Selling Out and Going Indie

The crux of this post is going to depend on whether or not you consider Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night to be an indie game.  I do, basically, since Kickstarter helped it exist (resoundingly), and it’s not as if it’s the product of one of the big companies like EA or Activision.  I mean, it’s here specifically because a well-known company in the industry (Konami) either would have rejected it preemptively, or actively resented its potential existence to the point where the heads -- in their unfathomable wisdom -- let Castlevania mastermind Koji Igarashi escape from their employ.

Mostly, I just want to call it an indie game because it’d give me the chance to lump it together with some of the other games I’ve been playing (not named Smash Bros. Ultimate).  Namely, Katana Zero and VA-11 HALL-A.  Also, it’ll be easier for me to use it as a paddle with which to whoop the backside of the modern, big-budget, AAA game industry.  As if they weren’t whooping themselves already.

Let’s be fair before the paddling commences.  Even if the companies with the biggest names, brands, workforces, pools of resources, and pockets tend to skew toward evil, there are times when they’re a necessary evil.  I mean, look at Disney.  The house of mouse is doing its damnedest to own everything under the sun (and also the sun), and while their tactics toward world domination rely heavily on nostalgia-baiting and franchise bombardment, their products -- I’d argue, at least -- still manage to qualify as quality art.  Granted we’ll see if I’ll eat my words once Toy Story 4 drops in full, because I’m not entirely sure why that movie exists besides nostalgia bait, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut at least before that we got Toy Story 3.  Star Wars is still making a ton of people happy, so that it doesn’t have to end on the prequel trilogy.  Resident MCU apologist that I may be, it has a globe-spanning fanbase for a reason.

The saying goes that “money is the root of all evil”, which is true in more cases than there are people on this planet.  But pragmatically speaking, you have to use money to do pretty much all of the things -- especially if you want to do them well.  So as easy as it is to begrudge the big boys out there for their bulging bags of bucks, in the right hands that money goes to good use.  You think Nintendo kept the purse strings tight to make Breath of the Wild?  I doubt it.  At most, they only spent less relative to AAA developers surpassing the GDP of small countries just to launch one game.  Yet we don’t begrudge Nintendo, the Zelda team, or their latest game (for now).  Why?  Because it was good.

Effort, talent, creativity, ambition.  When you mix those four together, you get art.  That’s what the best providers in the entertainment industry understand.  When you don’t mix those four together, or even have one on tap, then…well…

As of writing, we’re hot off of E3 2019.  I’m sure there are still plenty of people out there riding high from the residual fumes.  I can’t say I’m one of them; my approach to the big event this year is to maintain casual awareness of some of the big stuff (and memes) while picking and choosing so that the content that does interest me makes it to my eyeballs.  Hey, guess what?  It works for me.  Now I don’t have to waste time ramming my face into my monitor to see every individual second of every individual conference -- which, thankfully, has spared me of sitting through anything EA-branded.  Hard to believe I haven’t touched anything with their logo since a thirty-minute test run of Battlefield 4.

I guess I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t care about that stuff anymore -- not even for the sake of griping about it in a blog post…besides this one, I mean.  Am I down for something like Cyberpunk 2077?  Oh, absolutely, with or without Keanu Reeves, because I feel like I can trust the devs to put out a good game.  Am I even going to give Watch Dogs: Legion a glance?  Not a chance.  Even if you ignore Ubisoft’s less-than-stellar business practices, I’m convinced we’re only at a third game in the franchise is because 1) franchises are king, 2) too many people bought the first, and terrible, game out of goodwill/curiosity/low information to ward them off from the mediocrity, and 3) franchises are king.

Last Ubisoft game I played: the For Honor beta.  Take that as you will.

I don’t want to automatically dump on these big-name, big-budget games, because I know there are real, good, honest people who have to slave away -- literally -- in order to put these endeavors out in the wild.  Sometimes I wish I could pull them out of the prisons the industry has locked them up inside, so that they could be free to work on their passion/dream projects.  I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these guys aren’t exactly enthused to work on the next Call of Duty.

I mean, just look at the AAA industry.  Look at it.  Different strokes for different folks, sure, but so much of it to me is so wearisome that I can’t even summon the energy to look in its direction.  Oh, hey, Borderlands 3 has a billion guns or whatever!  Too bad I don’t give a toss about loot, and the previous game’s humor made me want to twist my brain like a wet dish rag.  Oh, hey, Gears of War 5 is…going to exist at some point?  Too bad I mentally checked out after 3.  Oh hey, I’m tired of this gag and don’t feel like scrolling through the other E3 news, so I’ll just offset it by being excited for Astral Chain.  That’s how much faith I have in a not-insignificant chunk of the game industry right now.

Some companies have done, and will continue to do good work.  But these days, it’s more like “guilty until proven innocent”.  And can you blame me?  After the live service debacle that was Anthem, EA may or may not be hoping to try again with more (?) success with Dragon Age 4, even though Inquisition made me tap out hard.  After the world premiere of Squeenix’s Avengers game and promises of not having loot boxes or P2W guff, news came out that there would still be microtransactions.  Whoops!  And not to be outdone, EA’s back at it again by trying to claim that loot boxes are ethical, fun “surprise mechanics”.  Not for any particular game, but just in general.  Yeah, how about you play Overwatch for 2 years and grind out boxes just to get the one skin you want before the event that unlocks them in the first place goes away?  Nothing says “surprise” like a “fuck you” in a box.

Far be it from me to play armchair CEO (because my chair doesn’t even have arms), but these big developers have no clue what they’re doing.  Chasing trends, chasing dead-end trends, homogenization, bloated budgets, needless features, questing for money, questing for more money, breaking games over their knees just to squeeze out a few extra pennies -- it’s so much so often, and the games themselves have suffered as a result.   We’ve had so many cautionary tales over the years, but the lessons haven’t stuck to the people that matter.  Now the industry might as well be a parody of itself.  Why did Capcom try to sell us an $8000 jacket?  Why is Shenmue III, another Kickstarter Cinderella story, screwing over a decent chunk of its backers by staying locked behind the substandard Epic Games store?  Why would Squeenix outsource the remake to one of the most important games in history to a company whose track record for gameplay is well below par, and then run that decision back, which could only negatively affect the development cycle?

I would say that the answer to all of those questions and more is “money”.  Maximizing profits while minimizing costs.  But the way these guys run their businesses?  It’s more like they hate money.  To quote Pat from Castle Super Beast, companies exist to create value.  And they’re not.  Nowadays, there are so many games and so many companies that make me ask “how are they going to fuck it up?” because that’s exactly what they’ve done in the past.  And they’ll do it again.  They’ll sell out for the sake of profits that aren’t even guaranteed because they’re too busy vying for the sake of profits.  It makes them suffer.  It makes their employees suffer.  It makes the games suffer.  It makes us suffer.

And sometimes, I don’t want to deal with that.  Therefore…

It’s WAY too early for me to say anything substantial about Bloodstained, but I’m having fun with it.  I’m intrigued by it.  I want to play it more.  The cynic in me says that my appreciation of it just stems from my fond memories of playing/clearing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow -- to the point where a decent chunk of my time spent so far was while wielding a massive axe, just like I did with Soma’s big adventure -- but at least I have appreciation.  Pared down to basics?  Yes, it’s just another Castlevania.  Guess what?  Castlevania is good.  Even if I’m only two hours in, the prospects of this game are exciting.  Exploring a castle.  Surviving one near-death encounter after another.  Building a character that suits my tastes to the letter.  Using the accessories given to make Miriam into the ultimate waifu…as one would.

There was always the question in the back of my mind over whether or not Bloodstained would actually be good.  As part of the trinity of fan-supported spiritual successors, I wondered if it would share the same fate as Mighty No. 9 and Yooka-Laylee.  Right now, it looks like I didn’t have to worry at all.  Even if Metroidvania-types are pretty common these days, getting a fresh installment from one of the genre kingpins is a sweet fortune.

On one hand, I wonder if indie devs ever feel constrained by the limits of their financial status.  Art through adversity can always help them excel, but there’s an alternate universe version of these guys who make entirely different games because they have a bigger pool of resources.  Are there a multitude of indie platformers out there because of a genuine desire to put them out there?  Or is it because their makers have to commit to realistic standards and constraints, thus pushing their real dream games back into the darkest corners of their brains?  Who knows?

On the other hand?  The more time passes, the starker the difference between indie and AAA development gets.  Even if the latter has incredible amounts of money, resources, and power, they’re the ones that end up getting chained to the ground -- by shareholders, by investors, by the threat of financial collapse, by their own second-guessing on trivial matters.  I look at a decent-sized chunk of modern games, and I see titles that are practically scared of their own shadow -- too afraid to say, do, or be anything besides safe, predictable, and familiar.  Functional.  Workmanlike. 

Then I look, like, four feet to my left, and I see the party that’s going on with the indies.

Katana Zero is short, but it’s so damn good.  It’s a 2D side-scroller, but its core gameplay mechanic transforms it into a powerful experience.  It’s done strictly in 2D (barring under-the-hood technical wizardry), but the presentation and animation quality are top-notch -- to the point where some of its more brutal scenes are genuinely unnerving despite them happening to masses of pixels.  There isn’t even a hint of multimillion-dollar casting or performance capture, but the story told here kept me motivated from start to finish.  I’d do a lengthier post on it if I wasn’t afraid of the possibility that my “beating the game” was just me getting a BAD END instead of the true ending.

Then there’s the self-proclaimed “cyberpunk bartender action” game, VA-11 HALL-A, whose title I’m only just now managing to type correctly without reference.  On a surface level?  As a game, its level of interactivity is minimal; you won’t need split-second reflexes or one-frame links to succeed here.  The tradeoff is that the writing here shines like a diamond in the sun, with a good cast, a developing world, witty conversations, and genuine laughs to be had.  I legitimately can’t think of another game that’s (intentionally) made me have a laughing fit, but this one did it once Streaming-Chan made her debut.  Even if I haven’t finished it yet, I’m already sitting here going “Sequel when?”

I’ve been playing games since I could tie my shoes.  That means, naturally, I’ve been following and investing myself in them for ages now -- so I’ve seen the highs and lows offered across the medium’s history.  These days?  Boy, are there some lows.  The worst part about it is that a lot of problems the industry faces are self-inflicted wounds.  It wouldn’t surprise me if I booted up my computer one day and read in a headline that the whole thing crashed.  I know that that wouldn’t happen the same way it did in 1983, but still.  The effort AAA games are putting in (such as it is) is unsustainable, and something has to give.

Meanwhile, the big guys are barely even aware that the game has changed in the wake of indie devs and their sterling titles.  To be fair, not all of them are critical darlings or heroes worthy of praise, but when they’re on point, they’re on point -- and they have the opportunity to do so.  While they’re also in it to make a profit, it’s with these smaller teams and efforts that I feel the drive -- the desire to make art, and not just a product.  I can respect that.  And it’s because they’ve earned that respect that I don’t feel the need to give them the stink-eye just for existing.  I would sooner trust the little guys with major projects and brands than some of the big guys…which, given the Sonic games, might be entirely justified. 

This would usually be the part when a writer better than I would feature a call to action -- something like “support indie devs” or “play more indie games”.  I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that, but I have a better way to end this post.  I can’t rightfully tell others what to do, so I’ll tell myself to do something instead.  From here on out, I’m making a commitment.  Knowing full well what’s out there -- old and new -- I’m going to put more of an effort, personally, to play those indie titles.  In a modern-day scenario where a lot of big-budget fare makes me more tired than excited, I’m ready for a change of pace.  Time for me to see the best this industry has to offer, rather than the worst.

And that’ll do it for now.  See you next time.