Hacker News Reader

Comment by ungzd | Hacker News Reader

In 2010, when AAA games totally became interactive hollywood with "press x to win" and vulgar pathetic, when indie games scene started to being eaten by cancer of making "philosophical", "artsy" highly-hyped Mario clones, Minecraft came out (as alpha). It was entierly new type of game, giving many hopes for stinky game industry.

Now it's being converted into another Clash of kings.

View on HN

I'm not sure what your point is with bashing on creative indie games. Are all of them amazing? Obviously not. Are there some really bad ones in there? Sure. But I would never even dream of getting rid of em.

The democratization of gamedev tools was the best thing to ever happen to gaming. Yes, it also brought a sea of low hanging games, but at the same time, there is more variety and original ideas as ever.

Sure, those games may not be traditional "solve a puzzle" or "kill all the monsters", but trying to lock video games to such a narrow focus is silly. Video games are a very rich and powerful medium, and we still are discovering brand new genres, tropes and mechanics every year, most of them born out of small experimental games. Minecraft being one of them.

He's saying we hit a wall of originality that Notch broke by creating a new genre of game. It's definitely true.

I played other games that were good as they came, but from about 2010-2014 Minecraft consumed a very huge chunk of my video game time because the gameplay was fresh, original, and there was so much content for what at the time was a $10-15 game license.

Ever since Notch got rich and depressed and couldn't get excited working on Minecraft anymore (it's not his fault and he has every right to move on), things started going downhill. Jeb and the boys kept it up for a while but the game lost its focus and gave way to preferring 'content' updates over much needed bugfixes and gameplay expansion. Then Microsoft came and Notch would have been a fool to turn it down, probably because he knew this trajectory was inevitable and didn't want to watch his baby die a slow death in his arms. It grew too big for him to control anymore.

I think many of us from the original MC community (it has largely been replaced by 2nd and 3rd gen users, a generally much younger demographic) saw this coming after the Microsoft deal. Most of us have already tried moving on to other games because it's just not the same anymore. What was once a pretty tightknit and niche community has been replaced by little kids with credit cards and no concept of "gameplay" or "bugfixes". They just want to play watered down Minecraftified versions of other games and more content. The soul of the game has been lost.

/rant

> I'm not sure what your point is with bashing on creative indie games.

The way I read the comment, he's calling them uncreative.

Both of your claims are wildly exaggerated.

The second one is particularly childish. Philosophical or socially relevant games are not "eating" indie games; there are still hundreds and hundreds of conventional indies coming out. You're basically saying "stop liking what I don't like."

It's possible to make a good game with a message, but it's like politics - the only people who want to do it shouldn't be allowed to. So they tend to come out very lecturing (Braid, text adventures) or be low-effort (that one platformer that just has rectangles that teach you about friendship).

Western AAA studios also seem to get lazy about everything somehow, like Bioware's games where all the romances are carefully diverse and bisexual, but also are just giving someone presents until they suddenly love you.

Japan is doing well with "intellectual AAA" lately (NieR, Persona 2/3/5).

Have you actually played Thomas Was Alone? It's an excellent game in its own right, as is Braid. "Simple graphics = poor game design" is another gaming meme that's pretty toxic.

Played it once, some time ago. I think using rectangles is acceptable, but you could go more places with it, and a platformer is not a very interesting game.

Here's a similar better game from 1989: http://fools-errand.com/04-3T/index.htm

See, I love platformers. You don't like them, and that's fine, but your preferences are not objective truth. It seems like you're doing the same thing as ungzd, just in a more highbrow fashion and with genre instead of subject matter.

Thomas Was Alone is on the same level of expression as tumblr pics of Mona Lisa with cat face. But the difference is that Thomas Was Alone creators are confident that they've created Masterpiece Of Serious Museum-Grade Art. Just by reskinning Lode Runner with filled rectangles.

Interesting that you accuse Braid of lecturing. Beyond the basic plot of the game, any further meaning that Blow might have meant was fairly opaque and not forced on the player in any way (I certainly didn't see any deeper meaning on my own).

2010 was an amazing year for games, AAA and indie alike. Just googling [0] will show you this. On the AAA side you had Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption, Starcraft II, Civ 5, and much more. On the indie side Super Meat Boy, Limbo [1], VVVVVV, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and of course, more.

I think it's cool that Microsoft is giving Minecraft players a way to support content-creators. They aren't forcing content-creators to offer their content for a fee; free mods will continue to exist. And they certainly aren't putting base gameplay behind paywalls like some mobile games do.

[0] - https://www.google.com/search?q=best+games+released+in+2010

[1] - Which was an awesome game that you might dismiss as a ""philosophical", "artsy" highly-hyped Mario clone".

Even the so called "walking simulators" have grown to be a powerful genre with games such as Firewatch, or even more extreme story games such as Her Story.

Dismissing these games just because they're not conventional "games" is insanely stupid. Video game are an insanely powerful medium for story telling, and limiting yourself to one narrow subset is just a shame.

Personally these type of games have lately revived my identity as a gamer.

Soma, Talos Principle, The Valley, Kona, Firewatch, To the Moon, Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture. Have all been extremely enjoyable experiences.

Really hoping for more to discover in this genre.

The worst thing about video game culture is that idea that only some kind of games count. It is not enough to say "I don't like it", the games one does not find enjoyable are abominations and wrong for just existing.

Anyway, there is no innovation without mistakes. If you want new kind of high quality experience, you need to accept a lot of failures will happen in the process.

Also, Halo: Reach, the last great Halo game.

Limbo is the most canonical example of overhyped Mario reskin. What's good in it? Just stupid gore, halloween-grade "darkness" and use of little boy as protagonist to generate more pity points.

I provided multiple examples of great games from a variety of genres. I included a footnote acknowledging the criticism of Limbo that you would have. I addressed your points about both quality of gaming and what this particular thing means to Minecraft.

All you have to say to me is a boring complaint about Limbo. Have you played through the game? It's a short, well-crafted puzzle-platformer with interesting art, animations, and sound design. It's just fine if you personally didn't like what the game did, but dismissing it as a Mario reskin is ridiculous.

Yea, I think it passed that mark a long time ago.

I think this is different, in that what's being sold is community-generated content: custom maps, texture packs, and skins. They're not locking pieces of the actual game behind paywalls.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com