The Official Insomnia Top 100 Indie Games

[icycalm]

Same shit again:

http://www.the-ghetto.org/forums/index.php?topic=2298.0

but it made me think of an idea of how to drive my point home with the subhumans a bit more forcefully, so that perhaps a few more of them would understand.

So basically what we do is we list 100 masterpieces which, for one or another reason, going by the "indie" scammers' own self-contradictory attempts at a definition, can be categorized as indie (without quotation marks), and make a top 100 list. The order is not important, and I will decide on it after we have got all 100 titles down (the only reason I am including an order is because this is a parody and so I need to copy the bullshit of the shit I am parodying in order for it to be more effective; my own Videogame Art titles are listed in chronological order).

So here's a couple of games:

Sid Meier's Civilization (1991)
Designed by indie buddies Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley, programmed single-handedly by Meier (without Game Maker, no less!!1), and developed with the help of a team a fraction of the size of the kind that today makes abortive pseudo-indie crap like Braid, Civilization may well be the most astonishing indie game ever. Build an Indie Empire to Stand the Test of Indie Time -- and may the indie gods be with you!

Espgaluda (2004)
With a maximum of 8 or so developers per title and a tiny budget, Cave is indie as fuck, and Espgaluda is the title that launched them on their winning modern formula of increasingly esoteric scoring mechanics coupled with sexually titillating visuals. The Kakusei system is complex yet kind to beginners too, the music is phenomenal, and the game is an absolute blast to play from start to finish. Indie shooting doesn't get much better than this.

Vanquish (2010)
Indie studio Platinum games is largely made up of ex-Capcom employees who fled from their evil corporate bosses to pursue the loving and passionate embrace of indiedom, and their masterpiece Vanquish is indie FPS done right. Displaying a bold desire for innovation that's typical of indie games, and blending that with the programming expertise and attention to detail that dependie designers could never hope to match, Vanquish is shining proof that the future is indie. Stick it to the man!


So the idea is basically to focus on the aspect of the development process of each game that matches one of the scammers' pseudo-definitions of indie, and then proceed to stick it to them that this game absolutely trashes all the crap they eulogize, to the point where mentioning it in the same breath with theirs is even ridiculous. Don't worry too much about providing a good CRITIQUE of the game; these aren't one-minute reviews; the whole thing is a big joke. As long as you've picked good games, pointed out that going by one of the scammers' definitions is indie, and ideally made a few people laugh, we are good.

I'll post some more myself later. When we have 100 it's going on the frontpage, and it will be publicly viewable (like all list pages), in order for it to be widely linked.

Also, all contributors will of course be credited (with usernames) in the final list.

[icycalm]

If anyone has played, or will play Spelunker, you should help me make an entry for it. Something to the effect that it was copied by dependie designer Derek Yu who works for Microsoft, and who twenty years after the original indie masterpiece still couldn't make a sprite jump properly because he is a dependie and doesn't love his game.

[icycalm]

The blurb on the frontpage will go something like "Insomnia proudly celebrates five decades of indie gaming, and presents the world with the definitive list of the 100 greatest indie masterpieces yet".

[icycalm]

Red Seeds Profile (2010)
While Western "indie" devs are still stuck making platformers with narrative on the level of a wordy fortune cookie or struggling to make sprites jump properly, the true Japanese indies are rivaling evil Western corporashuns like Rockstar (L.A. Noire) and Sony Studios (Heavy Rain) with a free-roaming action-adventure title that puts their big-budget big-hype flops to shame. But who needs money and hype when you have indie love and indie fire? Not SWERY, that's for sure, even if your labor of indie love takes half an (indie) decade to finish.

[icycalm]

I think that page will be the internet's no. 1 page for number of times it uses the word indie. I am sure Google will eventually notice too, once people start linking.

[icycalm]

We can even have memes that make it look like the typical drone-written list. For example, we can have the "Stick it to the man!" ending line five or ten times. And another five or ten times the line "XXX doesn't get much better than this", etc.

[icycalm]

And then like, right after you've said, for example "Indie shooting doesn't get much better than this", you start the next blurb saying that this indie shooting game is much better than the previous one.

[icycalm]

And like, we must overuse the words indie, love, passion, burning, etc. so much that by the time a reader has gone through 100 fucking blurbs filled with them he'll be so sick of them that whenever he sees them again he won't possibly be able to take them seriously. They must come to seem to him like the vapid, pretentious, empty words that they are (at least when the scammers use them).

[icycalm]

Also, we'll need some truly absurd choices. Like METAL GEAR SOLID 4, or whatever. FARM VILLE. MADDEN 2012. Etc. Just need to find some loophole in the pseudo-definitions of "indie" and then harp on it for a paragraph.

[SriK]

Gears of War (2006)
As an indie developer, Epic Games owns the full IP rights to Gears of War; they just choose to work with Microsoft because they like them (that's right, they're so indiependent they can even choose which publishers they want.) Cliff Blezsinski is well-known as one of the greatest indie designers of all time, and this game further cements his legendary status. Gears combines a tactical cover system with subtle indie homoerotic tension to create an unforgettable 3D third-person shooting indie experience. Stick it to the mainstream, Cliffy!

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
With his cool rebellious attitude, it's clear that Sonic the Hedgehog depends on absolutely nobody, so it's fitting that the game he first starred in was made by an indie team. This innovative platformer was made by less than 10 people working at the famous indie developer Sega, and published by them as well! Its combination of blazing speed, creative and varied level design, and lush aesthetics basically served as a giant "fuck you" to the shadowy corporate cabal creating the Mario games at Nintendo. The indiependent spirit permeates through every pixel of Sonic the Hedgehog's extravagant worlds, and it will forever be marked in indie videogame history as one of the best indie platformers ever made.

Gimmick! (1992)
The 8-bit console era saw some of the best indie developers ever, but Sunsoft was one of the least dependent of them all. This game was both developed and published by them; it had a team of only four people, and three of those dudes were so indie that they never worked in the industry again (probably because they were just that appalled by the evil fat corporate pigs who were starting to invade gaming and hold developers at gunpoint with their hitmen.) Gimmick! combines an innovative indie star attack mechanic, a revolutionary indie physics system, and an incredibly diverse set of indie enemies to create indie levels that are challenging, but forgiving as long as you are using savestates and slowdown on Nestopia. Like all indie games, you can tell this is a true labor of pure love and passion; the art design and attention to detail is amazing, and the soundtrack has some of the best 8-bit chiptunes ever made (even better than Cave Story's!) This is top-notch indie platforming.

[void]

Thief: The Dark Project (1998)
Unfortunately, few today remember the almost-too-indie Looking Glass Studios. It's a real shame! Had they been less indie, they might still be around, and we wouldn't have to suffer the dependie plagiarists 2k Games, whose cynical efforts are almost enough to retroactively taint such masterpieces as Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II: The metal Age, and System Shock 2! Like all good indie efforts, the original Thief bucked the trend, and innovated at all costs, even going so far as to take the S out of FPS. That's right, in Thief there's a good chance you'll never shoot a single enemy! Thankfully, you'll be so busy infiltrating and looting luxurious mansions, dank prisons, shadowy woodlands, and otherworldly haunts, all of which are some of the most complex and richly atmospheric locales to ever exist in videogame form, you may even forget that itchy trigger finger.

[icycalm]

http://www.the-ghetto.org/forums/index. ... 8#msg30068

‘Independent.’ I’m so sick of that word. I reach for my revolver when I hear the word ‘quirky.’ Or ‘edgy.’ Those words are now becoming labels that are slapped on products to sell them. Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent.

This will go at the top of the page.

[icycalm]

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)
If there's one designer who epitomises the indie spirit, it's got to be Hideo Kojima: the man can do whatever the fuck he wants, and no one can stop him. If that means inserting half-hour-long weaboo animu cutscenes that make bollocks-all sense between every fucking button press you make, then that's how it's going to be because that's just what this man's deranged artistic vision looks like, and you can suck it fagets.

[icycalm]

Another thing for SriK and co. (see also Great Videogame Music and Artwork threads): italicizing titles when you are using them as titles is dumb. The entire point of italicization for titles is so that the reader knows it's a title and doesn't just read them as part of the text. If the title is on its own, in a list or whatever, there's no need to italicize it. All italicization does at that point is to tell people that you don't understand the point of italicization.

[icycalm]

Also, void, we do not italicize the names of companies. Only of publications or artworks.

Both you and SriK: do not edit your posts. Let people see your mistakes and learn from them.

[icycalm]

Just below the Jarmusch quote it will say:

This list is comprised only of indie games, if you are interested in "indie" ones instead, Insomnia has that scene covered too, and to a great depth, and you can find out all about it right here.

And then on the sidebar there will be links to The Myth of Independence and On "Indies" and "Dependies" essays, and just below these will be the following two definitions from the Subhuman dictionary for handy access:

Indie (n., art criticism)
An artist who contributes to the creation of an artwork because he wants and chose to, of his own free will, without having someone hold a gun to his head, i.e. effectively everyone, rendering the term meaningless.

"Indie" (n., art criticism)
An artist who, in the secret consciousness of his inferiority, is fearful of having his work measured against that of the masters in his field, and who therefore invents this non-existent category in order to hide in it.

Whoever manages to go through this entire page and all the linked materials, and STILL come out spouting bullshit about "the indies", deserves to believe and spout that bullshit. At that point no more excuses, perhaps of naivety or ignorance, can be made for him.

[icycalm]

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)
There had been first-person perspective games before, but it was indie group's id Software indie sensation Wolfenstein 3D indie hit that put it on the map big-time, by speeding up the pace and adding a frenetic shooting element to the mix. Going against the mainstream's insistence on boring and antiquated 2D games, the indies had done it once again, by ushering the new and wildly immersive first-person era, and gaming would never be the same. Thereafter only aspies would seriously bother with 2D games, and indeed an affinity for 2D games is today considered a reliable criterion of autism by medical professionals.

[icycalm]

Defender of the Crown (1986)
The game that sold Commodore's Amiga supercomputer to the masses was of course, as always, an indie game. Blending a solid strategy/action element with the signature of indie gaming -- cutting edge graphics -- indie upstart Cinemaware displayed once again the far-reaching wisdom of the indies by understanding that, contrary to mainstream belief, aesthetics can be just as important as mechanics.

[icycalm]

Crysis (2007)
Cutting their ties with evil mainstream publisher Ubisoft because of incompatible artistic visions, German indie developer sensation Crytek broke free to concentrate on yet another aspect of game design that only indies can tackle: amazing graphics. While Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 skimped on the graphics in favor of new mechanics, the indie masterminds at now-freelance Crytek studio skimped on the mechanics in favor of the graphics -- and it sure as fuck showed. And that's what the indie spirit is all about: putting the video back in videogames.

[SriK]

Deus Ex (2000)
Warren Spector, the famous indie auteur, was given complete creative control over a full team at Ion Storm to make the indie game of his dreams. Deus Ex was the resulting indie masterpiece. You play as JC Denton, a nanoaugmented agent who breaks free of his evil corporately-allied dependie masters at UNATCO and becomes an indie soldier in order to restore freedom to the world. The game is well known for its extensive player choice, fully realized world, and narrative branching, which illustrate just how large the scope of Spector's indie artistic vision was. While other developers have attempted to make sequels to Deus Ex, no one has ever quite come close to its quality, and that's because they're missing the fundamental elements which made the original so great: passion, love, and the indiependent spirit.

[fkndead]

Max Payne (2001)
Sometimes we find the strongest of passions burning in the coldest of places. The Finnish indie auteurs Remedy revolutionized the indie third-person shooter by introducing the bullet time mechanic in Max Payne, a story of independent undercover cop who is framed for murder and hunted by the NYPD and the mob. Taking inspiration equally from John Woo and film noir, it is an uncompromising piece of indie artistic art.

[icycalm]

FarmVille (2009)
Independently developed by Mark Pincus' indie developer Zynga, FarmVille is yet another indie success story. While mainstream developers kept yapping about "quality", "art", "innovation", and other such tired, worn-out buzzwords, the indie folk at Zynga bucked the trend and instead set their sights on the one and only thing that mattered to them: money, which they achieved in outstanding measure. But that's what happens when you pour all your passion into your work, do your own thing, and refuse to cave in to outside pressures -- long live the indie spirit!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007)
It is a little known fact that the vast majority of videogames (something like 80%+) are kids stuff and shovelware that has nothing to do with violence and warfare. The mainstream, in other words, wants peace, and consequently that's where the money is. Thank God then for indies like Matthew Dyrdek's Infinity Ward which refuse to bow to mainstream pressures and choose violence and war instead. "Fuck peace. Peace is fer fagets", Dyrdek reportedly said before launching Modern Warfare, and quickly gained a small but cult following in the war- and violence-loving niche indie gaming community. But this indie success story is far from over, and the mainstream keeps pressuring Dyrdek to drop war and switch to casual games instead. How long will Infinity Ward be able to carry on the indie flame?