Indie Australian team taking on industry giants

“What’s interesting about this? [’80s] A period very similar to today is a period of access to the means of production, meaning the ability to put the tools in your hands,” Chan said.

“There are a lot of full circles there, and I think the 20 years in the middle are the quarantine years.”

Dozens of new games from small teams are released on digital platforms every day, but those with exceptional art, innovative storytelling, unique concepts, or proven creators tend to rise to the top. This includes games made primarily by a single person (Animal Well, Tunic, Balatro), games that blend familiar genres or themes (Scanning, Vampire Survivors, cuphead) and games made in retro style (UFO 50, Pizza Tower, Star Sea). Thanks to lower overhead costs and a potential audience of billions, it’s possible for games to be financially successful even if they only appeal to a niche subset of players. But some have managed to achieve broader cultural relevance.

Not counting free-to-play games or games designed for phones, among the small but growing list of modern indie games that have managed to capture the zeitgeist and sell more than a million copies, there are several made at least partly in Australia: Untitled Goose Game, Unpacking, Cult of the Lamband original Hollow Knight.

Among the games on this list, very few are this popular. CelesteA Canadian platform game released in 2018 that has been hailed as both a masterful piece of design and an insightful reflection on overcoming anxiety. Creators Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry of Extremely OK Games were recently in Australia for Melbourne International Games Week. They agreed that the console-dominated middle period of the gaming industry—in which both created games but lacked a broad mechanism to distribute them—was an odd period, but that technological change, plus the high price and impersonal nature of major games, had led to a resurgence in indie productions.

“Big blockbuster games lost credibility. They worked so hard on microtransactions that all prices went up,” Thorson said.

“The graphics are great, but… they’re made through a process, just like in Hollywood. These are processed games.”

Celeste And Song of Silk They sell for around $30 each, whereas blockbuster games can sell for more than three times that amount.

“Indie games are more accessible,” Berry said.

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“If you want to spend $30 and get this great piece of art and it feels like it was made by individual people, that comes in a lot more with indie games. The big triple-A games are made by really talented great artists, but this is a much bigger machine.”

Thorson and Berry can both code and Celeste It is written in C# rather than being created using a commercial game engine. With the help of their friends, the duo collaborate on art, story, design, and mechanics; all of which point to a coherent sense of creative vision and artistic intent that is the hallmark of solo-developed or small-team independent projects.

Thorson said the process of creating games holistically and touching up various pieces means that his thoughts in certain areas naturally influence others. Inside CelesteMany of the themes of kindness and forgiveness influenced the way the mechanics worked, and this may be part of what the audience responded to so strongly.

“I think if you’re an independent artist, it’s partly because you want your fingerprints on the work,” he said.

“And that really resonates with people who love gaming from an art form perspective rather than a spectacle.”

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In a way, this is like the difference between blockbusters and art cinema; if both were equally available on the same platforms to reach the same mainstream audiences. Thorson and Berry prefer to compare creating games to making a comic book or music album rather than a movie. This is something they do primarily for themselves; they let their emotions come out without thinking too much about how their art will be received; This probably doesn’t apply to a blockbuster game that’s made by hundreds of staff, costs millions of dollars, and needs to appeal to a very broad audience.

While motivations vary across the wide spectrum of game creators, a focus on making art for art’s sake is something all gamers share. Song of Silk creators.

“What is enjoyable is the process. What is satisfying is Hollow Knight “We were doing something that suited our tastes, and that meant we were doing things a little bit differently,” Team Cherry’s William Pellen said in an interview with ACMI curator Jini Maxwell as part of Game Worlds.

“And of course it’s rewarding when people respond to that. But it’s rewarding because it opens up the idea that there are other people who share likes and dislikes in games, and that they’re also responding to things that we think are cool.”

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