Thanks to V.M. Ayala for helping with edits on this piece. You can find them and their work @spacevalkyries on most platforms, including Patreon and Twitch. She’s a good friend and a wonderful creator who, like me, loves indie games, and she more than deserves your attention.
An outdated audio version of this article is available via Twitch VOD. The reading is followed by a broader live discussion.
The world is so weird and interconnected that sometimes what you thought was a petty pet peeve is actually, genuinely, indicative of a larger problem in your little corner of it. Maybe you grumble about the long, drab, scripted ad reads in YouTube videos, and then remember that those creators have to make ends meet somehow. Maybe you balk at the price tag of your favorite media property's new clothing collaboration, only to realize that the seamstresses were paid a living wage, unlike everything else you've purchased in your life. Maybe your petty instincts will lead you to uncover something you didn't know you knew.
My petty little instinct is that I hate when someone — anyone — tries to explain a video game using another video game. “Oh it’s like Resident Evil.” “Looks like another Earthbound clone.” “It’s kinda like Hades so you’ll probably like it.” Why does this piss me off so much? And why is it that indie games are so often reduced to nameless copycats?
I’ll say right off the bat that there is one huge, huge allowance I make in my contempt of indie games being compared to AAA titles, and that’s when indies do it themselves. Unfortunately, most developers must treat their games as products to make ends meet (or to make their next game). Identifying those elements of your game that can attract attention is instrumental to its financial success, especially if you’re lacking any formal budget or marketing team, as is so often the case.
So if you’re painfully aware of this thing that indies always have to deal with; if you’ve had your work tirelessly compared to games you’ve never played or movies you’ve never seen; if you threw up a trailer and a dozen people said it looked like a cheap Dark Souls, well… you may as well take advantage of that, right?
When I first started to notice this little habit in the games industry, it grated on me, but I wasn’t so sure why. It just felt so shallow. There are a limited amount of games the average player is going to be exposed to, even if they’re a full-on hobbyist playing every single day. They’ll know most modern AAA titles like The Last of Us, Pokémon, and Grand Theft Auto, as well as popular games-as-a-service like League of Legends or, of course, Fortnite. Outside of that, there are some breakout indies (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Among Us, Undertale) as well as classic game series — Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, Banjo-Kazooie… you get the idea. This list is far from exhaustive, but it still feels like the supposedly grand lexicon of games we pull from sits at around 50 titles, heavily biased towards recency.
Can we really say that the games on this meager list influence all future games’ creation? As popular or seminal as they may be, I think very, very few people have played all of them, or even a majority. Playing video games is practically my job and I sure haven’t. I can’t expect a developer to spend their limited free time running through all of them, let alone the average gamer.
This is all compounded by the fact that we’re in a very peculiar time in games history. Steam brought about the era of the instant download digital storefront, allowing more developers than ever to get their games distributed all over the world at relatively minimal cost to them. Combine this with the ever-increasing accessibility of development tools and we find ourselves living in a massive indie boom. There are more games available to us now than ever before by a matter of thousands and, by sheer law of large numbers, we end up with a lot of good ones. How could anyone possibly keep up?
The thing about indie games is that they are more often than not extremely personal pieces of work (yes, even the goofy ones). They may become commercially successful naturally; or, at some point during development, a developer may make decisions with the hopes of making their game more commercially viable. But at the end of the day, indie developers rarely go into this with the intent of making money. No one in their right mind would tell themselves, “Well, the best way to make money would be to just teach myself programming, art, marketing, social media & community management, project management, and game design, and then rip off some more popular games with a lower budget. That’s a get rich quick scheme if ever I heard one.” They make games because they love them and they love making things, or because they want to tell a story, or because they want to share things with and participate in a community. And when an individual (or a small group of individuals) make a game, it’s all the things that inspire them that find their ways into the work — not just the video games.
In December of 2020, TUNIC creator Andrew Shouldice gave an interview with Xbox in which he talked about his inspirations.
“Tunic wears a lot of its influences on its sleeve, for sure. A lot of people mention The Legend of Zelda series, and there’s definitely a through line there. If I were to compare Tunic to a Zelda game though, it would be, more than any other, the very first one… It’s hard to be absolutely sure where each part of the game came from, but I can name a few things I’ve actively admired while trying to get things right while making Tunic. The feeling of dodging through an attack and being perfectly positioned to land your own hits, from Bloodborne. The sublime, perfect isometry of Monument Valley. The mystifying, ever-present text of FEZ. The sprawling yet intricately connected world of Dark Souls. The imposing and boxlike villains in The Secret of Kells. The ruined world of a powerful civilization, from Nausicaä [of the Valley of the Wind] and Laputa[: Castle in the Sky]. The dumbfounding and world-spanning riddles of La Mulana and Myst.“
The funny thing about this interview is that nothing here seems to have a direct nor deliberate 1-to-1. Shouldice confirms that he’s inspired by The Legend of Zelda series — but at the same time, says that it’s the very first game for the NES that should draw the most comparison, as opposed to the safer assumption of Ocarina of Time or even Wind Waker.
He goes on to name two FromSoftware titles, one of the most famous indie platformers of all time, two Ghibli films (but, again, none of the ones you’d guess), a mobile indie puzzle game from 2014, an independent Irish animated film, and to top it all off, La Mulana and Myst of all things! What’s so interesting and telling about this interview is the uncertainty of it. Shouldice is trying to navigate his wide web of inspiration and pull out what inspired exactly what in TUNIC, only to find that nothing matches up perfectly. These are the things that inspire him, broadly, and so they’re the things that came to inspire broad concepts in TUNIC. Without sitting down with a developer and having a conversation with them at length like this, it’s impossible to know not only precisely what inspires them in general, but also what inspired individual decisions within their work. I mean, neither you nor this hypothetical developer may even recognize that they had to make decisions at all. When working artistically, some things come naturally, because you’re working instinctively off of the massive library of reference and inspiration that you yourself have. It’s rare to sit there thumbing through the rolodex and pick out individual things to influence individual sections of your work.
And this brings me to my greatest frustration with this line of thinking — the “Oh, it’s like Undertale,” of it all. It is so unbelievably arrogant to presume that you know everything that a developer is from a single game, let alone mere seconds of a trailer. To say with such confidence that the developer's inspirations are those things that you know, too, and know well, is nothing short of delusion — especially when your frame of reference is limited to the world of video games and “geek” culture, while theirs may encompass old foreign films or the local traditions of Chile or Arabic love poetry or the impressionist art of Monét or any other manner of things.
It’s worse when it’s not presumed inspirations but presumed inspiration, singular. This so wholly reduces a game down to a facsimile; a low-budget clone or money grubbing imitation of something great. It’s not a brawler with minigames, it’s just, like, a Yakuza. Whatever. The grass isn’t greener on the other side and also that grass is just like the grass we already have anyways so why even bother, right? Indies are subject to great acts of narrowmindedness on the daily, but the certainty that each and every one of them live in the same tiny little world as you is the most disrespectful of them all.
“Though the game is filled with some fairly common action-adventure genre tropes — it has melee combat and climbing similar to games such as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order or even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, platforming that recalls games such as Ratchet & Clank, and puzzles like you might see in The Legend of Zelda — it manages to combine a familiar approachability with some fresh spins on the ideas.”
Pause. Let’s pretend you haven’t played those games. What the fuck does any of that mean?
This is from a review of Kena: Bridge of Spirits from GameSpot and, unfortunately, this is the first paragraph that talks about its gameplay. So, there’s no other context provided for what Kena’s gameplay feels like — or what you even do — prior to this. It’s a deluge of similes involving games that are not this one with little-to-no other description for another couple paragraphs. Words are entering my brain with no impact, not only because these references are too broad (Which Ratchet & Clank? Which Legend of Zelda?), but because they are, bafflingly, being used to add detail to a comment on Kena’s derivative and even generic nature. The author states that Kena’s “filled with… action-adventure genre tropes,” which pretty heavily implies that anyone who’s played a few action-adventure games will innately understand Kena’s basic gameplay on that description alone. They then go on to describe, at length, the gameplay of Kena — not by using actual language to explain the game’s speed, complexity, flow, or core gameplay loop, but by throwing out the names of other popular action-adventure games for comparison.
The problem here is that both “fairly common action-adventure genre tropes” and the multiple video game references require the reader to be fairly gaming literate, but in the exact same way (In fact, I think the Ratchet & Clank and Legend of Zelda references are referring to the most recent releases from each series, meaning that the reader has to be caught up with major AAA titles for these to have any meaning). The reader who doesn’t know what constitutes action-adventure genre tropes probably doesn’t know much about the games provided as reference. Likewise, the reader who does understand action-adventure genre tropes probably also knows enough about the games mentioned that this is a weird nesting doll sentence — it contains its own generic description within itself. Its over-explanation makes it more confusing and nebulous, instead of less, because it’s so unnecessary.
This particular snippet of this particular review is a pretty extreme example, but this is how so much writing on indies hits my ears. This may come as a shock, but games have a lot of stuff in them. Art, UI, UX, combat, weapons, levels, worlds, story, dialogue, voice acting, mocap, gameplay, progression systems, playable characters, non-playable characters, lore, and so on and so forth. There are dozens of qualities any given game can have. So: how many qualities does one game have to have in common with another for it to be like that game?
If I were to follow what I understand from mainstream games writing and common conversations, the answer is one, but it depends. If a game has a 2D, papercraft art style, it’s like Paper Mario. If it has RPG-style gameplay with timed attacks, it’s also like Paper Mario. If it has a large cast of silly NPCs, uh, well… that might be Paper Mario, too. But if it’s really hard, it’s like Dark Souls. If it has an intricate world that interconnects, it’s also like Dark Souls. If it has a lot of lore (especially if that lore is hidden in item descriptions), you guessed it: Dark Souls. I mean, unless those items are journals or notes, because then it’s like Resident Evil.
As much as we all might like to disagree, there’s no denying that having even one single quality perceived as being kind of like that of another, more popular game invites comparison. What’s so troublesome here is that without a full explanation, I don’t know why you’re comparing these games. With the exception of outright ripoffs, even the most apt comparison requires some regular ole adjectives to get the point across. Why mar your writing with some extremely context-dependent proper nouns instead of just… describing the game?
Perhaps because the final boss of games journalism is a shitty little acronym: SEO. I feel like the term gets thrown around without a lot of explanation, so real quick: SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the practice of making alterations to works posted publicly online in the hopes of securing a higher placement in search engine results, namely Google. It’s an open secret in… pretty much any online industry that SEO is a factor in any large scale production (or any production that would like to be large scale). Whether you’re a gaming site that relies on ad revenue, an online retailer selling clothing, or even, say, a YouTuber, SEO is a bit of a monkey’s paw. Just master the art of shoehorning commonly searched terms into a somewhat-related work, and you’ll be rewarded with page visits the likes of which you’ve never seen. But beware… not only can this severely impact the quality of your writing, but Google changes their search engine algorithm every few months, so you’ll have to relearn this frequently. And if you’re really trying to optimize things, you’ll need to constantly update old articles not only so they meet current SEO requirements, but also so they’ll appear in the highly-coveted “Recently Updated” section on Google.
But pure SEO isn’t all there is to talk about here. Unfortunately, indie games have historically very poor “return on investment” when written about. It’s kinda the nature of things — indies are much smaller games, so they tend to have much smaller audiences. If the game hasn’t even come out yet, the amount of people interested in your article based on the game’s name alone is pretty minimal. So how do you drum up interest? How do you make people want to read it?
Mentioning another, more popular game is a pretty straightforward avenue, of course.
Something like “Creature Collecting MMO Temtem Leaves Early Access And It’s a Great Time to Join” may pique a passing interest, especially for those who recall the game’s name from its early access phase, but I can’t help but feel like most people would pass that by. Now “Indie MMO Temtem Is More Than a Pokémon Clone” — that’s a headline. I know because that’s not only the headline for just about every review of the game, but also because it now includes the name of the most popular franchise on planet Earth. Someone who likes Pokémon (which is… most people?) and is looking for a new game to play is a lot more likely to take an interest here, and it might show up in Google searches related to Pokémon to boot. Theoretically, hopefully, probably, you’ve just massively increased your potential viewerbase with what is, overall, a pretty minor alteration to your piece.
And I have no problem with that! Honestly, I would — and do — do it too. That’s just how it works on this bitch of an Earth right now for us online creators. So let’s talk about ways to do this that are a little less cool.
You remember how earlier I said it wasn’t really helpful to describe a game with another game without proper context? If you use anything but a AAA game to describe another game in your headline, you ensure that you don’t have enough room for extra context; and, therefore, that anyone unfamiliar with the reference game you chose will continue to know nothing about the game the article is actually about without reading the entire thing — which they’re not exactly inclined to do, since again, they have no context as to what that game is about to begin with.
Rock Paper Shotgun released an article at the beginning of the year, headline: “Excellent Frostpunk-at-sea 'em up The Pale Beyond is coming this February.”
What.
I’m pretty well-versed in indie games, considering I’ve made them by business for the past few years, but colony sims aren’t really my jam. From what I recall, Frostpunk is, like… a super hard colony sim/citybuilder where you can freeze to death or something. A [blank]-’em-up usually just means you do a lot of whatever is in the blank, so a shoot-em-up involves a lot of shooting, right? So I guess The Pale Beyond is a lot like Frostpunk.
Ah, but it’s literally not like it at all, huh? They’re just both survival sims set in harsh, cold environments. Alright, cool. It could just as easily be a The Long Dark-’em-up — though that has the same issue. Both Frostpunk and The Long Dark are relatively well-known within the indie space, but far from being industry leaders or the type of games you could expect anyone to know. For most people, this could just as well say, “Excellent game The Pale Beyond is coming this February.” It might even be better for it.
If you’ll allow me to pick a quick bone: this is especially frustrating because Rock Paper Shotgun is one of very few publications to take the time out of its day to consistently, loudly, and happily cover indie games of all sizes — and they’re not exactly a tiny outlet, either. So much of the writing they do is genuinely really well done and funny and interesting, and has led me to games I never would’ve found otherwise. This particular headline is one of the stronger examples I can remember, but they do this all the time, and it drives me up the wall. I find it so intensely disappointing from an outlet I really respect otherwise, and I just want them to do better.
I’m not from Reddit, so I’m not willing to write off the entire industry of games journalism as just being bad writers. I use these extremely specific examples from major games websites not to condemn the industry (nor those sites, nor those writers), but because they very well illustrate my point. Contrary to what THE MEDIA™ would have you believe with the lambast of critics like the late Roger Ebert or Martin Scorcese, writers are just regular ass people with regular ass opinions — they’re just better at articulating them because, y’know, they trained to do precisely that. I don’t think it’s bad that journalists are saying these sorts of things; I don’t like that anyone does, and they’re the most readily available and accredited examples. This practice being so widespread even among what is supposed to be the highest echelon of games writing just indicates to me that it is and has been widespread in the more public culture, and no one seems to recognize it as a concern.
But I digress. Another indie game headline pet peeve of mine is simply not saying the name of the game, although this I can see a bit more value to. As annoyed as I can be at what is in essence a lack of credit, I can’t deny that it can be an effective way to pull in readers. Again, indies aren’t gonna attract as many eyes on name alone as larger titles will. From earlier, my headline “Indie MMO Temtem Is More Than a Pokémon Clone” wasn’t bad. But, hey, let’s say I’ve kinda heard of Temtem before and I didn’t really think it was interesting. It looked like a cheap indie, or I really did think it was a Pokémon clone, or whatever. Or maybe I’m not interested in reading that expressly because I haven’t heard of it.
These attitudes represent a perhaps concerningly large section of the gaming community, so leaning on the core concepts of a game may be more fruitful for the benefit of the reader, writer, and developer. For a really, really small indie, it’s difficult for me to say that having the name in the headline is going to attract any readers at all, regardless of whether they’re indie lovers or haters. Then, is it better to use the space that’d be taken up introducing the game’s name to add more potentially eyecatching description? I don’t really know, but I can’t discount its ability to garner attention for the parties that really need it.
Some people wonder why indies are so underplayed and underestimated among the cavalcade of AAA releases every year. But how can anyone say they’re encouraged to broaden their horizons when this is how we talk about them? Who cares to experience something new when everyone introduces it as derivative? Who wants a description that comes with its own works cited — with fucking homework? I’m not a publisher. I don’t wanna hear another reference soup ass “elevator pitch” as long as I live.
There’s not really a solution here. There’s not something that you or I can do or start doing overnight that’ll change all this and magically transform the world of indie game culture and critique. All you can do is internalize that a real person — maybe even lots of real people — worked themselves hard to make a game you have a chance to enjoy. Their work is worthy of respect not because it’s good or bad or because it reminds you of something else you like but because it is a thing that someone made.
When a work is so individualized as an indie game, you don’t know why someone made it, what inspired them when they did, or what went into all the little decisions that had to be made every step of the way. And you certainly don’t know all that after ten seconds of a trailer you’re half paying attention to, dickhead. You can’t know all that without knowing them personally — and even then you might be a bit behind — because people, as it turns out, are very complicated. We are simultaneously everything that we’ve ever absorbed in our entire lives and also our own unique interpretation of every single one of those things, and what parts of those things mattered to us, and how they all combine. Some games are simpler than others, and some really are engineered to make money by ripping off something else. But it’s rare you can faithfully make that call, because you just don’t know that. I don’t, either, but I know that there are too many good, unique, weird games in this world for that to be the rule rather than the exception.