Monday 25 August 2014

The road to Gaming Heaven is paved with Indie Games or why we do this

There are two forces present in all aspects of this universe: One that creates from nothing and another that creates from something that has already been created by the first force. Both are always equally important and both are dependent and complementary to one another in order to obtain perfection.

But every time this fine equilibrium is disrupted and the focus starts leaning towards one part more than the other, then all is not right with the world anymore.

The same can be said for our current gaming universe, where it has always been that “the little guy”, the one who’s able to be much more in touch with himself, has been the champion of creativity and innovation, while “the big guy”, whose focus is on using his own expertise and resources to expand the output of the little guy and put everything into a practical-practice, has been the enabler of video game masterpieces of epic proportions.

But is everything right with the gaming world of today? Some would argue, not so much…

In the latest years, little by little, the invaluable contribution of the indie developers has been under appreciated and very lightly supported, while sequels of many Triple A titles, often only repeatedly offering a stale remake of their first release with, no real added value, have had enormous success and have generated monstrous revenues, many times over the budget of probably most indie developers out there – all put together! And what happens with most of these revenues? They usually go into the next stale, valueless iteration, again and again, until one day when, exactly like with economic bubbles, they bursts wasting huge sums of money and sometimes even taking the whole company with them.

So with all this going on for quite some time now, one can’t help but to start dreaming: what would happen if all these resources would be spent in the direction of enabling more and more of “the little guys”, more and more of the passionate, aspiring developers, to go wild with their imagination? What if they’d be able to dare to dream their whole dream and not just what is immediately achievable to them? What amazing new concepts would they come up with, what new avenues could they start to open?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Well, this is where we can come in. This is where gamers like you and I, the lifeblood and grassroots of this industry, could consciously come to this awareness and start focusing more and more on that one part of this field that can cure our apathy – The Indie Games.

At the same time, it is also in our duties to start demanding more from the “big guns”! I don’t want, by any means to minimize the major players’ role in the industry, as I’ve said earlier the two facets must be in equilibrium, but in recent years they have been very quick to take advantage of this apathy of ours, because they realized that we’ll mostly accept all of their hideously half-baked products, thrown in our face for a quick profit. Well I want to say“no more!” If they can’t get their sheet together, how about we go and give our money to those people who truly appreciate it and who actually give something real in return?

PlayInjector Team


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