GDC 2013: How DIY Indie Game Development is gaining ground

ne of the biggest issues currently facing the video games industry isn’t with the lacking of video game coverage, but rather the types of games we’re actively covering. We have numerous individuals crafting their own ideas for what they feel video games could truly be, yet we never hear enough about them.

Luckily, we see more outlets shifting focus towards more indie developers and projects, which opens entirely new realms of opportunity in the world of video gaming. One entire website, for instance, even showcases some of the best independent games currently available for download: Free Indie Games.

Indie developers Terry Cavanagh and Porpentine, two curators of the website, highlighted some of their personal favorite indie titles at a presentation paying tribute to these developers and their work. Whether it be in the world of gaming or concepts involving real life endeavors, Cavanagh described how each game conveys an amazing sense of the authors experience.

“We simply present the work and let the author and game speak for itself,” said Cavanagh.

As Cavanagh and Porpentine continued speaking, they mentioned multiple favorites of theirs on the game referencing website. Among the first highlighted titles was Merrit Kopa’s Lim, a seemingly simplistic game about the nature of harsh exclusion in society when two subcultures clash. As Porpentine describes on her website, it’s a game about dread, violence, and suffocation in passing.

As players move a dot along narrow channels on the screen, other square dots have the ability to push it around and even force it out of the main level grid entirely, causing players to be without resources and cut off from everyone. Essentially, this is the digital equivalent of what transgendered and other oppressed individuals experience in their daily lives.

As the indie festivities commenced, another title which stood out was I’m Scared, a game toting primitive graphics that basically exists to deceive players and scare them stupid. In the showcased demo, an individual could be seen flipping out at every single little thing that appeared on the screen at any given time. The overall premise of the game offered what it promised in the title: Scaring players to convey emotions of uncertainty and restlessness. Of all the emotional demos showcased at this panel, I’m Scared certainly wins the “literally got the point across” award.

One of our personal favorites, Goblet Grotto from Harmony Videogames, conveyed the overall emotions involved with playing video games back when every critical detail didn’t matter.

So here’s what we’ve got: As we watched the video of a frog knight exploring a three-dimensional open world and hearing frog croak “runes” flash on the screen for no apparent reason at all, we had no idea what was happening. God, it was amazing. It’s absolutely true, too. When some of us started playing video games, we didn’t care what we were doing; we simply enjoyed being, in a way, lost and confused. The colors and sounds were all that mattered, and that’s really the experience Goblet Grotto offers players.

One of the final titles, Live Forever from Hubol Hubol Hubol, also proves that the most simple games can be the most entertaining. As the official website states, “This game is about something!” Sure is, and it’s (literally) a blast as players discover.

Live Forever basically starts with a gender and sexual orientation, and must navigate through a field of objects in order to scope out... well, porn. If you find the wrong type of porn based on your orientation, you vomit. Find the right type of porn and you’ll... as stated above, have a “blast.”

After the two developers discussed each highlighted game at the panel, Porpentine closed by discussing how we simply must change the rules of games journalism in order to help the industry evolve.

“It’s not that exciting and innovative games don’t come out every day,” said Porpentine. “It’s that they’re not being covered sufficiently. they’re not being recognized.”