Indie games are perfect for college kids, whose computer-like heads are the perfect hard drives for storing new ideas, but lack the processing power and graphics card to bring them fully to life. I would know because I used to be a full-time indie gamer. I took pride in playing the games that nobody else had heard of. Then, I would tell my friends, who later stopped inviting me to parties for probably unrelated reasons, about these “bold, new, retro-styled games.”
Well, a few years have passed since I’ve graduated from college, and my perspective on games, once again and forevermore, has changed. It’s not that I no longer play indie games – they’re still a major group in my balanced gaming diet – but I’ve begged bigger budget games to take me back, and I’m better off for it.
Indie developers essentially champion the self-publishing route. I respect them all for it, even if it means that only a few of them will ever achieve comparable success to Undertale or No Man’s Sky . Actually, even fewer might even be talked about in passing conversation or even by the media. Perhaps you might think that we – and by that I mean games media as a whole – purposefully refrain from talking indie games to maintain a status quo of gray military shooters.
Nope! Just a quick scan through the hundreds of press releases containing buzzwords such as “crafting” or “awesome retro style” is all I need to see before I click out of it. On Vice Gaming’s podcast, Mike Bithell explained that indie studios also tend to create games based on their target audience, and that makes sense. Indie games may lack the financial backing of an AAA game, but they can be just as formulaic.
By looking under too many rocks for the latest indie gem, I would often forget to look up and miss the sunset. As a result, I have a lot of catching up to do. AAA games can truly offer something wonderful and even artistic, and often in plain sight. I put off The Witcher 3 for the longest time under the pretense of having not enough time, but I just didn’t want to play it because everyone has talking about it. Now that I’ve become ensnared by its rich story and open world, I’ve come to regret not joining in on the fun sooner. Not all games will succeed based on hype marketing alone, but you’re more likely to hear about them. We’ll continue to be tricked into purchasing mediocre games under the ruse that they’re the next big thing, but every now and the game in question truly deserves it.
I’ve come to regret eschewing AAA games, but does this mean I’ve come to resent indie games? Absolutely not. In fact, my love for them might only have strengthened now that I’ve struck a balance between big and smaller budget games. Indie games are cheap and often charming. And every now and then, I find something special in the indie scene; however, until then, I still have the latest mainstream game to discuss with my friends.