Posts Tagged ‘free game downloads’
When it Comes to Videogames, Go Indie and Thank Us Later
People say that the era of the smaller game publisher is finished. As games become a bigger and bigger market, leapfrogging things like the music industry, and selling a huge number of releases with each new big game, the industry has been moving towards a kind of blockbuster mentality.
Not Every Game Can Be Grand Theft Auto IV
To do over the incredible experiences and 40 hours worth of wonderful gameplay inside a game like Grand Theft Auto 4, entire buildings of hundreds of game designers are needed. Budgets are massive, and profits are expected to be big, too. While games like GTAIV are great, they constitute a strangely gigantic quantity of the market, just like Hollywood ‘event’ films do, and they normally pervert the rest of the industry in strange directions.
Films are a useful analogy here, because it is essentially the same thing: a good film is a memorable movie, regardless of budget, and the same goes for video games. There are dozens of indie top games out there that just don’t have a way into the relevant distribution methods. And how many bad films or bad games—from big companies—have you seen or bought in your life?
The Problem With the Blockbuster Mentality
One of the main issues with making videogames on the blockbuster model is that a vision of good, quality gameplay disappears under all the other must-do things that have to go into a major property—just like the plot of a huge Hollywood film can often be obscured under layers of other concerns. With a small development team, this doesn’t happen—it’s all about the video game, the richness of the experience—whether or not it’s fun to play, made well, and gives gamers a reason to come back is truly all that counts.
The fact is that just because it’s widely advertised in the store doesn’t automatically imply it’s quality. And so the issue becomes: how do we get to those independent titles, those medium game-makers doing great, tried-and-true titles that aren’t being advertised on the internet or endlessly chattered about?
Is There a Place for Indie Games Online?
The net is still the best destination. You can find companies selling independent games that are built on real values: like classic gameplay that keeps you coming back again and again. Not facing the huge budgets, official trademarks, and big development teams that the huge game publishers have, small publishers are releasing video games that don’t have the luxury of exciting you through flashy visuals alone: they need to be enjoyable to play above all else.
Although a select few big publishers have seen the light, and have started fostering small developers to go insane with their wildest notions, most of the top, small, enjoyable games are being released by developers you’ve never heard of before.
Classic Distribution Still Works
While the talk is about new distribution channels, the ones that are already working are still very much useful: many of the best, most under-regarded small films can still be found sitting at your neighborhood DVD shop, and many of the most fun, independent videogames can be located online, available to you at very low prices—you get all the benefits of a box, a booklet, something aesthetic to hold, but you aren’t shelling out insane prices.
Next time you’re hunting down a truly great game experience, don’t just hit the obvious spots. Remember that big companies release their fair share of expensive garbage, and that indie studio you’ve never heard of might have just published your next all-time favorite videogame.
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Tags: all about video games, blockbuster video games, free game downloads, games, video games | 
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