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[FatHat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15videogames-t.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Well hello thar new york times

[Captain_404]

Yes guys, now that the NYT recognizes us, we are a legitimate art form.


Seriously though, this is really cool!

[TOM SENNETT]

I thought it was a pretty good article. I especially like the part at the end about Cactus.

[i wanna be the guy]

pretty interesting from what i read
my attention span is balls today so i just read the first page and part of the 4th, hurrrrrrrrrrr

[pogo]

Wow...... Wow 

This was an interesting read.

[Christian Knudsen]

That was a really good article. Definitely seems like the author knew what he was talking about, what with all of the accurate descriptions of the games and their stories.

[PGGB]

Too much Rohrer.. otherwise quite ok.

[C.A. Sinner]

Too much Rohrer.. otherwise quite ok.

Hardly surprising though, considering he's the most "media-friendly" indie dev, both in attitude and physical appearance. 
That said, I'm pleasantly surprised by the article. No inaccuracies (as far as I'm concerned), the author really seems to know his shit. 

Also, chrknudsen: Holy shit, I just came to the realization that you're the developer of Privateer ASCII Sector. I wanted to tell you I love your game!  :D

[r.kachowski]

that was pretty painful. there's a lot of wank

[Nate Kling]

I thought it was a great article!  Usually when newspapers cover things like this they butcher them up and are pretty inaccurate but this article was excellent.  I also liked the part about cactus at the end.

[Mike Lee]

For a general overview of the indie scene it's a pretty good summary that doesn't have too many inaccuracies. These things tend to be overly general, but that's understandable since you're trying to explain indie games to soccer moms and 55 year-old businessmen with this article.

I think the author overstates the ability of indies to replace mainstream games at least financially and the metaphor to the auteur-driven era of films in the 70s is a bit stretched. Still though, good for games like Braid and The Passage to get recognition outside the usual sources.

[Dragonmaw]

Decent article. I remember the 2008 cover story of Esquire also having a good article on indie games (it was mostly on Jason Rohrer, like this one).

The thing that bothers me is that people seem to think that "games having meaning" is a new thing. All games (and media, for that matter) have meaning. What people are really impressed by are games that hide their meaning under fifteen layers of obscure, surreal references. While I would enjoy meeting Jason Rohrer or Jon Blow, I don't think their assertions about games coming into their own as an emotionally valid art form are especially well-thought or correct. I think we've been there all along.

It seems like these statements espouse the pretentious "INDIE VS THE MAINSTREAM!!!" attitude that does nothing more than undermine both. It makes the mainstream look like emotionally-deprived psychotics and indies look like self-absorbed art critic assholes. There have been mainstream games that provoked extreme emotions in me (Call of Duty 4 did it twice, Fable 2 did it as well, and these are just recent games) while some indie games such as Passage do nothing more than make me tilt my head and wonder why this was thought of as deep.

The notion of the DIY culture springing up around games is an engaging one, and I'm really glad that the article makes direct reference to the 'zines of yore. Especially since WE REALLY NEED TO WORK ON THE TIGZINE.

[Jayenkai]

Speaking of TIGZINE.
I do a weekly newsletter over at Socoder, and.. well, ok, it's not exactly full of stuff, the forum's not exactly thriving, and pretty much the only games being posted are my own (save for maybe 2 a month!) but what I do try to do is make everything relevant to the actual community as opposed to just throwing all the spammy garbage in it that's obviously just been auto generated by "The Newsletter Robot!" (looking at you, GDNet Direct!)

Having a weekly TigZine newsletter (google groups, nice and easy) will let you slowly build up the momentum.
New games get listed, really interesting topics get linked.
Treat it a bit like a blog, but don't go off topic.
Write things yourself, and don't EVER copy and paste (looks robot'y)..  except the links, obviously, you can copy+paste those!!

Once you've got going, add things in, bit by bit, and given enough time you'll see a proper Zine out of it.
All it takes is one person to get it going.
Someone who has the obscure dedication to keep things going long after it's become blindingly obvious that no-one else is reading it.

Just one person, a weekly deadline to stick to, and the ability to write more than 1 line of text..

Just one person..

[tim_the_tam]

awesome =] but it seems that the article is saying that indie game = art and mainstream are not.

[Aquin]

Welll....I'd argue that the mainstream is far less concerned with it.  Consider the number of 'artistic/aesthetic' projects compared to the number of 'formulaic-sequels' this Christmas.

I'm not sure the argument is far behind.