Super Meat Boy is challenging, innovative, quirky and creative. Everything an Indie game should be.

What’s your perception of independently developed games?  Do visions of weirdly textured first-person shooter mod maps come to mind?  Do you think of flash games of dubious quality?  Or do you think of games like Braid, Eets, Monday Night Combat, Super Meat Boy, and Limbo?  Any of these answers are correct – there is a lot of shovelware that comes from independent studios.  But dig deeply enough, and you’ll find some of the best games on any platform.  And here’s the beauty part: The best of Indie Gaming is yet to come.  We have never, and may never, have a year that was the “Year of the Indie”.  But strap in, because we’re entering the Era of Indie.

Will thatgamecompany's Journey be the next great Indie game?

You’re going to ask yourself why you should care about this.  Naturally, if you’re happy playing the yearly releases of Call of Duty and Madden, or even if you’re happy playing the bi- or tri-annual releases of Mass Effect, Uncharted, or Dead Space, you may not have paid that much attention the independent gaming arena.  Many of these games are cut from the same cloth, and there are few independently developed games that are epic, sweeping adventures with Hollywood-level talent on roster.  You’re not going to pour 25+ hours into a lot of independent games.

Indie games are all about maximizing the player’s enjoyment of the time they have with the game, not about stretching some quality content just enough to justify at $60 price tag.  A classic example is Limbo, developed by Playdead Studios.  This game clocks in at about 4 hours average playtime, which even a semi-hardcore gamer can execute in a single night’s playtime.  Truth be told, it’s a game that you won’t circle back around to, in all likelihood.  You will play a game like Limbo one time and never go back to it.  But ask anyone who has played it to completion: It is one of the most memorable first-runs in recent gaming history.  There is a stark, unique art style to this game that adds to the darkness and mystery surrounding the never-explained backstory.  This game relies on the player to create their own drama and draw their own conclusions about who the character is, where the character is, and what the character is ultimately doing.

These games take chances that a large-scale publisher simply cannot take.  And that’s why you should care: Because independent game developers are the true gaming innovators of our time.  The next innovative game mechanic will come from an indie game developer.  Will it be the visual storytelling we see in games like Flow, Flower, and the upcoming Journey from thatgamecompany?  Will it be the dynamic, persistent narration we’re seeing in Bastion from Supergiant Games?  Maybe it will be something entirely different.  Whatever it is, I’m ready for it.  Are you?

In Part 2 of The Era of Indie, I’ll talk about why the Era of Indie is now, and how Talkingship will be on the cutting edge of it.