The Indie Game Identity Is in Danger – Cold Take

What is even is “indie?” Shortened artsy fartsy lingo for “independent,” indie art has always been difficult to describe, be it indie music, indie films, or indie games. For some, indie is seen as the bottom of the financial totem pole in any creative industry relative to the Triple A space that employs hundreds and spends millions to rake in billions. I’m not particularly sold on this measurement. Comparing a game to its development costs creates a false equivalence. Indie is not when developer is poor, living on welfare, and working out of mom’s garage. And to the contrary, that same developer doesn’t become an uncreative hack once their bank account gets into the 6-figure range. I, myself, take indie to be a flavor. Games that are beholden to no one during their development phase have a subtle fragrance about them. It’s a delicate smell easily overpowered by the stench of executive intrusion and the salty wafts of saturated trends. It’s the intoxicating scent of uncompromised passion.

Edmund Mcmillen reeks of uncompromised passion. Well known for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, he’s maintained a tangible presence throughout all of his creations, themed around cartoonish body gore, poopoo, and Judeo-Christian taboo, whether as a solo studio with no money, working alongside publishers, or publishing his own game again but with a much better credit score this time around. If money played into the identity of indie games, then all of these projects would drastically differ from one another based on his income. The key to maintaining a consistent middle school bathroom aesthetic was his fight for creative control. Mr. Mcmillen was repeatedly offered more money if he was willing to hand over the reins to his publishers who wanted to “clean-up” his game’s identity in order to make it more consumer friendly. But what is The Binding of Isaac if not a space for the developer to muse about the motifs of their childhood, be it a biblical upbringing within the confines of a Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler, thus inviting us to look into our own nurtured inspirations? Sanitizing it to the point where it can be fenced off to a general audience inspires a homogenized experience that inevitably spawns more of the same bland gruel day in and day out.

Likewise, Kojima has money to spare on his own studio and creative endeavors. He has enough budget and profile to be considered Triple-A or a minor country, if measured with money, and his games have only gotten more bizarre with his newfound freedom. Death Stranding embodies the independent spirit of games the industry was founded on. The millions used to fund it don’t make it any less indie in my mind; money didn’t impede his creative vision. The solution seems to be all or nothing. Either have a stack of cash so fat you could crush a senior executive asking where the loot boxes are going to go, or have so little money that another medical bill is just another bit of paper added to the pile. Somewhere between no money and all money, are faustian bargains promising financial stability and guidance to smaller developers.

To a certain extent, I could put the blame on Triple-A for the way they gobble up smaller studios and regurgitate them onto a napkin with their own IP. But over time the big fish have lost the need to be so direct. The more popular services like Game Pass get the more likely a developer will be to keep Microsoft’s sensibilities in mind for hopes of being featured themselves. Edmund McMillen didn’t clean up his games for Nintendo, who initially rejected him for not lining up with their kid-friendly image. But the Switch’s popularity and blossoming indie curation is more charismatic than the socially awkward 3DS. Would-be game makers know good and well what kind of image Nintendo wishes to uphold and they’ll scrub their own games clean of independence to fit in with the cool kid. Without coercion, the higher ups have managed to use the indie scene as a means to advertise their bigger budget games.

But the practice of cageing developers with dodgy contracts isn’t completely gone either. It’s trickled down into the Double-A and indie scene. They aren’t peddling aggressive monetization, moreso they push for the continuation of trends well past their expiration date. It’s like a mom that can’t help but compare you to your more successful older brother. “I wish you’d use more voxels and survival crafting. Minecraft did voxels and survival crafting. I know it’s been 10 years but I do wish your world was more depressing like Dark Souls. You don’t have to, but I already told everyone your roguelike would be just like Hades, and you kind of owe me a lot of money…” The indie game scene has attracted little league indie mobsters who know they will get their money whether developers succeed or fail. Savvy game development does not mean savvy business acumen, so younger devs are liable to misstep in the hopes of seeing their dream games come to life. But everything comes with a price and their dream game turns into just another jelly bean lost in the jar of indie games.

Then other independent game developers walk by the jelly bean jar and assume through its overwhelming representation that this must be what people want. They start second-guessing their own thoughts and designs to tweak in favor of what is deemed popular. It’s peer pressure. No contracts. No coercion. Indie game development skews towards this unassuming norm. While I was over the moon to see that cozy games have a platform to promote themselves now, I can’t deny it felt bittersweet to see low-stakes crafting game after low-stakes farming game be presented during the Wholesome Direct in the same manner that playing through Next Fest demos elicited a haunting sense of roguelike deja vu. There’s variety within each genre, but we bottleneck around the same success stories and follow-up derivatives for fear that the niche games might scare someone off with their pearls clutched in a prudish fury. Maybe people don’t want Squirrel With A Gun. Maybe mom was right, I should’ve made Minecraft again.

You don’t have to make Minecraft again. No one knows what they want until they have it, don’t take it personally. There is no round of applause to be expected with the inception of your project and after the fact, when you’re wondering where to go with your follow up, people will only tell you they want more of the same. That’s just human nature. As the video game industry mimics the growth of the music and film industry that came before it, it needs to steer carefully around the glaciers of commercialization. The virtual gentrification of the medium means money will pour in to try to appeal to a wider audience which inevitably scrubs out the culture.  Why is it in danger now and not before? Simply put, the indie scene has shown through its parallel growth and resilience that it is as much a staple of gaming as the Triple-A blockbusters. The big pockets are looking for different ideas at a fraction of the cost, because they’re starting to understand the diminishing returns of pouring money into game production and not getting it all back. They’ll tempt the indie scene with juicy contracts and a stipulation to only change a “few” core details so your game can fit in with the rest of the market.

The indie scene was never about fitting in. It was about standing out. People don’t want the same product. They want the same experience as before, but new and dangerous ways of getting there. Your favorite shows, songs, food, favorite anything all take you to the same place, but feel vastly different. Those differences are worth celebrating. Developers making the differences are worth elevating. Publishers offering to help with the business side of things while leaving the creatives to express themselves over every pixel are also worth a pat on the back. Let the bigger studios worry about presenting their games with suits, ties, and washed hair. There’s good games. There’s bad games. There’s bland games. Indie is where the freaks come out to play. We must preserve it. As the late great Robin Williams put it, you’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.