Braid, by Jonathan Blow

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Would it be juvenile of us to point out that a signpost along the way to a medium's maturization is the almost-but-not-entirely-silly battling over issues like authenticity, selling out, pretentiousness and the like? (The "are games art?" debate is part of this as well, but having expended many pixels on that subject, we'll leave that alone for now.) Think of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris' duels over auteur theory. The Sundance-and-Miramax fueled mid-'80s to mid-90's boom of indie film calcifying into Indiewood and the cinematic equivalent of the well-made play. Nirvana and Pearl Jam, agonizing in their heyday over the prospect of selling out; later, 50 Cent out-gangsta-ing his spiritual progenitor, Ja Rule, into Billboard oblivion. And today, AAA games vs. casual games; real games vs. non-games; and mainstream games vs. indie games. These battles over definitions and canonology wax and wane, with motivated audiences chiming in as they see fit. And while much of it is merely sound and fury, we come to games in part from a comparative media perspective, so we nevertheless find these exchanges interesting.

One such exchange took place last week on the blog Sexy Videogameland. In a post titled "Indie is the New Popular," blogger Leigh Alexander expressed both her affection for and her confusion by certain independently created videogames, saying:

Indie games are great. Like in our sister industries, film, music and literature, a selection populated solely by mainstream blockbusters orchestrated by Death Star companies is a dull one indeed. Fortunately, console developers are acknowledging the tiny little art projects of independent developers and realizing them, giving us a new wave of the future in terms of selection and creativity on offer.

Perhaps predictably, there is, as with those other industries, a hipster sort of culture emerging around indie games--if you listen to bands no one's ever heard of, why not play games no one's ever heard of, too? Then, when those games finally get their booth at a big game show and the jaws of the media and the culture alike hang open at the simplicity, the beauty, the innovation on display, you can scoff, flip your hair, and proclaim you already played it, and now you're just so glad this tiny team--or, even better, this heroic one-man show -- is getting the recognition he or she deserves.

After all, some of these less heard-of games are damn good. But, at risk of showing my unsophistication here, I must admit some of them make me feel like the hayseed who wanders into MoMA and stares, perplexed, at the often odd experiments on exhibit. Like, I know that Jenova Chen's fl0w is great. But, you know, I didn't really get it.

This struck us an honest exploration of Alexander's reactions to certain indie games and an eminently even-handed observation of the culture springing up around them. She then, as many bloggers are wont to do, snarkily threw the subject back to her readers, challenging them "to describe a game so trendy it hurts, so independent, so individual, that it makes sense to no one but you--because everyone else is an Extreme Mountain Dew-chugging juvenile with Electronic Arts' d--k in their mouth," providing a few examples of what she meant. We didn't LOL, but we certainly LQTO'd, because even as newly-minted judges for the Independent Games Festival, we saw nothing wrong with taking a satirical jab at the art form.

One person's satirical jab, however, is another person's cynical sucker punch, especially if you're an indie game developer who, after toiling for years in relative obscurity, has just made the jump from Sub Pop (self-distributing) to Geffen Records (Xbox Live Arcade). Braid creator and MTV News icon Jonathan Blow happened upon Alexander's post and, at least initially, he was not amused. In her comments section, he wrote:

Probably I am just too close to the subject matter, but this posting just wasn't funny.

A big part of it: this article is steeped in the same kind of hipster cynicism that Leigh is criticizing in indie game players. (Why one would go through the effort of criticizing a percentage of the game-playing population so tiny that it can't even support a market for cheap indie games, I don't know. If someone could notify me where this ostensible "popularity" is that Leigh is talking about, I'd appreciate it.)

Distance and cynicism are cheap, and they are easy. But such easy remarks tend to fall flat when aimed at people who work very hard and who care tremendously about what they do. (And the majority of indie game developers--especially the successful ones--work very, very hard.)

I realize that this posting began with positive comments about indie games, but for me those just felt like Standard Blogger CYA, there only to set up the second half.

To address that half:

Sure, not everyone is going to "get" every indie game. But you know what? That's the point! If indie games were designed around the same kind of criteria of mass-audience-appeal that govern mainstream games, then they would become just like mainstream games, but with low budgets. At which point they don't offer much to justify their existence.

Since (most) indie games aren't designed to appeal to every person on the planet, then by definition many people aren't going to like any particular game. It's not that hard a thing to figure out.

So when you find yourself not liking a particular indie game, you can rest assured that everything is working wonderfully.

Busted, Sexy Videogameland! (For its part, the staff of Level Up began to feel a wee bit guilty for having chuckled along.) After all, it's easy to say "business, never personal," when one's own business isn't at stake. Still, with thatgamecompany (fl0w), Queasy Games (EveryDay Shooter) and Jonathan Blow himself (Braid) all being clasped to the tender bosom of such massive conglomerates like Sony and Microsoft, and being prominently featured in magazines like Game Informer and on sites like MTV News Multiplayer, isn't it legitimate to, as the Brits say, take the piss? Or is it the equivalent of slapping hip-hop circa 1982 with the destined-to-be-dead-like-disco tag when the boom bap had barely made its way out of the Boogie Down? In any case, Alexander replied to Blow:

Thanks so much for commenting. I myself am a writer who often catches a bad rap for being "elitist," or for targeting the small percentage of gamers interested in thinking and reading critically about games--in other words, a small audience that is appreciative and creative, as opposed to a mass consumer market. It'd be terribly hypocritical for me to honestly criticize something because I don't "get" it--after all, I'm always espousing in my work the idea that the best games make the player think or feel, rather than satisfying them or providing gratification for impulse behaviors. To insult the work of people like yourself (or anybody putting their heart into a game grounded in thought) was absolutely not my intention; I like to spoon in a dose of dry humor to counter all the navel-gazing I often indulge in--perhaps too dry in this case, and I took it for granted that I was writing for a reader base of regulars familiar with my tone.

Moreover, if I am critical, I usually (perhaps unwisely) am slinging the mud at a demanding culture of gamers and a somewhat unhealthy games media, which is more what I was aiming for here. No matter which side of the industry one is on, I think it behooves us to laugh at ourselves at least occasionally. In fact, the inspiration for this little jag came from my own sense of uncool-ness at not being "up" on the scene, and how I noticed my play preferences had become dictated by buzz and not my interests--kinda not good, for someone who does my job.

Long story short--I only intended a lark, and I apologize if you felt offended. The industry would surely stagnate if not for efforts like fl0w and Braid, so in truth I appreciate them enormously.

Yes, we can all get along. In her attempt to defuse the tension, Alexander points out the similarities between the marginal nature of her and her peers own l33tist work--the serious criticism of videogames--and the seriously intentioned game-making of Blow and his contemporaries in the independent videogame scene. It's an interesting parallel, but unless she--or we--are planning to make a Godardian leap from criticism to creation, it's important for us to acknowledge that Blow and company have a lot more skin in the game than we do. Which is why we should therefore be understanding if said skin is, somewhat justifiably, a bit thinner than we might otherwise expect. Still, all's well that ends well, with Blow magnanimously signing off:

I hear ya. 

I don't think "offended" was exactly how I was feeling. More like, in the words of John McClane, "Pretty f---in' unappreciated, Al." It's just that, most full-time indies work for years under harsh and thankless circumstances, just because they want to make things that are in some way better than they can produce in the mainstream; so when someone comes along and actively criticizes our efforts *because* they are indie, it's just an extra helping of kick-in-the-eye. (I'm not necessarily one to talk, here, since I have been getting some coverage and acknowledgement this year; but I have been doing this since 1996 and I still feel the sting of all those years). In this case, it's not even the fact that it was criticism that bothered me, just that it was "easy" criticism (not attempting to play on the same field of discourse as the things it was criticizing).

It's pretty cool that a few indie developers are getting publishing deals through the major consoles' online download services. But that is still such a new and shocking thing--and who knows if it will last even another year--so my current attitude is, if you like indie games at all, enjoy it while you've got it.

But yes, as I was finishing up that reply I figured that I was taking it a lot more seriously than you meant it. But hey, it's the Internet. And I had already typed all that stuff in, so I had to post it.

Blow's right; from the handful of indie developers we've spoken with who've been fortunate enough to make that leap from Def Jux (relative obscurity) to Def Jam (Cristal and Bentleys), there's a strong sense that this could all be over tomorrow, so they'd better make hay while the sun is still shining. Our take? While we're not quite so pessimistic, the best case scenario--the last golden age of Hollywood from the late '60s to the early '80s (better known as the '70s), when collapsing box office and social upheaval forced studio bosses to put their fates in the hands of the movie brats who turned out such important films as "The Godfather" "Apocalypse Now," "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull"--is a pipe dream. No matter how rough this console transition has been, we don't see the THQs and Square Enixes handing over the keys to the kingdom to a Jenova Chen or a Jonathan Mak. They'd rather scoop up the next BioShock, the next Guitar Hero (though we hear that a number of U.S. developed music games have been greenlit and canceled as publishers discover that making such games are easier said than done), or, better yet, the next biggest day in entertainment history, aka Halo 3. For them, a fl0w, an EveryDay Shooter or a Braid is far more likely to be a rounding error than the kind of score that earns them huzzahs at their next shareholders' meeting. (Though, if anyone's got the next Tetris or Bejewelled, their doors are always open.)

That said, we don't see the worst case scenario--indie games are the new disco--as likely either. The system isn't perfect, but with the means of production cheaper than ever before, and near-ubiquitous distribution via the Internet, it would be very difficult to stuff the indie game genie back into her bottle. Somewhere between the Sundance Channel and HBO, then, is where we see indie games landing, with Sony continuing to lead the way among the major console publishers out of a combination of genuine belief in the art form and a need to differentiate Playstation Network from Xbox Live Arcade; Microsoft dipping its toes in the water but focused more on the fruits of its XNA labor; Nintendo throwing its doors wide open with WiiWare but doing little else; and third parties playing wait-and-see until and unless real money exists to be made. Let's all stay tuned to see how this story ends.

P.S. Corporate magazines still suck.