I have a perhaps naive view of our readers, and it's something like this: You love games. You sometimes despair at the conventional game market. You look to the fringes -- to indie games, to tabletop, to serious games and game for change, to anything outside of the industry mainstream -- to try to recapture the sense of wonder and bliss that games once wrought in you.
In other words, there is hardly an audience more "indie" than ours.
But are we to make of such as this?
The old punk* in me says: Right on, yer!
But only for about two seconds.
What this video is suggesting is that indie, as it connects to games, has something to do with, if you will, the punk aesthetic. The punk aesthetic is relentlessly anti-intellectual. It evolved in response to the pretension of groups like ELO, and prized the famous "three chords" of the Ramones. Stripping things down to the essentials produced kick-ass rock and roll. Fuck pretension.
And here I am: the advocate of pretension.
Just a couple of glancing points: The Ramones themselves proved remarkably articulate and intelligent. And the punk revolution was equally fuelled by art-house poseurs, like the Talking Heads, who treated the anti-intellectual pose ironically.
"Fuck you if you're not indie?" Well, yes. But no cross-cut against the jaw, surely. If you are a gamer, you've already made an important step: you understand the cultural and phenomenological importance of the game as the most vital modern medium. If you are not yet "indie," then, well, you have not yet grasped the intellectual and creative bankruptcy of the conventional retail form -- but you can be saved.
We will not sock you across the jaw.
Instead, we will seek to reason with you. Or, we might patronize you a bit, or mock your tastes, but violence really isn't an option. Except in boss battles, of course.
Really, what do that makers of this video think is "indie?" And are they really indie themselves, or are they simply mocking us?
It's kind of cool that a meme like this it out there at all; nothing like it existed, say, three years ago. A threnody of hipness, a note of confident self-justification, self-righteous rage at the smarmy self-satisfaction of conventional games: Good! 'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go!
But really. The East Village, 1973, is not gaming in 2008. And Jonathan Blow, say, is not Joey Ramone, despite a certain similarity in Brechtian cool.
I, for one, promise never to slug you for failing to be indie.
*I refer to myself as an "old punk" above. I base this on the fact that in, say, 1973, I was within two blocks of CBGBs, where the Ramones first played. This is a total load of bollocks. I was within two blocks of CBGBs, because I was at a long-departed NYC institution known as "The Battleground."
Where I was playing D&D.
"Old geek" might be a better categorization. But of course, that depends on whether you think it would be cooler, in 1973, to hear the Ramones, or play D&D. Brown box edition. At the very inception of the revolution.
And where you come down on that divide may well say something about what "indie" means in our context.
What?
Did you just take that video seriously?
Hm. At first I assumed it
Hm. At first I assumed it was a parody of the anti-mainstream sentiment of some indie advocates. Now I am not so sure. I actually think it may be that it's their own position, exagerrated for delivery.
I have to ask Greg: Since
I have to ask Greg: Since you were near CBGB's during that era, did you ever get to see the Velvet Underground? That would kick immense amounts of ass.
The person who DM'ed my first D&D game was THERE, and we played from his brown box original rules. It was great.
Hah
I find it amusing that you admit the pretentiousness of the indie movement: their is certainly a certain level of poseur in the indie movement, even if the movement itself is not without substance.
This is particularly apparent when a bad indie game is made (Justine comes to mind). There will be those that will defend it against all criticism just for being unconventional.
I don't really see this video as punk, more like a self-parody of the very movement it follows.
Re: Hah
It's better to have games that have supporters and detractors, unlike mainstream games, which are typically universally loved or hated. I believe costik said in the last post, they either rock or suck. Idiots will fight online over tenths of points on reviews because reviews tend to be so united in opinion. If someone respectable gave Metal Gear Solid 4 an 8.9, they'd be dead.
Umm....
Did nobody else see the irony in the ending? Made possible by Microsoft, Sony and Mountain Dew.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH
It was one of several Mega64 videos commissioned for the IGF, just like last year's, which had Dan Paladin - the guy they didn't punch - in GWAR drag screaming in front of videos of people shooting PS2s and 360s.
(EDIT: Actually, didn't you see this at IGF this year, or the stuff M64 did last year, or the year before?)
So yeah... that's a lot of words defending pretentiousness about indie games, spurred by a tongue-in-cheek joke commissioned by indie game makers about how poorly pretentious indie-game fans handle the portrayal of indie games in media.
Unless this whole article was adding another troll-like level of satire to the whole thing, in which case... good show.
Jokes
I'm sure there are some people who take the "joke" as gospel.
Whatever we believe about it being a joke or not, I don't think there's anything wrong with a bit of position-stating and "Welcome, if you are not indie".
Punk
This is a bit OT, but I envy you and your CBGB-ness. Both punk and D&D were sadly absent from my 1980s childhood. I was busy reading bibles and shit in the bible belt at the time.
Re: Re: Re*inf
That's more of a criticism towards the mainstream gaming media than the audience.
My experiences with the mainstream audience is sheer, self-inflicted retardation: gaming forums have one of the most lowest signal-to-noise ration possible.
Numbers are a marketing man's favourite: how can you precisely point whether gameplay has an 8 or a 9? On what metric scale can you measure something that does not even want to adhear to a set standard?
Numbers are there because then the magazine and website can be brought by the marketing managers in VG publishing companies.
Its perfectly natural to like and dislike something. Games especially. What bothers me is that some people don't defend a game for virtues and faults: they defend it because its indie. That's it. Not because its faults were forgiveable or its virtues were only at aimed achievements. But because its indie, therefore saintly.
Well, I always take the
Well, I always take the score to be a reflection of the reviewer. Does the reviewer match your own values at all? Sometimes a reviewer who doesn't match your own values and gives a game a low score, means that game is actually a good one for you, even.
But the thing is it seems alot of people take scores to be not a reflection of how suitable the game was for that reviewer (and then you think how suitable is that reviewer for me?), but as some sort of galactic standard the game has been measured against. This is even perpetuated somewhat by scores being bandied around, with perhaps only a reference to a magazine that gave it, rather than the person who gave it.
It's actually frightening how often people take a score as objective fact/gospel, rather than a subjetive rating from a certain person.
Look
To judge something as pretentious and then like something else because it isn't "pretentious" is pretentious. Unless you are evaluating the thing on its own merits, you are being pretentious. So, to say you only like "Indie" or "Punk" things is stupid.
I like good things. ELO is good. The Ramones are good. Michael Jackson is good. The Pixies are good. Vampire Weekend is good. My Chemical Romance is good. The Raconteurs are good. The Ting Tings are good. Does It Offend You, Yeah is good.
I actually read a post from someone who hated Vampire Weekend, *because* they were the darlings of the indie set. They just weren't indie *enough*! Of course, that completely disregards whether you like the music or not, but maybe that's not important to you.
I like Monopoly, Risk, Stratego and Magic the Gathering. But I also like Gloom, If Wishes Were Fishes, Farkle and Here a Chick, There a Chick.
I like Lego Wii Star Wars and Boom Blox. But I also like Crayon Physics, Flight Controller and Drop 7.
So, the label of "indie" or not indie is not indicative of goodness to me.
I do like learning about Indie games, because they tend to push the envelope and try new things, and I also really like trying new things.
But sometimes the best ice cream is a tried and true hot fudge sundae.
So, enjoy what's good and ignore what's bad, and stop judging things based on labels.
That's what I think anyway.
Peter