Week 2 — Audiences and Experiences

Indie Game: The Movie

Indie Game: The Movie takes us on a journey of a couple of game developers building their games and the moments past release day, like a video diary. We follow the stories of the games; Braid, Super Meat Boy and Fez. We see the many struggles, from game-breaking bugs on release to marketing errors by publishers, to the audience not actually understanding the meaning of the game.

Braid and Fez were developed by a lone creator, whereas Super Meat Boy was developed by two creators. The film shows how much passion and care was put into the creation of these games and how it tears apart their real lives. They treated the game as if it were their own child. Some became quite aggressive

Even though Super Meat Boy was released and showcased by Microsoft on the Xbox, it was still only produced by two guys. Which, when it came to peoples comments saying it's taking too long, they took it personally.

Is Every Indie Game Independent? Towards the Concept of Indie Development — Maria B.Garda, Powel Grabarczyk (2016)

This article describes different interpretations of the term ‘indie’. It asks the question of should ‘indie’ be understood as ‘independent’, or should it have its own meaning. It looks into three types of ‘indie’ labels; Financial independence, Creative independence and Publishing independence.

Financial independence is where the developers do not receive any funding from investors to produce the game. For example, self-funded or through some sort of Kickstarter or crowdfunding.

Creative independence is where the game is developed with no intended audience other than what the creator wanted. This means that the developers do not have to follow guidelines and are free to make the game as they please.

Publishing independence is where the game is self-published instead of through a larger company. This does have some exceptions, such as ‘indie’ titles first releasing or showcasing as independent but later on being scooped up by a large company. For example, No Mans Sky was showcased independently but later published through Sony, another example is Minecraft which was acquired by Microsoft as the brand could see the products potential.

I think the term ‘indie’ has been taken as an umbrella term to cover all the ways that people interpret ‘independence’. Similar to how someone would say ‘car’ and another person would say ‘hatchback’, neither term is incorrect and they both describe the object. It is hard to say that someone is incorrect when the term is fairly open to interpretation. I have seen ‘indie’ being used to describe games that do not fall within any of the categories as the art style looks ‘indie’, i.e. very simple or a bit low budget looking.

Everything is going to be okay — Alienmelon

This game was quite interesting. The colours, visuals and sounds were quite overwhelming. Nathalie Lawhead, the creator, utilised pixilated images, glitches, pop up ads and error messages to portray 90s era computers. This game was seen as a meme due to the dark humour disguised in bright colours and cute characters. One scene shows two bunnies in lava with one saying “I don’t think I’m going to survive this…” and the other replying “You don’t have to survive… just pretend you are until you are old enough to die”. Another example is “It's okay! I trust the universe!”, meanwhile the bunny that said it is laying on the floor cut in half.

This game is ‘indie’. Developed by one creator, Everything is going to be okay was created without financial or technical support from a developer or publisher.

A Museum of Dubious Splendors — Studio Oleomingus

I was drawn to playing this game because it looked bizarre and visually interesting. Small hallways with ginormous objects just caught my attention. The game is an adaptation of a series of essays written by a Gujarati poet, Mir UmarHassan. UmarHassan’s work is known for being particularly difficult to translate because of the use of Urdu and Hindu in their work.

Studio Oleomingus is a small independent game and art studio from India consisting of two people. They did however receive funding through the Arts Practice programme at the India foundation for the arts. This, in some peoples views, would not put them in the category of ‘indie’. However, I believe the funding they received was to allow creative freedom and not to turn over a profit.

Bastion — Supergiant Games

Bastion is an action RPG developed by Supergiant Games before they grew big. A team of seven built the game over two years. Bastion won several awards both before and after it was published.

As the player moves through the fantasy environments, a story progresses told by a narrator. Back when I played this years ago, I found it fascinating as I had not come across a game that told a story in that manner before.