I think really Tale of Tales' "those who don't get it are just gamer nerd losers" stance is really what is firing up a lot of animosity. If they have truly failed anywhere I would say it is there because all they are managing to do with that is to alienate people who might have otherwise given the game a chance, for no good reason at all. They are being every bit the negative jackasses as the people who are being critical of them.

Very much this. I would have definitely played and, possibly, even bought The Path just because of the splash it's made, but every new piece of correspondence regarding the game or genre* from the mouths of the creators has made me feel more like it was conceived and crafted as a personal attack on me as a person who enjoys games!

I respect that they're trying to promote an alternative view of the scope that can be aspired to within the realm of digital media, but the attitude gets my hackles up...

*the term "genre" does it a disserve, I think, in implying that it's no more different than RTS from FPS but it's a useful term in this context

You'll need to host it on a third-party image-sharing site, then you can link to it using [ img] tags (without that space in it. I'm not sure how to force this forum to display BBcode as text).

There's a button above the text-box when you create a post that'll place the tags for you; just type the URL that relates to your uploaded image between them.

While Icy Tower means a lot to me, personally, I don't know what kinda impact it made in the indie scene in general (it's bigger with the 'casual' audience AFAIK). Also, and more importantly, there's nothing on which to build a moveset.

A level might be possible, but not a character.

That's, potentially, very true. I'm gonna (forcibly) refrain from commenting on the Nifflas-Nicalis situation since I've got a vested interest in Nifflas' work, kinda... I'm a semi-regular user of his forums, anyway.

I think you've got a solid point I can't comment on objectively 

I'll be thinking about this very seriously... the only thing making me hesitate is that a real-time RPG (which I've assumed M&B to be) doesn't really interest me as a single-player experience.

A real-time MMO, or even network-game, has a lot of mileage, I just find myself feeling like I'm wasting my time on a single-player-only action-RPG.

Eugh... I deleted my post, which is why that looks random-as-hell.

I misread what was typed and made an enquiry about an aspect of the game that's non-existant  

EDIT: Incidentally, Eric; jeebus, that was a fast response! My idiotic post was up for less than 30secs 

I've been taken in. I've searched for references to He-man in relation to "Rare", "Rare-ware", "hardcore", "masocore", "difiiculty"....


My final conclusion? Give me back the last 10mins of my life!

That's a much better idea than having him running wild. Should be pretty simple on the animation front aswell.

Well yes, of course it's personal when I talk about my own opinion on the matter.

But outside of that, it seems quite obvious that a lot of other people assume this about the label "indie" as well. I'm not saying this makes it universally true by any stretch of the imagination. (I'm sure if you checked out all the games made by small non-publishers, the % of good ones would be pretty bad) My point is just that the word has more than one connotation now.

It's not only "guy makes game without publisher". It's come to mean more things than that for a lot of people.

As I mentioned in passing, I agree with you entirely 

Indie-gaming can be considered to have an absolute meaning, but that doesn't represent what the fan-base (i.e. You and me) understand the term to mean ^^

sounds a bit too much like you're 'fanboying' (is that even a word?)

Technically, no... you'll never find it in any dictionary. However, it transfers meaning... so I'd consider it "a word", since it means something to me.

Christ-alive, really?! 

Erm... what  rigs are you running? My own rig is mid-range, at best, but I've been playing Saira on my Mum's budget laptop aswell... with no slowdown... 

But maybe the confusion here is over how we're assuming "indie" is defined.

I was just thinking about that, yes i agree.
It's all a sort of language-name thing that's totally exploitable (because of its vagueness)
I personally rather think of myself as a "bedroom/attic/shed/basement - programmer/artist"
but that doesn't sound as markatable as "indie" ...

I think although "independent game developer" technically means "no publisher money" etc, the term "indie" has come to mean a kind of different thing through press coverage, communities, word-of-mouth etc.

I associate it with the concept of creative freedom, and a number of other people do too... It doesn't mean that anyone who makes a game without a publisher is going to make something amazing, or that every "indie" game is better than a mainstream game. But in a number of cases, people doing their own thing are making really creative stuff and having a blast. And there are certain (positive) attitudes that go along with that which have helped to form a pretty awesome community of developers.

I don't think BigFishGames et al tend to get covered in games journalism as being indie in the same way that say Tale of Tales or Derek Yu or Flashbang or Jon Blow or Phil Fish or Jenova Chen would get covered.

I think  the division you draw is artificial and very personal (although I share your opinion on where that line lies) but what you say here is very much in -line with how I, personally, understand "indie" games.

I see it as these (multiple) communities of like-minded people who're creating games based on their own artistic or gameplay-/game-concept-based ideas about what makes a decent game.

There is, however, a case to be made for the concept that an "indie" game is any game produced outside of the big-business mainstream that has come to define the industry. In that point, specifically, moi has hit it on the nose.

When someone outlines something we agree with we nod, smile and move-on safe in the knowledge the world has received a valuable opinion.

When someone wilfully degrades something we're passionate about, our natural instinct to herd together and protect our "family" kicks in and we go on the offensive. It's simple animal psychology 

@Cthulhu32;
As a player, with no artistic or coding (or any other) capacity (I can edit raw scripts pretty well, but that's as close as I get to creativity...) I'm really pleased there are people like you out there, still, making games for the joy of making games.

Even when I pay for "indie games", those I buy are the ones that appear to be a work built on love and vision... if a person makes a game simply to make money, they're just jumping through hoops. That's gonna show in the final product, I believe, and it's my biggest turn-off in gaming.

The only way I can see him working is if he spawned, fired off a shot (or short salvo) then dissappeared. The problem with basing his damage in IB on his lethality in Spelunky is that it would fundamentally affect the match if someone was hit. I don't think having players feel they "lost because of the ****ing shopkeeper" would promote a positive experience of the game 

Actually, that is the opposite of a bunch of people. Personally, I have simply made games with not much obvious meaning, and had them interpreted differently by different people. Rather, I made Tanaka's Friendly Adventure with little more than intention of satirising people, and making some sort of non-linear map. But other people tell me all sorts of things about it which I didn't think of. (I've also not bothered prescribing any meaning to it.)

Going to pick on Increpare, 'cos he doesn't write massive essays about his games.

This reminds me of my.. let's call him my "high-school" english teacher (I'm from the UK, I was a bit younger than an American might assume from that but, it's fine). We were studying Golding's Lord of the Flies and going through the religious/biblical symbolism. At one point, getting thoroughly sick of surgically dismantling what was originally a very well-crafted novel, I raised my hand and asked, "Did Golding actually put all this into his book deliberately?"
I was told, "It doesn't matter, meaning is defined at the point of understanding".

Art is art because some of it's observers consider it to be so, it's that simple, in my opinion. You can apply the same thinking to any other tenuous concept aswell.

This entire tangent is very interesting. Brought up many authors I've not read in an age and a few I've never heard of.

What, for me, defines the content-over-writing concept is the _entire_ cyberpunk movement... though Gibson would be the most obvious and, possibly, most iconic in there.

wow, is that the same bob forward who wrote the legend of zelda cartoon in the 80s? the 'excuse me, princess!' ones? or is it just a weird coincidence that they have the same name?

i just looked it up: it's his son!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Forward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward

very weird. bob forward (the son) was also a writer for he-man and she-ra, and several other 80s cartoons.

Woah, I never heard of his son. I knew his daughter had collaborated on a few works, but... 

if we're talking about sci-fi, i also think asimov is a pretty bad writer, more known for his stories and ideas than writing

You're very right... in fact, all "hard" sci-fi is generally pretty badly written.

My favourite sci-fi author is Bob Forward who wrote scientific speculation disguised as sci-fi novels. Brilliantly interesting, but the writing was weak. Conceptually spectacular, however.

You raise a good point. It's a case of getting raped by some random piece of scenery, but there's no randomness in whether you get slain or not. It's, at least, consistant.