Located 491 results from search term 'indie'
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Commented in Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming
I honestly don't care too much nor ever had the perception that Valve was a "Good Guy" company. I like being able to browse through lots of games and having a convenient means of accessing indie games.
Overall, it seems like the author is just super mad at Steam and wants to just launch a rant because they can. I agree that there are problems with the service, but got damn.
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Commented in Nintendo Switch review: the best portable console
The battery life of the Switch, according to Nintendo, ranges from two and a half to six hours, depending on what you’re playing. With The Legend of Zelda, I’ve been consistently getting just under three hours of playtime before I need to charge.
No long car rides then. It might be ok for a daily commute on public transit if it's a short trip, it may not last on a bus to MARTA into the city and back out for some in the outer edges of the metro with transit options.
The bottom edge of the Switch has a standard USB-C for charging, although we’ve yet to find a battery / cable that can charge the console faster than it drains.
That also sucks for long car rides, we need a cable that can charge this thing in the car.
Outside of a small flicker every now and then, the process of moving from one screen to the next is seamless. The no-nonsense, plastic base station doesn’t add any additional processing;
The flicker is kind of a bad thing like the docking isn't as smooth as every review is claiming. Also, it'd be great if they had boosted some things with the dock but I guess I can see why they didn't.
I’d almost say it’s an essential accessory if not for the $70 price tag, Sony and Microsoft’s controllers both cost less, and they also feature a headphone jack quietly gaming with headphones, something the Switch Pro Controller sorely lacks.
I don't understand this choice, I only want to game with this thing, to begin with, but being more expensive and having fewer features is stupid, Nintendo has a homerun idea and makes it a ground rule double.
start using a Joy-Con for motion-controlled games
When the others have moved on from this idea, Nintendo is tripling down, why?
The Switch, notably, won’t have a web browser. It won’t have Netflix, Virtual Console, Nintendo’s online store dedicated to reselling classic games from the company’s back catalog, that isn’t going to make launch. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the single flagship standout here, with the others mostly being smaller indie titles, many of which are available elsewhere. Zelda is available elsewhere, too, with a Wii U version also launching this Friday.
This means there is zero reason to buy this thing on launch, wait.
Here's another big question for Nintendo: long-term support. The company has long struggled with rallying third-party publisher interest.
Maybe don't be an asshole company and accept M-rated titles including things like GTA. Don't force weird motion controls, don't force, just allow companies to come join you. The biggest problem is this thing isn't as powerful as other current gen consoles and that will probably hurt 3rd party support.
All in all, I like the idea, I'd love to have one, but I can't justify paying more than an Xbox or PS4 on a company with a track record of all first party titles and stupid controls. Not to mention they're joining the others with paid online and Zelda is getting DLC.
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Commented in Now You Can Smell Like an Old Book
I love smelling like old books. There are many alternatives available in the indie perfume world as well, because some of the fragrances listed here and in similar articles are incredibly expensive. I will say that I've seen good reviews for Sweet Tea Apothecary, but these oils do not necessarily smell like 'books' per se. More like the interpretation of the authors for which they're named. If you're looking for the more literal notes of books (things like dry paper, ink, book bindings, must, etc), I don't think you'll find them at STA.
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Commented in CRASH: The Year Video Games Died
People keep saying we're about to hit another '82 crash, but I don't think we are. The gaming landscape has changed in the past decade - for both better and for worse.
Everyone like to point out AAA titles, such as Call of Duty 14 and Assasin's Creed 9, as examples of stagnation that could lead to a collapse. They will says that this chasing of initial highs will eventually flood the market with yearly rehashes and lackluster releases. On top of that, bug-ridden and failed releases point to a laziness inside the industry that could lead to a decline in trust of these studios. AAA studios are the key players in the industry, and their performance can indicate a general trend in the market. However, there's been a large expansion of the indie scene that could withstand a AAA collapse.
Since Minecraft, the indie market has boomed - with new studios cropping up every year and releasing new titles. Without Minecraft, titles like the Stanley Parable, Day Z, and Kerbal Space Program wouldn't exist. At the same time, these games have proved that the indie approach is sustainable. New companies can be created and kept alive, without being controlled by large publishers such as EA and Activision - which are constanly pointed out as "the problem." However, a part of the indie model could eventually lead to their demise - early access.
Steam's Early Access model allows small studios fund their projects without a final product. People can buy in, get an alpha or beta version of the game, and the studios can in turn use their generated revenue to fund further development of their game. The system has worked for games like Minecraft (although, not backed by Steam) and Kerbal Space Program, which have eventually made it to the full release stage. However, for the consumer, buying into these games can be a risky investment. The Day Z standalone that started development a few years ago has been called dead and a ripoff by some. The War Z was such a failure, that Steam pulled the game out of their store and gave buyers a refund. The system is good for the honest and determined studios, but how many times can consumers be ripped off and abused before they abandon the model in favor of something else.
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Commented in EOS Lip Balm Can Damage Skin, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges
Ugh. Frankly, many cosmetics companies (indie, especially) could potentially run the risk of contaminants. I've never used EOS and certainly won't now. But hopefully for the sake of their customer base, they will be able to identify the problem(s) and rectify them safely and in a timely manner.
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Commented in Synth Britannia
This all came about as I a habit of just letting youtube do its autoplay thing when listening to music. What came up today brought me back to this documentary about synth pop that hit the UK in the 80s.
The Human League - Don't You Want Me
Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine (full album)
Depeche Mode - Master and Servant
Franky Goes to Hollywood - Relax
The reason why this is important to look back on is all the folks making outrun/synthwave/retrowave music today, from Kavinsky to Lazerhawk to Carpenter Brut and many more. We are starting to see these influences pop up in film, like le matos scoring the indie film Turbo Kid, or Moonbeam City being a show on the television.
This is by no means meant to be extensive, just information on where some of the music people might hear has its roots.
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Commented in Streaming Music is Ripping You Off
Click fraud is a problem, yes, and one which I hope services like Spotify are working hard to solve. This doesn't mean I'm getting ripped off, though: I'm still getting exactly the service I'm hoping for.
Now, I definitely hope that with time artists end up getting a fair share of the money spent on streaming services, but the truth is, it's the exact same bullshit with CDs and vinyls. Artists make a fraction of the CD price. CDs, and now streaming services, are ways for artists to get exposure for their music, and their real money is coming from endorsements and live tours.
That's why, I suspect, that mainstream and indie artists are not up in arms about this. They're getting known through the service, and that later translates into CD sales through word of mouth, sales of concert tickets, merchandise, etc. Beyoncé isn't going broke any time soon, Spotify or not.
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Commented in TotalBiscuit - The failure of an indie platformer
I'm gonna copy my comment in from the video that was published into indiegames because reasons:
I feel this video misses the mark pretty heavily on why this particular platformer failed and why indie platformers in general have failed/can fail. Two of the things it hit right were saturation and price. However the false resurrection of platformers began back when YouTube was more of a baby and game guide sites were emerging for flash games.
Flash games were relatively simplistic to create a platformer, and caused a lot of free decent platformers to emerge. Flash games worked on a different budget all together and were largely driven by ad revenue - one game would earn developers between $2000-$20000 depending heavily on how popular the game was, the initial sponsor, and how many rebrands flash consumption sites paid for. This was the underlying push for platformer flash revival, and super meat boy took a simple formula and made it simpler- a flash platformer with short difficult levels and used completion principles which were getting popular along with the rise of meta gaming. It was it easy to replay those levels over and over with a real end goal.
A number of these games were decent, but not all of them were popular enough to give rise to games outside of the flash scene, as the rise of mobile games quickly followed this making ad revenue more accessible from free phone apps(which quickly became saturated and was quickly realized to be a different beast all together all with media differences). One of the other notable platformers from this era was VVVVVV which gained success in a wildly different manner. This game probably only gained the hype it did due to the leak during its alpha phase that ended with it on 4chan, and then the developer ranting about how his game was going to fail because of pirates, which caused a lot of people to feel bad about the leak, since they thought it was a publicly available free flash game. This caused an influx of donations which set the dev on the path to success, since the game was pretty much complete at that point anyway.
Anyway after all the TL;DR the main reason this game failed was because it had little to grab the user beyond the one gravity mechanic seems like. That and a 10$ price tag is ridiculous when comparing it to the darker older indie platformers. This may have been fine 10 years ago as a flash game, but probably would have raised the same amount of money in ad revenue as it got from sales.
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Commented in The failure of an indie platformer
I feel this video misses the mark pretty heavily on why this particular platformer failed and why indie platformers in general have failed/can fail. Two of the things it hit right were saturation and price. However the false resurrection of platformers began back when YouTube was more of a baby and game guide sites were emerging for flash games.
Flash games were relatively simplistic to create a platformer, and caused a lot of free decent platformers to emerge. Flash games worked on a different budget all together and were largely driven by ad revenue - one game would earn developers between $2000-$20000 depending heavily on how popular the game was, the initial sponsor, and how many rebrands flash consumption sites paid for. This was the underlying push for platformer flash revival, and super meat boy took a simple formula and made it simpler- a flash platformer with short difficult levels and used completion principles which were getting popular along with the rise of meta gaming. It was it easy to replay those levels over and over with a real end goal.
A number of these games were decent, but not all of them were popular enough to give rise to games outside of the flash scene, as the rise of mobile games quickly followed this making ad revenue more accessible from free phone apps(which quickly became saturated and was quickly realized to be a different beast all together all with media differences). One of the other notable platformers from this era was VVVVVV which gained success in a wildly different manner. This game probably only gained the hype it did due to the leak during its alpha phase that ended with it on 4chan, and then the developer ranting about how his game was going to fail because of pirates, which caused a lot of people to feel bad about the leak, since they thought it was a publicly available free flash game. This caused an influx of donations which set the dev on the path to success, since the game was pretty much complete at that point anyway.
Anyway after all the TL;DR the main reason this game failed was because it had little to grab the user beyond the one gravity mechanic seems like. That and a 10$ price tag is ridiculous when comparing it to the darker indie platformers. This may have been fine 10 years ago as a flash game, but probably would have raised the same amount of money in ad revenue as it got from sales.
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Commented in Not your (grand)father's Grateful Dead
An unusually thought-out expression of the old Dead-as-artifact argument, in which the music's appeal to post-baby boomer generations is actually an insincere, postured misunderstanding of 'what made the Dead great.' Calling Fare Thee Well "a paint-by-numbers image of one filled out with anachronistic elements suitable to 2015, not the 1960s or 70s" makes that clear. But then, Shapiro drops the hammer of enlightenment on his inferiors: "The audience then manufactures an experience with this counterfeit group that allows it to believe it is reliving the past, creating in effect a counterfeit of a counterfeit." So, this may be a reality all its own, but it bears only a distant likeness to the original. Even the band itself doesn't realize what this (apparently) great social theorist does - that actually liking the music and wanting to celebrate that with fellow fans is part of the Grateful Dead equation only if the music is presented in its original historical context by all the musicians who first performed it. For Shapiro, any appeal that the performance of their body of work has today must found in the reenactment of those times by the naive or nostalgic, struck dumb by Instagram and reality TV (or something, I couldn't follow his argument after he totally divorced the tunes from the fans' reason for attending Fare Thee Well).
I feel an open letter comin' on...
Robert E. Shapiro,
Clearly, you're a deep thinker. You have invoked Socrates' cave allegory to describe media. You have accused modern society of being shallow and impatient. You really nailed that low hanging fruit, man. I'm sure someone, somewhere is snapping out of it and burning all their tie-dyes and all their bootlegs from before [what would you prefer? 1973? The moment they signed with Arista and shuttered their indie label?] so as to be in the present with fun, sharp-minded guys like you. But your assumptions about modern culture have blinded you to the real reason that the Dead still has purchase in our culture: damn good songs and an endlessly regenerative - if sometimes uneven - method of presenting them. We who attended (or, like myself, wish we could have attended) Fare Thee Well are not trying to re-enact your version of the past for an audience on Instagram. We're acting (present tense, cowboy) out our own versions of being a fan of the Grateful Dead. You say "get your own decade," but we don't want your decade or your Grateful Dead anyhow, because we don't need them. We each have our own. Yours seems to have been on mothballs since Pigpen died, and that's cool if you're into that, but mine is alive, rockin', a few men down, and yes - they're on Instagram.
"Crazy rooster crowin' midnight
Balls of lightin' roll along
Old men sing about their dreams
Women laugh and children scream
And the band keeps playin' on"
Signed,
Your (grand)son's fellow Deadheads
/rant
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Commented in IO doesn't want to call Hitman an Early Access game in case it gives people the wrong idea
Now the question is if the base game is worth the cost? There are plenty of games that do this, albeit more-so indie titles such as Minecraft or Terraria and pretty much every MMORPG, but those games were worth their original cost without additional content.
Just a wise warning: it's fine to buy into Early Access or whatever this is as long as the product you are getting at purchase is worth what you paid. You should never "invest" money or faith into a developer these days.
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Commented in EA cosplay
EA has slowly ruined Maxis. Both SimCity and The Sims 4 pale in comparison to their predecessors. And now with the rise of indie games and development studios, we able to see such huge success with games like Cities: Skylines.
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Commented in How TV lost its sexual inhibitions
You know, I was just thinking about this today actually. A good example is in the case of USA Network. A network not well-known for its serious dramatic series (comparing to AMC and FX). I mean, in the sense that their chief demographic was not the same people that would be tuning into Orange Is The New Black (at least from my mother's perspective), yet two episodes ago on Mr. Robot they show a character having obviously gay anal sex. I for one, was not expecting that on USA, maybe HBO or FX but no there.
But I also think that the reason why we are seeing this sort of sexual revolution on tv is because it's for a smaller audience. Even local audiences as some shows distribution is harder on the international level. It's a shame distribution for independent films also aren't wider because if more people saw indie films, they would definitely be seeing a less conservative Hollywood.
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Commented in Can't Decide On Which PS Vita Model To Buy? Watch These!
I own both a PS Vita and 3DS and I have to agree with what you've said... But, the Vita is a fantastic console as well. It might not get much AAA support, but you have a ton of great indie and japanese games, as well as a various exclusives that really make it worthwhile to have the console. You can also buy PSP and PSOne classics which makes it all the better as well.
Also, if you're a trophy hunter like me, then you can't go wrong with the Vita. There's tons of games with good trophy lists that can be platinumed in a couple days if you put enough effort into them. And don't forget that the Vita is NOT region locked, which means that you can import games to your heart's content!
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Commented in Life's Entropy - Everything You Needed to Know About This Brand You've Never Heard Of
I think LE stands out for its non-eyeshadow products, because there are far fewer indie brands doing lip-products, and the number that do anything involving foundation/brow products, etc. are pretty limited. LE also focuses on the science side of things - not just with branding and names, but in terms of researching products, ingredients, etc. This is why LE has things like their Revival Serum - Jane (creator of LE) likely had to do quite a bit of research to figure out which ingredient was evaporating when brow creams would dry out, then she had to figure out if it could be added back to a dry brow cream to "revive" it. Etc.
If LE decides to release a matte lip cream, I think they'll be doomed (in a good way).
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Commented in Life's Entropy - Everything You Needed to Know About This Brand You've Never Heard Of
Love your reviews! I think it is so important to showcase indie brands. I feel that many lesser can be just as good as popular brands which is exactly why the box subscriptions are becoming so common. I am definitely going to check out LE. How do you think they stack up against other indie or even popular brands?
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Commented in Disney Had to Close its Scariest Ever Attraction. Here’s Why
The only rides I like are Haunted Mansion, Alice in Wonderland, the Who Framed Rogger Rabbit ride, and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Don't know if I'm boring or not, but yeeeeeah. It's been years since I last went to Disneyland, California (that's the closest one from where I live). You guys should watch this movie called "Escape from Tomorrow" it's an indie horror film shot "guerilla" style and more people need to watch it. Tell me what you guys thought about it later, okay? Anyways, good post.
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Commented in Kyle Pittman: "When 'Doing Everything Right' Goes Wrong"
Both of these games are absolutely fantastic imo, and Super deserved to sell better than he reports, I think. To me, this article served as a pretty fascinating insight to the hell that indie development can be, in a world where the quality of a game is not the only thing that dictates success.
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Commented in Tech Demo for Pillow Castle's First Person Puzzler
Just did a search for the latest info on this game. Found a reddit post from 4 months ago that says:
"Yeah, like smushkan said, the Pillow Castle team just graduated recently so it's going through a transitional period. I'm trying to see if I can continue development full-time in a more indie space, but not all of the team are in a good position to take that kind of risk. Thanks Shardwing. We definitely thought there was a lot of hype about the game and didn't want to disappoint people until we had something really good. That's why we didn't make any giant announcements yet! Games like these can take a long time to make (usually any time from 3 to 5 years), so the last thing we want to do is rush the process and make an incomplete game. -Albert"
Probably won't be out for quite some time.
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Commented in Agar.io
Keyboard control means you can only work this in 8 directions. If Agar.io came out as a game on the Xbox and PS4 as a little $5 indie, it would be a hot seller, I can guarantee that.
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Commented in Moo means NO!
Yep, it's me! I'm an indie comic artist from the UK. Thanks for the kind words :)
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Commented in MRW fatpeoplehate users try and make a tribe on snapzu
You are absolutely right. I hate complaining without doing something about it. I am the admin of /t/longform articles, and I intend to operate it on a free speech basis. The only requirement for people posting there is that their content is an article longer than a couple paragraphs, and written well.
Believe me, as an indie game dev watching all these online game blogs and people complaining about games because they don't meet their personal, subjective criteria, the phrase, "If you don't like it, make something better," is never far from my lips.
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Commented in Beginner's guide to indie cosmetics - great starting point for delving into a relatively new industry.
Of course, some or all of you here might be entirely familiar with indie makeup, but I thought I'd post what I thought was a great starting guide - it's obviously a little different from mainstream makeup brands. I'm most familiar with indie nail polish brands, but I have quite a few indie lipsticks, foundation modifiers, etc. If you have a favourite brand (or forever-shunned brand), please share!
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Commented in Terraria 1.3 Patch notes
Yep. This is how to be an indie dev.
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Commented in One of the Most Amazing Feats in Chess History Just Happened, and No One Noticed
The Sinquefield Cup—maybe the strongest chess tournament ever—drew fewer ticket buyers than an indie rock show.
that's just sad