• Home
  • Tech
  • Podcast
  • Shoe View
  • Videos
  • Community
  • Info
  • Contact us

Editorial: You should be thanking Valve for Indie Games

4/22/2011

0 Comments

 
(Posted by: Eric Rees)
Picture












People were more than a little upset that the end of Valve's beautifully run ARG (Alternate Reality Game) ended in the users having to buy $40 worth of indie games and play them, a lot, to unlock Portal 2 early. I am here to ask: is anyone really surprised coming from Valve? This is the company and the game that started the whole indie game genre. 

Most people know, but some may not, that Portal wasn't always the game that it is today. It started as a little game called Narbacular Drop. An interesting "puzzle" game that had a Princess that couldn't jump escaping from an elemental creature through a series of dungeons. The game was made as a senior project for the group of guys attending DigiPen, a technology institute in Washington. The game went on to impress many people and won a fair amount of awards for a project and then Valve got wind of it. Thinking that this could be a big game, they acquired the creators and what we have now is now known as Portal. 

The video game industry as a whole isn't that old and before this point, around 2005, the "indie" genre that we've come to know barely existed, if even at all. Valve, the creator of Steam which is a giant in the industry today, was taking a unprecedented risk by picking up some game designers still in college and helping them to produce their game. Until this point games had been developed by professional developers but this acquisition marked a turning point in the industry and spawned a whole genre of games and opened the door for amateur developers around the world. 

Without Portal we wouldn't have gems such as Super Meat Boy, Limbo, Minecraft or Amnesia. A small company named Rovio Mobile might not have been picked up by EA based on the sales of their little game called Angry Birds. Valve extending a hand to a few guys who developed a game with some promise gave life to all of these games so I found it not surprising in the least that Valve turned around and gave the games in The Potato Sack the same shot that they gave the guys from Narbacular Drop. Indie games are a legitimate genre in video games today and Valve was doing just doing business as usual, helping other games to flourish and leading the industry forward. Don't be mad that they pointed you out to a few games that are awesome and fun and suggested that you play them while you were waiting for Portal 2 to drop. People didn't have to buy it but I guarantee you that there are plenty people out there that loved the games as they played them and I also guarantee that the developers from the games in The Potato Sack thank you for it.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    Authors

    Gameshoe Staff

    Archives

    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010



Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.