Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
There are all these people who think it’s only a video game if it involves big fightymen killing things. That’s hyperbole (they could be big sportsmen doing sports), but not by much.
These are the people who view graphics as the be-and-end-all of a game’s quality. There are more kinds of games than anyone could count, but you wouldn’t know it by asking those people.
Just finished Momodora: Moonlit Farewell. Couple of years old now but that game had more passion put into it than anything I’ve played in years. Puts many AAA to shame.
I still need to play that one. I played Reverie a few years ago and that was an amazing game that is still in my top recommendations.
Can also recommend Minoria from (I think) the same dev. I believe unrelated story but very similar feel.
Yeah, indie and AA-gaming are doing fine, its the AAA that is suffering. And I think they deserve it for sure: predatory practices, lack of innovation, everything looking and feeling the same… Indie and AA-games are the ones I look forward to.
Tried God Of War, lost patience after 30 minutes - too much of a “guided experience” for my taste.
Picked up Valheim again for my 6(?)th run of it and only lost patience with it maybe a month (in real time) later.
Been doing Saelig since (got it as a promo from GoG) but now have so much money in that game and such a steady way to make more that it’s not really fun anymore.
Just updated Songs Of Syx to v0.71 and preparing for a new run on that.
I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades, originally in a ZX Spectrum and after than mostly on the PC (tried modern consoles with the WII, but found it a bit meh).
For me the modern AAA gaming experience is seldom as much fun as some Indie games out there and AAA games now tend to have much less replayability: AAA games in the last 1 or 2 decades mainly have fixed game areas with fixed and reasonably simple game rules so once I’ve seen it and done it I tend to still remember how it was for many years after playing it, so the exploration fun isn’t there anymore in a new run (in my experience it takes maybe a decade before I can come back to the best such games and have fun with it again) whilst many Indie games have procedurally generated playing fields and/or complex enough game rules that after I’ve played so much of it that I got fed up, it takes me a lot less time to have fun in a new run.
Even supposedly great games like Red Dead Redemption II turned out to, for me, be engaging and interesting for far less time than things like, say Terraria - sure, the former starts a lot more impressive, but the fun goes down a lot faster whilst the latter just keeps throwing challanges at you. Also having played it until you’re fed up, some months later Terraria is fun again for another run, whilst if you go back to it a year later, for RDR II you quickly remember what’s were in the game area and how to go around doing stuff, so the “discovery” part of fun isn’t there anymore (this especially so for the story: it’s really only interesting once)
Mind you, there are actually older AAA games for which this doesn’t apply. For example, I can still go back to the Sims 3, start a new game and it will be fun for quite a while.
I think that the problem with modern AAA games is that far too much was invested into glitzy visuals and a heavilly curated game area (not just visually but even things like scripted events) and not enough in engaging game play, plus I get the impression that game play tends to be low complexity so as to be accessible to more people, and for me after 4 decades as a gamer, simpler game rules are usually boring unless the interact in complex ways. Further, all that curating (read, “tight control”) of the game experience goes against a great source of fun in games - emergent gameplay (how the interaction between game rules and between them and the game environment can create varied and complex situations that need different solutions) - something which, IMHO, is part of the reason why in some games multiplayer is a lot of fun when singleplayer is not (humans are great at creating the novel and unexpected) and which works especially well with game with tons of things which interact with each other and with procedurally generated game spaces.
Played Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora recently, and it struck me almost immediately:
This is, without a hint of doubt, a Ubisoft game. The setting may change, the characters are swapped, but it is always the same gameplay. Like if they figured something that works with Assassin’s Creed and decided to never change it, ever.
Whatever Ubisoft action RPG you start, you always play Assassin’s Creed with extra decorations. Again. And again. And again. Zero creative vision, just new textures on top of the same mechanics.
They used to have good writing though. How’s Avatar’s story?
you always play Assassin’s Creed with extra decorations.
Or if there are guns and vehicles, it’s all Far Cry :-)
Retro gaming:
A bunch of Indiana Jones fighting against techno-feudalists seeking to hoarde proprietary
Cozy Pixel Dating Exposition Building Pastel Farming Dog Quirky Fishing Rogue-lite Crafter
Shut up and take my money!
For real though, casual and chill-out games are so cathartic. Sure, I love my edgy soulsborne action adventures… But a couple of edibles and some Slime Rancher and I’m happy as a clam.
Unfortunately a large percentage of the population (subconsciously) believe that if a product isn’t marketed to them, they shouldn’t touch it.
And there’s also those, who will throw a hissyfit if they’re forced to play something without modern AAA graphics, don’t want to play “woke” games, etc.
Sounds like a them problem
To put it more accurately, they don’t look. They don’t seek. They wait for it to get served to them via an algorithmic feed.
I think this is a core issue with all of civilization, right now.
We will mock this, but we all use Product X in industry Y, which is the more well-known brand of that industry. We don’t know that if we explore Z Niche Store, we can find excellent replacements for Product X that can take a little more effort to use and appreciate but are valued more for it.
You can fill in that mad lib in several ways; it’s very much down to which industries you pay close attention to.
How much difference does it make for your life?
What’s the fraction of your time you spend in it?
How long do you have to work to earn the money to pay for it?
As I see it, those are the kind of question which dictate how much time one should spend in trying to figure out the best option for something.
Trying to figure out the best cost/quality option in, say, soap or discardable plates for a party, is seldom worth it versus spending time figuring out, say, what’s the best house or car to buy or even just a good sofa for you living room or mattress for your bed.
And yeah, plenty of people won’t spend anywhere as much time researching even a purchase they’re going to spend the next 30 years paying for (the house), which IMHO is pretty sad - if something will cost you tens of thousands of hours of your life to pay for (by working to earn the money to pay for it), spending many hours of your time in making totally sure you’re getting the right one is the wisest way of going about it.
So, it’s totally logical for casual gamers to invest in their game purchasing decisions the same time and care as they do for, say, their soap purchases, and it’s logical for people who spend many hours a week playing games to care a lot more about finding the best games for what’s probably their main form of entertainment.
Capitalism ruins another awesome part of our lives.
Indie games aren’t capitalism?
Are indie better because of capitalism or despite capitalism? It’s despite.
I think you’re mistaking capitalism with corpocracy…
“The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s <fancy term to describe the inevitable result of capitalism>!”
No, I am not. I did think about my answer despite it being short.
there have always been loads of shitty games, same witb movies/music etc. the bad just gets forgotten with time
There’s definitely amazing indie games, but there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
If you dont play a game for 2 hours and didnt buy it more than 2 weeks ago, you can refund it if you bought it on steam
And thats the natural way of the world. Without shitty artists there would be no good artists, because every good artist was once a shitty artist.
Sure everyone needs to start somewhere. I’m just saying it’s also very far from all sunshine and rainbows in indie-game land.
I mean don’t play the ones you don’t want to…?
Also, I’m a lot more willing to gamble on a $20 game than an $80 one.
My experience has been indie games are pretty well vetted if they are able to sell for $20.
Plenty of $3-5 games that are a bit of a gamble though. Even if it ends up being kind of lame I figure it’s funding for the developer to make another attempt.
Adding on to that: Sometimes these indie devs, who made a cool thing as a passion project and get rewarded with life-changing money via sales, then go on to continually update the thing since they can now devote time to passion. Thinking Minecraft, Terraria, Vampire Survivors, Stardew Valley as my personal “I have sunk hundreds of hours into this title” games. That $3 game might have good bones and just need time to flesh it out.
Also the communities will rally around devs that don’t use predatory pricing and cash-grabs. I know I’m not the only one who bought more copies of some of these games (or their OSTs, donation DLCs, Patreon, etc) to gift or even just as a thank-you when something updated and gave me more content or more polished experience.
My game list were so popular it was almost cliche, but we can’t really predict what the next great thing will be until it’s there and pricing your new best-seller at $3 means you get exposure and good will.
Yeah you are right there is plenty of small slop games that were clearly made as a cashgrab full of microstransactions and bugs. But i jist wanted to point out that its not so black and white.
If you read the negative reviews on steam, you can often filter these shitty ones out. Also, be suspicious by default of free games. There are some that were made by some game dev just having fun but most want to make money some way or another and f2p monetization is often pretty toxic, like adding a long grind just to sell ways to avoid it or p2w mechanics.
I haven’t felt like I’ve gone wrong by generally just buying the cheapest well-reviewed games on my wishlist, occasionally stretching the budget to grab a mid-priced game I’m interested in and rarely going for a AAA priced game. Means that I get to some great games later (eg, Hollow Knight is one of the more recent ones, highly recommended btw) but it’s been a great way to experience a wide variety of games from today and the last 15 years for not that much money.
I don’t think the intended message is that all indie games are great. The message is that if you’re frustrated with AAA-games and haven’t considered indie games, you should.
I can respect a shitty indie game that has passion. You can tell a lot of people are ALMOST there on itch.io sometimes. And its just so close. Or just something that doesnt click with you. But thats ok.
“Or just something that doesn’t click with you. But that’s ok.” You’re going to rile up the rage addicts with this calm logic.
It’s funniest when they act like their rage is justified. Or destroy their own things.
This wisdom is strong. I respect the fuck out of shitty games that have crazy passion. I often enjoy them far more than soulless titles that are perfectly polished. A lot of my favorite games gain their character from their rough edges. Peripetia, Alisa, Webfishing come to mind.
Oh no I spent $3 on a game that could use some more polish.
Honestly even if the game ends up being kinda lame I won’t ask for a refund.
There’s a lot of indie games costing $30+ these days
there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
I would skip those and play the good ones
I would play them both. Because fuck me I guess
Yes.
Ratings systems and reviews aren’t perfect, but they are a good starting point.
There are more good indie games than ever. It doesn’t bother me that there are also more bad indie games than ever. We have a variety of ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I don’t think the ratio has ever been better than 1:100 in any genre in any time period. 🤷♂️
yes but more chances to be good. variance is expected ln chances. the choice is your’s to pick which ones to play. no one said you absolutely had to play the shit ones. use your free will.
That is why indie gamer bloggers still exist, to write about which ones are bad and which are good.
All the old cool shit still exists even if its not “mainstream”.
Ultrakill, Deltarune and Celeste are my favorite video games, all indie I think.
both ultrakill and dusk look like arse, and that might turn people away
not played those but deltarune, undertale, and celeste are on my planned list, and might check ultrakill out
i rlly like hollow knight and hollow knight silksong, which are 2 very good indie games
the main non indie ones i play are minecraft and the legend of zelda series
Minecraft is an indie game that became super popular.
I love deltarune and I enjoyed the ultrakill demo, never tried Celeste though
Most games I play are indie ones cause those are the best imo
never tried Celeste though
How solid is your relationship to your gender?
Is this really the best takeaway from the game? I love Celeste and I’m pretty solid with my gender identity. The music and game mechanics are the best parts. You reference the story, which ain’t bad, but definitely not where the game shines.
Ehh different people take away different things from the game. One of the pivotal experiences that lead to me finding out I’m trans was beating Celeste.
honestly unsure
Well, then Celeste sounds like the perfect game for you!
Depends on how you define indie. By my definition, Deltarune is still indie but made by a quintillionaire so like, meh. Celeste was indie when it was just a fantasy console bs thing.
And ultrakill probably sold the least out of these 3 but actually has a publisher (it’s also my favorite of the 3)
I think the most accurate definition is “produced without a publisher”. That’s the thing they’re independent of.
Where it gets grey is things like “okay it has a publisher, but they’re tiny and cute and only publish indie-feeling game”
So the “feeling” of indie is “made by a small group of people with a shared cohesive vision and minimal outside influence”, where publishers tend to be large sources of outside influence, and teams larger than, like, 50 people tend to be unable to all have a truly shared cohesive vision. And a single person, by definition, always has a shared vision no matter what they make. But if a publisher is low-touch, or brings a game that’s basically done to market without asking for changes, and the game feels cohesive and personal, then that’s good enough.
Right, that’s where the other definitions come in. I’d say itch is a distributor rather than a publisher, but even if you don’t care about that distinction, it is definitely the case that itch doesn’t tell the developer to do anything. So publishing on itch doesn’t affect the vision for the game.
Nintendo… I mean kinda yeah. They’re a weird one. Some of their games they’re just the publisher, and there is another developer with a different name. But some things they do actually develop and self-publish. And some of the games have surprisingly few people working on them…
There may actually be a few Nintendo games that are kinda indie, oddly enough.
I think the most accurate definition is “produced without a publisher”. That’s the thing they’re independent of.
Yeah I think it was the original meaning. And New Blood, ultrakill’s publisher, is only doing small games so far IIRC (also they have some ridiculous merch for their games alongside some pretty cool one) so they fit the “indie-ish” publishers category I have
I mean Deltarune was made by toby fox who became a millionaire from his other indie game Undertale. I think it definitely counts.
I did say “is still indie”.
You also said, “but made by a quintillionaire,” as if that is a point lowering its indie status, and as if money is the defining aspect of indie vs. AAA.
So if an indie game blows up because it’s great then it’s not indie? That’s a silly way to define it.
Have some mid-sized studios co-opted the term? Sure. Expedition 33 is on that AA spectrum, but a game by a very small team? In what definition is Celeste not an indie game?
Here’s one definition. If you go to the Steam page for Deltarune, it says “tobyfox” as developer, that’s a (nick)name. OneShot (2016) says “Future Cat LLC” but that seems to be made up since Steam asks for “company name”. Celeste’s “Maddy Makes Games Inc.” seems real, however. Therefore, Celeste isn’t indie.
So true! If you ignore big corpo and their slop, we actually live in a golden age of gaming.
We always have and I’ve often ignored big corp.
Same thing for movies, music, etc. The people that piss and moan about their media being terrible are the ones that can’t be bothered to lift a finger to seek out something better. They only bother with media that falls into their lap, and that’s petty much all determined by studios that care more about profits than quality.
I think it’s still a bit of a fair critique.
There were always sequels and garbage 30 years ago but someone who maybe only saw a movie a year the chance that it would be a new IP were higher. Studios are allergic to risk so they would prefer a mediocre known quality.
That said you’re right there’s more media than ever and tones of interesting options in niche areas. That said discoverability is not free. You have to put in a decent amount of effort and even still you might end up watching a niche indie darling that was never for you and come out disappointed.
For someone who only periodically dips into a form of media I think the current landscape is undeniably worse than it was and I understand when they complain about it.
Streaming has changed films. With on-demand TV, and more affordable, higher-qualitt home theatres, the only films worh spending money on seeing in a cinema are the big eye-candy films.
However, those streaming films are often lower quality if they weren’t also released in cinemas.
On the topic of indie films, can people in-the-known share some suggestions for what’s worth watching?
Grey Man, purely for Captain America in a pedostache hamming it up as a villain.
Brick, Moon, Sunshine, Seven psychopaths
I don’t know how many of those are actually indie but I feel like they all flew in under the radar.
That’s what folks don’t seem to realize, it’s always been about money and the entire industry has always been toxic and what we have now is it’s natural outcome. There’s always been non mainstream content and more recently it’s become more accessable which hurts the profits of the industry meaning they do less innovating because they worry about the ROI beyond anything. This drives more people to non mainstream which increases its quality. It just requires effort to find.
I mean… if you only have a console (or even worse: only a Smartphone) I get why it looks like that to people. Some people apparently don’t even have a PC or laptop anymore.
I’m genuinely upset at how miserable the mobile scene is compared to the rest.
I’ve got a phone that’s orders of magnitude above a TurboGrafx or a Game Gear, but 95% of the games are GACHA crap or so ad bloated as to be unplayable.
There is nubbys number factory
And thats it, there are no other good mobile games
Only counting (intended) exclusives, uhh…
osu!stream…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Mekorama.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Yeah, it’s abysmal. I still rock a OnePlus 7 Pro from 2019 with /e/OS, that damn thing can run Crysis (I tried, works with Winlator - lots of compatibility bugs though). The SoCs are so powerful Valve designs a whole stand-alone VR system around it able to play full-blown PC titles. Modern phones got crazy performance.
Good games without all the extorsion money simply can’t compete in the attention game though and people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”. The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism. But, you see… it’s for ✨the economy✨.
Personally a big thing that holds me back from even seriously considering mobile gaming as an extension to normal gaming instead of “the best you can do when you don’t have access to better devices” is the input side. I hate touchscreen controls for anything with real time action because touching the screen obscures it from view, plus you don’t get the tactile feedback of buttons that makes it trivial to play without needing to readjust your finger positions constantly.
And I know there are external controllers you can use with phones, but if I’m making space (and remembering to bring) one of those, I might as well just bring my steam deck or even the switch instead.
I mean, yeah, why not bring a dedicated device, but the shit you can do with a phone and a controller is not unimpressive. I’ve got anything and everything psx and before emulated (including SCUMM and DOS, so I could play old lucasarts or sierra games. Fuck if I remember how to do that. Something on fdroid) on a oneplus 7 pro and galaxy s3.
I think the money aspect is a big one with this. Someone with a Steam Deck and/or Switch doesn’t see the need (well, Switch maybe unless it’s jailbroken), but if you just want something and money is tight then a new 50€ controller and your existing phone gets you way further.
people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”.
I’ve got the first six FFs, which were remastered and released on Mobile. Got me through lockdown, when I was just trapped in a socially distanced office with nothing to do.
Like, it’s definitely possible to make - and sell - a good game that works well on a phone.
The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism.
Ain’t that the fucking truth.
It’s unfortunate that the attention economy is what sells the existence of these indies in the first place.
Slay the Spire!
They need to release the sequel on mobile already. I’m dying here
Well, as a consolation prize, you can run PPSSPP on Android, Linux, and possibly iPhone. You can also find archived ISOs for pretty much every PSP game ever made such as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Crash Twin Racing, Phantasy Star 2, etc.
A lot of great games have been ported to phones. Then you have emulation. I am playing games up until 3DS on a 6yr old phone with a blue tooth remote that sticks to the back of my phone.
Do you have the screen vertical or two screens horizontal? I’ve been trying to get through a run of radiant historia and I keep falling apart because I can’t get the screens lined up right
if you only have a console
… then your an idiot in the first place.
If you spent $700+ on a gaming only device that you can’t use for most “PC activities” (office, banking, browsing the web, etc), than you obviously set your priorities wrong.
Most indie games run on 10 year old budget laptops/PCs and you can get them definetly cheaper than a console.
Do you know how goddamn cheap an old console can be? It’s insane value for money for entertainment. You do not have to buy the latest console. I played Star Wars Racer for hours the other day with my nephew, on the old Nintendo 64 in my games cupboard, gathering dust but still working perfectly.
Even if you only have a console, it’s really not THAT bad especially if you’re not a conscious consumer. Like my kids love their Switch 2 games because they don’t really know any better yet. They see me playing different games on my PC or even indies on the Switch and look genuinely interested so I’ll get them to play those soon enough to expand their horizons (and eventually let them know how shitty a company Nintendo truly is lol).
But Switch exclusives are amazing anyway. 1st party Nintendo games are almost always good. And ever since Switch 1, pretty much all of the indie games are available on the platform. And since indie games don’t really need powerful hardware, it’s a great experience.
The quality is good, I give that to them. But their pricing, ownership model and especially opinion about copyright is abysmal (weren’t they the ones trying to patent relative motion?). Nintendo has some genuinely good artists and engineers who clearly love their job but they take the carrot-and-stick approach to the extreme and it’s disgusting.
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You can emulate tons of consoles and games on your phone though
Just sucks without physical buttons. Using button on the screen covers things up and is much harder to use.
There are a few really good gamepads (or smartphone holders for e.g. Dualshock).
Taking a premium phone from a few years ago and slapping a controller on it genuinely makes an awesome mobile console. And inbetween all the garbage there even are a few really good native games, such as the remastered GTA Trilogy.
Got a Bluetooth controller. Changed everything.
Agreed. Some emulators do have the option for haptic feedback via the vibrations. Which still isnt ideal but i found it quite useable for certain types of games.
Or you just buy a bt/usb controller for 20-50 bucks. A few phones even have usb-c dp alt mode and you can enjoy the games on the big screen.
Lets be real:
Most console gamers, console primary gamers… have no idea what an indie game even actually is, let alone how many of them there really are.
(Indie means self-published, btw… Independent -> Indie)
The expections to this are the ones that specifically hunt for really niche, not advertised things, or go hard into emulators.
Only true console peasants are in hysterical despair right now, or denial, or whatever stage of grief.
If your brain can only process passive consumption, if you’re not capable of or willing to actively seek out specific games, find out which ones actually jive with you, put in some effort?
Then you have an abusive parasocial relationship with a or multiple corporate entities, which is mostly just sad.
Maybe try like, actually talking to someone, an actual person, who actually knows games, instead of just following the herd and listening to marketing branded as ‘journalism’?
