What Do You Love and Hate About Indies?

What aspects of the indie scene do you really just love and really just hate? Do you love that many of them bring fresh new ideas and ways of playing games that the AAA scene wouldn't dare try? Do you like their unique art styles that feel inviting? Do you like that they are cheap to purchase? Or do you hate that there's so many of them? That they are abused by amateur developers who will put anything out for a quick buck or do anything to seem "unique"? Are they just too dang short to justify their price tags? Do you find the quality or idea of indies just overwhelmingly bad?

Personally, I always hold interest in indie games. I have nothing against them in the first place, but I do feel there are problems with them, whether it be the influx of Steam Greenlight games that are usually bad with very minimal effort, Kickstarters that fail or are abused, etc. Yet, I feel they also offer so many unique ways to play video games. I find myself getting continually annoyed with the AAA scene, so it's always nice to take a break and try a well done indie game from time to time. That isn't to say I'm crazy for them, in fact I've barely bought any compared to the amount of "AAA" games I've bought, but I feel they are an important part of the video game industry that we would surely be hurting from if they suddenly disappeared.

At its best it reminds me of the free spirited early days of computer games, whereby small teams sometimes in their on homes were working on games with their mates for ZX Spectrum. They also bring out new games in genres that are long gone from the mainstream in particular 2D games.

At its worst there has been a pretentiousness and cliquishness which has developed meaning you have to be careful who you give your money to. I want to reward gamers who take the initiative to give me good games, not purple haired morons who develop boring walking simulators which get over inflated coverage by their friends.

Love the variety, the creative freedom. Hate the horrible uninspired pixel art of some games. Like this...

Much prefer real 16 bit where the artists were working with limited hardware trying to make it look as good as possible, as opposed to working with unlimited power trying to make it look like trash.

In the days of Atari, anybody could make a game and release it on the console. It led to the creation of many bad games and oversaturation of the market. Nowadays, similar to the Atari days, tools are now free to study like Autodesk Maya, GIMP, Unity, Unreal Engine 4, etc. and create more feely with many options to sell like on Steam. But there was a big difference and it's the existence of the internet. Back then, how do you know if a game is good? You just don't. You rely on commercials and word of mouth or game magazines. Now you can see gameplay videos of people playing the game and you can read many reviews.

If you're smart on using your money to buy a game, the existence of bad games or disappointing games aren't a big concern. Investing in Kickstarter and Early Access games is taking a risk and and your own responsibility. If you can't trust the developer then don't invest. If the developer has let you down like Keiji Inafune, then don't invest in his future developments. You learn when a developer can't be trusted and if the new game turned out to be good after full/complete release then you can safely buy games from that dev/company again.

Seriously, this is the open age of gaming when it is no longer restricted just like the early days of the video game industry when there were still no big time video game companies.

@bobrossperm: lol. What game is that?

I love that indies pack a lot of content in at a low price and another thing that I love about indies is that indie devs communicate with their the gamers regularly through social media like forums etc.

Love: new ideas and approaches to old genres. Games like Divinity OS wouldn't exist without Kickstarter which champions independent projects. Some indie devs try outrageous things that really work that you would never ever see from a big publisher (Her Story is a good example).

Hate: horrible graphics get a free pass because 'indie'. Average games get insanely high scores because 'indie'. Massively pretentious 'games' with zero gameplay get insanely high scores because 'indie'.

The Occasional Indie is great because I love the creativeness to them. hat said, I don't care how great reviewers, other gamers claim they are. I didn't by new hardware to play mostly 2D games that PS3/360 could have handled. My game time is limited so I want big massive games budget and size wise.

I agree with you, now you can tell whether you find a game worth your money or not. Still, having a lot of games that aren't great getting through things like Early Access really diminish the overall quality of the store for some. I avoid funding any projects that I feel may disappoint or turn out terribly; of course the only Kickstarter I supported was Mighty No. 9, (which was like $20) and so far that hasn't turned out well. :P

I still remember the shareware days. When Doom first released, the first episode was free. You paid for the second and third episodes. The box was hand-packed. The box was secured by a piece of scotch tape. He He. Same goes for Epic when they first released their pinball game. One pinball table was free. You paid for the others.

I stick to the classic definition of indie as game developers who self-publish their own games.

Love: They make the genres that I like, such as platformers and shmups.

Hate: How so many of them get a free pass for being average or artsy fartsy. I also dislike how the majority of retro inspired ones look like ugly NES games. Give me more 4th and 5th gen stylized sprites, please.

@bobrossperm said:

Love the variety, the creative freedom. Hate the horrible uninspired pixel art of some games. Like this...

Much prefer real 16 bit where the artists were working with limited hardware trying to make it look as good as possible, as opposed to working with unlimited power trying to make it look like trash.

'pixel art' lmao, I guess it's just you and me who can't appreciate the 'art' in an ugly splat on the screen.

I love some of the ridiculous games that come out like "Who's your daddy" http://store.steampowered.com/app/427730/

There are a lot of terrible indie games though.

I like the indie games that have the old school feel but utilize better tech to do things they couldn't back in the day. We have come so far that everything must now have very high production values and huge teams working on it. I feel like games such as Resogun give us the type of game we wish we could have had in the eighties without forgetting what made those games so much fun.

Transistor is a bit like that as well.

Like: Dedicated modders going professional

Dislike: Wankster hipsters with blue hair and mutton chops making "art" games

@jun_aka_pekto: You could get a disc on a magazine with more content than most games and tons of it just because of shareware. Good times.

Simply, I love the creativity that some Indie games bring to the medium... but for every gem of a game you find, there's 20 sh** ones.

Big budget games often times derive their value from amazing game art, being massively multiplayer, or some such quality that is achievable only with a lot of money.

Indie games must have a great foundation to succeed. The game must be unique, and great at its core. Take Minecraft for example.

The world's shittiest graphics, but one of the greatest games. What would Minecraft have looked like with a big budget behind it? Would it have ever been invented? The lack of a big budget forces the developers to present their terrible graphics in a really compelling way. Indie games are often the most creative and new.

Another thing is that indie developers are almost always the ones to explore new technologies first. For example, look virtual reality and augmented reality technology. Indie developers are already testing the limits of these new technologies.

The big game studios are watching to see what's possible, and waiting for their opportunity.

So, in summary, indie games lack the money to afford great writers, graphic designers, programmers, hosting, and so on and so forth, but they are forced to make up for it by being creative and innovative. I think that they're little scientists that do a lot of the necessary testing and exploring that ultimately makes the gaming world a better place.

Some indie developers don't seem to get that while older generations had pixel art, they still tried to push the hardware to its limit.

The only Kickstarter game I supported was Yooka Laylee. :P It's my first investment and am hoping it will turn out okay. I'm with you that having a lot of games that are sub-par or below average is diminishing the overall quality. But it's to be expected. Bad games outnumber good games from the very beginning. It's like increasing a ratio of 1:4 to 2:16 then 8:32. You will feel that there are so many bad games. The real problem here is how you find a game in a place filled with junk. I guess you could say the same for other forms of entertainment like films, music, and books.

Love: when the games are good

Hate: when the games are bad

Anything else is whatever, I'm very black and white about this, but make good games, make games that play well, make games that are creatively interesting, and if you're going to tell a story, make sure it's actually good. I don't have the low enough bar necessary to act like video game stories that get gassed up as something special aren't usually shit.

Would argue that has less to do with them being "indie" and more to do with game critics being soft as hell, for the longest time.

That game is Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

A really strange but good game.

Indie games can be quite great, I just love terraria and i am still not done with it. The best part with this game is that we are still getting free updates.

Many indie games harken back to the days of my gaming youth in sense of design and aesthetics (see: Galak-Z). I love that they through their relative simplicity in structure grant a different type of gameplay that has been neglected or at the very least marginalized due to the AAA space.

Buying GTA, The Witcher 3, or any AAA endevour requires me to adopt complexity when playing, complexity that I oftentimes find to be antithetical to a game's enjoyment. More mechanics doesn't always equate to a better game, even if they are flawlessly executed. Many times indies remind me of why I got into gaming in the first place. By their nature, they oftentimes are able to sidestep the drawbacks that massive, overly convoluted big-budget experiences present. They excel at whittling game design components down to their most essential fundamentals, and found within that focus is where an indie's power lies.

If I were to have any gripes about them, my main one would be a lack of polish and an apathetic attitude in support post-release by some developers, though this isn't always the case. And forget all of you.....bring on the artsy-fartsy shit, I love it.

Not sure what i like, but i know what i hate.

All indie games that try to live off of YT.

That might make me the only person that hates the PT demo and glad no Silent Hill will be an FPS.

Love: There are great games being made by small studios.

Hate: So many "indies" just don't appeal to me. I'm not trying to paint a negative picture towards indies, but so any that I try just don't click and I'm not entirely sure why.

A lot of Indies have some sort of passion for the game they are creating, not like the monster companies churning out sequels to games that should have probably stopped at the 3rd iteration, so that is a good thing.

The bad thing about a lot of indies is they try to copy an art style from old games they think is trendy rather then just making the best possible piece of art they can create which was the original intention of the old games in the first place. I'm not saying it has to be AAA quality or even a fully 3D game, but if all they can do is pixel art? then maybe they should get a proper artist unless it's just a place holder.

I don't mind people starting something simple then evolving it into something better, but putting in arbitrary limits damages what they are making to cater to a small group of people who for some reason like it.

I love the fact that they seem to the be frontrunners in terms of creativity these days.

I don't hate anything about them per se, but I guess if I had to nitpick I'd say that I dislike that they're on the lower side of production values.

I like the good ones but absolutely love the good ones I get for Free. :P

digging through all the shit to find that one hidden gem among all the mountains of crap that makes it worth the effort

I love the pricing structure and they offer new ideas and great art.

Hate that you have to weed through so many garbage ones to find the good ones, like the app store.

Basically the same as any other medium, there is good and bad. One thing I hate exclusive to indies is people act like they are a genre and lump them all together. You either get people that bash retail/AAA games and praise the indie industry blindly as a whole or those that say anything indie is trash(I've seen people saying The Witness should be $5 because it's indie)

@Heil68 Okay that is valid, thanks to Steam and Greenlight. But otherwise on other platforms I've been on it's really no different than AAA games were some are great and others are crap.

Unlike the AAA industry, where games are made for profit and to appease shareholders. An indie developer usually starts with a great idea and a lot of passion.

How is that different from AAA gaming ?

There are more bad ones than good ones.

The word indie itself. They are just games, no matter the budget.

I hate that most of them are 2D side-scrolling garbage. As for looks, 16-bit is as far back as I will go.

In general I love their creativity and I hate their emphasis on storytelling even when the story is kinda bad.

@bobrossperm said:

Love the variety, the creative freedom. Hate the horrible uninspired pixel art of some games. Like this...

Much prefer real 16 bit where the artists were working with limited hardware trying to make it look as good as possible, as opposed to working with unlimited power trying to make it look like trash.

"Here's my video game art guys!"

What holds my interest in the indie scene is just how it oozes variety, while the AAA market plays it safe for the most part, it's the indies that take the most risks and usually they're the ones to set up the next big thing that AAA devs will pick up on, I have played my fair share of genres thanks to the indie scene, from first person horror, to platformer, to isometric rpgs, to hacking games, to strategy, to simulators, the list goes on and on...

One thing I do hate about indies is the pretentiousness, how there are developers that rather make "art" at the expense of everything, even gameplay, the biggest offenders being the chinese room, where most of what you do is just walk around while a piece of "story" plays out, no developer should take pride in games where gameplay takes the backseat to worthless "art"

p.d. an extra point for contrast, is that you can make a walking simulator but with a dinamic that turns the gameplay into you vs the game (ala stanley parable or pony island), you can make a game with artistic value and fantastic gameplay if you use the right dinamic, too bad not many devs do that

Love that they are creative. Hate that they are so short.

Many reasons for me....

Pros:-Cheap

-Usually more creative than AAA games

-Some types of games, such as 2D brawlers, twin stick shooters, etc. are mostly available through the indie scene

-More retro-type games

-They are great for quick play sessions usually

Cons:-When they suck, they usually suck bad

-Low budget sometimes rears its ugly head....(very limited modes, couch coop instead of online, low quality assets, etc)

@bobrossperm said:

Love the variety, the creative freedom. Hate the horrible uninspired pixel art of some games. Like this...

Much prefer real 16 bit where the artists were working with limited hardware trying to make it look as good as possible, as opposed to working with unlimited power trying to make it look like trash.

That looks great though. It looks like actual art. One of the reasons I love Dungeon of the Endless is because of the beautiful pixel art style.

@gkmogglemog said:

@bobrossperm said:

Love the variety, the creative freedom. Hate the horrible uninspired pixel art of some games. Like this...

Much prefer real 16 bit where the artists were working with limited hardware trying to make it look as good as possible, as opposed to working with unlimited power trying to make it look like trash.

That looks great though. It looks like actual art. One of the reasons I love Dungeon of the Endless is because of the beautiful pixel art style.

I'd agree. Much of the appeal of that art style (both of the above), at least to me, lies also not in the art itself but in its allowance for my imagination to fill in the blanks due to its rudimentary nature.

I wish there were more indie games like Hard Reset. I can't help but look up in the game. I get that Blade Runner vibe. Definitely an industrial feel, even more so than the PS3 KZ games..

I love all games, even Indies. Some of my favorite games form the past few years have been indie titles.

What I HATE is the gaming medias bias for Indie titles and their willingness to ignore shortcomings in order to give high review scores.

I'm at that point where I am just sick of mine craft knockoffs.