Good Games Will Save Us

A Twitter friend of mine (and a damn fine writer), Mark Whitney, has written a new piece entitled "Indies Save the Industry." If you know anything about my feelings toward indie games, you know that title makes it impossible for me not to respond.

The thrust of Mark's article is actually pretty inoffensive, even to me: independently developed games have a lot to offer the video game industry. As I said when discussing my favorite games of 2010 a while back, I agree wholeheartedly with this, and the reason I generally have such scorn for indie games is that they so often squander their independence by rehashing ideas that were threadbare twenty years ago. 

Mark also states upfront that he's not actually sure that the game industry needs saving, so I won't devote too much time to taking the title apart. It's hyperbole, but I have no problem with using eye-catching headlines to get people to read articles that are far more nuanced than those headlines suggest. I agree with Mark's basic premise, that the video game industry could use a big infusion of creativity.

What I disagree with is Mark uncritically repeating the meme that indie games are, by their very nature, more innovative than anything put out by major publishers. The only example he cites is Narbacular Drop, the game that would become Portal after Valve hired the students who made it. It's a good example of what a small team with a great idea can do when they don't have a marketing department demanding more blood and bigger boobs.

But Narbacular Drop undermines Mark's premise as much as it supports it. Most people who know about the game know about it precisely because the team that made it was absorbed into a corporate entity that gave them the resources to perfect the concepts with which they were experimenting. If anything, Narbacular Drop is an argument that indies should sell out to the company they think is most likely to put the most faith in their best ideas. Yes, the idea was conceived while the developers were independent, but it wasn't fully realized until they got their hands on some dirty corporate money.

The reasoning behind the "indies as creative saviors" meme (when there is any reasoning at all) comes from the notion that creativity is always best when it's unconstrained. But that's a huge oversimplification. Look through any artist's sketchbook, listen to a band's demo tapes, and it quickly becomes clear that refinement and editing are essential to the creative process. Knowing when and how to edit one's own work--which good ideas are good for the project at hand and which are good in a vacuum--is essential. As much as indie fans are loath to admit it, there are people at major publishers who have great insights into this subject. 

Of course I would be wrong to pretend that nobody in the indie scene realizes this basic fact. We have to keep in mind that video games cost a lot of money to produce, and even indie developers who really want to polish their ideas often don't have the resources to do so. As Mark points out, there's a reason Blizzard's games are as good as they are: they can take as long as they want to release them. Indies don't have that luxury, but they could get closer to it by partnering with publishers or producers who believe in their ideas--and have access to the coffers of an EA, a THQ, or even an Activision.

Of course I realize that my vision of a world in which well-to-do publishers sink money into worthy small-budget projects for the betterment of everyone is utopian. But it's no less misguided than the assertions of people who have looked into the dregs of Xbox Indie Games or the iTunes and Android marketplaces and still claim that indies are, on the whole, more innovative than anything in the mainstream. Good ideas can come from any size team with any size budget, and indies who partner with major publishers aren't necessarily going to be drained of all creativity. We only hurt ourselves as gamers when we pretend otherwise.