Pisscubes wrote:Sony claims to be the indie developers best friend right now as they're getting everyone on board for the ps4, I've read. But I think this smacks of American Idol-ism, where they're going to make it seem an honor to "try out" for them and as soon as one of these indie games that they'll probably pay very little for hits, they're exploit the fuck out of it and maybe run it into the ground like with what happened to Dead Space. Obviously not saying Dead Space was an "indie" game when it started, but it was at least a niche game that got totally raped by huge budgets and focus groups by the third installment and now, despite selling millions, we've basically been told it wasn't successful enough to warrant another one.
Which I suppose is fine-- I didn't want another DS3. But the fist two games were great and it was only greed that killed the series.
I'm a total Sony fanboy, but I'm with you on this. I hate the idea that indie "content creators" (can't type that without scare quotes and still respect myself) of any kind NEED big conglomerate publishers, which is less true than ever right now and has long been basically discredited as a concept by the DIY music culture to which this board is distantly related.
One of the most bummer video game stories in recent years to me was the story of Streets of Rage Remake--not the canceled 3D game (also a bummer) but the
unbelievably loving and detailed, fan-made, from-scratch re-imagining of the 16-bit games. As I understand it, they went far out of their way to inform Sega about what they were doing, and it was only days after the final version was made available for download that Sega told them to cease and desist.
It's just so backwards: these guys basically put in eight years of work making the best free advertisement imaginable for a dormant franchise that hasn't yet been rebooted, and rather than seizing the opportunity (publishing the game, promoting a new reboot, boxing kangaroo action figures, whatever) they just scuttled the whole thing and put out
another fucking shitty Sonic game that I'm sure failed to meet their expectations of finally at long last returning that doddering, syphilis-ridden franchise to its glory days...