seeing a lot of "i want shorter games by less people made with less money and worse graphics and i'm NOT joking!" in response to this from the same people talking about how totk is going to revolutionize gaming forever and the cognitive dissonance here is real
shifting video game culture to actually foster a healthy market for smaller games is something that needs more than lip service. we need to create spaces and communities around it. we need curation.
video games, whether they realize it or not, are a lifestyle industry.
the seductive power of a giant three-ring-circus game dropping/sucking everyone in at the same time is too powerful for most people to resist, which isn't a moral indictment as much as it is a recognition that the industry is just giving people what they've proven they want, but know that air is limited and the oxygen is thinner and thinner as these AAAA experiences consolidate into multi-year commitments for both devs and players.
we need more than just a moral stance on smaller games. we need infrastructure - cultural, logistical, financial.
(this of course does not apply to the original poster who is doing the work. stan @aqualounge, as they say)
The thing is that the work is already being done. Culture for smaller games has been around for decades. I have a bookmarked folder of ~1500 games and those games didn't all come from me visiting a bunch of people's websites! (they came from what are assuredly a large number of now defunct sites and blogs) The thing about the The Work is that it is always being done (to the point where someone has already made a post on this post about the work being done) and the problem is always one of support for this infrastructure rather than its construction.
In this latest round of "what about small games though"* I've seen plenty of pining for something or posting that picture of Sonic, but I don't think I've seen a single person actually saying "and here's a cool example of something different". And in a way, having a conversation around the quoted article feels like it's mostly just another bit of FOMO (everyone I see is having an opinion on it!) than it is actually people discussing dev cycles and scale in games. Though, I suppose that describes most Discourse and why it's so cyclical.
But I get how it can be hard for people to be the one to talk about a thing not everyone else is talking about. And I imagine a problem people run into with curation is that even with a strong curatorial source (I often see people using Criterion and Shudder as examples for streaming services) there's still not a clear Thing to watch/play/etc. But! I also don't things meaningfully change and shift away from the corporate-led Industry without doing a little (often solo) exploration.
Within this very site there's plenty of places to start looking and support (and many more than what I list)
Indiepocalypse - Monthly anthology that pays and highlights alternative games (that's me)
@IndieGamesOfCohost - indie interviews
@indietsushin - interviews and highlights with Japanese indies
@terrycavanagh - weekly free (often well of the beaten path) games
And places like these are just entry points to discovering and supporting a much wider culture of games and developers!
*with the addendum that of course when most people talking about this article (or probably headline) say "small games" they likely mean games with only a couple mil instead of hundreds in terms of budget. but i gotta strike when i got the chance
