Expedition 33 coronation as expected.
Thing that surprised me the most was Wuthering Waves for Players Choice Award over Expedition 33, Dispatch, Silksong, Death Stranding, Ghost of Yotei, and KCD2. Literal complete stable of awesome games across genres lost out to a gatcha game. Are there just more gooner gamers than I thought? 🤔
Mega-hyped for Total War: Warhammer 40k
Flute guy killed it as usual!
What are your thoughts on the awards and show overall?
The Players Voice award always goes to some gacha trash, cause they incentivise their players to go vote. “If we win, we’ll give everyone free shit”.
Sad to see that so many FANTASTIC games ended up with nil, because E33 stole the show so hard, but it’s tough to argue that they didn’t deserve each one. Myself, I probably would’ve put Silksong over E33 for art direction, it’s ASTOUNDING to me how much of a step up the artwork in that game was, compared to Hollow Knight.
I do wish that they would adjust their criteria for “indie” game. E33 really shouldn’t have been counted as one, IMO. Hundreds of people worked on that game, as many as some AAA games, and yet games like Blue Prince, from a solo developer (or very close to it?) had to compete against that? That really defies the spirit of the indie category, for me. Even if we count JUST the core team of (supposedly) 33, that puts it squarely in AA territory, for me.
Moby Games lists 121 people in the credits for Blue Prince and 416 for Clair Obscur. At some point, the number of people who worked on a game is nearly arbitrary once your publisher enlists a QA contractor or starts localizing to more languages. I don’t think it’s ever been murkier territory to try to classify a game as indie.
The original meaning of indie was independently published. I would think having a publisher would pretty squarely put you in the not indie category.
Kepler, IMHO, is the exception, because they are specifically a coalition of indie devs pooling resources to give other indie devs the best shot of success.
And to the comment above yours: I think any devs who don’t have a board of investors or any obligation to anyone but their fans counts as “indie” in my still-honest opinion.
What we think of as the rise of indie gaming was when they started getting publishers to promote them. You needed one in order to be listed on XBLA back in the day.
When I think of the rise of indie gaming I think about the early 2000s when people could put their game on their own website and things like Steam were coming out. The Xbox doesn’t even cross my mind. Consoles were very much not the realm of indie games until like the Wii U.
Xbox 360 and Summer of Arcade are major pillars in bringing indie games into the spotlight around exactly that era. There may have been Darwinia and Ragdoll Kung Fu on Steam at the time, but it was the likes of Braid, Super Meat Boy, Bastion and such that really came up within the XBLA promotions.
You clearly missed out on a whole era of shit like Pocket Tanks and Zuma.
I played quite a bit of Pocket Tanks, but there’s a huge gulf between that and the public consciousness that came up around indie games in the summers of arcade.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on that one. Personally, I think you are giving the Xbox far too much credit.
I heard that Blue Prince was going to be on the nominee list, but the lack of accessibility features ruined it for them.
Which list? It WAS a nominee for Best Indie.
I thought Blue Prince was one of the most innovative games of the year for sure and the story of it while subtle was very engaging.
It would have been nice to see it recognized somewhere! The Dev will just have to make do with the adoration of the legions of fans it has gathered for making an objectively awesome game :o