Unless you have been locked in a small dark room with nothing but a last-gen console and supply of gamer fuel to sustain you, you will know that there has been a lot of talk lately about social media, the way we consume games, and the way casual gaming and the internet has impacted the industry.

The idea of social media and casual gaming has both upsides and downsides, detractors and idealists. “They’re ruining our games!” screams the hardcore gamer on one hand, frothing insanely over the lack of difficulty in his latest purchase. “There’s so much more choice” burbles the starry-eyed wii player, having finally introduced their family to the hobby they have nurtured all those years. “I’m old and tired and just want something mature,” sighs the grey-haired gamer who knows nothing will compare to the Magnavox Odyssey.

Social media has done two things - it has expanded our possibilities to a limitless number, and it has given us the attention span of a gnat. There are a lot of games out there. Big blockbuster titles like Assassins Creed, resplendent with graphical beauty. Tiny indie games like Fl0w, turning the whole idea of a game on its head. Flash games of unspeakable crudity. Ports of old games that somehow retain a playability and charm. Games for your mobile. There are advergames, designed around products. Games are no longer just expensive niche products, they drive subscriptions, advertising revenue, or they are just a fancy pull for something else.

Meanwhile, entire populations of dreamers are slaving away in their rooms, hacking out mods and indies. Most of these display a regrettable lack of imagination. Shoot zombies! Post-apocalypse! More ammo! Look! Tanks! Elves! Elves in tanks!

Of course, the internet provides plenty of opportunity to sink the worst. Poor reviews spread, criticism is rife, the most foul-mouthed and irrelevant people can now jump on a blog and spout off their inane opinions - and be taken seriously. You can’t buy out reviewers and then dismiss them for giving a poor review without causing massive internet outrage. Of course, this being the internet, it will be forgotten in two days.

Meanwhile, the poor gamer, clutching his wad of bills, looks around bewilderedly and says: but what should I buy? The award winning Bioshock? The little known underground production Galactic Dream: Rage of War? The resource demanding Crysis? The best selling Call of Duty 4? Or just go and download some more torrents, skipping from game to game in an ever increasing desperation?

There are, of course, social networks. Services such as Steam, forums, communities.

As you may - or may not - know, I work for a indie game company called Isotx. In addition to making games, Isotx is also responsible for the software CrosuS. CrosuS is designed to fill a gap, to give indies and mod developers a place to publish their content, to give gamers an easy way of searching, rating, downloading and installing it, and to give everyone a chance to rate the games they’ve played. The most interesting thing about working on it has been the variation in quality, style and look inherent to indie games.

It has flaws; through chance most of the people who add the stuff are non-wow players, so the wow mods are remarkably random. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, boasts a collection that would make any dedicated fan proud. The imbalance would easily be solved with the addition of one or two dedicated wow players (so if that’s you, get along to our submit mods page)

As a result of working on this, I jumped into the deep end of the indie scene. And it’s pretty amazing. If you can’t afford the PS3, and you’re ambivalent about chucking another $60 down on a game that got 9.5 on all the review sites but just doesn’t seem to be anything that great, you can’t really go wrong with indie, which are cheap. Plus you get to feel good about yourself. You’re more likely to be listened to by the developers - instead of being one voice in nine million, you’re one voice in a hundred.

The downside, of course, is the dross. Whilst blockbuster games are rarely too brilliant, they are also rarely completely unplayable. Like fanfiction or arthouse cinema, you have to sit through a lot of weird shit before you find something lifechanging.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion. There really are both upsides and downsides to the changes. Both the hardcore gamer and the casual are correct in what they say. The crazy teenager spitting bile, the idealistic games journalists worshipping at the feet of the giants, the armchair critics… they all have a point to make, and an experience to share. The difference now is, we can choose who we want to listen to, we can choose to get our games from gamestop or modDB, we can choose to walk with the big industries, the glossy magazines and the shiny shiny graphics, or we can go with the often dirty, sometimes broken, occasionally crazy indie scene. It’s your choice.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Game Design, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.