Discussion Hot Take: 'Indie Games' today are really just the modern version of Flash Games. Except they're not free.

[BotenAnna]

Even hotter take: the developers of most of those free flash games would have been completely justified in charging money for them.

Some creators did end up doing this by porting/remaking them, and ended up deservedly getting paid for putting out some real classic stuff. OP's take is ignorant and disrespectful as hell, but there is a lineage there that should be celebrated as others here have said. Tbh there still is a thriving scene of creators putting out free projects that are cool or interesting, it's just done with different tools these days. Similar spirit is still out there with lots of creative juices flowing around.

 

[hologram]

 

[james]

hey man i get it sometimes you wanna log on and post but sometimes the neurons arent firing and you cant figure out what to type in the box before pressing enter

happens to the best of us

just remember, you dont have to post! under absolutely no circumstances do you have to post!

 

[GamerJM]

I don't agree with this necessarily, but I do think games like Celeste have a lot more flash game in their DNA than people often recognize. It comes from the same school of game design that Super Meat Boy comes from, which was heavily inspired by flash games.

 

[Aether]

While there are for certain many releases that are in the spirit of those flash games (looking at steam or the eshop...), and most of them are in the 1-10$ category, they are far and away from the majority of "indie".
Its just that there are way to many games launching every day.

And i don't think when people talk indie they think about the 10th "hidden object game with reused assets" that one studio released this year alone. (hypotetical, and not dissing the genre, just something i've seen many times with flash games)

Indie is to broad to make such statements.

Then again, there where some A-Grade Flash games over the years that kept my attention for longer then some AAA games....

Obligatory:

 

[BotenAnna]

I don't agree with this necessarily, but I do think games like Celeste have a lot more flash game in their DNA than people often recognize. It comes from the same school of game design that Super Meat Boy comes from, which was heavily inspired by flash games.

It was not heavily inspired by Flash games. The original Meat Boy was literally a Flash game, and Super Meat Boy was just the follow up version that was set for console release. There was a lot of this going on with the early indie game boom with examples like Alien Hominid, VVVVV, N+(+) all being built in Flash then being either ported or sequelized to consoles.

 

[Mr Doggo]

99% of indies are trash

 

[Dizzle]

99% of indies are trash

Brrrr that take just lowered the ambient temperature 5 degrees (Fahrenheit)

 

[Lord Azrael]

Everyone seems to be taking this thread as OP trashing indie games but I don't really think it is. Or at least it's not clear to me. It just sounds like they are saying that indie games are an evolution of yesteryear's Flash movement.

To inject some positivity into this thread, there were some absolutely amazing Flash games out there. Or well, browser games I guess; I don't know which ones specifically used Flash, or something else. But ironically everyone else here is doing exactly what they think OP is doing, which is putting down an entire subset of games. Plenty of the best browser games even led to big paid games later. Bloons is a big one, but I also really enjoyed playing the Dad 'n' Me beat-em-up on Newgrounds, which eventually led to Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Don't forget PopCap before they got acquired by EA - they made some absolute gems, like Bookworm, Bejeweled, Heavy Weapon and Insaniquarium.

Hell my favorite tower defense series of all time is Cursed Treasure, and that one's still available to play online. Browser games single-handedly held up certain genres, like the aforementioned tower defense. And a lot of the best beat-em-ups and puzzlers were free browser games too - Bloxorz anyone? And didn't Canabalt basically invent the runner genre? It feels like people are shitting on these because they rep genres that are typically viewed as "lesser". More arcadey experiences that people look down upon. Yeah indie games nowadays are absolutely much higher quality on average than browser games of the past, but there's no reason to put one down to prop up the other.

There were absolutely some larger games too, stuff that could easily stand alongside the greats of today. Mardek was a huge turn based RPG built in Flash. The developer only ever finished three of its eight planned chapters, but each part was like a dozen hours of gameplay and the story scope was insane. Hell it's even on Steam right now, as a preservation measure!

 

[lexony]

I somewhat agree. Though definitely not something like Goat Simulator and also not like 99% of all indie games (if you ignore the output of itch.io). Indie games created in teams are quite a big production compared to most Flash games. Though specifically many Queer Games remind me of old flash games or sometimes 8 bit games (often a single dev, creative ideas and with a Twist) in a good way. And by Queer I mean games from Nicky Case, Kara Stone or Zoe Quinn.

 

[Beanstar40]

I would say flash games were the inception of what we know as the modern indie. But most of todays modern indies are so much more than what those games could offer. I remember playing meatboy when it was a new grounds flash game before the xbox release

 

[BassForever]

I don't agree with this necessarily, but I do think games like Celeste have a lot more flash game in their DNA than people often recognize. It comes from the same school of game design that Super Meat Boy comes from, which was heavily inspired by flash games.

Celeste started as a Pico 8 game, which is basically the modern version of flash games.

 

[ngpdrew]

99% of indies are trash

Ignorant.

 

[Stilt Village]

I don't agree with this necessarily, but I do think games like Celeste have a lot more flash game in their DNA than people often recognize. It comes from the same school of game design that Super Meat Boy comes from, which was heavily inspired by flash games.

It was not heavily inspired by Flash games. The original Meat Boy was literally a Flash game, and Super Meat Boy was just the follow up version that was set for console release. There was a lot of this going on with the early indie game boom with examples like Alien Hominid, VVVVV, N+(+) all being built in Flash then being either ported or sequelized to consoles.

My understanding of this is that Maddy Thorson basically invented this whole subgenre. Meat Boy was probably inspired by her first platformers, the flash games Jumper and Jumper Two, from 2004. The protagonist Ogmo is even playable in Super Meat Boy, and is also pretty much a red square with a face. They're not super similar games otherwise, Meat Boy is way more vertical and has a wall jump instead of a double jump, and Jumper has much more complicated and less straightforward levels, but they tend to be compared due to the structure, just like how N++ gets lumped together with Super Meat Boy and Celeste today despite all three games being very different mechanically. It's oversaturated now, but that screen by screen "die and instant restart" thing used to be pretty novel, and I've never heard of any earlier example than Jumper.

Interestingly, Kaizo Mario World and I Wanna Be the Guy are from 2007, so the more masochistic side of it (I see "kaizo" used for all of it, but I think there's a pretty significant difference in design philosophy between Celeste and Syobon Action) actually came a bit later.

 

[Mekanos]

Remember Flash games? I'm not that old. They old died out....TEN YEARS AGO!?

But once upon a time, people used to make tons of free flash games for people to play online. They were cheap, they were janky, but occasionally fun. And sometimes impressive!

With Adobe Flash and shockwave dead, those adolescent game development urges had to be let out somewhere. And steam greenlight was perfect for this, wasn't it? And with modern development tools making it easier than ever to program a proper game instead of using Flash, they are usually put together just a bit better.


Don't believe me? Goat Simulator. Deer Simulator. 90% of the steam library. All those super-janky games. They may be fun, but the spirit of Adobe Flash lives on, even if it now costs money!

Incidentally, there is a reason why I usually don't bother considering most indie games when talking about the state of certain genres. 10 years ago nobody tried claiming that shmups were alive even though there were more shoot-em-up flash games than you could shake a stick at. In the same sense, I really don't care about indie RPG maker game #6969.

 

[Dizzle]

My understanding of this is that Maddy Thorson basically invented this whole subgenre. Meat Boy was probably inspired by her first platformers, the flash games Jumper and Jumper Two, from 2004. The protagonist Ogmo is even playable in Super Meat Boy, and is also pretty much a red square with a face. They're not super similar games otherwise, Meat Boy is way more vertical and has a wall jump instead of a double jump, and Jumper has much more complicated and less straightforward levels, but they tend to be compared due to the structure, just like how N++ gets lumped together with Super Meat Boy and Celeste today despite all three games being very different mechanically. It's oversaturated now, but that screen by screen "die and instant restart" thing used to be pretty novel, and I've never heard of any earlier example than Jumper.

Interestingly, Kaizo Mario World and I Wanna Be the Guy are from 2007, so the more masochistic side of it (I see "kaizo" used for all of it, but I think there's a pretty significant difference in design philosophy between Celeste and Syobon Action) actually came a bit later.

OH SHIT DID SOMEBODY SAY JUMPER!?!?!

Ahem.

I never thought about the possibility that Jumper could have been a pioneer, but then again, I can't think of anything earlier either. Back in the day, that genre (or a broader version of it) did have a name and it was masocore (which apparently Anna Anthropy invented/popularized). The term is rarely used now.

 

[EtherPenguin]

Everyone seems to be taking this thread as OP trashing indie games but I don't really think it is. Or at least it's not clear to me. It just sounds like they are saying that indie games are an evolution of yesteryear's Flash movement.

To inject some positivity into this thread, there were some absolutely amazing Flash games out there. Or well, browser games I guess; I don't know which ones specifically used Flash, or something else. But ironically everyone else here is doing exactly what they think OP is doing, which is putting down an entire subset of games. Plenty of the best browser games even led to big paid games later. Bloons is a big one, but I also really enjoyed playing the Dad 'n' Me beat-em-up on Newgrounds, which eventually led to Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Don't forget PopCap before they got acquired by EA - they made some absolute gems, like Bookworm, Bejeweled, Heavy Weapon and Insaniquarium.

Hell my favorite tower defense series of all time is Cursed Treasure, and that one's still available to play online. Browser games single-handedly held up certain genres, like the aforementioned tower defense. And a lot of the best beat-em-ups and puzzlers were free browser games too - Bloxorz anyone? And didn't Canabalt basically invent the runner genre? It feels like people are shitting on these because they rep genres that are typically viewed as "lesser". More arcadey experiences that people look down upon. Yeah indie games nowadays are absolutely much higher quality on average than browser games of the past, but there's no reason to put one down to prop up the other.

There were absolutely some larger games too, stuff that could easily stand alongside the greats of today. Mardek was a huge turn based RPG built in Flash. The developer only ever finished three of its eight planned chapters, but each part was like a dozen hours of gameplay and the story scope was insane. Hell it's even on Steam right now, as a preservation measure!

I don't think it's so much the comparison to flash games as being trashy but more so the point of bringing up the cost and the "Except they're not free" that's really prickling people.

If the OP really just meant they're happy to see the spirit of Flash games live on and that's it then my bad for misinterpreting. But in the current climate of AI discussions where the work of artists and creative people is constantly devalued and exploited, it's a little hard not to read the worst into the bit about these games having a pricetag that the OP brings up.

 

[Mekanos]

I don't think it's so much the comparison to flash games as being trashy but more so the point of bringing up the cost and the "Except they're not free" that's really prickling people.

If the OP really just meant they're happy to see the spirit of Flash games live on and that's it then my bad for misinterpreting. But in the current climate of AI discussions where the work of artists and creative people is constantly devalued and exploited, it's a little hard not to read the worst into the bit about these games having a pricetag that the OP brings up.

I mean OP outright says “I don’t care about indie games” in the last paragraph, which is what caused Godzilla’s death.

 

[slide's]

99% of indies are trash

quoting this inflammatory drive-by post not to respond directly but to generally wonder: are people who so thoughtlessly write off enormous swaths of games interested in the medium of video games itself, or just fans of companies and particular IP? I don't mean to be making an argument about what "a real gamer" is or anything like that lol, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. people who spend a lot of time reading about and watching movies, or reading about and listening to music, or reading about and reading fiction almost always eventually gravitate toward some of the less popular stuff, or at the very least let themselves be exposed to it and give it a fair shake.

but there is just a pervasive mentality of dismissiveness that lingers in some of the most "hardcore", enthusiast-level, full-time video game players that really seems unique to the medium to me. a general resistance to and distaste for "the weird stuff" in favor of familiar brands and big budgets and whatever the established "canon" is. I think a lot of it must be related to video games' origins in Big Business and especially the inextricable link between mainstream games and marketing (and admittedly some more complicated factors like the relative inaccessibility of games due to hardware requirements etc) but....idk! it sucks anyway, and it extra sucks to see stuff like this even in places where you'd expect most people to be willing to Go Deeper

 

[oomoepoo]

Obligatory:

Oh man. Childhood memory unlocked :O
Instantly wishlisted it on Steam and cannot wait for it to come out!

 

[Mekanos]

quoting this inflammatory drive-by post not to respond directly but to generally wonder: are people who so thoughtlessly write off enormous swaths of games interested in the medium of video games itself, or just fans of companies and particular IP? I don't mean to be making an argument about what "a real gamer" is or anything like that lol, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. people who spend a lot of time reading about and watching movies, or reading about and listening to music, or reading about and reading fiction almost always eventually gravitate toward some of the less popular stuff, or at the very least let themselves be exposed to it and give it a fair shake.

but there is just a pervasive mentality of dismissiveness that lingers in some of the most "hardcore", enthusiast-level, full-time video game players that really seems unique to the medium to me. a general resistance to and distaste for "the weird stuff" in favor of familiar brands and big budgets and whatever the established "canon" is. I think a lot of it must be related to video games' origins in Big Business and especially the inextricable link between mainstream games and marketing (and admittedly some more complicated factors like the relative inaccessibility of games due to hardware requirements etc) but....idk! it sucks anyway, and it extra sucks to see stuff like this even in places where you'd expect most people to be willing to Go Deeper

To be a little more charitable, I think part of it is that video game marketing has always been about chasing tech and blowing your mind with graphics and gameplay, so indies will always struggle in that regard in such a crowded market. I also am generally picky about what games I play, so I will be the first to admit I tend to gravitate to familiar series and developers, and the sheer volume of games makes it harder to pick out the crown jewels. But I would never write off all indie games or anything like that, there are great ones out there (and they deserve to charge money for their labor as any developer does).

 

[Soul Skater]

This reads like someone asked an A.I to have Skip Bayless to give his opinion on video games

 

[BotenAnna]

stuff

stuff the sequel

I should clarify that I wanted to draw attention to the fact most of these games are "Flash Games" because they, well, were built in Flash. There's nothing that denotes them into some specific genre, they just were all built with the same tools and distributed primarily through browsers at the time. I wanted to denote it because the spirit of the Flash era never really died, just the platforms did. Creators mostly moved on from Flash to newer and better creation tools that are widely available to get started on, then started hosting those games on places that allow self publishing or just throwing download links out onto the greater internet. That's kind of what I want to illustrate, that's it's always just been people making games with what they can and putting it out to the world with whatever they think will get people to see it. The only real difference these days is obviously the scope, money, and publishers involved have gotten larger for the more successful creators. Other than that there's still an ocean of people just making all kinds of different shit and slapping it up on Itch or other places for free and seeing what sticks. That kinda rules imo, so I wanna spread the positive vibe with this lineage of creation/distribution since I feel it's important.

If you wanna talk about that lineage of platformers though I get it. Meat Boy was almost certainly inspired by other things that came before it. I went through the Jumper > Kaizo/IWBTG pipeline myself many years ago so I get it. Masocore is a somewhat useful descriptor, but it doesn't really match the broader genre of faster paced platformers. It really just applies to Kaizo/IWBTG lineage where there are gags and punchlines at the player's expense being a recurring theme. Something like Celeste to me is just a platformer that's managed to borrow and adapt all kinds of stuff from across the genre, but tracking down where some of the ideas come from is neato.

 

[Brock Reiher]

I miss flash games, I wish this was true.

 

[hologram]

quoting this inflammatory drive-by post not to respond directly but to generally wonder: are people who so thoughtlessly write off enormous swaths of games interested in the medium of video games itself, or just fans of companies and particular IP? I don't mean to be making an argument about what "a real gamer" is or anything like that lol, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. people who spend a lot of time reading about and watching movies, or reading about and listening to music, or reading about and reading fiction almost always eventually gravitate toward some of the less popular stuff, or at the very least let themselves be exposed to it and give it a fair shake.

but there is just a pervasive mentality of dismissiveness that lingers in some of the most "hardcore", enthusiast-level, full-time video game players that really seems unique to the medium to me. a general resistance to and distaste for "the weird stuff" in favor of familiar brands and big budgets and whatever the established "canon" is. I think a lot of it must be related to video games' origins in Big Business and especially the inextricable link between mainstream games and marketing (and admittedly some more complicated factors like the relative inaccessibility of games due to hardware requirements etc) but....idk! it sucks anyway, and it extra sucks to see stuff like this even in places where you'd expect most people to be willing to Go Deeper

The closest comparison I can think of is people who only enjoy blockbuster movies and dismiss anything even remotely close to independent as artsy Oscar bait. I think the main difference is that film as an art form was established long before the modern blockbuster, so the blockbuster-only crowd don't represent the majority of self-professed film lovers.

 

[Suswave]

i made flash games in the day and i’m building console games now and i can assure you that they are NOT the same

there are standout flash games, there are mediocre indies, but they truly are worlds apart in both execution and paradigm

i’d say you’d be much closer with some mobile games nowadays, but even then it’s DRASTICALLY different to build

 

[Kartina]

I think the opposite, indie games are the modern version of the small mid sized games of the early 2000's era. The smaller titles from publishers that were made for the psx and then for gba/ds are pretty much dead but the indies have pretty much taken their spots. You miss wario land? then you get pizza tower, you miss metroidvanias? you get the gist.

 

[Magic-Man]

99% of indies are trash

100% of the post is trash

 

[Lord Azrael]

I think part of it is that video game marketing has always been about chasing tech and blowing your mind with graphics and gameplay, so indies will always struggle in that regard in such a crowded market.

Indie games blow my mind with gameplay way more nowadays than any AAA production. The tech/graphics part is the unfortunate reality though, or people perceiving stuff as low budget or whatever. I will say though, for me personally nice stylized graphics do way more than ultra detailed hyperrealistim (and I assume the same is true for many other Nintendo fans)

 

[Lugia667]

I think the main reason people get annoyed is because the word "Flash" is often thrown at game's artstyles as a kind of slur. I can't count the number of times I have seen hand-drawn animated dismissed as being "Flash" cough*streetsofrage4*cough

 

[Magic-Man]

I should probably duck out of this thread. As someone who wants to make his own game one day, this is making me irrationally angry lol

 

[OTBWY]

I made Flash games back in the day, I could only wish to make something as cool as Chained Echoes or Hades.

 

[Narroo]

Everyone seems to be taking this thread as OP trashing indie games but I don't really think it is. Or at least it's not clear to me. It just sounds like they are saying that indie games are an evolution of yesteryear's Flash movement.

To inject some positivity into this thread, there were some absolutely amazing Flash games out there. Or well, browser games I guess; I don't know which ones specifically used Flash, or something else. But ironically everyone else here is doing exactly what they think OP is doing, which is putting down an entire subset of games. Plenty of the best browser games even led to big paid games later. Bloons is a big one, but I also really enjoyed playing the Dad 'n' Me beat-em-up on Newgrounds, which eventually led to Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. Don't forget PopCap before they got acquired by EA - they made some absolute gems, like Bookworm, Bejeweled, Heavy Weapon and Insaniquarium.

Hell my favorite tower defense series of all time is Cursed Treasure, and that one's still available to play online. Browser games single-handedly held up certain genres, like the aforementioned tower defense. And a lot of the best beat-em-ups and puzzlers were free browser games too - Bloxorz anyone? And didn't Canabalt basically invent the runner genre? It feels like people are shitting on these because they rep genres that are typically viewed as "lesser". More arcadey experiences that people look down upon. Yeah indie games nowadays are absolutely much higher quality on average than browser games of the past, but there's no reason to put one down to prop up the other.

There were absolutely some larger games too, stuff that could easily stand alongside the greats of today. Mardek was a huge turn based RPG built in Flash. The developer only ever finished three of its eight planned chapters, but each part was like a dozen hours of gameplay and the story scope was insane. Hell it's even on Steam right now, as a preservation measure!

It's a little of A, and a little of B.

Playing flash games was a bit of a ritual for me back in high school. I'd get up, hop onto the computer, and play something on onemorelevel.com while I waited for my body to wake up. I am an incredibly groggy person.

Obviously, I enjoyed playing a good flash game. But I also generally didn't think of them in the same way as traditionally released games that you bought. There was a clear distinction in quality, professionalism, and length between them and let's say "professional" games. Case in point: Think of all the cheap stick figure games that probably took a single day or two to make! Sort of like the difference between amateur fanfiction and a professionally published book. Not to say that there weren't some rare, extremely impressive Flash games out there. Like the adventures of Reimus. Or the fact that The Binding of Issac was originally a "professionally made" flash game.

There are one or two things that bug me though: The merging of the old-school indie scene with the "flash" scene has made things a bit messier and more difficult to discuss. Back in the day, "indie games" tended to refer to games like Cave Story, Braid, Limbo, et cetera. They tended to be passion projects with enough talent to get published on major platforms, which as a huge deal. Nowadays, "indie games" can refer to anything from Celeste to "Meme Run" for the Wii U. This results in incredibly muddy water that's difficult to get through. When you talk about "indie games," you have to figure out what "kind" of indie games a person has in mind. Are they considering the high quality stuff like Hades or Bastion, or are they considering the "dime a dozen" flash-knock offs? Also, it's really friggen hard to browse the Steam and Switch storefronts without relying on recommendations, because of all the ridiculous amounts of shovelware.


Don't believe me? Read all the pissed off posts in this thread! You'll see that different people seem to have different ideas of what I'm insulting. Some people actually think I'm ragging on Celeste!

God damn I'm good. I have killed Godzilla. I am the new king of monsters. Bow before me!

 

[meatbag]

Don't believe me? Read all the pissed off posts in this thread! You'll see that different people seem to have different ideas of what I'm insulting. Some people actually think I'm ragging on Celeste!

Then it seems you’re complaining more about shovelware than indie games, and shovelware has been there way before indies ever became a thing

 

[HyahHaHa]

I made Flash games back in the day, I could only wish to make something as cool as Chained Echoes or Hades.

Chained Echoes is one of my favorite new rpgs. Heard it was done by one person and it blew my mind. I had so much fun with that game.

 

[lemonfresh]

While there are a ton of good indie games there are also really bad ones that also are not free like for every 1 good indie there are probably 20 bad ones that flood the store fronts. Also burying the good games and making them harder to find also with that you will probably end up with more bad indie games that good ones and will probably miss out something great, sony steam nintendo and Microsoft should have better curation method for what they let be put on their store not just let any asset flip game go through. So yeah I think op is mostly talking about those games the effortless ones more akin to the cheap flash games of the past that took little effort to make but now you have to pay for them and they are spamming the storefronts.

 

[Skittzo]

Making a good indie game stand out is definitely a really, really difficult problem I'm currently grappling with. I literally just finished making my game today (the content anyway) and I'm really almost paralyzed about how to go about putting it up on a marketplace and marketing it so that it can reach its potential audience.

I'm obviously biased but I think it's a really high quality game with really fun and easy mechanics, a ton of variety both visual and mechanical, and a increasingly odd and bonkers story that may or may not

But when the indie scene is so crowded and you get large swaths of people writing off the very idea of a small team developing a game, even if it happens to be one they'd love to play, then it gets remarkably difficult to get the message out there that, yes, you have made a good game.

 

[MrBones]

generalization blah blah, you got a point referring to the low barrier of entry games. Game engines and dev tools are easier than ever to use and likewise more accessible than ever.

 

[Lord Azrael]

Don't believe me? Read all the pissed off posts in this thread! You'll see that different people seem to have different ideas of what I'm insulting. Some people actually think I'm ragging on Celeste!

People are dunking on you because your point is unclear and the rest of this post really doesn't help. I still have no idea what you're talking about. I can't tell what the distinction you're trying to make between the various games you listed is at all

 

[Suswave]

frankly bud i would like to see you make a fucking game and then come back and tell us how easy it was

how utterly simple it was for you to let out your “adolescent game development urges”

go make a piece of shit game and get back to us

even the worst shovelware you’ve ever seen probably took more effort than anything you’ve ever done in your life

 

[Magic-Man]

It's a little of A, and a little of B.

Playing flash games was a bit of a ritual for me back in high school. I'd get up, hop onto the computer, and play something on onemorelevel.com while I waited for my body to wake up. I am an incredibly groggy person.

Obviously, I enjoyed playing a good flash game. But I also generally didn't think of them in the same way as traditionally released games that you bought. There was a clear distinction in quality, professionalism, and length between them and let's say "professional" games. Case in point: Think of all the cheap stick figure games that probably took a single day or two to make! Sort of like the difference between amateur fanfiction and a professionally published book. Not to say that there weren't some rare, extremely impressive Flash games out there. Like the adventures of Reimus. Or the fact that The Binding of Issac was originally a "professionally made" flash game.

There are one or two things that bug me though: The merging of the old-school indie scene with the "flash" scene has made things a bit messier and more difficult to discuss. Back in the day, "indie games" tended to refer to games like Cave Story, Braid, Limbo, et cetera. They tended to be passion projects with enough talent to get published on major platforms, which as a huge deal. Nowadays, "indie games" can refer to anything from Celeste to "Meme Run" for the Wii U. This results in incredibly muddy water that's difficult to get through. When you talk about "indie games," you have to figure out what "kind" of indie games a person has in mind. Are they considering the high quality stuff like Hades or Bastion, or are they considering the "dime a dozen" flash-knock offs? Also, it's really friggen hard to browse the Steam and Switch storefronts without relying on recommendations, because of all the ridiculous amounts of shovelware.


Don't believe me? Read all the pissed off posts in this thread! You'll see that different people seem to have different ideas of what I'm insulting. Some people actually think I'm ragging on Celeste!

My issue is the context (or lack thereof) in your post. If you would have clarified that you meant shovelware, a lot of confusion and frustration would have been avoided. It comes across as bait.

Indie games tend to be major passion projects, which feels a lot more authentic than AAA Game of the Week 125. Every developer has a reason for being there that's not monetary. Celeste, Hollow Knight, A Space for the Unbound, Oxenfree, Five Nights at Freddy's, Tunic, Hades, Stanley Parable, Crosscode, Disco Elysium, Cuphead, The Long Dark, Subnautica, Undertale, Omori, A Short Hike, I could go on and on and on. They wouldn't have existed in the AAA landscape. They're works of passion and art. Not Flash games or shovelware.

 

[Magic-Man]

Also, I swear people forget how many high profile games are actually Indie games or started out as Indie. For example...

• Five Nights at Freddy's
• Minecraft
• No Man's Sky
• Rocket League
• Amnesia
• Outlast

Two of those are some of the most recognizable games in the world, and another is one of the most popular multiplayer games on the market.

 

[afternoon delight]

We could only BE so lucky as to be trapped with machines that could only play games like FEZ, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Into the Breach and FTL, etc etc

 

[Narroo]

My issue is the context (or lack thereof) in your post. If you would have clarified that you meant shovelware, a lot of confusion and frustration would have been avoided. It comes across as bait.

Indie games tend to be major passion projects, which feels a lot more authentic than AAA Game of the Week 125. Every developer has a reason for being there that's not monetary. Celeste, Hollow Knight, A Space for the Unbound, Oxenfree, Five Nights at Freddy's, Tunic, Hades, Stanley Parable, Crosscode, Disco Elysium, Cuphead, The Long Dark, Subnautica, Undertale, Omori, A Short Hike, I could go on and on and on. They wouldn't have existed in the AAA landscape. They're works of passion and art. Not Flash games or shovelware.

The thought crossed my mind on trying to be clearer. But in my experience, it's usually pointless. I could be a specific as possible, but people would still read the post wrong and assume I'm insulting their favorite indie games. It happens every time you talk about any sort of category of game. Besides, it wasn't even necessarily just low-quality shovelware I'm talking about. In the past, there were a lot of pretty good flash games that you could kill a morning with, but they were still distinctly different from more conventionally released games.

It does help illustrate one of my other points in this topic: While the fusioning of conventional indie games with the flash game market isn't inherently a bad things, it does make things much messier to talk about. After all, all of those games you listed belong to the same class of games such as "stick fighter," or waifu simulator #500, or "Hi, I made a shmup! It's my first ever game #1999999." You kinda get my point, right?

(P.S. I hated Tunic with a Passion. I could go on a huge rant about how it's a mostly creatively bankrupt indie game that rides on one single gimmick to make itself interesting, and it's emblematic of the problems most mid-tier indie games have. But that's another topic.)

 

[Magic-Man]

(P.S. I hated Tunic with a Passion. I could go on a huge rant about how it's a mostly creatively bankrupt indie game that rides on one single gimmick to make itself interesting, and it's emblematic of the problems most mid-tier indie games have. But that's another topic.)

Okay now THIS is the worst Indie game take I've seen all week. Creatively bankrupt? Only one gimmick? Did you actually play the game? Don't answer that question. You probably only played an hour of it if this is genuinely what you think.

 

[ngpdrew]

The thought crossed my mind on trying to be clearer. But in my experience, it's usually pointless. I could be a specific as possible, but people would still read the post wrong and assume I'm insulting their favorite indie games. It happens every time you talk about any sort of category of game. Besides, it wasn't even necessarily just low-quality shovelware I'm talking about. In the past, there were a lot of pretty good flash games that you could kill a morning with, but they were still distinctly different from more conventionally released games.

It does help illustrate one of my other points in this topic: While the fusioning of conventional indie games with the flash game market isn't inherently a bad things, it does make things much messier to talk about. After all, all of those games you listed belong to the same class of games such as "stick fighter," or waifu simulator #500, or "Hi, I made a shmup! It's my first ever game #1999999." You kinda get my point, right?

(P.S. I hated Tunic with a Passion. I could go on a huge rant about how it's a mostly creatively bankrupt indie game that rides on one single gimmick to make itself interesting, and it's emblematic of the problems most mid-tier indie games have. But that's another topic.)

You should watch a Tunic speedrun.

 

[meatbag]

The thought crossed my mind on trying to be clearer. But in my experience, it's usually pointless

So you thought people would take you the wrong way and decided... against making your thoughts clearer? How are we then supposed to have a discussion in good faith?

 

[Magic-Man]

I simply cannot fathom someone calling Tunic creatively bankrupt. Bro the game....

Spoiler: Tunic

Uses perspective tricks to hide paths and treasure from the player, hides puzzles in the environment incredibly creatively, uses the freaking d-pad as a secret puzzle solver, pulls several plot twists including sending you to a ghost version of the game world with invisible enemies, and the main gimmick involves you collecting pages to form a game manual in a language you can't read.

Like what the fuck

 

[Narroo]

So you thought people would take you the wrong way and decided... against making your thoughts clearer? How are we then supposed to have a discussion in good faith?

Because I realized that I couldn't. I've posted on enough video game forums to know when certain things will get misinterpreted no matter HOW CLEARLY you state your case. At some point, you just have to post and talk with people.

I mean, if I could figure out how to make people understand what I mean in a single post, of course I'd do that. But at some point, attempting to craft the "perfect post" just results in an absolute, incomprehensible mess because you have to include multiple caveats to every statement. So, not only does it get harder to read, but people, I find, frequently don't care or read clarifying statements anyways. Or they just don't believe you.

 

[paranoodle]

Because I realized that I couldn't. I've posted on enough video game forums to know when certain things will get misinterpreted no matter HOW CLEARLY you state your case. At some point, you just have to post and talk with people.

I mean, if I could figure out how to make people understand what I mean in a single post, of course I'd do that. But at some point, attempting to craft the "perfect post" just results in an absolute, incomprehensible mess because you have to include multiple caveats to every statement. So, not only does it get harder to read, but people, I find, frequently don't care or read clarifying statements anyways. Or they just don't believe you.

So... realizing that having a good faith discussion would be impossible (which, fair enough so far) you instead decided to give up on it and... have a bad faith discussion? What?

Like, I get it, some topics are rough - there's things I'd love to talk about that I will never make a thread here on, because I don't think I could articulate myself well enough to get a good discussion going - but I genuinely don't understand why after the train of thought you just outlined, you would want to post a thread that by your own admission would backfire.

Also I just want to say that while I can see how your OP gave a slightly different idea of your stance than some of your replies, I think chalking it up to being all "misinterpretation" is a bit of a cheap way out. Sometimes people just disagree with you (I know I do, on several points, including those you already cleared up) and that doesn't mean they didn't understand. It just means they still disagree.

And please understand that this is me being as respectful as possible because as an indie dev both your OP and replies have not felt very respectful regardless of how you meant for them to come across.