Jim Sterling On the Often Pretentious Nature of Indie Games

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Yesterday, Jim Sterling posted on Destructoid, a rather rousing article discussing the often pretentious nature of indie video games and their developers. He goes into great detail about his recent experiences with the game “The Path” and his previous experiences with other Indie games both good and bad. Of course the debate of art vs. entertainment has been around substantially longer than that of the video game industry. Examples of similarly pretentious works can be found in every other medium for example John Cage’s 4’33″ and Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.

Unfortunately in the world of video games we have a severe shortage of words to describe games that are purposely not fun and thus do to their typical underfunded nature get wrangled into the category of Indie. We have seen this become a fairly substantial issue in IGF where games with considerable muscle behind them get tossed in the same category as a game made by a single chap programming in his skivvies simply because the game is offbeat or stylistically unique and isn’t propped u p by by “the man”.

Personally, I think art is at heart something that is intended to communicate a meaning to its audience and while interpretation is the audiences responsibility, it can often seem like the artist simply had nothing to say. And as Mr. Sterling stated in his article “there is always a subgroup of people too terrified of looking stupid to argue against “art.”" thus leaving the rest of us to put up with that particular sub-groups vigilantism when it comes to works of those types.

In the end, I haven’t played “The Path” and can’t confirm nor deny his claims, but if it is anything like he describes my gut says he probably nailed it. As far as Indie games acting like Indie games, I think that is probably symptomatic of the lack of a subcategory labeled something along the lines of “Pretentious Shit”.

Be sure to go and interpret Jim’s article however you like, but be warned if you are one of those who resides within the aforementioned subgroups, the piece’s meaning may be all too clearly laid out for you. Also, the topic has continued discussion during this weeks Podtoid.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/HCNJDYOFNL5WTGZNUTBQXX4LI4 jose jesus aleman acosta

    i like this game.

    Yo soy una persona almada, y si bien disfruto de deztazar extraterrestres a balazos, navegar una lancha motorizada, o inmisuirme en una pelea con efectos especiales super epilepticos, tambien adoro, los juegos que me permiten desansar, juegos que me permitan disfrutar de los paisajes, adentrarme en el personaje mas alla del gatillo, y este en especial, me permitio descubrir la tematica de ese cuento antiquisimo y lugubre uyo final no era feliz y cuya moraleja era la muerte.

    estoy disfrutando este juego, si esperan graficos inreibles, y una maniobrabilidad de los controles, lo mas probable es que lo detesten, sin embargo, habra gente a que si le agraden este tipo de producciones en las que el concepto artistico sea mas que suficiente.

    saludos a todos