I was frustrated by the indie games scene before being frustrated by the indie games scene was cool.

The esteemed Bennett Foddy gave a brilliant talk at Indiecade East on the history and current state of “indie games”:

Especially poignant to me is the fact that he starts out the talk with a quote from Edmund McMillen, complaining that the “indie games scene” no longer fits his definition of the indie games scene. In comparison, here’s something I wrote 9 years ago — when Edmund McMillen was just getting started — complaining that the “indie game scene” no longer fit MY definition.

I suspect a little digging could turn up a usenet post from 16 years ago, when I was just getting started making video games, complaining about how the indie games scene wasn’t what it had been in the late 1980s.

2 thoughts on “I was frustrated by the indie games scene before being frustrated by the indie games scene was cool.”

The fact that so many semi-professional projects are moving into the ‘indie’ space is probably a good thing for gaming as a whole- I see Steam and the other download services as being a big part of this, as with the current trends toward ‘retro’ graphics. I must confess, though, that I find it a little depressing to see the levels of budget at quality that are now ‘indie’… Back in, like, ’05 or ’06, I used to look at the Games of the Year on the indiegames,com feed and say to myself “Hey, I could do better than that!” for about half of them. These days? Not at all.

This is probably a good thing for games, and a good thing for games, but I can’t help but find it a little sad. Of course, I’m not trying to deny that my own failure to accomplish anything in that space is driven almost exclusively by laziness.

– HC

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