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[Michaël Samyn]

I'm reading the interviews on Indiecade.com. Many people talk about how important the independent scene is for the industry. How indie games are a sort of avant garde where new ideas are experimented with. Ideas, that later become part of the mainstream. In other words, indie games rejuvenate the mainstream.

I'm not terribly familiar with the history of indie games myself. But at first glance I can't really see much examples that support this assumption. Can anybody help? Can anyone name games, or ideas that originated in the indie scene and then became something of significance in the mainstream? I don't mean actual games or developers that cross over, but ideas, concepts, designs.

[Alex May]

The FPS

[Zaphos]

I think perhaps you're not understanding the page you linked?  Those interviews seem to mainly be talking about a hypothetical or just-now-blossoming indie games community, and what it can or should do for the mainstream.  They're not saying the community has had a large affect up till now.

Historically, I think the RPG, adventure, and FPS genres all have their roots firmly in indie/hobby development, although recently the mainstream has been mostly paying attention to itself.

[Derek]

The most obvious one is Narbacular Drop to Portal.

You could make a case for Gish influencing Loco Roco, although the link may be tenuous.

Many FPS mods become commercial games (Counterstrike, Team Fortress) or introduce ideas or mechanics that become canon.

And I could be wrong, but I think Kyle Gabler's Experimental Gameplay has popularized rapid prototyping with some of the bigger studios.

But I think, more important than introducing new game mechanics to mainstream games, it's just the fact that the indie community exists that makes it important to the industry as a whole.  It's what got me interested in gaming again, and I'm sure it's the same way for a lot of people.

[skaldicpoet9]

Well, if you want to get technical I would say that the whole idea of video games themselves arose from an "indie"-type environment. It was pretty much just hobbyist and college students from the very beginning. Not until Atari, I would say, did video games start to become more mainstream.

[fish]

And I could be wrong, but I think Kyle Gabler's Experimental Gameplay has popularized rapid prototyping with some of the bigger studios.

tru dat.
the studio where i work held a kind of mini-conference some time ago, and one of the presentors championed rapid prototyping by constantly refering the experimental gameplay games.

well d'uh.

[Shoot-em-upper]

Well, if you want to get technical I would say that the whole idea of video games themselves arose from an "indie"-type environment.

That's what I always thought.  Spacewar! was a college student's spare-time project.

[Farbs]

I gave a talk on rapid prototyping four years ago.
I am from the future.

[Michaël Samyn]

Well, if you want to get technical I would say that the whole idea of video games themselves arose from an "indie"-type environment.

That's what I always thought.  Spacewar! was a college student's spare-time project.

But then virtually everything started indie. That's not really what the word implies, is it? I mean: you cannot have a real indie scene without a mainstream scene.

Was there a mainstream games industry when the FPS was invented? Or was that just after the collapse of the first generation of home consoles and arcades?
Was Wolfenstein the first FPS?

[skaldicpoet9]

I suppose with that logic you are right. But I do think that the word indie does imply this sort of atmosphere. One where ideas are freely exchanged and old concepts are improved upon for the sake of fun within a small circle, and if it blows up well that is just something that happens sometimes. But hey, I think the definition of indie is just about as ambiguous as trying to find a three headed, half-man, half-dragon beast :D

[team_q]

I don't think its really that hard to pin down what indie is, The three modern media that I can think of, Music, Games and Movies. The indie element is more willing to try out new concepts or rehash old ones.

For example, the Rockabilly scene in music. The whole thing from how the guitar is played to the look, from the Pompadour down to the Parlour Creeper shoes, its all a throwback to the fifties. Which isn't to say their isn't any innovation, but I think its mostly refinement with modern technology. They keep what they like and throw away what they don't. It isn't the most popular genre of music, but a decent Rockabilly band can make enough coin to live.

Or Chiptunes, which are a throwback to old video game music, or the most basic digital music you can make.


 I also think the indie scene is a good indicator of what the mainstream is missing.

Right now alot of indie games are trying to be difficult.

[Zaphos]

Was there a mainstream games industry when the FPS was invented? Or was that just after the collapse of the first generation of home consoles and arcades?
Was Wolfenstein the first FPS?

A lot of the early FPS genre came from then small shareware developers Apogee (aka 3D Realms), Epic Megagames (now just Epic) and id Software; it was during the SNES era so there was a I guess a console mainstream at the time.
In addition the FPS mod community has I think significantly impacted professional development with work such as CounterStrike and Team Fortress.

[ithamore]

For the FPS posts:

The earliest FPS I can think of is the arcade version of Battlezone from 1980 (it's also on of my favorite arcade games despite how unfair incoming homing missiles are in an FPS). However, there seems to be some debate about which game from the 70's was the first FPS. Besides that, the game of Cowboys and Indians existed far before computers were used to represent the equivalent of children imagining about shooting each other.

[Alex May]

That's a bit reductionist IMO.

[Zaphos]

Actually for FPS history Wikipedia has a good article; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter#History

The summary there is:

First-person shooters came to be recognized as a genre in the early 1990s, and many of the genre's most common conventions date to this time. However, the modern genre is an extension of earlier games, particularly those involving 3D graphics. While some of these early games are not First-Person Shooters in the modern sense, some of them might be retroactively included in the genre, and many others contained ideas which later influenced the modern genre.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Two new genres (that I can think of) that came out of the recent indie scene: danmaku games and tower defense games. I don't believe either yet has a mainstream game in that genre (although Blizzard paid homage to tower defense in a secret level in Warcraft 3), yet both are fairly widely enjoyed genres, or at least subgenres (tower defense as a subgenre of RTS, danmaku games as a subgenre of shmup).

But I think your basic point is correct, as a whole indie games tend not to be much more innovative than mainstream games. They are much more *personal* and *quirky* than mainstream games, and those are valuable traits, but not necessarily more innovative.

As an example, take a look at this game:



It's not particularly innovative. It rips graphics and music from other games, it even takes most of the name for the game from another game. It's a RPG, with no innovations in gameplay that I'm aware of. But the idea of basketballers all being killed in a future dystopia and Barkley coming back to life and exploring Neo New York and using sheikals of silver in a RPG-like quest is quirky and personal and would never be seen in a mainstream game. I think that games like that validate the indie games community; that such things can be created is beautiful.

[Michaël Samyn]

I wasn't wondering about innovation. As such. Just wondering if there was any truth in the assumption that what happens in the indie scene on a small scale, later becomes part of (or influences, somehow) the mainstream on a bigger scale. I don't have the impression that this dynamic exists (yet). Partially, indeed, probably because indie games don't innovate much. Or at least not in a way that is suitable for mainstream consumption. But also because the mainstream is not mature yet and still largely thinks of games as purely commercial or engineered products. In other words: they don't need input from an indie scene if all that matters is bigger and better. When we finally achieve a point when photorealistic rendering is just a default technology accessible to everyone and when computers are fast enough to run everything you throw at it, this attitude will probably change. But chances are they'll run out of money first...

[fish]

what the hell is danmaku?

[Zaphos]

But also because the mainstream is not mature yet and still largely thinks of games as purely commercial or engineered products. In other words: they don't need input from an indie scene if all that matters is bigger and better. When we finally achieve a point when photorealistic rendering is just a default technology accessible to everyone and when computers are fast enough to run everything you throw at it, this attitude will probably change. But chances are they'll run out of money first...

It seems the mainstream games industry already recognizes the benefit of innovation outside of just realism, etc, and invests in developing it to some extent.  See: Wii, Portal, Whatever Spielberg Thinks He's Doing, Will Wright's crazy new technology, Little Big Planet.  So your cynicism seems misplaced?

what the hell is danmaku?

Japanese shoot-em-up game with lots and lots of bullets.

[Michaël Samyn]

I wasn't being cynical at all, Zaphos. And I think -I hope with all my heart- you're right. Guess I'm still jaleous of how shiny and solid last years multi-million Dollar blockbusters were.