-
2 years ago
Rebuttal: Indie games don’t have to act like indie games
This is a response to this article. You should read it first. And then rage with me.
First off, let me make public that I am not a huge fan of the author of this article. I liked Destructoid, but I find this guy antagonistic, overly-sarcastic, and egotistical in a way that leaves my blood boiling with the large majority of his writing.
That aside, I’ll keep this as professional as possible.
The author has a problem with indie games. More specifically, indie games that are attempting to be “art”. He claims (in a nutshell) that people should quit making art games and just stick to the fun stuff. Or at the least make your art games fun.
Fundamentally, I don’t disagree with some of this argument. I don’t have any personal desire to make a game with some deep meaning that only I can distill and leave my audience scratching their head as they struggle to interpret it themselves. That’s just not me.
But, on the other hand, I would never tell people who do want to make art games to stop. My primary reason being that while they may not end up making an game that is fun to play, concise in its meaning, or easy to consume, what they ARE doing is pushing the limits of what games are and what they can do. Even if it fails as a complete package to be called “game”, it still sets a precedent that others can integrate into their own games in the future. It subtly changes what is acceptable to put in a game (story-wise certainly, but I’m referring to gameplay and mechanics mostly, and the way you deliver your story). It’s pushed out the boundary that encapsulates games and widens the possibility set for what others can do.
And anyways, who’s to say that games have to be “fun”? This gets into a whole different issue to me, about how appropriate it is for us to be using the term “game” to describe our medium still, but that may be a topic for another day.
He also says that they should be more accessible, less vague, less interpretable. To this I would have to respond by asking him if he likes any of the art movements that have occurred in the past century and a half or so. Maybe he doesn’t, and that’s fine. But you can’t deny that the direction art has gone is that interpretation of the message has been handed to the user/viewer. The creator may have subtle, deep, personal meaning in the piece, but no artist is obligated to shout that meaning at them. And largely don’t want to either. The purpose of art often is to allow the consumer of it to make their own meaning from it, decide what it means him or herself, and not to shove meaning down their throat. Why should an art game behave differently? I see no reason that they should. There is room, in fact a large mostly empty room, in the medium of games for less obvious, more interpretable examples.
There is value to art games, there is value to mainstream games, and there is value to those that do the balancing act in between, able to fuse artistic meaning in an engaging game experience. And that’s just it: they all have their place. If it ain’t your thang, then don’t pay attention to it. But don’t lambaste it for doing something you don’t understand or care about. Just go find what you do care about. We have enough close-minded bigots trying to shut down what they don’t understand in this world already.
blog comments powered by Disqus
You can find more of me
here: www.ryanbatten.com
and here: Twitter
