Indie games offer thoughtful experiences and support passionate creators who build them

I haven’t played nearly enough indie games in my life. Growing up, I was never exposed to indie games (or even knew what an indie game was), so my experience with them has only come recently. My overall time spent with them has led me to one belief — indie games provide experiences that can be found nowhere else in the industry.

Indie games are special, and my time with them certainly is as well. The Fullbright Company’s “Gone Home” brilliantly subverts the horror genre by letting the player explore the organized chaos of a familiar house and pick up clues that lead to one of the best reveals in the history of storytelling. “Emily is Away” and “Emily is Away Too” perfectly encapsulate what it was like to nervously instant message a highschool crush. Nostalgia will never hit you so hard in your life. And “Florence” artfully depicts the start, highs and lows of a relationship (with a beautiful soundtrack) better than any movie or show I’ve ever seen. These are genres and stories never even thought of on the AAA scale. These experiences are only made possible through the tender care and love that are poured into these titles.

Indie games don’t just offer different experiences to seasoned gamers; they are often the best place to start playing, for new or returning gamers.

Support for independent developers is vital for the long-term health of the industry. Countless major studios in the industry today were once a struggling, independent studio. The beginning of the industry looked remarkably like the state of indie games now. Small, independent developers with less than a dozen members are what make up the majority of the industry. They are the first stages in the life cycle of studios. Look at the best regarded game studios out there –– the Naughty Dogs, Insomniac Games, Sucker Punch, Obsidian Entertainment, etc. –– all of these originated as independent studios. But indie games don’t get nearly as much publicity or attention as major developers because they don’t have the money to pay for it. Thatgamecompany was lucky to have a three-game deal with PlayStation, which gave it the exposure it needed to make “Journey,” a game of the year contender in 2012.

In recent years, the biggest players in the market — Nintendo, Microsoft and PlayStation — have started to notice the capability of independent developers to fill out game catalogs on their platforms and provide plenty of experiences for the player.  

The bloated budgets of massive AAA games often leads to an obtuse experience for the player. These massive AAA games become too expensive to make and encounter so much demand to be made in a timely manner that they lead to massive problems of crunch in the industry. We have seen this issue recently with Rockstar Games and Riot Games, which resulted in 100 hour work weeks.

But, by supporting independent developers and buying their games, you know that your money isn’t going straight to a corporation that will encourage crunch. Sure, indie games take a lot of hard work to make and are ultimately not immune to crunch culture, but a majority of the profit goes straight back to the developer. And the reward for a small studio’s work can be everything. Eric Barone, solo creator of indie hit “Stardew Valley,” has made more than 30 million dollars from one game alone. But that is far from reality for most indie games.

Supporting independent developers is equitable to taking care of the mom and pop shops of America — if we don’t do it ourselves as consumers, there won’t be many others who can. And if locally-run stores aren’t successful enough, they can very easily be run out of business by the giant Wal-Mart corporations of the world. The same is true for independent developers, whose every game could be their last. The next time you go to buy the next big, annual iteration in the same AAA series, take a look at the best indie games available and try to support those who really need it as well.

The only way we can move forward in the industry is by supporting and encouraging unique experiences that differ from what we already know as gamers. Elevating these experiences is what will give us new ones. And we are already seeing hints that some of the major platforms recognize that, with the way that Nintendo and PlayStation have recently pushed for indies on a larger stage. Some of my most memorable experiences in recent years have come from games like “Gone Home,” “Emily is Away” and “Journey” — and the reason they were so memorable was because of the incredibly unique experience they provide through the independent, unsullied lens of their developers.

Written by: Calvin Coffee — cscoffee@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Crowds of people taking pictures of the California super bloom has caused damage to the flowers, calling into question the role of pictures and social media in nature

The “super bloom” of wildflowers in California this spring has been gorgeous; it’s undeniably special to see the normally dry, brown hills blanketed with colorful blossoms, especially after the past few years of drought. Their arrival reveals a dark side, though. The widespread news coverage has sparked an overwhelming flurry of tourism in parks like the Anza-Borrego State Park near San Diego, and the attention has not left the flowers unharmed: in search of the best pictures, visitors are wandering out into the wildflower fields, creating new trails and crushing blooms in what USA Today called (a little dramatically) a “super bloom apocalypse.”

People wreaking havoc in the righteous quest for the perfect Instagram shot is not a new phenomenon: stories of people actually dying both in parks and urban areas for a selfie with a bear, a cliff or an oncoming train are shockingly common. These strange, morbid stories are a testament to the weird disassociation we feel when taking a picture — especially when that picture comes with bragging rights.

As social media has taken off in the past few years, more and more people filter their experiences through pictures meant for sharing, especially when they’re outside. Pictures of beautiful places have long dominated advertising, and it’s hard for me not to see the impulse to photograph and share pictures of the outdoors as something of the same thing. It’s a way of cashing in on natural beauty for brand development — in this case, a personal brand.

When my phone dings with a picture my mom took on her last hike, I feel genuinely happy, glad to be included in her experience. But I’ve also been on trips with friends where taking pictures of what we were doing felt more important than experiencing it. The genre of carefully-posed shots on Instagram with John Muir quotes for captions often leaves me feeling a little disillusioned about the whole thing.

I’m over people bagging on technology and social media; that’s not what I’m here to do. In another context, I’d defend they way that social media is getting people outside by sharing the excitement of exploring new places (which it does), and if posts of people looking hot in Lululemons in front of Half Dome makes caring about nature cool (which it does), please show out and fill up your camera roll. If I’m really being honest with myself, I don’t know if I would have ever tried climbing if I hadn’t been seduced by online posts — I still use Instagram to find places I want to go, scrolling through the explore page and then checking location tags to add adventures to my bucket list.

But for every shot of Devil’s Tower that makes me swear I’m gonna make it there this summer, there’s a picture — like the one that Miley Cyrus recently got flak for — of someone intentionally or unintentionally disrespecting the place they’re in for some kind of social caché. In an attempt to associate themselves with somewhere special, people put the picture above the place, undermining and sometimes damaging the place they’re exploring.

I’ve come across a lot of pictures of the California super bloom, on both news outlets and social media sites, taken by professionals and casual observers — even some taken from space. The vast majority were taken from only a few parks close to the California-Mexico border, which strikes me as strange, and a little sad: there are wild blossoms all over California this year, sprouting out of the ground to celebrate the end of a particularly brutal drought, and they’re pretty thrilling even in small numbers.

The idea that a picture with one particular field of flowers is somehow important, worth the traffic jams and environmental destruction, is a testament to the insane way we appreciate nature right now.

Written by: ANNA KRISTINA — akmoseid@ucdavis.edu

Public shaming can only teach part of the lesson on wider issues of prejudice

The age of technology and rise of social media has allowed us to share and interact with others immediately and globally, connecting people and communities all over the world. The immediacy of sharing stories and posts affords many things — keeping up with friends and family, expressing solidarity with others in trying times and even calling attention to issues and practices that have no place in our society. That immediacy also allows for reactionary responses to be shared swiftly and snowball even faster.

Videos, images and scandals go viral all the time — which, without context, can be dangerous. Ridicule is often misdirected, made evident by the mischaracterized incident between a group of students from Covington Catholic High School and a Native American elder. Images of the elder playing a ceremonial drum and the smirking teen in a MAGA hat spread rapidly, but the viral image and partial video of the event failed to capture the incident as it really occurred. Consequently, the teen was subjected to unjustified and borderline immoral ridicule — likened to a school shooter and a symbol for white supremacy. If guilty of anything, it’s disrespect; but disrespect doesn’t warrant this kind of response and, more importantly, this kind of response does little to change that behavior. On the contrary, the amount of ridicule he received from the left more likely solidified the very beliefs that allow him to support a president who many feel is racist himself.

Shaming is a large part of the culture of viral media and can be productive when appropriate, such as in the case of serial sexter and convicted child predator Anthony Weiner or former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, accused of blackmail and misusing his charity’s donor list for political ends. But shaming doesn’t always work — not everyone is willing to resign and, more to the point, shaming doesn’t necessarily target the culture that cultivates those beliefs and behaviors we find reprehensible.

After spewing abhorrent racism in the House of Representatives for over a decade, Republican Congressman Steve King was finally ostracized by congressional leaders in January, removing him from all committee assignments. While GOP leaders deserve commendation for taking appropriate action, overlooked is the culture that has yielded nine straight election victories for an essentially open white supremacist.

All too often, shaming accomplishes little beyond simple ridicule. Steve King remains the representative of Iowa’s 5th congressional district to the U.S. Congress. Ralph Northam remains the governor of Virginia despite the discovery of him wearing blackface in his medical school yearbook.

Beyond simply thinking twice before sharing a misleading story or partaking in premature condemnation, as a society, we have to ask what our objective is in shaming: is the goal to get people, for example, to just resign or to eradicate condemnable practices at the root? If we want people to simply go away, shaming is great — it got Roseanne Barr off the air. But if we want to target deplorable behavior, making people go away simply won’t do it.

Shaming has effectually become shunning. With technology and media, the face of a scandal becomes instantly recognizable and more easily ridiculed, the inescapability of it all forcing those at the center into hiding. Shaming doesn’t encourage an honest conversation, and honesty is necessary to target issues of belief at their roots. How do we know what we’re fighting, or how to fight it, unless people fess up, say how they’ve contributed to the problem?

In an incredible piece on the culture of shaming done by John Oliver, Monica Lewinsky — unfortunately a public shaming icon — discusses the aftermath of her scandal with former President Bill Clinton. She recalls the inability to escape the scandal as it followed and affected almost every aspect of her life, from dating and familial relationships to employment and mental health. That’s not to say the actions of Northam and Lewinsky are comparable. But there’s something to be said about the practically rampant and inconsequential incidents of politicians in blackface — there are far too many racists to make them all go away. And even if we can force some into hiding, it’ll only encourage others to pretend they don’t partake in a culture of oppressing others.

If we can’t shame people out of behaviors, perhaps it’s time for a new tactic.    

Combatting behaviors rooted in deeply flawed beliefs is futile unless those fallen prey to such misguidance are part of the conversation — and that inherently involves a degree of forgiveness and toleration. In forgiving, we also respect the capacity of those at fault to change, and ultimately, isn’t change what we want to achieve? In order for people to change, they have to believe they can.  

Written by: Hanadi Jordan — hajordan@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.