The awful truth is that Big companies are not exactly as respectable as they used to be. Xbox came into 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 of this report being Nintendo’s infamous Switch 2 game pricing, I decided to make this report as a Glimmer of Hope and 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 in a NES will save an entire industry?” you may be thinking, and realistically it won’t exactly SAVE it fully, just keep it from falling in another Crash of '83. But now that we have a realistic approach on the scope of the article, let’s begin:
THE HUMBLE ORIGINS
“LOOK MOMMY, NO DEVKIT”
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 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 set aside, 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 as Touhou, was going to be the kickstone 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
“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: unique, bittersweet story, solid gameplay, challenging but enjoyable mechanics, and a great chiptune OST. That was the reason why the game got lots of praise, giving people too the idea that “Hey, if a man can create art with crayons, I want to too.”
It was relatively slow; the only engine where people could create their own adventures was RPG-Maker. Said engine wasn’t half bad: OFF, Yume Nikki, LISA, Lonely Wolf Treat, Ib—all of them made from passion and a creative mind. Experiences created by people that love games and have played them. Some time later…
INTEGRATION AND COMPETENCE WITH BIG NAMES
Look at you, small man—you are now acknowledged by the big men.
Eventually, Indie games got so normalized and accepted that they got onto big names’ radar, to the point Shovel Knight and Shantae have appeared in FUCKING 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 be great?
Great, now, ¿how many suits have ruined small Indie games?
My point.
FINE, I’LL DO IT MYSELF
A picture counts more than a thousand words, so I will let democracy talk:
LEFT: PAPER MARIO STICKER STAR
RIGHT: BUG FABLES: THE EVERLASTING SAP
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 interest in making a sequel unless they want to gamble. Or even if they wanted, rights and copyright may put a dent in the plans and the owners, to quote a Smiling Friends episode: “wants these IPs to sit in them and not use them.”
Fortunately, small studios that most likely played the original will surely do them. Just add some details to characters, add new mechanics, swap some stuff of the original… and DOJAAAAAAAAAAN! New Castlevania game.
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 era?
All I want to say is that in a—at the end of the day—business where man eats man, it is true that staying true to what works is safe. But sometimes, risks need to be taken, and so far, most Indies I have played decided to take the jump, with a lot of great results:
Tunic: A Zelda clone of the bunch… 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 incites 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 kid book illustration to claymation.
Even A Hat in Time decided to flesh the right in the Collect-A-Thon genre by giving us a game that gave lots of exploration without going overboard like DK64.
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
Above: Mega Man, a game that if you played a Mega Man, you know you can drink them.
Below: Momodora, a far more complete game.
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 with a low budget.
Indies don’t have 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 over 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?
POP QUIZ! Which game do these characters come from?
Now with these:
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 for another if it weren’t for the recognizable name.
Now picture an Indie. Even without relying on a retro aesthetic, you will note that, at the end of the day, Indies have become more memorable than the hyperrealistic style nowadays.
Even leaving graphics aside, the Indies—being made by, as reiterated, people that played and loved the games—give us what we want:
An experience created by someone that 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?
SIXTY FRIGGIN MEGAS!!!
For comparison, A Hat in Time gives us an entire playground of stuff to mess around and find out. With all the expansions, you will get a humble 15 GB usage… still big, but nothing compared to the aforementioned 60.
Not only is space something Indies think about—Resident Evil 2 Remake has pretty graphics, but if your PC doesn’t have a graphic or processing card that can handle them… (Insert burning PC)
The heaviest graphically intense games I’ve played by contrast run on laptops, if the reviews are to be believed.
Considering the games are made by people without all the thingamajigs the big names have, I think it’s obvious why it happens.
Yet it has the side benefit of making the games be lighter than feathers when it comes to resources.
A CONCLUSION TO HELP YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT
Granted, I am not saying ALL Indies are the greatest games ever.
In fact, some Indie projects or makers have been contaminated by AAA practices due to how attractive the word “INDIE” makes a game sound—causing a lot of games that fail to live up to the hype or projects that end as smoke, scams, or merely the developer didn’t manage to make sense of all the things involved in game making.
Let alone whatever pipe dream they wanted to make, like Bob’s Game (the lightest example I can bring).
Yet despite that, Independent has managed to keep this little hobby afloat. Then again, AAA companies have made it right, so they deserve their praise too—like Atlus with the fix that is SMT V: Vengeance.
Their work may be small, but without Indie developers, gaming would have a crash akin to the one that happened 42 years ago.
If you want to help them, you can too:
1) Pay for the games. As said a lot, they are far cheaper, and being a small group of people, all of them will appreciate the thanks.
2) Keep your eyes peeled for scammers or games that fly too near the sun.
3) Big names can do it good too. Help them by paying—as long as they don’t go overboard.
With all said, I want to thank most of the Indie games that helped me form my character and tastes in gaming:
The knight in their desolate quest in a death Hallownest,
The hilarious Peppino and his fast-paced antics for his pizzeria’s sake,
Quote and his seemingly impossible journey to look for the Demon Crown,
To the Batter, who went on a journey to puri… nevermind, he committed the G-word,
To the Penitent One, whose penance in the rotten Cvstodia was as satisfactory for him as much as to me,
To the Cup brothers, Cuphead and Mugman, who taught me that you can dodge debts by shooting your debt keeper (for legal reasons, JK),
To Madotsuki, who taught me that sometimes, you don’t need a goal—you can just keep walking without care of an objective,
And to the one that started my journey in the genre…
To Frisk, whose accidental fall into a world full of quirky people taught me a lot of determination to keep going even when stuff got hard and bleak.
Thank you to all of you folks—your journeys will be told.
With all said…
Bakuma out.
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