Late again
I ranted about the media coverage of Indie Games a while back, more or less saying that reporters are a bit too eager to assign independent developers (“independent” according to the IGF and not the literal definition) all responsibility of creating innovative or interesting games. With so many new areas of gaming being opened up for us it becomes hard to make that argument – maybe even harder to counter it – but maybe it was easier when the scene was smaller. Long-time indie veteran Jeff Vogel wrote a piece about it almost five years ago.
The article is a bit of a downer to read and it could certainly be argued that Vogel is overly negative and outright wrong about the place of independent developers. The scene has grown quite a bit since 2006 after all and more independent games receive mainstream media attention now so I do not think Vogel would put it quite the same way had he written the article today. I do, however, think his argument is solid – not having enough money to get through the day can be a big encumbrance, just as having an overbearing publisher intent on forcing their ideas on the developer can. I think if the project is strong enough you will find a way to fight the opposition – whether this means taking crappy jobs on the side to make sure everyone makes rent or spending most of your time in meetings to convince middle-management that your ideas are solid is not really important.
The difference, again, is that in the case of the indie game the product will never be released or fall immediately into obscurity while a mediocre game with an AAA budget will still be marketed enough so people get to know about it and complain about the state of the games industry.