Slashdot Mirror
DIY Game's Indie GOTY Awards
Veryzon writes "DIY Games has posted their 2003 Game of the Year Awards in which they name the best independent games of 2003. In addition to the standard categories such as action GOTY, adventure GOTY, and so on they also have a few fairly unique awards going to leaders in such areas as 'Copyright Infringement,' 'Most Controversial,' and 'Most Overrated.' In the end they hand out 17 awards in various categories. Here's a quote on the most controversial category winner: '...Dada Stagnation In Blue. Technically, Dada is a brief freeware adventure game that will be over almost as soon as you finish it, but those 30 minutes in between are sure to stay with you for some time. True to its Dadaist theme, Dada can be very unsettling for those who might be unprepared to see suicide, domestic violence, and dead fetuses addressed in a game. And if that doesn't mess with your mind then the bizarre environments and disturbing Anne Sexton prose are sure to keep you up a little later at night.'"
I agree with you though, that most games are giant commercial projects now. However, that's the gamers fault I think. Most companies noticed the trend that consumers would buy the games that looked the coolest, rather than the game that was the most fun (am I wrong?).
Open source games is a cool concept because it lets programmers get a feel for how games should be coded. Game programming is hard, and lots of "tutorials" don't tell you all the stuff you have to put into a games engine.
This DIY games idea of awarding the best independent games seems almost equivalent to the cannes film festival. Really, there should be something like that for gamers. Not only would it show off new talent, but also what can be done with a tiny budget.
Actually, the only game for the PC that was ever really new was Tetris. The rest was, more or less, something of a genre which already existed on consoles or gameboys etc. When we look into a little more detail there have of course been a lot of new ideas, also by larger companies (civilization, worms, ...), but nothing is as innovative as Tetris...
Nothing beats Tetris ;-)
If you think more creativity and artistic skill was required for games "back in the days", then I'm forced to believe that you don't have a clue about modern computer and video games. The amount of excellent artwork in games like WarCraft III, Max Payne 2, Quake 3 Arena, Call of Duty or whatever still make me sit back in awe infront of my monitor every time I play those games, even though I've seen it all often before. If you think that pixel graphics are so elite and that modern 3D graphics are evil, maybe try out some of the cool GameBoy Advance games, like Advance Wars 2 - maybe that'll change your mind about modern games.
Sure, computer and video games today are a serious business and involve muchos ca$h. So what? Do you seriously believe that the games made by some hobby coder in a couple of months are always superiour to the games developed by 30+ programmers, concept artists, level designers, sound guys etc.?
99% of the games on the market are crap. Only very very very few are really great. Maybe that's the point you were trying to make, and I'd agree with that. Well, maybe this has become more extreme these days, but I'm sure "the good old days" had loads of crappy games as well. But, imho at least, the best-of-the-best games continuously improve.
You take the water in the boatman scene and show it to the sad woman. :P
I'd say that many of those games went from 'mainstream' to 'share-/freeware'. There are plenty Tetris games available for *nix, even multiplayer versions. And, as someone already mentioned, the web and Java are a popular platform for these games.
IMHO, games today are more and more trying to tell a story, an element rarely found in older games (with famous exceptions, of course, Bards Tale e.g.) This is necessary to catch the average user who just wants to play for an hour every other evening.
But I agree with you, genres like puzzle games, 2D shooter or point-and-click adventures have become rare.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.