And to DavidCaruso, the only one who attempted something that can be considered to be close to an argumentative criticism of icy's article: You are getting stuck up on details. Icy doesn't care about whatever you guys classify as "indie". In fact, he doesn't care about the "indie" label at all. All he cares about is the quality of the games. "Indie", "doujin", "professional", etc, are all just labels that go beyond (i.e., "trascend") the games themselves. One should not care about who developed Braid in order to criticize it. One should care only about the object, the game itself. The fact that most "indie" games are complete and utter trash that ignore 30 years of mechanical progress in the videogame artform is enough for icy to call most indie games trash, and rightfully so. There will always be exceptions: that's why they're called exceptions.
Oh, I realize that his reviews only care about the quality of the games themselves - and that's the way it should be. No one objects to that; in fact, Derek even said a few pages ago that he wanted his games to be compared to the best of the best in their genres, and that people shouldn't be hiding behind the "indie" label to excuse shoddy work. It's hard to use the "I'm only one person!" excuse when you have people like ZUN around - I think the only time when the "bedroom coders made this" thing matters is if the game is already great.
You're missing the point that I made in that other post, however. It wasn't about how
we're defining or using the word "indie" - it was about how
he was doing so. He contradicts himself several times - first saying that
all "indie" games are "the scourge of gaming and some of the worst games ever made," then saying Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress aren't "indie" games even though they've been marketed as such because they attempt to be on the cutting edge (and therefore are in the "Western equivalent of the doujin scene")...and then saying
again that he considers all successful games marketed as "indie" to be within the "circlejerk" and subject to his series of reviews, which would include these Western equivalents of doujin games. Even after that he goes and defines "indie" in his Subhuman Dictionary again to mean (paraphrased) "a degenerate game made by an author who wants to mask his obvious inferiority." Which games exactly is he even trying to review, then? Only the ones he considers bad, and then using them to represent the entire "indie" scene, while conveniently dismissing the ones he enjoys as "not indie" (even though he has said that
all games people are calling "indie," degenerate or not, are part of the "circlejerk")? Maybe I'm just not getting it and the final part of his Genealogy
will clear all of this up, but I can't see how you can use both definitions at the same time, talking about the same games.
And if I'm getting stuck up on details, that would be because icy's derogatory use of the word "indie" is the only aspect of his Genealogy I really disagree with. His taste in gaming matches up with mine fairly well, actually, and it's great to see someone passionate about gaming who isn't writing complete bullshit like all those game academics - his website has one of the most interesting perspectives out there on videogames, if not the most. So yes, it's a detail, but it's one that matters a lot to me, and I'd think it's one that matters a lot to this forum. I wouldn't feel the need to write walls of text about it if I didn't think that his writing about the "indie" scene could be damaging - not just to the people making horrible games and passing them off as "art" (who deserve the scorn), but also to the much greater number (and, sadly, much less recognized by the press - and therefore much less known to icy) of amateurs and hobbyists who just want to make a great videogame - and often succeed in doing just that.
(By the way, the reason I'm using the Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress examples so much aren't because they're the only complex efforts by indies - it's because they're the only "indie" games which I know for a fact that icycalm
likes for their complexity. If you want I could list more that I think he might enjoy.)
(Also every time I post in this thread my respect for people who can write concisely increases exponentially.)
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