I’m an indie. I make little games about maritime farming, adapt seminal pieces of seminal literature into interactive Unity things, and make match three games which are also hardcore side-scrolling shooters for some reason. So, it is with some guilt that I admit that I love big, sparkly, costly games. I love ‘em. Indie Twitter is filled with doomsaying about the mainstream game industry, preaching the superiority of little indie games about, I don’t know, uniform fetisism. There seems to be truth to the idea that the mainstream industry is unsustainable in its current form.
Indie games are at the forefront of exploring new ideas, new forms of play and new types of interactive narrative. I love indie games like Dream Fishing, The Stanley Parable and Papers, Please, but despite this there is something the majority of indie games lack, something that requires big teams and lots of time and resources. Games, unlike any other medium, can create universes that are near-infinitely big, because they can be explored only at the pace of the player.
My favorite series of books is probably Discworld, Terry Pratchett’s series of insightful and funny tales. For me they are more than anything about the world they are set in. Exploring it in minute detail through the eyes of the protagonist. This aspect it shares with my favourite mainstream games: Mass Effect, Dishonored, Fallout (the games I never shut up about on this website), Knights of the Old Republic, Persona 3. Pokémon, even. “Immersion” is a word thrown around a lot, and it is not the be all and end all of goods games. However, the epitome of the medium for me is when I can be immersed in an alien world. One of strange cultures and tiny details. Games let you explore worlds of breathtaking complexity at your own pace, learning slowly and going only as deep as your interest.
Exploration as the core is not unique to mainstream games. Gone Home and Journey are excellent examples of indies doing it right. But doing so at a scale, creating not a home or a village but a city, planet or universe still needs big developers and a lot of cash. With the right people leading it and the right people behind it, a Discworld game could be something incredibly special. As much as I love being an indie and playing indie games, if I ever got a chance to work on a game like this, to help craft a universe, I would abandon my indieness instantly. Maybe I’m a traitor.
