"Late Night Fish Pond" is a self-reserved section of campfire camps where our editors talk about less serious topics. The column's name comes from "Late Night Cafeteria" - everyone has their own story, so let's tell it here.
As a veteran player who began to pay attention to the development of domestic independent games from around 2015, there is a very obvious feeling in the past one or two years, that is, the local new development groups, new projects, and new publishers are emerging in an endless stream, the number and scale of output works are constantly expanding, and the difference between production standards and game experiences is becoming more and more obvious, but the themes and forms of expression are also visible to the naked eye, for people like me who will roam steam for a while almost every day to find freshness. This is undoubtedly gratifying.
The reason is that from the perspective of mature manufacturers, of course, there is an industrial background that has to change its thinking to seek multi-product line promotion due to the large environment, but many of them are indeed developers who have ideas, pursuits, and certain technical and management experience accumulation, in order to achieve the ideal and stand on their own and devote themselves to the main stand-alone business.
But after several years of scuffle, by the beginning of 2022, I believe that many people, like me, have found that there are some problems with the domestic small-scale main stand-alone products (indie games).
First of all, there is a slight homogenization tendency in the diversified environment, some specific themes, forms of expression because of the explosive pearl jade in front, soon there are some similar works with a strong sense of vision to follow, which is easy to see as long as you pay a little attention to some recent release activities.
▲ Screenshot of "Fireworks", the demonstration effect of the explosive model is obvious
On the one hand, this is caused by the development characteristics of the small-volume main stand-alone game itself, and the biggest selling point of independent game works is often in the innovation of gameplay, theme or form of expression, rather than relying on high content volume and overall quality sense to win, compared with the traditional masterpiece, the development resources consumed are very limited, which is the helpless choice of the independent game team that is shy in the pocket per capita, but in turn it also leaves a shortcut for the latecomers to imitate.
From the current point of view, the most widespread theme is the local thriller theme text adventure game of horizontal scrolling, the character dynamics are like shadow puppetry, the background story refers to various urban strange talks, moving back and forth in a few scenes, plus some not too difficult puzzle solving, collecting elements, and the rest is simply to compete in the script skills, music sound effects and the overall atmosphere of the hades.
From the perspective of a player who has only been exposed to similar genre works from Japan for many years, the localization of the horror thriller AVG does have obvious advantages, first of all, the language understanding barrier is gone, the environment of the character's life and the interaction relationship between the characters are close to real life, the player can always easily find events or items that can resonate in the game, and the most important sense of substitution for the plot to the game has been significantly improved. Combined with the mild volume (low price) and the innate communication affinity of the plot to the work, it has formed a huge impact within a certain range.
▲ Those who learn from me are born, and those who are like me die
But the reality of low technical threshold obviously makes many teams have the illusion of "I can do it", I myself have observed at least 3 or 5 homogeneous products with similar themes and similar styles have entered the publicity stage, and I don't know how many projects are being developed behind it, which is obviously not a good phenomenon.
Similarly, there are galaxy castlevania categories, card battles in the form of tower climbing, and simple puzzle games.
Of course, these works may also be born no less than the forerunner's fine works, but I personally believe that at least in the field of independent games, if you want to be a blockbuster, you still have to work the novelty of the theme and the form of expression, players have been prepared with a tolerant mood to endure the various experiences in the works with the local + independent label, please do not retrace the path that has been verified by previous people with conservative ideas, and the ending is likely not as easy as imagined. As long as the idea is wonderful, you can always find enthusiasts with similar interests in the market.
The second is the recent content tendency and update strategy around several domestic independent games, because of some issues unrelated to the gameplay and experience of the game itself, controversy has broken out, and the emotions between players and producers, players and players have become tense. Anger quickly spread to the Steam review area, having an intuitive effect on the game's praise rate, making the index lose its reference value to new players who didn't understand the origin of the matter.
▲As of press time, the praise rate has dropped to 36%
The rise of identity politics is a major feature of the international political and economic environment in recent years, and the well-known scholar Francis Fukuyama has written a book entitled "Identity Politics: The Desire for Dignity and Identity", which "explains what identity is around the threat posed by identity politics to the political order today, and how we should deal with the political rift it causes", which mainly describes the problems faced by Western society and its political system.
Overseas well-known factories are basically located in western developed countries, just in the center of the storm of identity politics issues, but also the earliest affected, in which works are embodied, here will not be repeated.
The problem is that local works and the local game market, in the traditional impression of the original is not in line with similar issues in the field, the development of so many years in addition to the host Yusanjia, platform contempt chain and other not so serious and really have no sense of existence of the void group, the impact of identity politics can only be seen in the game news from afar, is the domestic players in their leisure time to talk about and make fun of the object, can unconsciously, encounter the advance of the line, "put aside the facts" And other phenomena have even quietly come to the side of domestic gamers, which is obviously more worrying than the above-mentioned theme path dependence.
▲ Furry-themed "Mercury Sanatorium" has a look, who also said that the local developer has a small brain hole
As a veteran player with nearly 30 years of travel experience, judging the overall level of a game from its own theme, gameplay, quality, and expressiveness is already an instinct, once the identity position factor outside the game becomes one of the new evaluation criteria, it will not only be a team or two and a small number of players in niche games.
Or let the game's return to the game, focus on the video game works we love itself, pay more attention to those who are still breaking the barriers and bravely innovate developers, now there are bold local teams even Furry fandom theme pixel games have been made, the cost of a little strong began to impact the world-class influence of 2A and even AAA works, whether players or development groups, there is really no need to be consumed by such issues to consume excess energy.
Editorial Board Discussion Board on FishIng Techniques
(The following is excerpted from the real dialogue in the editorial department group)
September
If you want to find a sense of identity and more occasions, let go of the game that is already hot enough, please.
XXTX
Digging deep into the same genre is not a bad thing, but the premise is to make a difference.
Three hearts
Often reviewing an exclusive game is felt by some people to be "brought into the platform fan position to wear colored glasses", this kind of people who set up a field first and then watch things, I don't think I really want to play the game...
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