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I don't think you can objectively say that. I spent many hundreds of hours in Minecraft, which I paid something life $5 for back in infdev. I also spent less on

by krisdol 12y ago

I don't think you can objectively say that. I spent many hundreds of hours in Minecraft, which I paid something life $5 for back in infdev. I also spent less on both Dark Souls games and sure enjoyed them more, but I wouldn't call them AAA (though that may be debatable). A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience.

criley2 12y ago
Minecraft is the outlier, not the rule for indie games and for multiple reasons. It has a modding community larger than most actual game communities for indies. That's extremely rare in indies (and even AAA's!) to achieve an Elder Scrolls level of modding. Some of the modlaunchers/modapis that I use have more versions and active development than some indie games I play, and that's before we consider the mods themselves (hundreds, almost thousands, available for every MC point release) which are almost all separate projects being actively maintained. And two, Minecraft is a procedurally generated emergent game, an rarity among all games. My point is that it's wrong to use Minecraft as a generalization for "indie" game, when it breaks most of the rules/paradigms that most indies follow. ">A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience." Yeah, like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.
- NoPiece 12y ago
  It is not the rule, but neither is it an outlier. From the last several years I'd also point to indie games like Terraria, Starbound, Kerbal Space Program, The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight, FTL, and Spelunky.
  - criley2 12y ago
    Eh I don't like the list. IMO only Terraria and Starbound should be in the same category. Throw Cubeworld in there too, even though the dev wasn't capable of handling the demands of modern indie games and the project fell from popularity. There's some space ones like Space Engineers and StarMade. Games like torchlight are ARPG's played on rails, with zero emergent gameplay. Same with BoI when I played it, it's a rougelike not an emergent game. It wasn't a world to explore but levels to complete in order. KSP can be emergent but requires you to play very specifically to experience the content. FTL is cool but it's linear by design, no exploration, no freedom, no building, no game world destruction etc, just running from and attacking things on a mostly linear random path. But FTL is a game to play and finish, Minecraft is an emergent experience, a world to work on until you abandon your world.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      You are right they don't necessarily compare well to Minecraft as systemic games. But they have procedurally generated worlds, and rival the best AAA games in terms of amount of gameplay they offer, and at a fraction of the price. I have over 200 hours into Spelunky, and it still frequently manages to surprise me.
heliumcraft 12y ago
decades?
- krisdol 12y ago
  Yes, as in they've been capitalizing on the same gameplay formulas that have been hits since the mid 90s

by krisdol 12y ago

criley2 12y ago

Minecraft is the outlier, not the rule for indie games and for multiple reasons. It has a modding community larger than most actual game communities for indies. That's extremely rare in indies (and even AAA's!) to achieve an Elder Scrolls level of modding. Some of the modlaunchers/modapis that I use have more versions and active development than some indie games I play, and that's before we consider the mods themselves (hundreds, almost thousands, available for every MC point release) which are almost all separate projects being actively maintained. And two, Minecraft is a procedurally generated emergent game, an rarity among all games. My point is that it's wrong to use Minecraft as a generalization for "indie" game, when it breaks most of the rules/paradigms that most indies follow. ">A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience." Yeah, like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.

NoPiece 12y ago
It is not the rule, but neither is it an outlier. From the last several years I'd also point to indie games like Terraria, Starbound, Kerbal Space Program, The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight, FTL, and Spelunky.
- criley2 12y ago
  Eh I don't like the list. IMO only Terraria and Starbound should be in the same category. Throw Cubeworld in there too, even though the dev wasn't capable of handling the demands of modern indie games and the project fell from popularity. There's some space ones like Space Engineers and StarMade. Games like torchlight are ARPG's played on rails, with zero emergent gameplay. Same with BoI when I played it, it's a rougelike not an emergent game. It wasn't a world to explore but levels to complete in order. KSP can be emergent but requires you to play very specifically to experience the content. FTL is cool but it's linear by design, no exploration, no freedom, no building, no game world destruction etc, just running from and attacking things on a mostly linear random path. But FTL is a game to play and finish, Minecraft is an emergent experience, a world to work on until you abandon your world.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    You are right they don't necessarily compare well to Minecraft as systemic games. But they have procedurally generated worlds, and rival the best AAA games in terms of amount of gameplay they offer, and at a fraction of the price. I have over 200 hours into Spelunky, and it still frequently manages to surprise me.

heliumcraft 12y ago

decades?

krisdol 12y ago
Yes, as in they've been capitalizing on the same gameplay formulas that have been hits since the mid 90s