The Stifling of Creativity

The stifling of creativity

Creative licence

Mike Hirst takes a look at the proclamation that indie games are more creative than mainstream.

THERE HAVE been times in my early adult life where I would have been proud to discover a game while trawling through the internet which wasn’t for sale by one of the big name publishers, but now I’m not sure what to think when it comes down to indie games. I suppose this feeling I’m trying to describe is that the stereotypical argument about indie games being more creative than mainstream games doesn’t really exist.

The Rise of Indie

Since Xbox Live Arcade (XBL) and the Playstation Network (PSN) opened its doors, arcade and indie games have had more universal exposure to potentially thousands of customers which wasn’t the case back in the day. It’s certainly a far cry from what PC game developers had to deal with before Steam. On my shelf – just a few cases away from Half-Life 2 – sits an original cased copy of Uplink, a game which rapidly became infamous on word of mouth alone. Introversion Software is probably one of the most well known underdog stories in PC gaming, circa 2001.

Introversion’s original title of Uplink was a suspense thriller as your character undertook some moral choice decisions which would either end with the internet’s destruction or salvation. Since Uplink, Introversion has released Darwinia, Defcon and Multiwinia. Although they are all great games in their own right, they never met the ground breaking success of Uplink – although I hold Defcon as one of the most simplistic, challenging, yet thoroughly enjoyable RTS titles I own – and while Introversion’s major successes have cooled off recently, they’re not out for the count yet.

Uplink was a basic game, there were no 3D graphics and there were only a few audio tracks but I still hold it as one of my most loved games of all time. It opened my eyes to the idea that games didn’t need to be created by big name developers and supported by big name publishers to be great. However, whilst many proclaim indie games are more creative as a whole against mainstream games – which are arguably tied down by publisher based time restraints, franchise draining sequels, and safe design – I’m not too sure that’s true. Not entirely anyway. In fact mainstream developer creativity may be more innovative because of the restraints.

Take Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and its implementations of the levelling system and equipment unlocking system for online play, as well as the addition of medals and other honours for achieving certain criteria. It’s an inspired idea that has now become the norm for many FPS titles. FPS games have evolved within their closed boxes of creativity over the years to try to bring something fresh to the table every time a game is released – to try to corner the market – and have achieved it in many different forms.

Continues…

Pages: 1 2