Indie games that aren’t so indie, and my profound dislike of steam blog - Luminesque

News

• I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution yesterday :/ <-- That’s my ambivalent face. Why? Well, the game looks great, but it’s yet another impulse purchase. I’ll try it when it finishes downloading, and then maybe post a review complaining and/or praising it.
• I also bought Cubemen
• My new game menu for Miner Warfare doesn’t look like it’s going be completed anytime soon. But that’s got nothing to do with the rest of my post.

Indie Games Aren’t Always Indie

What got me typing was my discovery of Cubemen. This little game has already successfully captivated me for several hours. I bought it yesterday for $1.99, mainly to support the developers. After trying it, I can seriously say it was worth it. I don’t expect it to keep me interested for more than a day or two, but considering the price, I don’t really mind.

But after playing it for a while, I’ve stepped back and re-assessed my view of the game. Originally, I thought it was an indie game, due to the price. But looks can be deceiving; this game is actually the top selling game on the Aus Mac store (read: not indie). The formula is almost identical to that of a phone app; the price is inversely proportional to sales. Having said that, it wasn’t listed on the Steam Top 100 Most Played Games, so I shouldn’t give it too hard a rap.

On the note of buying ‘indie’ games, I thought I’d share some thoughts about them. I have recently come to the conclusion that the term ‘indie’ (in relation to games) is quite often just marketing.

For instance, yesterday I considered buying a game called Overgrowth. Ever since I played Black Shades, I’ve been supporting Wolfire – a company I thought were truly small (and presented themselves as so). But again, I was wrong. As of 2010, Overgrowth has sold over 1658 pre-ordered copies at $29.95 each – assuming the price remained constant, they’ve made over $50,000 for a game that hasn’t even been released yet. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not what stopped me from buying it. I’m not a bitter hipster, or at least not a hipster (if in doubt, check my list of games in my first post), I just find myself constantly annoyed at the fact that I keep seeing people mistake successful companies as groups that ‘need the support’. In fairness to Wolfire, the world’s a very competitive place, and their just doing their best. I guess the real annoyance for me is coming back to them several years after originally stumbling across them and seeing that they’ve shifted their focus to making money.

Take Portal as another example (and rather extreme at that). When it came out, everyone was amazed at this indie game that was ‘just great’ and everyone needed to go support the developers. I nearly bought it, but I was too busy and kind of missed the boat [UPDATE: I actually bought Portal 2 on XBOX]. What annoys me is that nearly five years later I still hear people refer to it as an ‘indie game’, even though it would have sold more than 4 million copies by now. And for crying out loud the game was developed by a whole team working at Valve which has an annual turnover in the excess of several hundred million dollars! It’s like saying the The Sims or Counterstrike series are indie!

My point is games that are labelled ‘indie’ aren’t necessarily going unnoticed, and some customers are – I hate to use the expression – ‘sheep’ who’ll think any game is worth supporting given the right advertising. Cubemen might be indie, Overgrowth probably isn’t but there is no way on this green earth that Portal is an indie game. Anyone who’s serious about PC games (or at least more serious than me) will laugh at the thought of Valve being an indie publisher. But not everyone with a credit card is serious. Or smart.

My Profound Dislike of Steam

This brings me to my second point. I really, really, dislike Gabe Newell. Mostly because of my undying hatred of Steam (I’m slowly moving over to Origin and Desura), but also because of his I-don’t-give-a-sh-t mentality. (Haven’t noticed that? Keep reading). Let’s have a look at some of Steam’s key features:

• Users are always forced to update games before playing, regardless of whether they want to play online or not. Wait, what? Originally, there was a setting to disable this (not that it worked, or anything), but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared.
• Users are forced to go online TO PLAY OFFLINE. How the F--k does that even work?
• Steam downloads are ridiculously slow. I live near the city, and usually enjoy speeds of 500-5000Kb/s (depending on where I’m downloading from). But Steam never fails to impress me with its shitty 40kb/s (and changing my download region doesn’t help). [UPDATE: To be fair, I've hit 400kb/s on the rare occassion].
• Steam itself is ridiculously slow. It is the only program I have that takes more than five seconds to load (I once timed twenty something seconds), and more than five seconds to close.
• Of course, that’s not everything. There’s also more minor ‘features’ like the inability to uninstall things from steam or remove them from your lists (I’ve been stuck with a shortcut, even though I uninstalled the game), the games and tools that become unavailable at random (the Source SDK becoming unavailable with no reasons given), and the lack of support (I kid you not, I was redirected to the community forums once after asking why CS:S refused to launch after updating).

So that’s why I hate Steam, and therefore Newell. After all, who allowed those features to exist in the interest of making money? But what really gets me is the fact that he while he is the epitome of commercial success (and some would argue insatiability), he has the nerve to promote himself and his products as important but overlooked. Those comments I heard about Portal being an indie game, as stupid as they were, didn’t come from nowhere. And the $20 price tag of CS:S is nothing short of a statement. Just you wait; when CS:GO is released, it won’t be more than fifty dollars (actually that’s not a bad thing). [UPDATE: It's on sale for $15. Even cheaper than CSS. I rest my case]. But underneath this false exterior of affordability and competition with the large scale games (I’m talking about the CS series vs. COD/BF) is a corporate monster that doesn’t give two sh--s about the minority of game makers – not to mention customers.

Now that my rather long tirade had receded, I think I’ll go do something more productive. If you managed to read this wall of text, congradulations. If not, that’s ok, but don’t reply complaining until you've read it all. I'll leave you with some more pictures.

Lux

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Newell plays a 'prank' on a mod developer:

Yet another example of blatant self promotion:

_{"Appeals to the minority of gamers"
Half-life sold a good ten million copies and Portal four million. The people that like these games are hardly a minority. If the person who made this thinks they are part of this 'minority', good for them. They are now part of the growing number of people who think they're different, and are willing to part with their money to prove it. They are an ever increasing market, and a very ironic one at that.Yeah, he makes good games but that doesn't mean they need to idolise him. Also, he is fat, and no one cares. Why do they need to make such a big deal about it? Just enjoy the games. There's no need to promote him like an Apple fanboy. "He's not our hero", they say, but it certainly sounds like it.}

Steam gets hacked, offers a small popup for an apology: