วีดีโอ

"I don't like trying to define things". I bet that's "What is a woman" ptsd.

dave the diver went woke so it gone broke

No offense, but this could be a twenty minute video. You made your point early and then kinda kept on babbling. I guess you really needed Dave the Dive off your chest huh? XP

2m prior: Complains about Jonathan Blow being abrasive & bullheaded. 2m later: Complains about Stray being hand-holdy & cowardly. You cannot be in consensus with the herd & express your own thoughts at the same time. A lack of concern for the opinions & claimed emotions of others, especially those of the safety dance mainstream, is a requirement to do anything even remotely interesting.

As a developer, I can tell from the outside what happened with Dave The Diver. * Started as simple diving exploration game, targeting <$5 pricepoint & probably mobile * Early demos of the game got great feedback, largely from the art/presentation * Pivoted to bigger scope, higher price point, going all-in. Maximizing ROI. * Few ideas for adding depth to the gameplay to justify increased scope, so they added breadth with a kitchen sink full of grindy timesuck mini-games common to mobile game development. Without doing any research on the team, I strongly suspect they were primarily mobile game devs before this. * >80% of players never play more than the first few hours of the game, which has great presentation & the mechanics aren't worn out. Then they give it a great rating. This is a common problem with today's games, they're designed as throwaway junk food. Extremely front loaded. Extremely biased to favor the new player rather than creating depth for the veteran. It's a function of how games are monetized & distributed now. With distribution so much easier & price points so much more variable, also the size of development teams varying so much, a lot of games take this frontloaded approach because it works. It's very hard to keep someone engaged with fresh challenge & mechanics for 25 hours, but it's relatively easy to keep them engaged for 2.5 hours while creating the false impression that you're going to continue unlocking more mechanical depth to keep you engaged for 25h... even though that's not true and the curve flattens at 2.5h. It's essentially "mystery box design" as JJ Abrahms popularized in tv/film. An implied promise that everything is going somewhere that will be satisfying & feel important, but it never does, the creators never had the intention or even the ability to pay it off later. Since gaming has gone "mainstream" this kind of design is now one of of the primary formulas because it can appeal to the many, many millions of mainstream normies, hook them in with a strong beginning and strong presentation, then phone in the rest once they've already gotten the normie's money.

You dislike Jonathan Blow because he doesn’t have the correct ideology? 🤨

This video just gave me +758 critical thinking XP. Great work, I applaud it! You just gained yourself a new subscriber, it´s getting harder and harder to find people with an honest opinion that doesn´t sound like most out there, or is influenced by everyone elses, so... that made me smile, and I thank you for that. 🫂

personally i only consider a game "indie" if the devs own the game they made. Nintendo games aren't indie because only the executives can green light a project and only the producers have the creative control. Now i would give them points for treating their employees well and they are allowed to pitch their own ideas and i don't know why but sometimes Nintendo does feel like "AAA indie" but that's probably because they are pretty much the only AAA company left that still uses pixel art and makes games that indies are often inspired by

The last 10 minutes are kind of the essence of playing this game I think. You get presented all the bits and pieces (in the video you didnt even touch on all the reports you can read additionally or the convaluted sideobjectives that tell you a lot aout the world but try getting there without a guide) and you have to put it together yourself. Ig the media did just notice that Nitzsche was quoted and went ohh this is deep without looking further, cause thats just modern media. Nobody tries to look behind the surface. Therefore i really appreciate this video. I still like the game and it made me deep dive into its lore and world, so the bit at the end, that its going to devide the player base is likely what happened to me and I just happened to fall on the side of those that pushed through for some reason.

I must've been too spoiled by the decades of modern literary SF that considers consiouness transfer a solved problem. Whether a synthetic being in Blame!, a sobornost branch in Quantum Thief, or a prtial in Greg Bear's The Way, consciousness is tooled to travel bodies seamlessly, empowered to interface with tech beyond biological abilities, and even managed as a resourse, creating versions and reconciling them. All this without unnecessarily torturing the person in question. When a XXI game shoehorns you into the concept of 'consiousness copy = trolley problem' ,this just feels so immensely... *archic*. Disturbing? No, just incredibly out of touch. It's like looking at sexy photos of your grandma. This whole concept of juxtaposing VR/AI/mind upload/simulation with Suffering™ is so last century. Probably culminating in Iain Banks's treatise on virtual hell, all the while thinking games were rulesets like chess or tic tac toe or physical exercises and milsim. He seemingly had no idea games were Stories and Virtual realities now, isomorphic to heaven rather than hell. Soma arguably underplays its best idea. The story places us the at the moment in time where we create a virtual heaven and mind upload tech from scratch, and then DOES NOTHING WITH IT. Having to decide "what should go into the simulation" was arguably the most disturbing moment of the whole game. It's also the only time we interact with the concept in any way :( P.S. if it's any consolation, anything built with the current CMOS processor tech will fail in a timeframe of *decades* due to diffusion and electromigration. No eternal torture.. yet.

The 'bird person reveal' was hilarious. Stray is bonkers beautiful. Too many games just fill their 'darkness' with pitch black 0x00000000's. Stray fills every nook and cranny with light and color, creating immaculate oppressive/mysterious/cozy vibes. And the story is decent. Tiny closed society hanging on by a thread, robots mimicking the best and the worst of their creators. Not exceptional, but still good. It's so sad that gameplay-wise it was so profoundly mediocre and felt like a demo at times. I'm a cat ffs!!! rawr. Let me claw the shit of these bloated blobs. Let me ambush them or pounce on them from above! So much potential for cat predator tactics... But noooooo, no rain world 3D for us :/ Disclaimer: cat person here

I'm sorry I do not agree on Dave The Diver. It is a 9/10 game, if it was restricted to the core game it would be a poor and boring Stardew Valley copycat. The story is charming, characters are funny enough and all the notifications and stuff Dave is charged with doing are perfect to represent Dave as a guy who js overcharged with responsibilities and stuff he does because he is told to. It is a very good game that you stop playing and pickup whenever you want, full of surprises and whacky cut scenes and minigames which you do NOT have to do if you don't want except for one or two times. Theming is consistent, hilarious (at least to me) and I don't see why it's bad to have a stealth section, I mean, why? It even barely takes a handful of minutes, it's a neat little gimmick in a game that would be devoid of any objective (if you want to relax fishing, go play a scuba diving simulator, I am sure there is one probably)

was with you until you claimed aaas go straight white and male and indies go queer. lol what. its the opposite and thats why aaa is failing. they hate their audience. straight white and male should never be used as insults like you just did

I thought it had to do with being publicly traded or not.

Worst opinion ever?

Amazing and thought-provoking video! I think the central issue you're hitting on here is the genrefication of the term "indie", emphasizing only the styles associated with the term rather than the reality it was meant to convey. This is why personally I think we ought not include aesthetics at all in defining indie games, as including it is what allows big, soulless games to masquerade as indie. I say have it be purely functional, defined by some arbitrary threshold of funding dollars, with a blacklist for games funded by recognized publishers like Microsoft, Nintendo, or whatnot. Definitions can be ephemeral, but if you're running an awards show, you can just set... standards? lol. What is indie? "Well the Game Awards defines indie as..." But as was pointed out in this video, they aren't interested in having a consistent definition. In my mind, indie should be a term that informs how a game came to be, not a genre or descriptor of its style, and I think, if we were to have that, we'd still see those styles associated with indie, and others not yet conceived, persevere. Also I wanted to just say that I have massive respect for your willingness to criticize mainstream games. I love to hear (what are perceived to be) hot takes like that, that are thoughtful and well-defended.

Great video! Both reviews of games were humorous and informative at the same time. Second half is thought provoking and made me question myself what indie really is. Hope you will get more recognition since your work is wort it

The rocket at the end with the credits in space might be a reference to Subnautica?

What a great video. I just finished the game for the first time earlier this week an I shared the exact same thoughts you developed all throughout my playthrough. I was very disappointed after all the praise but after many similar instances I've come to the conclusion that most people are easily impressed when there are mature and uncommon themes touched in a videogame but can't discern when it's not done in a thoughtful and developed way. On the topic of grief and as someone who has experienced it (and is still deeply affected by) I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the way this game approached the subject. On a separate note, I found many issues in Nier Automata are shared in Persona 5, where it has criticism towards problems in current society, including capitalism but it's done in such a naive, bland, superficial and childish way that is not meaningful in any way, yet all you see online is praises over and over and don't get me started on its one dimensional characters that are a huge step down from what was seen in Persona 4. Why is good writing in videogames so hard to find? It gets even more difficult when the masses sell some games as well written only to find it wasn't the case when you play them. Anyway, I'm happy to see there are people out there making great essays like this with a critical capacity, I have to thank the TH-cam algorithm for recommending me this channel. It's easy to sing praises like the masses do but I'll always appreciate more when someone can see the negatives that sometimes are more clouded.

The thing that worries and frustrates me is: the Games Industry was built after 2nd wave feminism started, and after the Civil Rights Movement had won some victories. Hollywood kinda gets a pass, imho. Maybe it *is* hard to change people's minds, given that the studio system underpinning it was built around the 1920s-40s . But the Games Industry was mostly built in my lifetime and it's really tough seeing such an exclusionary system grow, when we all know better

I'm so annoyed that Teardown(TM) wasn't the award winner I mean it wasn't an indie game in the first place but it could have at least been picked too be the most innovative game instead of a basic ultra cute cat game that is FAR over priced.

_"So the mysterious alphabet wasn't a meaningful hint to an unknowable game world, there are just symbols on the screen sometimes because symbols are cool."_ Uh... yeah. It would be kind of difficult to play a game based on disposition, and not be able to read any of the text... And yeah, the symbols are cool. And that's one of the only uses they'll have unless they _force you to translate everything manually._ Additionally, one of the few other uses are that it makes translation easier between languages, as you only need text files to change the games language, instead of alternate image textures and typesetting. And I get that most RPGs make you into a hero who has to fight God, but... do you expect that from a regular cat? Would you like the cat to do... hauling quests? The best way to win a fight is... to not fight at all. The game is reasonable for the story they want to tell. A story about survival, and mystery. Exploration and Relaxation. As for the textures of Dave the Diver, pixel art is reasonable. They were able to make a somewhat memorable style _(personally I really liked how they handled the pixel art and layering underwater)_ which likely helped them with the crushing timeframe enforced upon them by the larger company, by reducing the time they had to spend on art. Skipping the argument of indie, adding too large of a team makes the game production process slow down, as every part now has to plan around a larger group (assuming they have the time and permission to do so). _Regardless of my comments on the matter, you still have valid points throughout the video, and I have made sure to leave a like wherever necessary._

There are games I've played for decades that I still don't know everything about, that I purposely don't look up. In my case, as an RPG player with a love for monstertaming, any "random factors" in how elements(often creatures) behave or evolve continue to hold a certain mystery. I can play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for dozens of hours, just tending to Chao, because I don't know how they'll behave or evolve. I'll slowly learn stuff about them by playing, but because it takes a while and because I'm not playing it all the time, it feels like an endless mystery. Two friends of mine introduced me to the Phantasy Star Online series (the Gamecube ones) and nobody in the group ever looked up stuff - how to get the best items or how to "properly" evolve your support drone, the MAG. The story of the game is also a minimalist cryptic tale about aliens, so there's mystery apart from the mechanics as well. My personal favorite though, would be the Final Fantasy Legend games, particularly 1 and 2. Both games have very strange progression mechanics and a whole bunch of equipment mechanics, so you never quite know what's really the best thing (outside of a few very plain to see elements). Apart from that, the Gameboy typical limited text and trippy world designs are a neverending wealth of weirdness and mystery. Most of the people describing the games, call them "dreamlike" or "trippy". They are great. Incidentally, there are Nintendo DS remakes and from what little I've played of them, at least some of that stuff got lost in modernization, while a lot was retained. In general, I feel like any guiding presence snuffs out mystery. For the Soulsborne games, guides and wikis do exactly that. While the lore remains pretty elusive no matter what you do, a lot of the mystery of actually playing and exploring instantly gets lost when looking at a guide. Fromsoft questdesign, which is always harshly critiqued, is the best example. Elden Ring's quests would be long-enduring mysteries like what I described above, but because they're laid out plainly in well-known guides, instead that same design philosophy gets heavily criticized for being bad or inaccessible. I think beyond graphical advancements, the ideas of how much of a game you're entitled to seeing on one playthrough, are going against the idea of mysteries in modern games. I'm always happy if I notice a game not being quite as transparent, because I love replaying games and digging into them.

"co-opt" is something I've actually been thinking about since a while back. I've never really voiced it though, because it felt kinda off, maybe even conspiratorial. When Square Enix came out with HD-2D, with the Tokyo Game Factory branch of games and, more recently, releasing the Pixel Remasters, I can't help but feel like they were trying to take advantage of the "indie craze". I myself bought I am Setsuna without any prior research and I actually thought it was an indie for most of its runtime - only to find out it wasn't. I still like the game, warts and all, but it feels kinda murky that it's coming from Square Enix directly. It lacks a lot of the polish (which is the reason I thought it was an indie) but isn't really an indie. HD-2D is pixelart with tons of bloom. Am I glad pixelart is getting more mainstream recognition again? Of course. Do I think Square Enix just tried to find a way to cut cost by riding a wave caused by indie games? Also yes. It muddles the boundaries quite a bit in my opinion. Anyway, my favorite indies (some with publisher, some without) are Monster Sanctuary, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and Salt & Sanctuary. I'm actually not sure how "under the radar" those are, but they do what I'd do if I weren't utterly helpless in the coding department - they are entries in genres that either were underserved at the time or added an interesting spin (that one goes to Monster Sanctuary). Eastward and Slay the Spire are other great indies I like, but especially the latter hardly needs introduction.

I always consider the AA category for games (I don't know if it exists, and I honestly don't really care haha). For example, I consider Baldur's Gate 3 a AA game, because Larian Studios doesn't have the same budget as EA or Ubisoft. It was quite dumb of them to nominate Dave the Diver and Stray into the indie category, they should just have another one for medium budget games because, my god does it overshadows small games. Three indies that came out in 2023 come to my mind : Your Only Move Is Hustle, Shadows of Doubt and Peaks of Yor (I would have said Lethal Company if the game wasn't that popular). YOMI Hustle is a turn based fighting game where you control what action(s) your character will do in the next 20 frames or so. This is such a great concept and the community of the game is just mind blowing (there are so much custom characters that were made and posted in the Steam Workshop). Shadows of Doubt is a "roguelike" detective game where every case is procedurally generated. You can solve the case in a number of ways, none of which are wrong. The game also doesn't hold your hand, you have to search for clues by yourself, put everything on a board and try to see if every clue you got is relevant. Finally, Peaks of Yor is a climbing simulation happening in the late 1880s. The controls feel great, the challenge is difficult enough while not being impossible, and it's one of the few climbing sim that is not supposed to be a rage game : they don't throw random bullshit at you to make you mad, if you fall it's entirely on you. Some of these games are more popular than others, but overall not as popular as the so called indies that were nominated. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast with the fever dream that is Dave the Diver, and I tested Stray a bit and liked it, but I wish they could put a spotlight on smaller games because it would help them a lot.

You know I was willing to give Dave the diver a chance but holy moly i will not be able to deal with all that yapping, unnecessary dialogue from games is a pet peeve of mine.

"Why SOMA is the Scariest Game I've Ever Played" Terry.

Since i dont read reviews i always assumed Stray won simply because of the realistic visuals, didnt expect it to be worse and be nominated only because of cat lovers.

This is the first review that manages to put words on what I felt the whole time I was playing this game. Like you I had so much expectations about A2, like getting to play her would "unlock" the story and make all the painful trek through A and B worth it in retrospect. All along you see snippets of a plot, a story going on in the background, that 2B and 9S just don't get to see. Especially since there was that sidequest where some Yorha androids are deserting and you help them escape, they mention some kind of resistance. "For sure that's going to be A2!" I naively thought to myself. Then route C starts and..... a big wet fart, like the rest of it. She just kills robots aimlessly and that's all. Nothing more. Because nothing matters, it's nihilism, get it? Except that Nietzsche's point in the whole "God is dead, we killed him" story, was that when you realize there is no ultimate meaning in life, it is all the more critical to find meaning for yourself, so that you may keep going and save your own soul. This game missed that part completely. It has no soul. Thank you for making this essay. It'll be my go-to whenever I need to properly explain my view of this game to someone.

In enslaved, the robots were made prewar, and used in the great war, and some mechs remaining sticked to what they were programmed for, kill any human. Pyramid, such as Trip, hacked the mechs and used them for himself. There you go, no more plot holes. 😂

I'm 10 minutes in and you've already perfectly encapsulated why i'll never finish Dave the Diver, or ever touch it again for that matter. The first 10 or so hours were majestic fun in the sea, which immediately became an *onslaught* of nothing burger side-filler that is the rest of the experience. I stopped playing after I had so many different objectives I couldn't keep track anymore and felt choice anxiety on what to do next. Why would a game that would in all essence be quite low stress and cozy make me feel that way? So I deleted it after having probably wasted way too much time on it. It really is a shame though because when it shined, it was actually a really nice gameplay loop that was sadly bloated with too much nonsense. (which I found funny at first! Until it was literally happening over and over again and taking over the flow of the game)

THANK YOU for the captions, especially on such a long video

I mean, with such a definitation, then any studio that was independently founded is an indie studio, such as you said Nintendo.

An game I would really recommend is Skábma - Snowfall, It's a story driven game based on Northern Sámi culture where you go on a journey to become a Noaidi and heal the land from a mysterious sickness. It has fun gameplay and a heartfelt story with a beautiful environment.

I'm only discovering your channel and your videos are so good <3 This one was lovely, and A Short Hike was my first truly memorable game of this kind, and by now I don't know if you've done them but with the same aesthetic/vibe (more or less pixelated, cute characters, funny and dorky conversations etc) there's Lil Gator Game and Smushi Come Home thay may interests you if you're curious, they were both wonderful as well!

this is a legit good well-done video with a lot of compelling arguments about what makes indie "indie" for a reason but did you really have to shoehorn the dead horse of political discourse into it? im not white or american, but its all so exhausting in the same way i didnt need to hear about religious fervor and why i *should* believe in god in topics that have nothing to do with it i didnt need to hear about the "over-represented straight white males" being a big reason why the industry's the way it is, and all the justifications for why its a necessary argument

There’s just too many crossed wires for it to be easily definable, I mean something like Cultic is an indie game but that’s published by 3D Realms so a lot of people don’t count it, but it was still made by 1 guy and I think that’s a more reasonable definition of ‘indie’ if it’s a game made by 1-3 people with no budget or outside help, it’s definitely an indie but there are games made by 10 people with a small budget that are also considered indie games. I think much like how we have A,AA,AAA for larger game studios, we should have a similar thing for indie studios. So cultic would be an A-Indie studio but something like Hades would be a AA or possibly even AAA indie studio

Nintendo is a large company though. And they own the development studios that make the Mario, Zelda, Metroid...etc games. So by that very definition they are not indy.

At least you could recommend a few niche/indie games that you think should have won or been nominated. I love videogames, the ones you just shitted on and the other you showed, mentioned and praised for half a second, but I feel that the community (which was already pretty bad and negative) its getting worse with more complains from gamers and companies being so greedy. So theres really no point in being so harsh when some of those things you complained about are subjective (not the "being nominated" but everyone knows its not about good games but popular/profitable games, like srs WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT GAME AWARDS THEY ARE BAD AND BLOATED WITH ADS AND STUPID "QUIRKY" SEGMENTS) And I dont think AAA games or easy games arent bad and only hardcore indie games are good and worth playing, everyone has their own likes and dislikes. And indie games getting their own market and not just being put up for free isnt a bad thing so devs dont starve (its more of a capitalism problem blah blah, who cares its not like nothing gonna change) Tbh I wouldnt complained this much if you at least try to finish with a more/longer positive note, or at least a more specific "solution" and not just <who cares, do your best its the only thing we can do (which is unfortunately true)> (like trying more itchio free games and diving into more obscure media, idk) [also its a war crime to show Outer Wilds and not mention it bc of how good is it]

Incredible video. I can’t imagine how much work must have went into making this. Very inspiring to watch. Big fan 👏

Indie games are the games that I like the video

Brazil, actual brazillian, i have something to say to you as a brazillian too. com todo respeito, vai tomar no cu. 😃👍

omg super mario odyssey is like so retro

Dave the diver and stray being called indie is an insult to the indie community

I don't see the point in being so negative about games you dislike that other people love? I don't see how framing it like people who love stray and voted for it for steam and goty awards are ruining indie games helps anyone. I loved citizen sleeper, its one of my favorite pieces of media of all time, but a game like that is never going to be as popular as more casual games like stray because the niche citizen sleeper is catering to is just very small there are always going to be less people looking for narrative RPG with mostly text based gameplay than there are people looking for typical 3d action platformers, especially when its about being a cat, because people looooove cats. you can praise games like citizen sleeper and sifu without shitting on people who like games like stray. also the awards are always gibberish, starfield won most innovative gameplay and that's literally one of the worst games of all time.

I agree that defining it like "not owned = indie" is too broad. I think a better definition might be that indie games are games created by teams without publisher that themselves aren't considered a publisher. Then it would exclude Nintendo or Sony, but not Larian, for example

I'm quite certain that in the 1990s, Rockstar Games was an indie studio. Grand Theft Auto 2 was an indie game. There isn't a clear line. So really, i don't recommend using the terminology "indie" or whatnot, at all.

As an autist who also gets annoyed at the shallow perception of videogames, thanks.

So.. kojima is not indie anymore?

Classifying Nintendo as an indie is one of those moments where it might technically be true within the rules but it also makes me want to stare out the window for a while. I say this as a guy who plays mostly Nintendo games. 😂