“‘…to make a game about some idea’ where ‘some idea’ is like a fiction idea, and it’s an idea that would have been better if it was a book, or film, or a song, and not a game. Take, for example, his lauding of Stephen’s Sausage Roll as a shining example of modern game design (I’m not saying it’s not, just that it fits with the ‘a great game is a platonically perfect set of systems and mechanics’ view of games). ![]() His statements in the past pretty definitively put him in this camp, but we can also see it throughout this interview. But while I think there’s a grain of truth there, I think the real reason for Blow’s claims of stagnation in the face of countless innovative indie games is that he has a weird understanding of what ‘innovative’ means.īlow comes from a scene that values game mechanics, and mechanical innovation so highly it basically sees them as the be-all and end-all of game design (and gives little more than disapproving glances towards the term ‘story’). Ice-Pick Lodge are the masters of using sadistic, player-unfriendly gameplay systems to capture an atmosphere or dread and hopelessness.Ī lot of people have said that Blow is ignorant of the current indie gaming scene, and that, as a member of the indie dev Old Guard, his perception of today’s indie games is unfair and unlikely to change. Pathologic 2 (Ice-Pick Lodge, 2019) – a reimagining of cult classic Pathologic. So for Blow to make his claims that indie games are stagnant, he must either be so busy making his own game that he’s not paying attention what anyone else is making, or he’s working from a wildly esoteric definition of the terms ‘creative’ and ‘innovative’. There are loads of games coming out at the moment that are weird, creative, and innovative in a dozen different ways. But there are so many games that are so much more. are slick and enticing enough to draw attention), at the expense of doing something new or surprising. More than once I’ve found myself playing the first hour of a 15-hour indie game, and realising: “Oh, the next 14 hours are just going to be ‘perform this same gameplay loop again and again while incrementally unlocking upgrades that marginally alter the experience’“.Ī lot of indie games do chase market trends, and a lot of indie games are focused on making a fairly unoriginal gameplay loop as compelling as possible (while making sure the visuals/music/etc. I’ve grown increasingly wary of slick-looking indie games that slot easily into a specific, popular genre, because I often find them to be initially exiting, then deeply, deeply boring. Well, again, while I disagree with Blow, I can kind of see where he’s coming from. What about actually finished, actually respected and (occasionally) actually financially successful indie games? The humour, creativity, and player freedom of its investigation-and-puzzle-driven world is really something special.īut “ninety percent of everything is crap” , so it’s hardly fair to judge all indie games by the hobbyist devs putting their first game project on Steam. Hypnospace Outlaw (Tendershoot, 2019) – a game about surfing the World Wide Web in your dreams, in 1999. ![]() At first I was excited by the idea, but I quickly noticed that roughly 90% of all the games fell into two camps: ‘barely finished prototype or ‘oh, it’s a RTS/deckbuilder/RPG, only the twist is that there are no twists’. A while back I started following a Twitter account called Steam Trailers in 6s, which shows clips of the trailer for every game released on Steam. If you look at the vast wave of games being published on Steam nowadays, it’s hard for your eyes not to glaze over at some point. I think Blow’s claim that indie games are largely creatively stagnant – either just trying to be follow market trends, or copying older games the developer really likes – is unfair, but I can kind of see where he’s coming from. ![]() And while I’ve seen lots of responses to Blow’s claims, I’ve yet to see one that actually gives him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not either (a) an awful monster, or (b) an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. ![]() But while I think he’s wrong, I don’t think what he’s saying is the result of willful ignorance, a disconnect from the indie scene, or being a dick. I should put forward right now that I disagree pretty strongly with what Blow said. Its way of handling and presenting information to the player, as well as turning translation of a dead language into a central game mechanic, are just about as innovative as games can get. Heaven’s Vault (Inkle, 2019) – a game about archaeology and translation.
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