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The awful truth is that big companies are not exactly as respectable as they used to be. Xbox came under fire for closing studios and almost killing Hi-Fi Rush’s chance of being a franchise. Sony’s hunger with the PS5 and Nintendo… YES.
With an inspiration from this report being Nintendo’s infamous Switch 2 game pricing, I decided to make this report as a glimmer of hope and a brighter counterpart to a report about how we are in part responsible for gaming’s actual state. Gentlemen, gaming still has a final line of hope and defense in this “hyper-realistic 100 GB games that may as well cost 1000 dollars” sea.
Indie Gaming
“Why does a game that looks like it could run on an NES save an entire industry?” you may be thinking, and realistically it won’t exactly SAVE it fully, just keep it from falling into another crash of '83. But now that we have a realistic approach to the scope of the article, let’s begin.
THE HUMBLE ORIGINS
Raise your hand if you believe indies started with Cave Story.
Sees lots of hands raised.
You are right… and wrong. Actually, indies came into existence far from a little computer nobody knows about called the Commodore 64 (sarcasm mode off). Yup, most people may conflate indie with homebrew, but according to Google, indie is for user-programmable consoles like, say, a computer, while a homebrew is a program created by hobbyists. That aside, the Commodore 64 was, at the time, what Windows 7 still is at the time of writing, and games could be made by people with programming skills (alas, some of them usually were mere text adventures).
Eventually, as computers evolved, so did homebrew schemes, eventually leading to ZUN creating a phenomenon that nowadays still holds, Touhou, AKA the most notorious indie franchise. Eventually, just like how ZUN created a subgenre, Daisuke Amaya, with zero knowledge of programming, lack of imagination, and pocket lint budgets, created a game that, while not a great phenomenon like Touhou, was going to be the keystone for the genre and a turning point in gaming history in general. Now… enter Cave Story.
A SINGLE MAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE CAN CREATE A GREAT CHANGE IN AN INDUSTRY
“Bah, Cave Story, what a crude game, I doubt someone will play it, let alone remember it long after its release, right?”
Cave Story came from the mind of the aforementioned Daisuke Amaya. Made from his own words with scraps, the game was literally revolutionary. The idea of a single man making a AAA-tier game with scraps in a cave was a selling point, but what people got was a great game. The unique bittersweet story, solid gameplay, challenging but enjoyable mechanics, and a great chiptune OST were the reasons why the game got lots of praise, giving people the idea that “hey, if a man can create art with crayons, I want to do that too.” It was relatively slow at first, as the only engine where people could create their own adventures was RPG-Maker. That engine wasn’t half bad—OFF, Yume Nikki, LISA, Lonely Wolf Treat, Ib—all of them made with passion and a creative mind. These were experiences created by people who love games and have played them. Some time later…
INTEGRATION AND COMPETENCE WITH BIG NAMES
Stares at 3DS cartridge of Shovel Knight Look at you, small man, you are now acknowledged by the big men.
Eventually, indie games got so normalized and accepted that they eventually got onto big names’ radar, to the point that Shovel Knight and Shantae appeared in Smash Ultimate as stickers… Smash rejection memes aside, that acknowledgment is more than enough.
Now, the meat of my report: How indies are saving the world… or the hobby.
NO BIG CHEESES EQUALS FULL CONTROL
Let’s think about it. How many games that could be great were mangled due to executives saying “NO” to mechanics or plots that could have been great? Great. Now, how many suits have ruined small indie games? My point.
FINE, I’LL DO IT MYSELF
I don’t need to write more than necessary. Just check Paper Mario: Sticker Star’s reviews, then compare them to PM’s successor Bug Fables.
As much as we wanted, the truth is that video games are a business, and if a game fails in sales but gets good reviews, it still failed monetarily. Therefore, companies won’t have an interest in making a sequel unless they want to gamble, or even if they wanted to, rights and copyright may put a dent in the plans. To quote a Smiling Friends episode: they want these IPs to sit on them and not use them. Fortunately, small studios that most likely played the original will surely do it. Just add some details to characters, add new mechanics, swap some stuff from the original… and DOJAAAAAAAAAAN! New Castlevania game (Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon).
EVEN WHEN NOT ALL OF THEM ARE SUCCESSORS, THEY STILL AT LEAST BOTHER TO MAKE JUMPS OF FAITH
HORSE BEATING WARNING How many AAA games feel more and more samey? How many indies are as creative and experimental as the 8- and 16-bit eras? All I want to say is that in, at the end of the day, a business where man eats man, it is true that staying true to what works is safe, but sometimes risks need to be taken. So far, most indies I have played have decided to take the jump, with a lot of great results:
Tunic: A Zelda clone, yes… however, the creator remembered the trips back home from the video store reading the manuals, and rather than a mere adventure game, we have a game that encourages learning new rules and even a new language.
A Little Squire decided to go for the big league, betting on a great mix-and-match of graphical styles, from kids' book illustration to claymation.
Even A Hat in Time decided to flesh out the collect-a-thon genre by giving us a game that had lots of exploration without going overboard like DK 64.
Why bother with the big jump if you yourself said the game industry is filled with sharks? It may have to do with our next point:
MORE FOR LESS
Breaking the gaming theme, Godzilla Minus One, one of the finest Godzilla movies, managed to recover its budget in record time—not because it beat the current box office record, but because it managed to sell a great movie on a low budget. Indies don’t have that much of a choice. Heck, Cuphead, winner of lots of game art prizes, wasn’t an easy affair. They famously had to mortgage their homes TWICE to finish the game. End result? The best shooter on Epic, a neat homage to rubber hose cartoons, and a satisfactory challenge overall. Not only do the limited budgets benefit the net earnings, but also our pockets. Compare a big-name game’s $60–$80 price with an indie’s $15. Now compare the size of their scope, how much content, how many mechanics, how much game per game.
STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE?
Granted, Japanese games have averted this crisis, but when it comes to Western ones, the homogeneity of both character and world designs is notorious. Try to picture a simulator, a shooter, or a WRPG that doesn’t look like its screenshot would be confused with another if it weren’t for its recognizable name. Now picture an indie. Even without relying on retro aesthetics, you will note that, at the end of the day, indies have become more memorable than the hyper-realistic style nowadays. Even leaving graphics aside, the indies, being made by, as reiterated, people who played and loved the games, give us what we want: an experience created by someone who understands video games.
RESPECTFUL OF OUR RESOURCES
Economization of budgets isn’t the only thing indies do. Ace Combat, an arcade plane game, has fast missions, and even with the DLC, you won’t spend too much there if you know what to do. The size? 60 GB! By comparison, A Hat in Time gives us an entire world to explore, stuff to do, and twenty hours of fun for 15 GB. And it's a full-fledged 3D game. While it's reasonable that most games need all that space for the newer rendering technologies, in most quick affairs, it's nonsense. Considering that Resident Evil 2 Remake also occupies 20 GB and is an entire two-disc game with extras, it shows that sometimes it's the developer who goes ape without considering the audience doesn’t have infinite space or can get a NASA PC to render the graphics.
A CONCLUSION TO HELP YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT
Gaming has come a long way, surviving almost saying sayonara. But despite all the bad that happened, it took a little company that wanted to give us entertainment to make everything go right once again. It’s a sad fact that said company went mad with power and, while still the best of the three powers currently in charge of gaming, has done really repulsive stuff to its own fanbase. The truth is that indies need another small company—or better, companies—that want to give us entertainment to make the big jump gaming needs and get a great hobby back on track again. While not asking everybody to become developers, you are still part of the solution as much as you are of the problem. Gaming is in peril due to consumers’ bad choices. Now, we can be part of the solution by choosing to demand more quality and appreciate the ones who are doing it right currently. A dry toast to the indie developers who are keeping this hobby afloat, for the time being…
BAKUMA SAYS GOODNIGHT.
With an inspiration from this report being Nintendo’s infamous Switch 2 game pricing, I decided to make this report as a glimmer of hope and a brighter counterpart to a report about how we are in part responsible for gaming’s actual state. Gentlemen, gaming still has a final line of hope and defense in this “hyper-realistic 100 GB games that may as well cost 1000 dollars” sea.
Indie Gaming
“Why does a game that looks like it could run on an NES save an entire industry?” you may be thinking, and realistically it won’t exactly SAVE it fully, just keep it from falling into another crash of '83. But now that we have a realistic approach to the scope of the article, let’s begin.
THE HUMBLE ORIGINS
Raise your hand if you believe indies started with Cave Story.
Sees lots of hands raised.
You are right… and wrong. Actually, indies came into existence far from a little computer nobody knows about called the Commodore 64 (sarcasm mode off). Yup, most people may conflate indie with homebrew, but according to Google, indie is for user-programmable consoles like, say, a computer, while a homebrew is a program created by hobbyists. That aside, the Commodore 64 was, at the time, what Windows 7 still is at the time of writing, and games could be made by people with programming skills (alas, some of them usually were mere text adventures).
Eventually, as computers evolved, so did homebrew schemes, eventually leading to ZUN creating a phenomenon that nowadays still holds, Touhou, AKA the most notorious indie franchise. Eventually, just like how ZUN created a subgenre, Daisuke Amaya, with zero knowledge of programming, lack of imagination, and pocket lint budgets, created a game that, while not a great phenomenon like Touhou, was going to be the keystone for the genre and a turning point in gaming history in general. Now… enter Cave Story.
A SINGLE MAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE CAN CREATE A GREAT CHANGE IN AN INDUSTRY
“Bah, Cave Story, what a crude game, I doubt someone will play it, let alone remember it long after its release, right?”
Cave Story came from the mind of the aforementioned Daisuke Amaya. Made from his own words with scraps, the game was literally revolutionary. The idea of a single man making a AAA-tier game with scraps in a cave was a selling point, but what people got was a great game. The unique bittersweet story, solid gameplay, challenging but enjoyable mechanics, and a great chiptune OST were the reasons why the game got lots of praise, giving people the idea that “hey, if a man can create art with crayons, I want to do that too.” It was relatively slow at first, as the only engine where people could create their own adventures was RPG-Maker. That engine wasn’t half bad—OFF, Yume Nikki, LISA, Lonely Wolf Treat, Ib—all of them made with passion and a creative mind. These were experiences created by people who love games and have played them. Some time later…
INTEGRATION AND COMPETENCE WITH BIG NAMES
Stares at 3DS cartridge of Shovel Knight Look at you, small man, you are now acknowledged by the big men.
Eventually, indie games got so normalized and accepted that they eventually got onto big names’ radar, to the point that Shovel Knight and Shantae appeared in Smash Ultimate as stickers… Smash rejection memes aside, that acknowledgment is more than enough.
Now, the meat of my report: How indies are saving the world… or the hobby.
NO BIG CHEESES EQUALS FULL CONTROL
Let’s think about it. How many games that could be great were mangled due to executives saying “NO” to mechanics or plots that could have been great? Great. Now, how many suits have ruined small indie games? My point.
FINE, I’LL DO IT MYSELF
I don’t need to write more than necessary. Just check Paper Mario: Sticker Star’s reviews, then compare them to PM’s successor Bug Fables.
As much as we wanted, the truth is that video games are a business, and if a game fails in sales but gets good reviews, it still failed monetarily. Therefore, companies won’t have an interest in making a sequel unless they want to gamble, or even if they wanted to, rights and copyright may put a dent in the plans. To quote a Smiling Friends episode: they want these IPs to sit on them and not use them. Fortunately, small studios that most likely played the original will surely do it. Just add some details to characters, add new mechanics, swap some stuff from the original… and DOJAAAAAAAAAAN! New Castlevania game (Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon).
EVEN WHEN NOT ALL OF THEM ARE SUCCESSORS, THEY STILL AT LEAST BOTHER TO MAKE JUMPS OF FAITH
HORSE BEATING WARNING How many AAA games feel more and more samey? How many indies are as creative and experimental as the 8- and 16-bit eras? All I want to say is that in, at the end of the day, a business where man eats man, it is true that staying true to what works is safe, but sometimes risks need to be taken. So far, most indies I have played have decided to take the jump, with a lot of great results:
Tunic: A Zelda clone, yes… however, the creator remembered the trips back home from the video store reading the manuals, and rather than a mere adventure game, we have a game that encourages learning new rules and even a new language.
A Little Squire decided to go for the big league, betting on a great mix-and-match of graphical styles, from kids' book illustration to claymation.
Even A Hat in Time decided to flesh out the collect-a-thon genre by giving us a game that had lots of exploration without going overboard like DK 64.
Why bother with the big jump if you yourself said the game industry is filled with sharks? It may have to do with our next point:
MORE FOR LESS
Breaking the gaming theme, Godzilla Minus One, one of the finest Godzilla movies, managed to recover its budget in record time—not because it beat the current box office record, but because it managed to sell a great movie on a low budget. Indies don’t have that much of a choice. Heck, Cuphead, winner of lots of game art prizes, wasn’t an easy affair. They famously had to mortgage their homes TWICE to finish the game. End result? The best shooter on Epic, a neat homage to rubber hose cartoons, and a satisfactory challenge overall. Not only do the limited budgets benefit the net earnings, but also our pockets. Compare a big-name game’s $60–$80 price with an indie’s $15. Now compare the size of their scope, how much content, how many mechanics, how much game per game.
STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE?
Granted, Japanese games have averted this crisis, but when it comes to Western ones, the homogeneity of both character and world designs is notorious. Try to picture a simulator, a shooter, or a WRPG that doesn’t look like its screenshot would be confused with another if it weren’t for its recognizable name. Now picture an indie. Even without relying on retro aesthetics, you will note that, at the end of the day, indies have become more memorable than the hyper-realistic style nowadays. Even leaving graphics aside, the indies, being made by, as reiterated, people who played and loved the games, give us what we want: an experience created by someone who understands video games.
RESPECTFUL OF OUR RESOURCES
Economization of budgets isn’t the only thing indies do. Ace Combat, an arcade plane game, has fast missions, and even with the DLC, you won’t spend too much there if you know what to do. The size? 60 GB! By comparison, A Hat in Time gives us an entire world to explore, stuff to do, and twenty hours of fun for 15 GB. And it's a full-fledged 3D game. While it's reasonable that most games need all that space for the newer rendering technologies, in most quick affairs, it's nonsense. Considering that Resident Evil 2 Remake also occupies 20 GB and is an entire two-disc game with extras, it shows that sometimes it's the developer who goes ape without considering the audience doesn’t have infinite space or can get a NASA PC to render the graphics.
A CONCLUSION TO HELP YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT
Gaming has come a long way, surviving almost saying sayonara. But despite all the bad that happened, it took a little company that wanted to give us entertainment to make everything go right once again. It’s a sad fact that said company went mad with power and, while still the best of the three powers currently in charge of gaming, has done really repulsive stuff to its own fanbase. The truth is that indies need another small company—or better, companies—that want to give us entertainment to make the big jump gaming needs and get a great hobby back on track again. While not asking everybody to become developers, you are still part of the solution as much as you are of the problem. Gaming is in peril due to consumers’ bad choices. Now, we can be part of the solution by choosing to demand more quality and appreciate the ones who are doing it right currently. A dry toast to the indie developers who are keeping this hobby afloat, for the time being…
BAKUMA SAYS GOODNIGHT.
Last edited:
