Jim Sterling of Destructoid is awesome.  He’s mainstream gaming journalism’s harbringer of British cynicism, a loose cannon who openly rejects “news that isn’t news” while finding room for strong opinion.  And I want to thank him for the indie game shitstorm that has spilled over for a larger audience to read about.  The first salvo?  Artgame developers need less art and more game.

What most of you are doing right now is easy. It’s easy as fuck to make some vague shapes and rambling poetry dialog and claim that it has meaning. Actually try making an artistic, important, introspective game, but try making it fun at the same time. Try and do more with your message than throwing some obscure ideas together and telling us to figure it out. You’re not being clever, you’re not being deep, and you sure as fuck aren’t being unique. You’re being like all the other indie games that act like indie games.

The second? Big-budget doesn’t mean “stale”, and indie doesn’t mean “creative”.

The most perfect example of this problem came from G4TV’s Sterling McGarvey, who I briefly mentioned in a more humorous post. His response to the whole debate was one that, I think, truly sums up my major issue with those who defend art games.

“I’ll take a ‘pretentious artsy-fartsy indie game’ over creatively bankrupt bullshit any day,” is what he said.

Now, McGarvey’s comment was but one of many that shared similar sentiments, but it was a perfect snapshot of the big fallacy among those who stand up for art games — this idea that art games cannot be creatively bankrupt themselves, and that if you are against the indie crowd, you are against originality. This also leads onto a further incorrect but all-too common assumption — the idea that because something is innovative, it is automatically good.

I’ve played video games for twenty-one years and concluded they are a strong candidate for social history.  Technological limitations aside, the black-and-white storytelling in eight-bit Nintendo games can tell you much about the black-and-white Cold War climate they were created in.  It’s difficult to deny gaming can be a form of expression.

But like Mr. Sterling, I recognize artgames have issues.  And I don’t like that any criticism of the movement means we “don’t get it” or that we are “generalizing”.  Pick any criticism out of his articles: He’s either “trolling for views” or “doesn’t understand what art games are supposed to be” (in the same way a gamer doesn’t get World of Warcraft because he only got one character to level eighty).

The “No Russian” scene in Modern Warfare 2 was deliberately designed to make us feel uncomfortable.  BioShock’s approach to libertarian philosophy was a conduit for provoking thought.  And even indie darling Braid used an ambiguous, “the story is whatever you think it was” approach.  These games were capable of making statements because they were fun to play.

And with the artgame movement, I see the nether reaches of the internet responding to large-budget games that use graphics and technical superiority as a guise to cover up poor gameplay.  How are they doing it?  By using art and technical gimmicks…as a guise to cover up poor gameplay.

It’s quite telling in a period of time where Japanese game development has gotten its ass kicked on any front that doesn’t include “Wii” or “Mario”, the Japanese indie scene has thrashed this side of the ocean.  For every Braid, there’s a Cave Story, Melty Blood, or Touhou that dares to be as professional and playable as its commercial counterparts. And while these games may not be artistic expressions, Japanese doujin developers have developed a greater foundation for making “art” when they feel the time is right.

So believe me: People aren’t rejecting games that want to express themselves.  They just don’t want to play bad video games.  And as difficult as it is for one or many amateurs to press the right buttons and make a game fun, you’re going to be judged against the game industry you aspire to change.

If you enjoyed a commercial video game in the last seven years, you probably haven’t played Cave Story.  It’s an exceptionally polarizing indie game, either the greatest game of all-time, or a transcendent work that transcends all transcendency.  It’s made enough of a name for itself that I decided it was worth six hours of my life.  All I can say is “Really?  This is the game that got everybody worked up?”

I initially threw two hours into the game and decided to reserve judgment about the overall product.  Alex Kierkegaard’s unprecedented review (Spoiler: He didn’t think it was flowers and sex) spurred me to find out the second half of Cave Story actually lived up to its hype.  I’m not looking to puppet his line of thought, I’m just not sure where “polished platformer with no core flaws and a good weapons system” became code for “classic”.

Apart from two bosses, the game is a cakewalk.  The backtracking is completely obnoxious.  The in-game events that define progressing from point A to point B are completely illogical.  The dialogue is not very good.  Not that these flaws keep the game from being on the sunny side of “good”.  The problem is that my vote has now doubled the amount of people who do not think the game is perfect.

Search any gaming message board, and people will disagree with your opinion of any game.  Warcraft III is my favorite game of all-time, and that didn’t stop people from throwing their copy in the garbage when it got home after killing all the creeps in the neighborhood.  Not this one.  By virtue of “single developer busts ass to make playable Metroid game”, Anthony Burch of Destructoid can channel shared sentiments:

Honestly, if I found a way to put Cave Story on an SNES cartridge, go back in time to the 90’s, and sell it as if it were just your regular big-budget game, nobody would hesitate to call it one of the greatest games of all time.

…

…there’s literally nothing not to like in Cave Story.

…

This is Cave Story, and it is perfect.

It probably doesn’t surprise you I have beef with a game designed to honor 8-bit gameplay, considering I just got off that tangent.  Simply by being the fetish of the indie gaming community (that is, one of the five-hundred best games to ever come out of Japan), it’s worth downloading, if simply to educate yourself.

Fifty years from now, The Simpsons will be discussed alongside great literature and cinema.  Barring a nuclear holocaust, seasons three through eight will be college film class material for decades.  This won’t stop me from stating the show lost its edge in 2001, falling so far it earns comparisons to Family Guy.  The Simpsons tore apart its emphasis on character development to become a show where Homer ends up in a mental ward because no one believes the roofer he hired is a real person.  Fear not, Wikipedia explains!

“He did really exist the whole time: the bartender did not see Ray as he had an eye patch on, and Ray could not be seen by Flanders because he was behind the chimney. Bart still became skeptical for seeing Homer talking to thin air, but Stephen Hawking arrives and says that Bart could not see Ray at the hardware store because of a miniature black hole caused directly behind Ray which absorbed the light from Ray and made it look like as if Homer was talking to himself.”

But you know what?  Instead of watching the show every week just to bitch about it, I stopped watching it.  I voted with my remote.  I grew up with the assumption that when you don’t enjoy a product, you stop using, watching, or playing it.

So why don’t people bring this up when it comes to modern video games?

Wanna whine?  Fine.  They’re not perfect.  There will always be bad games.  Nothing new, never has been.  On top of that, consider your opinion of a bad game weighs heavily on the titles that do get hype.  It doesn’t cover the Sudoku cash-ins, or the grade-X pig meat used to create Nintendo Wii party games. But Rock Band is built for casuals.  Madden is just a cash-in series.  Halo is a dumbed-down shooter.  Metal Gear Solid 4 has too many cutscenes.  Grand Theft Auto IV forgot what made the series fun.  Call of Duty 4 just sucks.  Great, I get it.  I don’t get why you still play the games if you don’t enjoy them.

Today’s train of thought is “Games were so awesome when I was seven!  Today’s game makers should play some of those sixteen-bit classics so they learn how to make games!”  Yet when someone has the “audacity” to claim this sentiment is a combination of childhood nostalgia and being better educated about the product, they’re apparently out of their minds.  For all the grief I give retro gamers, a group of fat, aging adults stuck in 1982, they have the right idea: They didn’t like what gaming became, so they shut the fuck up about it and went back to playing Centipede.

Today, people have the internet.  Twenty years ago, the only way you uncovered niche titles is if you subscribed a magazine that was in the tank for Nintendo or Sega.  Now, a game like Big Rigs can become an internet celebrity within days.  And in the same breath, you can uncover the indie communities that worship games like Braid and Cave Story.  You know, a community desperate for a creative breath of fresh air.  But be damned if you actually put up the twelve dollars for Braid.

Instead of actually using the internet to inform themselves about the product, they want to be the kid that refreshes Kotaku four times a minute to catch up on “leaked screenshots”, and then complain the game didn’t cook their damn dinner.  True to form, The Simpsons had it right when an imaginary Donkey Kong said “it’s the company’s fault for making you want it so much.”  Go play Super Mario World, go play Starcraft, go play what makes you happy, and stop whining about a product that can never, ever please you.  I’m tired of the negativity.

Before I begin this tale of illegal software, this is my stance on piracy: I would be a hypocrite to say piracy is wrong and that it should never be done under any circumstances.  My point of contention is the Don Quioxtes who view The Pirate Bay as a noble endeavor.  If the tone was “I won’t pay for the game because I’m a jackass”, or “I can’t afford it”, whatever.  Instead, it’s “Starcraft II may not be playable on LAN?  That’s the final straw.  Fuck the greedy corporations.  They won’t get my sale.”  If Blizzard didn’t run the best gaming service on the planet, and you didn’t have to leave your e-friends behind, you wouldn’t pay for the game, anyway.

Credit to Kotaku for a good article.  Gaming’s transition to Hollywood budgets haven’t stopped indie developers from trying, but piracy has proven a threat to their ambitions.

Nearly 24 hours after it went out in mid-April, John Warner checked on the numbers for Raycatcher – a game he and a partner designed and distributed over Steam. The first day, it sold 1,000 copies for $5. But pirates had also made 35,000 copies for free.

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“I think people are voting – they’re just not interested in paying for games any more,” Warner said. “The DRM is getting cumbersome, and everyone hates it. I think we’re at a point where indies have to consider a new revenue model. Because it takes a long time to make a game.”

Put 35-to-1 in perspective with Cevat Yerli, who was laughed at for suggesting Crysis was pirated 20-to-1.  Remember when Stardock CEO Brad Wardell publicized his commitment to DRM-free games?  When Demigod was released last month, critics slammed its online issues.  Wardell (pictured top-right, attempting to crush piracy) explained the problem was 102,000 assholes thick:

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