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People who don't play indies...why?

If you don't play indies , do you ever feel like you are missing out?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 16.9%
  • No

    Votes: 74 83.1%

  • Total voters
    89

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
There’s not a lot of indie in those titles, baby.

Bookmarking this for when Starfield releases. 💋
Starfield will either consume all my time like Morrowind, or have me bouncing out after a few hours like Fallout 4. Hoping they can get back to what I loved about Bethesda games.
 

tommib

Member
Starfield will either consume all my time like Morrowind, or have me bouncing out after a few hours like Fallout 4. Hoping they can get back to what I loved about Bethesda games.
True words. I spent like 200 hours on fallout 3 with all the DLC back in the day. I didn't last more than a couple of hours on Fallout 4 and traded it in as soon as I could to get as much money back as possible. The weirdest thing. Wishing all the best to Starfield.
 

kuncol02

Banned
Most people here don't play indies, even those that claim they do.
Because if you have a publisher backing your *development* (Devolver, Microsoft, Humble Bundle, tinyBuild, etc) then you're not "indie" at all.

I guess you could consider "indie developers" those that develop their own games without funding, and then get a pulishing deal.
But I would likely call those "semi-independent", because without the publisher doing the marketing, PR and localization they would probably not get as far.

I guess there are very few "true" indie developers in the world left, and they probably are the ones that make freeware games.
Doesn't your definition make Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3 and Fortnite indie games?
 
I suppose it depends on what you view as indie, I generally just play what looks interesting so could be anything to me. Most of the stuff folk proclaim to be indie these days though seem to be bigger budget releases than something like Earth Defence Force from a AA studio, to me an actual indie game would be kinda like something found at places like itch.io
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
The time I have to play games is way too limited so I don't play anything other than games I really enjoy.
And what I really enjoy are epic AAA single player titles like God of War Ragnarok or coop games with friends. If there's a nice coop game that happens to be an Indie I'll play it, but that doesn't happen very often.

I think the last indie game I played was Haven with my wife.
 

HTK

Banned
Been playing vampire survivor non stop and it's been genuinely one of the best games I ever played giving Elden Ring, my current favorite game of all time a run for its money as GOTY. But being an over head pixel indie I know while many people who will play it many more will skip it. So if you are someone who only plays games by major publishers do you ever feel like you are missing out on something or are you content with AAA games or games from major publishers only?
I wouldn't mind playing indies but they never appeal to me. It's always some wacky art with weird gameplay elements that turn me off. I'm actually surprised how they're able to keep producing things I have 0 interest in, you would think one would strike a cord. I guess it's just different type of audience.
 

22•22

NO PAIN TRANCE CONTINUE
Ah, a Nintendo fan that knows all about bad graphics.

Awkward Cricket GIF
 
At least the really popular ones, I never end up liking them. Celeste, Gris, Fez etc...the whole internet was raving about them and I found every single one boring and with minimal story so I just gave up on even trying them because more than half of it is some hipster bs and nowadays I don't know if theres an indie game that isn't rogue-lite which I know some people adore. To me its just lazy design.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Just never got anything started aside from a few cornball titles on Steam. I'll take recommendations for Switch.
 
I feel empathy for kids who can't understand the paradigm of actors who slum it in the dumb-ass movies that make bank, so they have the capital to make great movies that flop. You will never get another, "The Thing," "Jacob's Ladder," or, "In the Mouth of Madness".

Those days are over, if it's not commercialized garbage it isn't fucking getting made.

Cherish indies for what they are, or throw them away, those are your choices.
 

Macattk15

Member
I'm 39. I have a full time job. There are just too many of them and the quality of many of them are just subpar.

I don't have time to wade fully into that ocean.

Hades and Valheim were probably the last indies I played ... so I do check out the highly regarded.
 
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nkarafo

Member
I only play a selected few.

The issue with most indies IMO is a combination of shitty production values + try hard art designs and narrative. Many indie games even have interesting art designs but pretty much all of them use crappy tools to make the job cheap and easy. Like how almost all 2D games use vectorized graphics and that abhorrent skeletal animation style, similar to mobile games or free adobe flash games in the past.

The "retro" pixellated graphics style you often see is even worse. Old games did not look like that. Nobody had a 4K OLED screen in the 80's/90's. The low res CRT TVs would filter those pixels in a certain way developers expected and made the graphics accordingly. Imagine the CRT screen as the final layer that completes the intended look. Indie games that use this style look more like these old games being played unfiltered on emulators + HD screens. It shows how the devs themselves are too young to know how these games really looked on a CRT and only use that art style because retro is trendy nowadays.
 

TonyK

Member
I play only the most praised ones, but even the best of them can't compare with something like God of War. Usually their gameloop is fun but production values are so low compared with AAA, that they have almost no impact on me. Also, a lot of them feel pedantic to me. I rather prefer a Mario game than Celeste. I don't need a symbolic story that try too hard to touch my heart, I want a good looking, well designed fun game.

The last indie games I played are Hades, Celeste, Death Door, Dead Cells... Good games but for a 10 hours max. The indie games I would want are more in the line of something like Kena. More AA, not so 2D and low production values.

I played Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX, Nintendo, Atari games... I don't need to revive that time again.
 
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Sophist

Member
I have definitely spent most of my gaming time on indies. Counter-strike, dota, day of defeat, and Minecraft already count for +15 000 hours.
 

odhiex

Member
I pretty much refuse to even acknowledge they exist. Every time I'm made aware of them, they seem like cheap ripoffs by individuals looking to get easy money with nostalgia bait and extremely cheap game production. There are the rare exceptions worth playing (eg Hotline Miami) but I'm not sifting through dozens of games a day on Steam just to find a diamond in the rough.
Damn...more than 6000 games released on Steam in the first half of this year? A sea of shovelwares indeed, just to find a handful of diamonds.
 
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Soodanim

Member
No one refuses to play indies like it's some sort of moral or ethical issue. If you put a new game in front of someone, they wouldn't ask how big the dev team was before they picked the controller up. Fun is fun.

Finding indies is a different story, and is no different to any product on the market. That's why forums, Steam groups, and various other things are useful: a collective helps separate the wheat from the chaff.
 

jigglet

Banned
call of duty? it never was an indie, it was a huge project by old devs from medal of honor and funded by activision.

I was being facetious. Because some of the games here being posted as "indie" are a fucking joke lol. If you're going to call them indie then I get to call all the marvel films indie
 
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Sophist

Member
I was being facetious. Because some of the games here being posted as "indie" are a fucking joke lol. If you're going to call them indie then I get to call all the marvel films indie
I played those games when they were made by dudes in their bedroom. counter strike was made by two college students. dota by one dude and a few volunteers, it was a map for warcraft 3. Minecraft started with Notch alone; when i bought the game, i had to sent money on Notch's paypal. It was his personal account, not a professional one; He eventually got blocked for receiving too much money. All these game are big franchises now but they started as small amateurish projects.
 
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Doom85

Member
I feel empathy for kids who can't understand the paradigm of actors who slum it in the dumb-ass movies that make bank, so they have the capital to make great movies that flop. You will never get another, "The Thing," "Jacob's Ladder," or, "In the Mouth of Madness".

Those days are over, if it's not commercialized garbage it isn't fucking getting made.

Yeah, shame there’s not an entire movie/TV company that……oh wait.
whPUqPV.jpg
 

Humdinger

Member
If you are someone who only plays games by major publishers, do you ever feel like you are missing out on something or are you content with AAA games or games from major publishers only?

I wouldn't say I'm "content" with just AAA games, because I'm disappointed in the trends and only want to play a few of them. However, my gaming is occupied almost entirely of AAA games. This was not always true. In the past, I enjoyed a number of indies (e.g., Journey, Edith Finch).

I'm not sure what has changed, exactly. I can point to a couple of possibilities:

1. It is harder to discover quality indies than quality AAA games. AAA games are heavily marketed, widely discussed, and get plenty of attention. Indies don't. I have done searches for "best indies," but this doesn't seem to have helped much. The featured indies just don't appeal to me.

2. 95% of indies just don't do it for me. I look through stacks of games but come up empty.

3. Indie games often seem overpriced relative to their content. I've often felt burnt by my purchase, because there is no way to get a refund or sell the game used. I just have to swallow the loss, even if I've only played an hour of it and decided it's not for me. GamePass would come in handy here, but I don't own an Xbox or a capable PC.
 

peronmls

Member
Eh there are just online 2d or side scrollers. I like a company team better. They seem to have more polish in all aspects even when the game is shitty. I just do not care for game like Ori or Hollow Knight. Or 3d games like FallGuys or Rocket League. These games just give me the most unappealing taste in my mouth. Do not know why. Simplistic? Horror is really bad in the indie community as well. At that point I rather just stick with Capcom, valve devs. Veterans.
 

Barrico82

Banned
They feel 3 Generations behined, I hate the 16 bit pixel art style, What i Enjoyed is mostly a Modernized game that i Played when i was a Kid in the 80s like the ( arcade plane games) Or metroidvenia

However i Have to admit Hollow knight is a Fantastic game and one of the best games that i Have ever played.

And as we are in the subject i Am open to suggestions, But not FPS i Have motion sickness
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Indies are fine - and I do play at least some of them - but most are callbacks to the 8bit-16bit era and arent 1/10th the games they are trying to emulate.
Better off just (re)playing the classics.
 

OuterLimits

Member
Oops, wrong topic. But hey since I'm here.


Indies such as Darkest Dungeon are fantastic. The problem is many Indies are similar In quality to the numerous awful very low budget horror movies you find on streaming services like Amazon or Tubi.(and for some reason many of these movies have Tony Todd in them) ..
 
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yansolo

Member
i dont have time for games much anymore and only play the indies considered special like hades and hollow knight for example, too many of them to play for me
 

KiteGr

Member
I used to snob at indies...
They are often hard to find
I played the ocaisonal left and right, but I couldn't get over the cheapness, and how hard it is to find them in a Non-digital form.
That's until I found on a closing video store a copy of Hollow Knight for the PS4!

I fucking LOVED that game! I've been trying to recapture it's feeling ever since, with various level of success.
The clossest I've come to finding something similar was Iconoclast, Blasphemous, Axiom Verge and perhaps the Blaster Master remakes, where I would research videos of the lore and the tricks you can do, long time after I finished them.
I've also found new favorites in Monster Boy, Risk or Rain 2, Subnautica, Guakamelee, Hades, Inside, Little Nightmares, River City Girls, Shantae and the Pirate's curse, Indivisible, and Griss among many others.
Needless to say I'm now religiusly collecting Physical copies of them wherever I can find them.

So...
To unser the Poll question.
No... ....until Yes.
 
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