Life would be much easier if you could run ahead and check things out in advance. If you could scale that hill and see what’s on the other side before deciding it’s worth the climb. Some people are gifted with relative foresight, but expecting unadulterated clarity is unrealistic. Ultimately, future-sight would hardly matter because among the very few true absolutes in life, the march of time stops for nothing and what will be, will be. Whoa, that was a bit cryptic, but let’s try to relate it to today’s topic. It’s been a couple months since my last Danger Blog, but it’s time to get back after such an exciting period of downtime. Between events like E3, and the daily duties of someone in my position at Gamepedia, I am exposed to new games every single day, almost none of them being big-name AAA titles. I am, of course, talking about the Indie crowd; independent developers and studios who are constantly innovating for our pleasure on boring Sunday afternoons.
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The life of an Indie game from my perspective can only be described as “fleeting”. One of the great things about smaller titles is that you can feel the personality of the people who have worked on it, the very soul they create in every line of code in their program. More massive household titles such as Call of Duty or World of Warcraft have squadrons of professionals dedicated to their production. It’s easier to lose any sense of individuality when you add more creative minds to the process. Indies are great because they’re being made by people who, above all, care about the content of their game and what they think the gaming community wants. Without past sales figures and projected numbers to cloud that vision, Indie titles earn a lot of my respect.
The risk involved in game creation at an independent level varies. Finding funding for your game, given a solid idea and reasonable plan of action, can be rather simple in this day-and-age. Crowd-sourcing using programs like Kickstarter or Steam Greenlight are great ways for gaming communities to back the titles that interest them, and allows your average Joe to be involved at a foundational level. It can still be difficult, and I’ve seen projects go under at almost every point in the creation process. Most fail to leave the ground, some can’t find funding, others don’t deliver to their backers or neglect similar duties, some people just get bored or switch to another project. If not enough interest is expressed for their game it’s easy to cut any losses and start over. This is all a part of the life of an Indie developer, and with so many people getting into the industry, finding your own niche style can be extremely difficult.
I chose the title “Looking Ahead” for this installment for one simple reason: gamers are becoming more and more fickle about what they choose to spend their valuable time playing. If it’s not big enough, not glamorous enough, not “loud” enough, many of us start to lose interest. We’re quickly accelerating towards a future where Indie games face a lot of scrutiny by being compared to AAA titles. Larger companies are force feeding young gamers graphics and other aesthetic elements to a point that this is how the quality of games is being judged. It’s less about the journey and more about who can build up to the most momentous, epic (probably a CG cut scene or cinematic) moment in gaming. After all, dramatic buildup and the resulting climax has been a part of cinema for ages, and it will continue to be. I enjoyed Arcturus’ death scene (Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm spoilers) just as much as the next guy, but that focus is taking away from what I believe gaming should be about. If we don’t support the Indie community, who is working hard to bring us new, exciting and an ever increasing quality of content, the future of gaming might be doomed.