Indie games: a new way of communicating ideas and feelings?

Indie games: a new way of communicating ideas and feelings?

                 

A blooming sector

                Maybe you’ve already played one of those games: Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, Castle Crashers, or Fruit Ninja. What have they got in common? Well, they are all labelled as “indie games”, meaning that they were all developed by independent games studios, in opposition to the “big fishes” of the gaming industry such as Call Of Duty, Halo or FIFA, also called “AAA” games. The indie games phenomenon, seems to have started around 2008 as we can see in this Google trend chart for the request “Indie Games”. 

            Even if independent games always existed (since the beginning of computer, there were always one or two “nerds” to develop games in their parents basement), the phenomenon really started to get big around 2008 with the launch of World of Goo, a reflexion game. Then it was Castle Crashers on the Xbox Live platform, released in 2008 and making 4.6 million dollars for the year 2011 (just on the Xbox platform).[1] Of course, it would be hard not to talk about Minecraft: in June 2016, it had sold over 100 million copies [2]. In comparison, Grand Theft Auto 5, which I’m sure you already heard about, sold 65 million copies between its launch (2013) and May 2016 [3]. But the fact is that Minecraft cost almost nothing to develop: it was made by a developer on his own, the famous “Notch”. GTA 5, on the other hand, was the most expensive game to develop in History, with a budget of 265 million dollars [4]. As you can guess, the indie game sector started to be trendy when it became bankable.

Typical independent developer

 

 

 

 A new kind of connection between the players and the developers

                So, now, that we’ve seen the exponential growth of the indie games sectors, it might be interesting to see what does it change to the media experience. To many observers, games do not suit the definition of a media, which is, according to Wikipedia “the collective communication outlets or tools that are used to store and deliver information or data”. It is true that games, and video games, are originally designed for entertainment purpose: what type of information is delivered by Call of Duty, or by FIFA? Probably none, or very little. However, the indie games, as they are not designed for commercial purpose, seem to be a medium connecting the player to the mind of the developer(s). For instance, in the Netflix documentary “Indie games: the movie”, all the developers recognize that their work allowed them to express themselves. The guys behind Super Meat boy, Edmund McMillen‎ and ‎Tommy Refenes, really see their games as a reflexion of themselves. Another game developed by this team, Aether, even seem to be a kind of therapeutic for McMillen: it is inspired by his fears, emotions, and its childhood. He declared that: “It’s a very honest and personal project I’ve been a little worried about making public because it exposes a lot of the fears I had when I was a child and puts me in a vulnerable place. But I feel like there are some out there that can appreciate something honest that has a lot of heart.”[5]

For instance, in this screenshot of the game Aether (2008), what the character is saying is actually something that McMillen suffered during his childhood and which appeared in many of his drawings as a kid. [6]

A screenshot from the game Limbo, 2010

Arnt Jensen, developer of the famous game Limbo which features a lonely kid in a devastated world, declares that “I think it's pretty important to have the right feelings throughout the game. I don't know if it's that important if it's specific storytelling. I don't care about that. It's important to have those special feelings. It was supposed to feel this loneliness so that in the end, when you meet the little sister, it seems like you haven't seen people so long, the impact will be so much bigger.”[7]

                A new art form?

Screenshot from the game Flower, 2009

         From my point of view of media’s expert, it is interesting to notice that the independent games seem to offer a new media experience. Instead of being driven only by entertainment purposes (for the player) and monetary goals (for the developers) as the “AAA” games, this new type of games offers a whole new experience: it connects the feelings of the developers to the players. As Henry Jenkins explains “games represent a new lively art, one as appropriate for the digital age as those earlier media were for the machine age. They open up new aesthetic experiences and transform the computer screen into a realm of experimentation and innovation that is broadly accessible.”[8] However, as a conclusion, we have to nuance this quote. In my opinion, it is hard to say that the “big games” represent a new form art, as they are more a product of the cultural industry than a way for people to express themselves. On the other hand, the indie games seem to offer a whole new media experience, between art and entertainment. We can hope that, in the future, this sector will continue to grow to give us new possibilities of interacting with digital media; and maybe that one day, indie developers will be recognized as real artists…

[1] Matt Liebl, “XBLA 2011 sales total $144 million”, Gamezone, january 27 2012

[2] Chloi Rad,”Minecraft sales surpass 100 million copies”, IGN, June 2 2016

[3] Eddie Makuch, “GTA 5 has now shipped 65 million copies”, Gamespot, May 18 2016

[4] Luke Villapaz, “'GTA 5' Costs $265 Million To Develop And Market, Making It The Most Expensive Video Game Ever Produced: Report”, International Business Times, August 8 2013

[5] Alec Meer, “Aether”, Rockpapershotgun, September 4 2008

[6] Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, “Indie games: the movie”, 2012

[7] Christian Nutt, Hanging in Limbo, Gamasutra, February 24 2012

[8] Henry Jenkins, “GAMES, THE NEW LIVELY ART”, Massachusetts institute of technology’s website

Wayne, “The indie revolution: how little games are making big money”, Game academy, October 9 2013