Videogames are experiencing nothing short of a renaissance.
My wife and I had friends over the other day, and in the course of our conversations learned that one of them had never played the 1997 PlayStation game Parappa the Rapper.
This could not stand, and we popped the game in right then and there. As we played Parappa, one of the early groundbreaking works that launched the rhythm game genre, I got to reflecting on how profoundly weird it was, and how there was a time not so very long ago when one of Sony's most high-profile game releases was an absurd cartoon comedy about a dog who had to rap-battle his way into a gas station toilet.
But just as quickly as games got weird, they got unweird. As game platforms got powerful enough to give us a wider range of experiences, it also cost more and more money to make something that looked good, and the risks of failure got higher and higher. Within a decade, big-budget games had been whittled down into a narrow selection of experiences: shooters, racers, sports.
Today, weird is back with a vengeance. I didn't have to look too hard to find the Parappa the Rapper of 2014. We're not even two months into the year and there are already two candidates. Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Jazzpunk both have that enticing combination of offbeat aesthetics, weird humor and outside-the-box gameplay mechanics. Each game costs just $15.
As games from major publishers got narrower in scope, indie games had always existed out on the margins. The difference today is that rapid reductions in the cost of game development and the ease of distribution through platforms like Steam is creating an environment in which these games are actually becoming closer substitutes for triple-A titles.
And great experiences from small teams are showing up in such rapid-fire succession that it's becoming possible to satiate oneself entirely on these games and not need to worry about buying $60 games anymore. That is to say, it doesn't really matter anymore that big-budget games only offer a narrow choice of genres. And that's awesome.
Octodad, in particular, strikes me as something that we might have played back in the PlayStation era. The scenario is ridiculous: You're an octopus disguised as a human, trying to go about daily life while keeping your wife and kids (and marine biologists and an evil chef) from uncovering your subterfuge.
The game's controls are unresponsive and unwieldy, but this is the point. It's a challenge just to put one tentacle in front of the other and walk from place to place. One level just has you trying to make coffee in the kitchen without accidentally knocking over everything in sight. The writing and visual design are full of scripted jokes, but just watching the gameplay itself is often hilarious.
Octodad was made by a team of nine people, the title of one of whom is "CEO [and] Community Manager."
Though it was published by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim Games label, Jazzpunk was made by even fewer people – two, to be precise.
The Jazzpunk experience is kind of like Gone Home on LSD. Although there are a few light puzzles, it's more about walking through the game and experiencing the insane story of a secret agent in a world that seems to be made mostly of retro computer parts and populated by the icons on the doors of men's bathrooms.
This game is so funny that at one point my wife walked into the room with tears streaming down her face, from laughing so hard at one of the jokes. It is a brilliant, creative experience.
One gets to wondering if the talented game creators leading a team of hundreds of people to create big-money games would rather go create the next Octodad or Jazzpunk. "I'll never make another disc-based game for the rest of my career," former Gears of War design director Cliff Bleszinski told Gamasutra.
The same day that interview was published, we found out that Irrational Games, the studio behind one of the most hyped big-budget games of last year, BioShock Infinite, was effectively shutting down. Creative director Ken Levine – who could easily find a game publisher willing to give him a team of hundreds for another colossal triple-A game, if that's what he wanted – said that he would instead set up a small 15-person studio within publisher Take-Two, specifically to create a smaller-scale game project that would be distributed digitally, not on disc.
As soon as the Irrational layoffs were announced, most every big game studio reached out on Twitter and elsewhere to attempt to snap up some of the laid-off talent. One of the offers was quite unlike the others: The small studio Firehose Games offered some of its surplus office space, for free, to laid-off developers who wanted to take the opportunity to "go indie."
The BioShock Infinite project may have been doomed from the start. We expected something as brilliant and innovative, but also as financially successful, as the first BioShock, and Take-Two was basically willing to give Levine infinite time, money and leeway to pull that off. But is that even possible anymore in a big-budget, $60 game that has to sell millions upon millions of copies to have a shot at breaking even? I really enjoyed Infinite, but if I'm being honest with myself I enjoyed 2013's indie hits Papers, Please, Gone Home and The Stanley Parable just as much if not more.
The question used to be, could independently produced games compete with the big studios? Now I think the question should be, can the big-studio model continue to exist? Right now, indie games are serving niche audiences that were left behind by big studios. What happens when small teams start to make shooters that can pull audiences away from Titanfall? Football games that are more fun than Madden?
For players, it really doesn't matter where the great game experiences are coming from, as long as they're coming from somewhere. The narrowing of triple-A and the democratization of development are causing a rebirth of videogames as a vibrant, diverse creative medium. It's an incredibly exciting moment.
