While I agree with the rest of your post, would like to point out that Minecraft, unlike the rest of your examples, presented a proper expansion of Infiniminer's formula. Same with its own "clones" (primarily thinking of Rust & Terraria here). This is contrary to indie gaming's ultimate problem of merely copying older, better games. That kind of bootleg retro crap needs to end.
I agree with you on a fundamental level, but Id like to offer a gentle counter point.OK, you guys want a really hot take – i.e., something controversial that probably only I agree with? I'll fucking give you one so hot it'll melt your little ears off:
I think the indie gaming space is fundamentally broken – just as much, if not more so, than the modern AAA space. And there's one big reason for it: lack of originality. Think about whenever you see a modern indie game get really big and popular, like Undertale (spit), Stardew Valley, or even UFO 50. Isn't it funny how about 95% of them are based on an older game? Undertale is Earthbound. Stardew Valley is Harvest Moon. UFO 50 is Action 52. Every modern Metroidvania is Super Metroid and/or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Lethal League/Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is Jet Set Radio. Minecraft is Infiniminer. Again and again. The same games. Repeatedly endlessly. FOREVER.
I'm not saying that any of these games don't develop or alter (or even improve!) elements of the games that they're based on. But I am absolutely saying that, from their conception, they're unoriginal – and, by definition, repetitive and tedious. (In my opinion, of course.) Can you mention Undertale without also mentioning Earthbound in the same breath? How about Stardew Valley – can you describe that game without using the phrase "Harvest Moon"? Even Cave Story, the ur-example of this sort of indie game – could you tell me about the game without, in good faith, referencing Metroid?
On one hand, I get it. If you're someone interested in conceptualizing, funding, developing, and releasing a video game on your own, without the backing of a major developer or publisher, you're probably someone who loves a certain video game so much that you want to make your own version of it. (Let's put aside cynical market pressures for the sake of this post.) My problem comes in with just how repetitive all these games are. When Undertale got big, every game wanted to be Undertale, and imitated its writing, music, and graphical style (and even many design sensibilities) to a T. When Stardew Valley got big, roughly 40 trillion identical farming games were (and continue to be) released. Same with Metroidvanias. Again and again. The same games, repeatedly endlessly, forever.
WHAT IF I DIDN'T LIKE THOSE OLD GAMES IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?
Yes, I actually don't like the vast majority of those millennial SNES games, and I truly do not want to play them – or any variation of them – again! But they've never gone away. I can't complain, because this is clearly what the audience wants, but I truly do think it's to the detriment of the medium. Whenever I see a new indie game, my mind immediately says "Oh, what other game is this supposed to be?"
I know that no piece of media is truly "original", and that every game is, in essence, building on what came before it. But what yobs me off is the fact that both gamers and developers seem to reject originality outright. The people making these games don't want to "break the rules", and there's really no demand from consumers to do so, so the entire indie space becomes an ouroboros, constantly devouring itself only to defecate its own head in perpetuity. And we get Earthbound, Super Metroid, and Harvest Moon again and again. We get genres named specifically to limit imagination and creativity – roguelike (games like Rogue), Metroidvania (games like Metroid/Castlevania), "boomer shooter" (games like id games), et cetera.
I'm not saying that if you like any of these games you're a dullard or something, but I do think they're a big reason why people younger than Millennials gravitate towards Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite over [INTERCHANGEABLE INDIE GAME #718942]. If you didn't grow up playing (or emulating) the very limited pool of Japanese console games that almost every indie game takes influence from, there's really no reason to play one over the other, because they're all – in a basic sense – the same. Their creators all speak, think, and are aged about the same, too, so why wouldn't they be?
Playing old Flash games on Flashpoint – which were the lion's share of the games I grew up with – really depresses me, because many of those games WERE original! (Not all of them, certainly, but I'd be so bold as to say most.) Even if they were copying other Flash games, at the very least it was a new template to build off of – a new space to explore, with new ideas to introduce and gestate. They weren't Earthbound, Super Metroid, and Harvest Moon. But I guess people didn't want that design sensibility – they wanted SNES games. Again and again. Forever.
Here's what I think: a lot of gamers are too soft on indie developers. You should be demanding more. Maybe it's because of nostalgia, or because of a heavy affection for older games that I've never personally known (on my own favourite games list, you won't find any of the stock SNES games I mentioned). It might also be because of a sense of camaraderie with indie developers – they're the "little guy", so it's fine if they re-release Pixel Art Farming Simulator #11249 with character designs copied wholesale from "old school anime" (barf) in-between Twitter rants, right? Because they're just like us... right? Honestly, the whole indie space just makes me sick.
Oh, and, for the record, Cave Story sucks gorilla dick through a crazy straw. ??
please dont
Yesssss
Steam being flooded with intentional nostalgia-bait is something I've complained about a lot too, but I wanna comment on this part a bit. RageBurner made an excellent point about games that were no longer deemed viable by publishers, and a single person simply went and *made* the kind of game no one else would. It's so much better than what came before, and clearly resonated enormously, that practically no one describes Stardew Valley as being "like Harvest Moon", they describe other games as being "like Stardew Valley". Yes, you mentioned your examples improved upon the originals, but I think creating something themselves that no one else would, and that millions of people clearly didn't know they wanted desperately, should be viewed as a victory of indie game development.
I have almost the exact same words in a maybe-article I'm kicking around about genre, if I can just ingest enough caffeine to write the rest of it.
I would add those games are also (to some degree) free to play, have massive social elements, and are available on basically every device, most importantly kid's phones.
It's more of a re-make/new viewpoint kind of thing.
I'd go even further and say that 99% of these are actually worse than the games they are inspired on. You can have something like Deedlit whose movement technically flows better than Simphony of the Night, but completely missing the point because you can move so fast that you simply kill 99% of the enemies before they can even attack you. Undertale is objectively a much shorter and lazier game compared to Earthbound in pretty much everything, only that it hides the repetitiveness of the combat with that awful bullet hell gimmick. Most of these famous 2D indie plats are a one gimmick thing with little variety. And yet everyone talks as if they are the saviors of gaming.
huh. i didn't recall much about it. i saw that the game grumps played it but i never got around to watching them play it. hopefully its interesting to play.
Minecraft is the sticky wicket to my argument, because I genuinely believe it is a medium-defining, progressive game that absolutely deserves to exist. But I had to list it because, like it or not, it's a game built on Infiniminer's foundation – Notch admits as much, and Zachtronic (developer of Infiniminer) agrees. At the very least, I'll say that Infiniminer, at the time, wasn't as heavily "inspiration overdosed" as something like Earthbound or Super Metroid is today.
I've got no problem with people wanting to continue playing older games, but level with me here: do you really think the target audience of Wargroove is people who've already mastered all the previous Advance Wars games and are looking for a new challenge? Or do you think it's people who aren't Advance Wars experts, but have heard of the series and are looking to try a game like it? If it's the latter, why not just recommend them... Advance Wars? We're living in the future – you can play these games for free if you really want to, and anyone who's interested in a niche genre like turn-based strategy games based on 40-year-old Nintendo franchises can figure out how.
I was also going to mention Balatro, but I haven't played the game yet and really know very little about it, so I didn't want to say anything either way. That being said... it's a card game/roguelike. As clever and good as it is, it's still a member of two of the most bloated genres in the entire indie game scene. Again, not saying that's a bad thing, but it's more than a little repetitive.
Unfortunately, I hate all video games, so this will never happen. ;)
Should it? If I create a homebrew version of Ocarina of Time and release it on Steam, is that a victory? Nintendo will never do it, and there's most likely a market for it. But what, aside from adding another game to the pile, have I achieved? If it's a victory, what has been won? Being the environment that Steam is (and this goes for any digital distribution platform), chances are that people won't even give my game a second look, so why wouldn't I want to do something unique that stands out, instead? Maybe that could be a "victory"... in a creative sense.
But this is kind of the crux of my argument – if you asked people what kind of car they wanted, they'd tell you a faster horse. Millions of people didn't know what they wanted during the third to sixth generation of games, so developers introduced a bunch of original new ideas, and they ended up being the best video games ever made. If you asked people what games they wanted in 1984, they'd have said better versions of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, and the medium would have stagnated. (Which is part of why the 1983 crash happened!)
I dunno how much I buy this point. I'll reference Flash games again – every single one of those was built on the same engine, but they were all (well, they were mostly, but stick with me here) wildly different from not only each other, but from every other kind of "proper" video game on the market. I'm sure that certain engines do limit what kinds of games you can make, but in an era where essentially all of them are accessible, I don't think I'll accept engine limitations as an excuse – a poor craftsman blames his tools.
I agree with this whole-heartedly, and, personally, think it's the way the medium should be going – open-ended games that keep you in control, always. We all love linear games with a good story, of course, but when I play Minecraft, I get a feeling that no liner game can give me: That it's my story. I control the pacing. I control the characters. I control where it starts, where it stops, and what direction it's going in. The game developer provides the set dressing, but, really, it's my game. You can't do that in any other medium.
GOLD STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (UNDERTALE SUCKS)
I agree 100%. My take is that these are the games we should be celebrating, not "millennial Earthbound".
I agree with this, too, but I don't think we can do anything about it at this point – video game culture terminology solidifies very quickly. (I still kind of dislike the term "roguelike", but whatever.) There's really no equivalent to an "indie game" in any other medium, because they don't have the level of distribution and societal recognition that games do. (This is even true in my world, literature, because self-published books have a massive stigma against them and are never celebrated.)
Beautifully put.
I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, but I do think that a "revival" is definitely what the medium needs to maintain relevance with newer, younger audiences. The 2020s have been a horrible decade for video games across the board (again, in my humblest of opinions), and industry people are getting laid off left and right, so it's hard not to think that we're currently in a low period.
Well of course, is iterating on things that inspire us creatively not worthwhile artistic endeavor? It's hardly a knock-off, and was a monumental effort by a single person, how could they (ConcernedApe) not call it an achievement? Heck, it's entertained millions, and inspires creative output every day for the last decade, from people sharing their farm designs, to countless modding projects, to fanwork, art and ficiton.
Yes, also exactly my point for why Stardew succeeded, I agree with you.
Not exactly what I was saying, it wasn't a blanket excuse for familiarity, simply a contributing factor. (3D models in Unity games for example all tend to have "paper doll" design that irritates me to see, for example, regardless of the quality of the game itself.) Yes, the engines are accessible, but when there's only so many in use it's going to objectively limit possibilities.
I'd say the 1983 to 1985 crash happened because developers had pushed the Atari 2600 to its technical/gamedesign limit. Games like Pitfall or River Raid were the best you could get out of the Atari 2600.
)
Actually that's how I used to approach it when I was actually interested in playing (a couple of aeons ago), it's a virtual sandbox building toy, and that's how it was fun for me back then.Here's another "hot take" opinion: (lets see if I get another Dislike
Minecraft isn't a video game.
Legos is a toy, not a game. You can play with it, but there is no win or lose state. No goals. Just a thing to play with.
Minecraft is just video Legos. Sure you can "beat" the ender dragon but that isn't really the goal. Its just one thing you can do.
I'm not saying it is a bad product; it's not. I'm just saying "game" is the wrong word.
I thought I was the only carbon based life-form that thought that way!
This has to win the thread because I've never disagreed with every syllable of such a long post before (had to delete most of the quote to stay within the character limit because I got carried away typing a response). Bravo, I'm attaching a $20 bill to a neighborhood squirrel and sending them your way as a prize.
I'd argue that it's like how GTA and Shenmue allowed you to not actually do the main mission and mess around.Here's another "hot take" opinion: (lets see if I get another Dislike
Minecraft isn't a video game.
Legos is a toy, not a game. You can play with it, but there is no win or lose state. No goals. Just a thing to play with.
Minecraft is just video Legos. Sure you can "beat" the ender dragon but that isn't really the goal. Its just one thing you can do.
I'm not saying it is a bad product; it's not. I'm just saying "game" is the wrong word.
Of course I do, and I really appreciate how much thought and effort you put into your response! (I’ll also thank you for not devolving into passive-aggressive pablum, as is common with discussion about indie games.) Yes, I was clearly goofing around with my harsh tone, but I genuinely do believe everything I wrote and continue to. As such:
But think about it: Lethal League (and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk) don’t just re-use some elements of Jet Set Radio — they are built from the ground up to reference that game in every element of their design. You can’t play LL or BRC without thinking about the JSR. You can’t describe the former without referencing the latter. These games re-use the visual style, the control scheme, the camera angles, the literal same composer, all to make you think: “Hey, this is Jet Set Radio!”
Really? Maybe I’ll be kind and grant you Mouthwashing and Papers Please, but every other game in that list is hardly what I’d call unique! Let’s take Dwarf Fortress or Vallhalla (not doing that stupid name, I’m talking about that anime drinking game) as examples. When you see either of those games, you immediately know what they’re taking influence from — Nethack in the former case, and PC-98 games in the latter.
Very simple: Create a video game that uses a unique, original sense of gameplay and aesthetics that isn’t so similar to another game that it can be immediately identified as a copy. They did it before the modern indie space for at least 30 years — I know it can be done!
And what concepts would those be? (10 years ago was 2015, so let's think from there.) The buggering dialogue system from Undertale? The… I was going to mention some other mechanic from an indie game that’s been introduced as a snarky aside, but I can’t even think of one in jest.
I ain’t never heard of even a single one of those games and really have zero desire to look them up because I can already guess pretty easily what they’ll be and what they’ll look like from the names and today’s general indie environment alone, but if they are truly original and creative — and I doubt they are — then they get a pass.
Here are literally ten of them. And those were just off the top of my head — I didn’t even mention Everhood, which plagiarizes Undertale! Oh my god, what a nightmare — see what I’m talking about when I say the word “ouroboros”? ??
Okay, there's a lot I could comment on, but I'll just say that I think you have a very broad definition of plagiarism that most dictionaries wouldn't agree with.PART 1:
Of course I do, and I really appreciate how much thought and effort you put into your response! (I’ll also thank you for not devolving into passive-aggressive pablum, as is common with discussion about indie games.) Yes, I was clearly goofing around with my harsh tone, but I genuinely do believe everything I wrote and continue to. As such:
But think about it: Lethal League (and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk) don’t just re-use some elements of Jet Set Radio — they are built from the ground up to reference that game in every element of their design. You can’t play LL or BRC without thinking about the JSR. You can’t describe the former without referencing the latter. These games re-use the visual style, the control scheme, the camera angles, the literal same composer, all to make you think: “Hey, this is Jet Set Radio!”
But it isn’t Jet Set Radio — it’s a copy. JSR introduced those iconic, recognizable aspects. That’s the game that’s been remembered by time. The other games are just copying its homework. If they do have a unique game mechanic, why dress it up in an existing game’s set dressing? Why not remove all that reference nonsense so the original mechanic can shine through?
The answer, of course, is that the gameplay of LL and BRC doesn’t really matter. What matters is reminding the player of Jet Set Radio — an established, popular, original game in its own right — which is why they re-use so many elements from it wholesale. It’s leeching off that game’s creativity and inspiration, because the developers likely don’t have any of their own. (If they did, they’d use their own aesthetic sense.) I think that is truly something to be abhorred — it would be in any other medium.
Undertale is a game that’s so unoriginal that it quite literally plagiarizes music from previous games outright — Megalovania is from a Brandish game, the winter area theme is from Kirby’s Block Ball, some of the music in the Omega Flowey fight is from Touhou, etc. etc., so it already loses any sympathy I’d be willing to grant it on a creative front. (I’m on mobile, but if I weren’t, you can bet I’d be linking these.)
Aside from that, it too is a game built from the ground-up to be like Earthbound. The camera angle is the same as Earthbound. The player character design is, too. On the original PC version (which is the one I played), you literally interact with the game world using your Z, X, and C keys, because those are the default keys you use in a SNES emulator. The second anyone looks at a screenshot of Undertale, they’ll think “Oh, it’s trying to be Earthbound.” That’s ridiculous, and you won’t find me celebrating it (among other reasons, but I digress).
Again, I’m not saying that these games don’t iterate, alter, or even improve on the original games, but the fact that they’re so close to previously-established ideas from usually completely-unrelated developers betrays the indie creators’ own lack of creativity and originality. (In my opinion.) That’s what I find regressive.
Really? Maybe I’ll be kind and grant you Mouthwashing and Papers Please, but every other game in that list is hardly what I’d call unique! Let’s take Dwarf Fortress or Vallhalla (not doing that stupid name, I’m talking about that anime drinking game) as examples. When you see either of those games, you immediately know what they’re taking influence from — Nethack in the former case, and PC-98 games in the latter.
As long as you have a somewhat detailed knowledge of the video game scene — which I think is fair to grant to someone interested in an independent download-only pixel art PC game in the first place — you can see the “influence” immediately. These games just can’t exist without those references, because the references are, essentially, the whole point.
Could Dwarf Fortress (especially the roguelike mode) exist without specifically referencing Nethack in its ASCII visuals? (The tiled version came way later after the game was released.) Could Vallhalla exist without the PC-98 games it’s so obviously drawing from? Of course not, because neither of these games are original enough to stand on their own without, essentially, copying another game’s ideas.
I know that, in the modern world, the term “plagiarism” has kind of been downplayed, and nobody really cares about it anymore. But I’ll also posit that, in the modern world, new video games tend to suck (IMHO), and I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation, there.
Very simple: Create a video game that uses a unique, original sense of gameplay and aesthetics that isn’t so similar to another game that it can be immediately identified as a copy. They did it before the modern indie space for at least 30 years — I know it can be done!
And what concepts would those be? (10 years ago was 2015, so let's think from there.) The buggering dialogue system from Undertale? The… I was going to mention some other mechanic from an indie game that’s been introduced as a snarky aside, but I can’t even think of one in jest.
The last 10 years of video games have mostly been awful (with some exception, and of course only in my opinion), so you’ll get no agreement from me on indie games being a net positive for the industry — the “low point” that I cited in an earlier post would suggest they haven’t.
I ain’t never heard of even a single one of those games and really have zero desire to look them up because I can already guess pretty easily what they’ll be and what they’ll look like from the names and today’s general indie environment alone, but if they are truly original and creative — and I doubt they are — then they get a pass.
I know that’s not fair and unnecessarily cynical , but that's just the way it is. Indie games aren’t in my good graces, so I’m not interested in granting them any favours.
Here are literally ten of them. And those were just off the top of my head — I didn’t even mention Everhood, which plagiarizes Undertale! Oh my god, what a nightmare — see what I’m talking about when I say the word “ouroboros”? ??
I hit the character limit too, so more to come very soon!
Bad news: Pikuniku is based on the PSP game Locoroco, down to the bloody title. (With added millennial politics writing, of course.) This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Even Lovely Planet is clearly pulling from Katamari Damacy (I actually like that game, but it still counts) and World of Horror is straight-up meant to be an old Apple II point-and-click a la Uninvited or Deja Vu.
Whether or not it’s doing more harm (the fact that we’re using that phrasing speaks for itself) is debatable, but think of what you wrote above — if innovation is supposed to be coming from the indie space, shouldn’t we hold it to a far higher standard than AAA gaming? Shouldn’t we be more strict and critical of it, not less? It’s like I said at the start: I think gamers are much, much too forgiving of these games, for all sorts of dumb reasons.
Simply put: I’m looking for unique, creative, original games that don’t rely on directly pulling from another game’s aesthetics or gameplay to be fun, entertaining experiences in their own right. To wit, here are five examples:
Mate, the fact that you’re willing to respond to my post in good faith and not just petty, passive-aggressive snark shows how much of an angel you are. I’m harsh about this stuff because it truly and legitimately annoys me, but I wouldn’t be writing all this if I didn’t believe it, and I really appreciate all your thought and effort.
Sonic does inspiration the right way — it uses its own unique aesthetics and gameplay to create an original game in a genre, not just copies what Mario did with a few token alterations. Sonic has undeniably its own visual style and mechanics that are completely distinct from Mario, and you don’t immediately think of the latter when you see a screenshot from the former. Sonic is a platformer — it isn’t a Mario clone.
That’s my point — if we embrace unoriginality like so many indie developers do, Old Maid is what we’ll be playing… forever. I want to play newer, better card games, not Gold Maiden: A Quirky Post-Modern Card RPG developed by Johnny Simpbrain for release on Steam.
I won’t disagree (even though I kind of secretly do), but, again, I think we should hold indie games to a higher standard. I’m not willing to give either section of the industry a pass.
I'm not actually arguing that most of these games are plagiarizing each other to a criminal degree (Undertale 100% is, but the Japanese don't care), but seriously – they re-use a lot.
