next »

[Valter]

Oh, the open source community haven't been mentioned yet on this thread.  While they historically tend to make quite derivative works, they have an important standpoint, and their development mode is significantly different from others' to set them apart.

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say "open source"? When I think of open source, I think of community-driven games like Battle for Wesnoth and our Indie Brawl. The primary authors provide a concept and an engine for creation and play, and the community builds up stories, characters and environments to use that engine with.

Besides taking herculean organization abilities to keep moving, they tend to work out very well in the long run (although it does take a while to get off the ground, generally).

[increpare]

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say "open source"? When I think of open source, I think of community-driven games like Battle for Wesnoth and our Indie Brawl. The primary authors provide a concept and an engine for creation and play, and the community builds up stories, characters and environments to use that engine with.

I mean games that are developed under an open-source licence, I guess.  BfW would be an example, IB would not be something I would have in mind, though it is practically similar in the way it's being developed.  Maybe 'community-created games' might be a better category than open-source. 

[Movius]

The 'New Wave' is a real group, (as much as people can be grouped this way,) but I wouldn't necessarily trace its history back to the early indie-game scene. I would say it's more of an off-shoot of the 'New Games Journalism' craze a few years back.

These people would generally write long, overinflated articles about the experience of playing games and the cultural phenomena surrounding it. Rather than attempting to measure certain qualities of specific games in an apparently objective manner, which was seen as a hallmark of the mainstream game media. Most of the more renowned writers gravitated to the early version of the escapist or similar publications, while others started their own personal websites or, for the more, ambitious, their own publications.

If you headed to internet forums for this subgroup, there would be many threads discussing the more esoteric trends or features of video games, as well as the posters favourite, obscure titles which would usually be console games and be referred to by their original, usually Japanese, title. So their would be threads about Yoot Tower or why Winning XI is better than Pro Evolution Soccer (even though they are literally the same game and the poster hates sports anyway.)

One thing you would notice is that very, very few of the posters would make their own games or work in 'the industry' in professions other than Journalism. The main aim here was to discuss and review the culture in a way that would make them look smart to that hot artsy chick in a beret, so they could get laid.

Somewhere along the line, the 'serious game'* trend started. Small, Mostly flash, games that parody a known genre with the aim of delivering a serious message. A good example being McVideoGame; A game that looks like a resource management/sim game, but actually is an attempt by the creator to lecture about apparent social woes.

While this was great for the NSJ** writer, he could tell the artsy chick about the SERIOUS ISSUES his subject matter was dealing with. Other people were still making the games.

Time went on and New Games Journalism became less trendy and a lot of people gravitated to blogs instead of personal websites and online magazines. So, while the 'community' still existed, it was much less centralised or focussed around any one outlet of information.

While this was going on, The Marriage was released. A batshit crazy game warning of the dangers of interracial marriage between circles and semi-transparent squares or something, this 'art game' claimed high intentions like the preceding 'serious games, but also that the actual message was in the interaction with the player itself and not in anything seen, heard, read or otherwise measurably perceived by the player. This inspired Jason Rohrer and others to expand upon this art-game idea. One could vulgarly claim that the only evidence supporting the claims made by the designer, was the designer's words themselves. But this is a misunderstanding.

At the same time, game-making tools had become much simpler and no longer would you require amazingly adequate abilities with numbers or logical thinking to make a game. In essence, anybody could make a game.

This allowed the supposed New Wave, previously limited to merely writing about games, to descend upon the game-making community with their superior artistic insight. Thus games could finally be steered toward a more refined, considered, culturally significant path based upon unlimited expression of inner emotions through interactivity.

Of course some people would make games that strive to reach certain measurable quality goals and offer the player an experience that can defined using objective terms. This is really know different to rating a game with percentages or numbers or developing a game to sell for profit. Ergo it is against the original NSJ spirit. Thus the immoral sell-out vs new wave schism.

Long post ends here.

*Not the actual Serious Game industry. By which I mean simulations or training games made for large corporations

** see

[Jolli]

my history involves all the game maker forums i was part of being slowly squashed by giant tigsource

so its not a very positive experience
sorry...

[nikki]

please don't call that group "New Wave" though , please son't mess with the beatiful melancholia New Wave means to me, call them something else.

[The-Imp]

5. New Wave - Not surprisingly, the cycle must continue.  Just as Early TIGSource was defined by a malcontentedness, so is the New Wave (or whatever this group chooses to call itself in the end, if anything).  I think it's kind of typified by the IGF grumbling and grumbling about TIGSource in general.  The New Wave tends to see XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare as selling-out, and holds pixel art, freeware, and short, experimental games in high regard.  It has disdain for people (like myself) who want to extend indie games into the mainstream consciousness.  Auntie Pixelante has one of the strongest voices of this movement and might rightly be considered a leader, and even though it's not really an official group, I feel like it's possible it will become one soon.

Understandable, but wanting to reach out to a wider audience isn't necessarily "selling-out" as one might put it. As for the others, people like free stuff, and short, experimental games can give way to bigger games.

AS FOR THE REST, I'll form some sort of opinion or something, but as of now I quite enjoy reading other's.

[Tanner]

I like pixely-games, 3d games, console games, short games, long games, polished games, rough games, conventional games, experimental games, indie games, and "mainstream" games. Just about the only games I don't really care for are "Serious" games (unless they're Serious Sam games). What does this make me? Open-minded?

[Shade Jackrabbit]

* Adventure game fans, specifically those that make their own games with something like AGS, tend to be mostly ignored when people discuss 'histories of indie games'  or similar. Now a lot of adventure games do get covered here and elsewhere, but this count is dwarfed by the actual output of the adventure game scene and even moreso the colossal unfinished (mostly unstarted) projects list.

On a larger scale, this phenomenon is visible in the perception that adventure games are a dead art even though  more adventure game titles are published than any other genre (mostly by small, independent studios.)

I would like to add to this by saying that:

1. The AGS site has 1116 games listed, while TIGdb has only 650.

2. Adventure games make up about 5 percent of video game sales in America, and 70 percent in East Asia if you include Visual Novels. A fair number of these are from indie developers (though they do get publishing deals so their level of indie-ness could be argued)

I just think it's rather unfair to completely ignore them in the history of indie games. 

[mr. podunkian]

what i've got to say about this is that you reap what you sow.

i think your flow chart of the history of indie games is flawed because it focuses narrowly on a definition of independent games that conveniently is missing a significant part of its history -- you don't make the jump from 80 & 90's to 2004 and then sweep it under some rug. i don't know exactly what you'd call it but it's something after the proto-indie games, but before TIGsource -- given your naming scheme i would go for something along the lines of the '21st Century Pre-Renaissance' era. let us not forget our roots, derek yu, for there did exist a time before 2004 where hobbyist game development was strong and thriving in smaller communities, i.e. the ZZT community, klik community, whatever. these smaller communities, and the works that derived therefrom, i don't feel, fall under the same categories of creators of indie titles doom, tetris, and who is william cowther???

what i feel happened (and this is my experience, and i am sure the experience of many others) is that INDIE GAMES began to encroach upon these smaller countries, like germany annexing austria before it turns out hitler was a bad person after all. "independent games" were portraying themselves as an EXTENSION of these smaller, hobbyist game development communities, as a group of similarly minded people doing similar things, who had spent an eternity working in isolation, only to discover in a freak accident, the existence of these other communities, and had decided that it might be of benefit to exchange ideas with these other communities. the "indie games scene" was in a sense, an umbrella community for these smaller groups. tigsource and timw's blog helped to plant this seed, featuring games much in the same way that the community epicenters of these smaller groups had done in the past (i.e. zzt.org, click cafe/the daily click, etc.) to many of its earliest developers, "indie game development" became just a different, interchangeable word for the very thing they'd already been doing, forced upon them by the media.

and for the most part, everything works. for as much negativity you claim to have seen in tigsource in its earlier days, it was not nearly as fractured as it is now, even given the fact that it was made up of these different fragments of other communities. even when artgames came into vogue, artgames only made up a partial definition of what an "indie games" was at large. if you didn't like artgames, there were plenty of other, nonart type games being posted about on timw's blog that you could play and discuss instead.

but look at the community now. it's wrecked. it's ruined. oh no, people are so negative!

well no duh, look at where it's headed. a community made up of hobbyist, freeware game developers was now being ignored for a smaller sect of RADICAL INDIVIDUALS who were making games for $$$profit$$$. what started as a community where almost any small individual could get a sense of self-fulfillment from a front-page article about their work, quickly became a platform for advertising the works of same big names. tigsource and indiegames went from writing about interesting, fresh new games to simply writing about news about the same games, over and over, and over. the developers that want attention don't get it, and the players are subjected to the same games, from the same people. the very developers who had once had the banner INDIE GAMES forced upon them are now being told their works are irrelevant. is it really that big of a surprise that the community is fractured?

you say so yourself in your flowchart that you considered "the agenda of Early TIGSource moot." did the thought ever occur to you that deciding on a whim that saying "indie games isn't what i've been saying it was; THIS IS INDIE GAMES," might make more than a few people a little bit upset?

here's my prediction to the conclusion of this thrilling tale:

    |
    |
    V

6. The Yu Wave - The 'New Wave' becomes largely ignored, due in part to the unwillingness of independent game media pundits to give it the time of day. With better tools, and the support of mainstream gaming communities, the phrase "independent games" loses all but its purely semantic definition; they come to signify, quite simply, games that are developed independently of game studios, which itself becomes an increasingly flawed definition in a world where the line between "two guys making games" and "game studio" is already becoming quite blurred. Independent game development, as it is portrayed, moves almost exclusively onto console platforms.

    |
    |
    V

6. Generation XNA - Freeware game developers return to the small same communities that existed before the Indiestrial Revolution, leaving their parting message: "So long and thanks for all the Fish." Fez continues, however, to be unreleased.

TIGSource and the recently re-branded XBoxLiveIndiegames.com/blog, under the assumption that "indie game developers have proven they can come up with experimental games," proceed to cover games that see that "creativity married with stronger craft and higher-quality production." Eventually the former is phased out when it is decided, arbitrarily that "Art is dead," which was a statement taken, mistakenly, from a thread title about the death of Arthur "Mr. Podunkian" Lee at the hands of a mysterious group calling themselves the Yukuza. TIGSource, now writing exclusively about games "creativity married with stronger craft and higher-quality production," writes its review of Bioshock 2.

    |
    |
    V

7. Kotigsource - Kotaku incorporates TIGSource after realizing how irrelevant the phrase "indie games" has become.

    |
    |
    V

8. A World of Poo - As chimp evolves into proto-human which evolves into human and then, with man's guiding hand, into the star child, so too does indie games evolve from Cave Story, to Passage, to Super Meat Boy, to Super Mario Bros. Historians look back at the independent games of yore and find them irrelevant, given their stilted definition of what "indie games" were. One day, however, a historian, Daisuke Yu stumbles upon a holodisk containing an archive of PIGScene. Inspired by the stories of the "little game developers who could," he takes it upon himself to create a site dedicated to small, hobbyist developed games.

Unfortunately, given the now-definition of "indie games" (ironically, constructed by his great, great grandfather), his original idea of calling it TIGsource -- the Independent Games Source -- falls apart. He decides, in defiant rebellion against the mainstream gaming scene, to call his site the Not Independent Games Source, which he later shortens to NIGSource.

    |
    |
    V

9. GOTO LINE 1 - Like that movie Groundhog Day, the world is stuck in perpetual shit.

[falsion]

3. Early TIGSource - I didn't have a strong agenda when I first took TIGSource over from Jordan Magnuson, but eventually I was motivated by how dull and thoughtless most casual games were, how much interest there was in turning a quick buck, and how much rampant cloning there was.  I was also very cynical about mainstream games, which seemed similarly thoughtless and also bloated.  Early TIGSource was very much defined as being the antithesis of those things, and I spent a lot of time from 2004-2006 trying to tear them a new one.  I felt empowered by the cool experimental games that were coming out of Click, Game Maker, and similar communities.

It's interesting how you originally started the site with this mindset. Yet, today there is a huge influx of low res platform games, even blatant clones of other games (no not "lol cave story ripoff" but stuff like this).

Just as people stereotype mainstream games as being the same, you could now say the same thing for every lowres platformer or abstract "experimental" indie game coming out nearly every week. And then every game that is "inspired" by it (while denying it heavily) after that.

I always thought it'd be interesting if someone made a site that focused on the antithesis of that. But then it'd be like the whole cycle starting all over again.

[Derek]

Yeah, there's definitely a "stereotypical indie game" - and the underlying implication of the stereotype is that indie game developers can't push an idea beyond a sketch.  And then they (or some brazen games writer) dress it up with artsy descriptions... or maybe the creator's personality is seen as being more relevant to the game's success than the game itself.  Really, it's the same argument that's leveled at modern art with varying success (I think it's even less successful with games, which are more accessible to people).

You could argue that these things swing back and forth repeatedly - artsy experimental games are promoted as a backlash to casual games, and then become popular, creating a stereotype.  Then something else gets promoted as a backlash to experimental games and so on and so forth.  But like people have said, it's a lot more complicated than that, and you have lots of threads running and pushing on one another.

These kinds of things really interest me, so that's why I started this thread.

The 'New Wave' is a real group, (as much as people can be grouped this way,) but I wouldn't necessarily trace its history back to the early indie-game scene. I would say it's more of an off-shoot of the 'New Games Journalism' craze a few years back.

That's an interesting theory.  Makes sense, actually.  NGJ peeps getting their hands on Click tools and Game Maker.

my history involves all the game maker forums i was part of being slowly squashed by giant tigsource

Can you explain what you mean by that?  I'm just curious how that works out, exactly.

[Alec]

I miss the phase of TIGSource were the community was mostly people who actually enjoyed making stuff.

[Jolli]

my history involves all the game maker forums i was part of being slowly squashed by giant tigsource

Can you explain what you mean by that?  I'm just curious how that works out, exactly.

sure
i was part of old hobbyist forums
game maker games (gmg), gmclans (now robosquid), 64digits, etc

they used to be very popular communities. the only goal on our mind was to show-off to ourselves, looking for internet fame or whatever was out of our agenda. the word "indie" was unheard of. etc

they all slowly died when tigsource came along. all the people left and even i'm posting here... same thing probably happend with other communities like mr podunkian says

i'm busy keeping my community "robosquid" alive with the hobbyist idea and we look like a bunch of starving turtles compared to what i see here

[Craig Stern]

sure
they all slowly died when tigsource came along. all the people left and even i'm posting here... same thing probably happend with other communities like mr podunkian says

Are you suggesting a cause-effect relationship? As in, everyone abandoned their communities to come post here instead?

[PlayMeTape]

Personally I think the biggest problem right now is all of the sensationalism. Can't we just get back to enjoying games? If you don't want to play art games, fine, if you don't want to play low res platformers, fine, if you don't want to play low poly 3d games, fine. Enjoy what you want and just be glad there's people out there who enjoy using their creative ideas in interactive media.

[Derek]

@eva: Oh, okay. Well, that explains why you're here and feeling kinda resentful about it.  I mean, I used to be part of the Click/Klik community so I know what those communities are like.

I would ask you to try and bring some of your hobbyist love here, because most people here are still here because they enjoy making games and not for internets fame.  It's hard to talk to you, though, when you're so resentful of the site.

Even in the Click community there was always lots of drama, and there'd be popular games and unpopular games and people would argue about it and feud.  TIGSource is maybe more open to the outside world, but other than that I don't feel like it's all that different.  Like, I don't see it as being any more sensationalistic than any other online community I've been apart of (Click and Eatpoo being the ones I'm most familiar with) - the scale is maybe different.

I miss the phase of TIGSource were the community was mostly people who actually enjoyed making stuff.

Really?  Seems like there's more creativity now than before, even.  We've got the whole Developer board, which is filled with art, music, games in development, and discussions about game-making.  Then there're the community projects, and our competitions, which have more and more entries.  Assemblee was 73 games and almost 200 people contributing art and music.

[Alec]

I miss the phase of TIGSource were the community was mostly people who actually enjoyed making stuff.

Really?  Seems like there's more creativity now than before, even.  We've got the whole Developer board, which is filled with art, music, games in development, and discussions about game-making.  Then there're the community projects, and our competitions, which have more and more entries.  Assemblee was 73 games and almost 200 people contributing art and music.

I'm referring to the ratio of stupid negative stuff versus optimistic creative stuff. I don't think you'd disagree that as communities grow, they tend to get dumber.

As a community grows, it attracts more and more people who just want attention - but who aren't interested in making any kind of positive impact.

[Jolli]

thats negative too

[Alec]

thats negative too

I'm stating my very subjective opinion. You'll notice that I'm not personally attacking anyone or being overly snarky about it.

It's cool if people disagree with me. I'm happy that a lot of people enjoy the community, and I agree that there's a lot of awesome things happening in it. I just feel like the signal to noise ratio is worse than it used to be. Fortunately, it's a fairly contained thing. (the creative boards tend to be fairly rational/optimistic most of the time)

I also don't feel like it's something that could or should be changed here. It may just be something that a smaller, more focused community would be better at maintaining.

[PlayMeTape]

I find it pretty awesome that TIGSource is filling up with a wide variety of mostly creative people. I tend to stay away from most of the negative threads though (sometimes i get roped in, see the IGF thread).

I almost always feel people manage to make too big a deal out of things though, both people I know personally and people in general. If all of us were to take a step back and assess the situation I think we'd find that we're actually creating most of the problems ourselves. So I try to stay relaxed in most issues.