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 4:52 am Post subject: |
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| The thing about not being controlled by a bigger company is that you get the freedom to make more obscure/out there/weird games that a bigger company thinks might not sell (and therefore not make money). Don't get me wrong, there are a few weird games from big companies (Katamari Damacy and Pikmin, I'm looking at you) but you'll see a lot more unique games from independent developers. Whether they are better than their more conventional cousins is really up to the player. |
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SethP
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 303
Location: Connecticut, USA
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 5:06 am Post subject: Re: Thought for the day 2: Indy gaming is not Punk Rock. |
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I think South Park said it best in the breakdancing episode they did. Kyle, Stan, etc. went up to the "goth kids" and asked them to be in a breakdancing group. All of the first three said something along the lines of "Breakdancing is so conformist, no way am I gonna join." The fourth one said, "I'm so totally non-conformist I'm going to not conform to any of you and join their group." The other 3 say, "I guess we just got put in our place."
Anyway, whenever anyone says "counterculture," that scene replays in my head and I laugh inside. Silly society-hating people... |
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Magnulus
Joined: 08 Nov 2005
Posts: 556
Location: Bergen, Norway
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| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:48 am Post subject: |
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Nice points here, Ic.
Yeah, I completely agree that people are taking it a tad far with the indie thing. While I agree with Konedima that they DO have more freedom in the development, a lot of indie games conform very strictly to trends and "safe" projects, which is understandable, considering how much they have riding on the success of their game. You have RPG games, MMOs, puzzle games, Breakout clones, etc etc. You get the odd Mr. Robot and Oasis, but they are relatively far apart, from what I can tell.
I guess my point is that no developer of commercial games is ever TRULY indie because they're all dependant on sales. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4107
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:03 am Post subject: |
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| Magnulus wrote: | | I guess my point is that no developer of commercial games is ever TRULY indie because they're all dependant on sales. |
Exactly.
I think the "counter culture rebel" thing is far more concentrated within freeware. Now, they do make some crazy stuff 
I wonder if it all started there and then kind of leaked into shareware games because every now and again a freeware title gets popular and the author turns it into a money making crossover.
Or maybe it's just journalists, bored by the current crop of genre defining mainstream titles, who are desperate for some edgey eye catching story. They pick on the odd rare example of something different and then hype it up until all the press it receives makes people think all indie titles are like that?
Or maybe journalists just lump shareware and freeware into one category when they really shouldn't. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4107
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 10:27 am Post subject: |
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Freeware getting its wierd on:
http://comic.makibishi.co.jp/
Warning - web based point and click adventure game with some very strange visuals indeed. I did see giant gas mask wearing babies at one point. |
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