Indie games and reviews: are they overpraised?

The Game Room
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From the GamerGate thread:

Okay, so here we go: are indie games frequently praised more for what they attempt, even if they fail at executing it? If this is true, is it fair? One one hand, indie games can’t be expected (in general) to have the production values of Assassin’s Creed. On the other hand, there are definitely well polished, tight indie games like Super Meat Boy or Bastion that both attempt something and undeniably succeed at what they set out to do.

I think the viewpoint has some merit. However, this is all a bit subjective. For instance, I think Gone Home is a good example of an artsy indie game that tries and succeeds. Anna, on the other hand, is linear, meandering, and is just generally a mess that tries too hard to be symbolic. Both are frequently praised for their artistic nature, however.

That said critical reviews seem to reflect this. Anna: Extended Edition is sitting in the mid-70s on Metacritic, while Gone Home has an 86. Other examples of “terrible artistic indie games” like Continue?987654321 seem to have very poor critical scores, which throws doubt that reviewers are giving it a pass.

I will note that, anecdotally, I’ve seen a certain contingent of gamers that will bend over backwards to defend anything that tries to be arty – especially if it uses fake Atari graphics or something. But it’s hard to prove the prevalence of these people either way.

I think that, in general, the gaming media isn’t willing to give bad indie games a pass, even if there is a market segment that is. In fact, after looking up a bunch of scores for this post, I’ve found that generally the metascores for indie games are around where they probably should be. Whereas the metascores for AAA games are overinflated. If anything, the gaming press seems far more willing to give mediocre AAA games a pass than it does indie games.

Just a note:
Do not use Depression Quest as an example. Regardless of whether you think as a game it’s worth defending or attacking, the extra baggage that comes with it makes it hard to analyze in this way without a pissing match happening.

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Personally, I think Bastion is the perfect example of what you’re talking about. Bastion is a pretty good action RPG. Not earth-shattering, but definitely above average. However, it got all those GOTY awards because it killed it with its vocal presentation. The voiceover narration is fantastic and the music is so awesome that I listen to the soundtrack CD regularly. But taken as a whole, it’s still just a slightly above average action RPG. Personally, I think it’s status as an indie game (and the unique audio stuff it attempted) were what put it in the GOTY discussion. And I firmly believe that if Ubisoft or Activision or somebody had developed and published it, Bastion would just be another cult XBLA game.

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Edit: Aw, crap, I just saw the note saying not to use DepressionQuest as an example. Post removed. SOrry!

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On-topic:

For myself, if a game experiments with the form in some way, that’s automatically in its favor. If it’s a terrible failure of an experiment, I can still be glad someone tried it out, because the nature of experimenting is that you’re not playing it safe, and that means lots of experiments are terrible failures. I’d rather have a lot of experiments with a few wild successes and a ton of abject failures than to have everyone play it safe.

So if a game is lousy and plays it safe, I’ll have nothing good to say about the game; but if it’s lousy and takes risks, I can easily appreciate the risk-taking separate from thinking the risks didn’t work out in this case.

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I definitely agree that the shortcomings of indie games are overlooked when it comes to reviews. For example, you have Towerfall Ascension with a metascore of 87 or something. No doubt it’s a fun game with fun graphics, but you know, it’s pretty simple. That the PC version doesn’t have IP connectivity is laughable. It isn’t really an 87 in the same sense that The Witcher 2 is an 88 or New Vegas is an 86. I think people generally understand that indie games are reviewed in the context of what they set out to do instead of compared to the gaming field as a whole.

So while I agree that reviewers aren’t willing to give a bad indie a pass, I don’t think they’re using the same definitely of “bad” as you’d find with other titles. It’s only their execution, instead of their entire feature set as well. NHL '15 is getting slammed for missing the features of previous games, but it’s probably a pretty solid game for what is there. As much so as Towerfall, at least.

The “Games as art” stuff is when things are completely thrown out the window. You have something like Proteus that has a pretty solid metascore and some GOTY titles… while other people are debating if it’s even a game. People used to say that graphics didn’t matter and it’s gameplay that counts. Now there are some people who seem to think that neither graphics or gameplay matter.

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I’m one of the guys who screens indie pitches for PlayStation. I’d much rather be pitched a game that’s crazy original (but that’s kind of jacked-up and broken) than a competently-executed game that does nothing new.

Here’s something I tweeted back in July: “I want there to be SO MUCH that I don’t feel compelled to overlook flaws in WHAT IS just because I’m thankful it exists AT ALL.”

I’m not going to say what indie game I was playing at the time. (Not Depression Quest.)

There’s some interesting stuff right now that’s being made on an absolute shoestring. Teams of one or two people working nights and weekends. And a lot of time it’s rough around the edges – cool ideas, wonky execution. The thing is, if we ever want there to be enough stuff that we can afford to be brutal about critique, we need to grow the scene. There needs to be a bigger market so that more indie teams can afford to work full time / hire more people / hit a higher quality bar. And if we’re going to grow the scene we need to not stomp on the little green shoots that are just poking up out of the ground. That doesn’t mean giving indie games a pass. It means being able to review a game as a collection of parts, good and bad. “Unfortunately the execution of this game is kind of poor. However they’re also trying something really brave and new so you might want to check it out anyway. Caveat emptor.” That’s a good sort of critique. That’s the sort of review that can help a tiny team to find a tiny audience and bootstrap themselves to something better down the line.

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I have never understood the love for Bastion. The voiceovers and music are very good but the gameplay is boring and the story is a mess IMHO. If I didn’t get it in a bundle I would have never spent money on it and would never recommend it.

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Indie-made games that try something new get a boost to their reviews. This because getting to play something new is enjoyable to many players and because reviewers understand that when you’re blazing a trail, you don’t have the accumulated knowledge of well-trod paths to draw upon.

Indie-made games that don’t try something new seldom get a review at all.

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Ain’t that the truth.

[deletes YET ANOTHER email from a random PR touting a new match-3 puzzler for iOS]