Ah, yes Paul, you do make a good point of me being biased. You're entirely right. So lemme clear up some things to explain my point of view a bit more.
The down part I see from the two philosophies joining to me is that, at some point, there will be more wannabes. Games will become easier to create, they will become more accessible creation-wise and thousands of "I don't know that I don't know" people will start thinking they can make good games, ripping off others, coming up with boring or mediocre products and not some good games. It'll be easier for talented people to stand out of the crowd, making it a jungle. Of course, that'll promote originality and creativity but at the same time, it's a bit sad. Quite frankly its a bad side but I can see some ups to it
When I talk about funding, I'm not talking about clichéed "Publisher-developper" financing but rather other sources of money. For instance, getting a personal loan from a bank, getting government support or perhaps even angel money. Of course there's always be the side of the investor who wants some money back in some ways, but if the investor is the creator itself or perhaps an individual who understands that letting the creator do what he does freely will be lucrative somehow, you get some clean funding (ie not someone trying to make the game look like "generic-big-seller"). I like how the government in here in Canada helps out the indie guys too. They help the big guys, of course, but the small guys get a share too so it's pretty cool. Ask Phil and Alec on that topic. They know much more about this than me.
I also wonder on the impact on how players will see indie games. I mean, today the players easily accept lower production quality (not low quality,
lower. As in not AAA titles with huge teams workin on them for years) titles because they are "indie". I wonder if people will stop understanding that you cannot have the same amount of polish on a small team dev as in a huge team dev. Like, it would irritate me if people are gonna bitch about indie games not being "as cutting-edge" than the generic titles that will feature one new cool and flashy feature smuttered in redundant gameplay.
There is no way in hell that the two philosophies can truly merge together seemlessly. Doesn't make sense, I completely agree. My vision, how I see and understand this, is more that the general pubic will accept ALL game design philosophies. I play some comercial games. I play indie games. I play experimental games as well as arcade games and retro games. I like games. I don't care how they are done (Well, I do care of course, otherwise I wouldn't be here but, as a player, the gameplay matters first
). And I'd love to see the public do the same thing so that both commercial guys AND indie guys can actualy live of making games. Everyone has it's own undertsanding of "live of making games" and that's where one can see your design philosophy shine out. You decide what that means to you.
So in the end, my opinion is "make it that the public starts playing other games than the craptacular generic bland manufactured spiced up with flashy idiotic stereotypes sausages that the large profit companies who enjoy looking at columns of numbers with lotsa zeros try to shove in the gamers throats while sucking off the money out of their pockets" than "make indie and mainstream games the same thing".
Does it help a bit to explain my point of view Paul? It's great to see your side of things
Player
