Indie Gaming Gets 2004 Mid-Term Grades

Thanks to Game Tunnel for its 2004 mid-term report card on the independent PC gaming scene, rating what "is turning out to be one of the most impressive years yet in the Indie world." Among the approved-of titles include action games such as Hamsterball ("a wonderful surprise that plays a lot like Marble Madness would play [if updated]"), platform adventures such as Gish ("[starring] a ball of tar [whose] goal is to find his girlfriend who was taken down... the sewer"), before looking forward to interesting hopefuls that include Oasis ("takes all the strategy of a game like Civilization and then turns it into a 3 minute experience.")

Comments

Re:Solid, Just Not Earth Shattering

[Anonymous Coward]

You are getting confused by a review trying to explain a game by making references to familiar genres. If you are looking for someone to go "check out this game it is truley unlike ANYTHING you have ever seen" then you will play one game every 5 years. Just because someone explains a new game to you based on familiar themes and genres doesn't mean the game is identical to others.

Any decent indie developer lives by the rule "make something people cannot buy elsewhere" - it's common sense. If you can buy a big publisher mainstream version of an indie game from a year or two ago it will always be better and probably cheaper. So it makes no sense for indies to just replicate mainstream titles. Hence GOOD INDIES DON'T.

However, very rarely will someone make something so "off the wall" that it has no connection to any previous form of gaming. There is a good reason for this, there is a very good chance people will reject it. They wont understand.

Think about two truely innovative titles like REZ(ps2) and ViewtifulJoe(GameCube) - both of these lost their publishers a lot of money (FACT). These were rare titles that were good and totally new, yet people didn't get it and voted with their wallets.

Starscape - this one is very good, yet again I defy you to find anything remotely similar in a shop. It's like a shootemup crossed with command&conquer (kind of).

GISH - not my cup of tea, but certainly unique, you cannot buy anything like this in a shop.

Hamsterball - I enjoyed this, but it got really hard really quick. Again, you CANNOT buy this in a shop. Ok you could download marble madness for an emulator or a phone, but it isn't the same really, the true 3D environments here lead to much more interesting puzzles.

If you can find the proper top quality indie titles you will always see something you cannot get anywhere else. The serious indies would be out of business if they just copied mainstream titles. What idiot would spend more on something that they could get out of a Walmart bargain bin for half the price? Nobody.

Re:Solid, Just Not Earth Shattering

[illuminata]

Well, for one, I do buy the games that fall within genres quite often. My point being is that I'm not too compelled to make a purchase from an indie when their game is too similar to what's already available from the big companies.

As far as the indie games you said were innovative, I don't see that to be much of the case. Let's take Starscape first. The fact that you were able to say it's sort of like a shoot 'em up crossed with Command & Conquer is proof that they're using borrowed ideas. Gish seems like it's a pure 2D side scroller to me (and the character kind of looks like that Meatwad thing from Aqua Teen Hunger Force). Also, you were able to draw a comparison between Hamsterball and Marble Madness, and sure you can't buy it in a shop, but does that make it truly different? Plus, as a previous poster said, it does draw a lot from Super Monkey Ball as well.

The "innovations" being made in the independent game development scene are too superficial. Essentially, the games that you've shown me can be bought elsewhere. For the most part, it's been done before. Sure, there's some differences in looks and stories floating about, but there has been no fundamental changes in gameplay. That's where you bring up the point of rejection. I just don't see why you would stay an indie if you were afraid of rejection. It seems to me that the credibility that an independent developer would earn from creating an innovative title, rejected or not, would be worth much more than the short-term easy money in the long run. Also, If you plan on making things similar to everything else in terms of gameplay (and often times in story) you might as well just get a job with an established game developer since there's not much point in grinding things out to make a clone (in terms of gameplay at the very least). As an indie, you have much more freedom to really make something different at the lower levels of gameplay. By not using that freedom, they're not going to separate themselves from the rest of the pack; thus not being able to compete.

On a side note, you mentioned Rez and Viewtiful Joe being bad financially. I can at least take your word for it when it comes to Rez, although I'll end up making sure for myself on Viewtiful Joe (as it does have a sequel coming out). I did think Rez was fairly innovative and it did minimize on the borrowed ideas. I think some rejection still would've occured, but it definitely could've gotten a better campaign behind it. For the most part, it snuck in to the market without much noise. With Viewtiful Joe, I really thought it was overrated. For the most part side scroller with the time controlling features we've seen in games like Blinx the TimeSweeper. Graphically it was impressive, but the characters just didn't cut it for me; I definitely didn't care about the main character at all. I think that some of those superficial things were its biggest problem and would be the main contributing factor if it was indeed a financial failure(other than internal factors). But, as far as it being an innovator; I'd have to say that it wasn't. But, I do give credit for both Sega and Capcom for at least releasing them.