Press Pass: Going Indie
Is the game press paying enough attention to obscure games from independent developers? Press Pass investigates.
11/24/2008 8:42 PM | 8 Comments | Page 2 of 3
Carroll sees a distressing level of groupthink around which games get coverage and attention. "There is definitely a lot of peer pressure, for lack of a better phrase, to like the same types of games that everyone else likes in order to be a 'gamer,'" he says. "I like to think that the press is nobly above that, but that's really not the case. ... At best, when indie games are talked about on game news sites, there is a cautious tone, as if the writer isn't quite sure how the audience is going to react. Typically the writer approaches the task as though they are trying to convince you of something."
Indie games like
Braid have gotten glowing blanket coverage, but what other indie gems are being ignored?
Of course, there are exceptions. Indie games like
Braid,
Everyday Shooter and
World of Goo, to name but a few, have broken out of obscurity thanks largely to glowing coverage from the press. These success stories, though, can help obscure how shallow the indie coverage is on most sites. "In the last half year I've seen people give a lot of attention to a few [indie] games, but less so to the second tier," Gillen says. Game Tunnel's Carroll agrees, calling out most sites' coverage for inconsistency. "Some games, like
Audiosurf, get noticed; others, like
The Spirit Engine 2, don't. ... Lots of sites will cover indie games with a few great articles in a month and then not mention anything for months."
Then again, it's somewhat understandable that many larger sites aren't putting indie games at the top of their coverage plans. "Indie games are sometimes indie because they are actually not that ... mainstream," says Simon Carless, publisher of Gamasutra and
Game Developer Magazine, and chairman of the Independent Games Festival. "So it's natural that some big sites, especially sites that review games, might not be covering them as a first choice."
But this sort of reluctance to cover indie games has a huge effect on the publishers themselves. "The only way for most gamers to hear about Introversion games and to understand the premise of our games is to read reviews of them..." wrote Introversion's Chris Delay in a
recent forum post. "We've heard disturbing rumours from more than one source that major games websites are now cutting back on the number of games they review -- and it's [indie] games like
Multiwinia that are getting dropped because there will always be hundreds of bigger games. If this is true and is widespread (as we are starting to believe), it has grave repercussions for all indie developers who rely on press reviews as their primary form of publicity."
