1611: Look in the Middle

I was pointed in the direction of this post earlier by a retweet on Twitter, and while I agree with some of its points — the games press needs to embrace the ever-growing diversity continually exhibited by the development sector — I feel like it’s not quite got its priorities right.

The angle on display in the piece is that press should pay more attention to the sort of things that were exhibited at IndiE3, an alternative presentation put on by the independent developer community during E3 — which is, as you may know, the busiest time of the year for both the mainstream games press and mainstream games publishers.

The games on display at IndiE3, judging by the description in the article linked above, were all highly unusual, creative games — often lumped together as “art games” — and, for sure, their existence is worth exploring and celebrating. They’re often very personal works put together by small teams — even individuals in some cases — and, in many ways, they’re probably the closest we have to true “works of art” in the medium in the traditional sense.

But I kind of have to disagree with the assertion that they’re the ones suffering the most from the mainstream press’ obsession with whatever the Top Three Triple-A Titles Right Now are at any given moment. In recent years, we’ve started to see the phenomenon of the “indie darling”, for example, whereby mainstream press and gamers alike suddenly all jump aboard the same small-scale title and champion it until they’re blue in the face. Not only that, but we’ve seen a significant growth in indie-specialist sites in the last couple of years; whether or not those sites make any money or not is another matter altogether, but they exist, and those are the places that are celebrating these highly creative, original and often very affecting titles — far better than the broad brush-strokes of the mainstream outlets can.

No; the field that is suffering the most from the mainstream press’ attention deficit disorder is that of mid-tier games. Barely acknowledged at the best of times and sort of waved away with a dismissive air of “this doesn’t really need to be explored in detail” at others, mid-tier games are often where the most interesting, accessible work is going on in the video games business. In contrast to the often self-consciously “arty” world of the aforementioned indie games — a style of development that makes them less accessible to those who prefer somewhat more “conventional” (for want of a better word) titles — mid-tier games often make use of recognisable gameplay tropes and conventions and marry them to subject matter that is more creative, inventive and risk-taking than that seen by big publishers. It’s mid-tier games that gave us titles like Deadly Premonition, the Twin Peaks game that never was. It’s mid-tier games that gave us series like Atelier, an unconventional take on role-playing games that requires a different way of thinking and which is still, to date, something of a trailblazer in its prominent use of female protagonists. It’s mid-tier games that gave us titles like Murdered: Soul Suspect, a game that was actually a whole lot more compelling and interesting than its mediocre reviews made out. I could go on all day.

These are the games that the mainstream press is truly neglecting. But with the ever-increasing focus on clickbait and ad revenue — both GameTrailers and Polygon, both high-profile online outlets, let a number of people go in the last couple of weeks, not to mention my own redundancy a short while back — this is a situation that’s only going to continue to get worse, until all big-scale games sites are going to be identikit news feeds with slightly different CSS.

That’s not an acceptable means of celebrating a medium with as much diversity as video games. That’s not an acceptable way to treat the talent in the industry, both on the development and press sides. That’s not a sustainable way for the business to continue to operate, surely. Surely?