Only purchasing/playing Indie titles for a year?

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

Gimpymoo

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After watching Micro Men (Have watched it a few times):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92

It made me remember how much more I used to enjoy gaming than I do now (Do not get me wrong, I still enjoy gaming) when games were born out of love and not just monetary gain. Developed by one or two guys in their bedroom/garage.

Remember when a game was so simplistic yet would have you hooked for months and still not complete the thing and you would STILL play it years later?

I think it would be an interesting journey and would probably open my eyes to much much more and would probably help me to reconnect with games again.

I still play Chuckie egg and Jet set Willy and those games have soul, something which many of the AAA releases nowadays are missing in my opinion along with the trend towards making games "accessible", whatever happened to dumping you into a game world and just having to "figure it out"? Maybe I am chasing something which does not exist and is purely a distant memory, fogged over by time, but I do not think that is the case.

So, can it be done?

Purchase and play ONLY Indie titles for a whole year?

Would be nice to do I think and would probably save me a few quid as well while in no way being less fun, infact, would probably be a nice adventure :)

If I did, maybe blog about it? Even have live streams of play throughs for giggles :)

I know many will think "big woop" but I think for a core gamer to go "No AAA games for me" is surely a big thing?
 
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Its an interesting concept but where do you draw the line with an Indie title?

there are quite a few "small dev team" games that get released, I mean what actually dictates what an Indie title is?

Intersting idea though and I can see where you are coming from. Also if you make a sucessfull blog/website with well constructed reviews maybe indie devs will give you game samples for free to review?
 
Good idea and easily doable i would say loads of quality indie titles out there,hell frozen synapse is so good i'm still playing that at least one night a week still
 
I would say an Indie title would be a game made and published by the same person/dev team.

Steam is a distribution method not a publisher.

Kimbie
 
Interesting idea, but for me.. No. I couldn't do it.

While the number of superb indie games seems to rise all the time, I still wouldn't want to miss out on the big name franchises that I enjoy.

If I just think of what I potentially would have missed this year, Portal 2, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, GoW3, Deus Ex and so on... I love indie games, but I just wouldn't want to live solely on them. :(
 
Would witcher 1 and 2 count as an Indie title though ? I mean it was a small dev team.

But theres no way I could do it tbh as mentioned above me would have missed quite a few games I have really enjoyed. Same with next year tbh, games like Diablo 3 and Mass Effect 3 I am really looking forward to and I would not want to miss them.

That said I do still remember playing Sonic 2 for the first time on my Sega Mega Drive and just having soooo much fun. When you look at the orginal Sonic games they are sooo basic in concept but it was fun. Now a days games are still fun and really good but for me in different ways. I like having a story to dive into, I like interesting characters without those things I tend to lose interest quite quickly. Where as Sonic had no real story (ok there was sort of but come on :p ) and the characters were not exactly interesting (just pretty damm cool).
 
@ OP

Trouble is as times as moved on gaming is no longer about those 2 guys in the basement creating stuff, its a mainstream form of entertainment media and a multi billion dollar industry so naturally its gone the way of music/movie media

The new star wars game people have been talking about... estimated 300 million pumped into it as of 2010, who knows what their total spends will be... you associate that sort of cash with movies

I love the star wars IP and I don't want that game to fail, but I do think the only way the gaming sector is going to get the wake up call it needs is for one of those overbudget productions to flop bigtime

Its a bit like putting some pink floyd on and thinking "ah, real music" when you compare the past/present eras

The trouble with indie developers is when they do hit a goldmine they get pressured into selling up to one of the big companies anyway

And then you get the ones that simply end up slacking... i mean what the hell happenned to team17 between 2000-2010 because their last few years of releases have been an absolute slap in the face to the very gamers that helped make them a household name for a time
(look at the console ports of alien breed, worms series on PC when they launched)

I really miss the likes of bullfrog/westwood pre-ea... when bullfrog were absorbed EA simply pulled the plug on a bunch of the IP's just like that, 10-15 years on people still play many of their games... hell GOG is making its bread off of re-releasing those titles, they just re-released populus 2 today for a couple quid

And it bugs me when I see timeless classics like syndicate rebooted as yet
another bloody first person shooter (not saying its a bad game, but still)

The stark truth is that in many ways, the indie developers are a bit like gamings version of the x-factor

I almost never really pay full whack for AAA releases anymore, with age comes patience and the satisfaction of a good deal, so I tend to leave it to sales.. which with the digital distribution boom are regular as rain

I don't mind buying indie titles that interest me but honestly when I get that bored I simply mod my older games to run instead.. and with GOG theres a big enough pool :D
 
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The last game I played that gave me that old feeling (the old C64/Vic20/Amiga type-feeling) was Killing Floor - not particularly polished, but it felt fun, and it was a simple concept - I still go back to it every now and then
 
What would be classified as "Indie" though as in essence, Valve are Indie are they not?

What would the criteria be as the term "indie" is rather broad.

yes, I know I am going to miss out on some great games but that is part of the fun - lol
 
I'm working through my steam list atm as a challenge. Indie ones I've played are "And yet it moves" - that was awesome (play it). Now I'm playing "Aquaria" and still and a quarter of the way through I think.

(Yeh I've not got very far).
 
this would be interesting to do, its a shame youve only thought of it now though as this past year has been superb for indie's :cool:
i hope the year to come is as good so you can record it all!
 
I've got my main games for the year really, so will be hoping to pickup a few indie bargains in the Christmas steam sale.

Haven't really given them the attention they deserve, considering some of the fantastic releases this year.
 
Gimpymoo said:
What would be classified as "Indie" though as in essence, Valve are Indie are they not?

What would the criteria be as the term "indie" is rather broad.
Click to expand...

I suppose technically Valve are an "indie" developer if you take the literal "independent" meaning.

To me, it means low budget, small team, and community driven. :)
 
Arma 2 is one of if not the best indie game i have ever played and Rfactor/iracing comes a close second.

Arma 2 is still yet to be beaten as a FPS game and Rfactor/iracing make forza/GT series look like mario kart
 
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