Fair enough but imo it is an overrated concept.
Somnia, darling, this is the crux of our argument, and why we're never going to agree: I'm personally of the opinion that professionalism, maturity, and the ability to conduct oneself properly in public is essentially the most important attribute of being an adult. (This is irrelevant, but, as I've mentioned before, I've literally taught university courses about this very topic.) It may be insincere, yes, but so is the ridiculous persona that most famous people on the internet create for themselves, so "sincerity" really holds no value in the discussion.
Like it or not, indie developers and their audiences
aren't on equal ground – one is trying to sell the other a product, and the other has money to give. If the customer doesn't like the seller – for any reason – they're fully in their right not only to not purchase from them, but to complain about it on the internet. That's capitalism, baby, and it's the reason we're discussing electronic TV toys instead of food lines. Obviously all the developers I mentioned succeeded financially in spite of their insufferableness (I bet even Phil Fish made never-work-again money), but I absolutely am still going to complain about them however I fancy – and if you disagree, you're not thinking in the real world. COMMIE!!!! (



)
Now, whether or not we think this is right or wrong is a far, far bigger discussion than is worth having on RetroGameTalk.com, but it is the
reality of the situation, not the emotion of it. I deal with things as they
are, not as they should be, which makes me public enemy #1 of the internet.
there is more to those two than surface level differences. You need to consider parametrical differences, too, or, in other words, how the game feels, as what it looks like on the tin doesn't tell the whole story.
But RageBurner, that's my point: the fact that we need to dig into nitty-gritty granular details of each game to explain why their different is proof enough that, on a general level, they're unoriginal. When explaining Cave Story to someone who'd never played or heard of it before, you
could dive into the intricacies of the Metroidvania genre, identify individual gameplay quirks (which themselves would require context) and reference the nuanced opinions of hardcore purists... but you'd
likely begin your description with the phrase "It's like Metroid", or "It's like Earthbound", or "It's like Harvest Moon".
Again: If you didn't like one, why would you ever want to play any of the others? That's my issue. Yes, it may very well be a shallow and surface-level comparison (in some cases more than others), but we're talking about video games, here.
I care if the game's good, which is actually quite rare both for indies and AAA.
THAT TOO!!!!!! Of the examples I listed, as mentioned, I
do like Minecraft – I think it's one of the best games ever made, and certainly the single most successful – so I can easily ignore whatever BS Notch says on a daily basis. I don't like Undertale or Fez or a lot of other indie games, so when I see their creators mouth off on social media, I have no problem with complaining about them on the internet.