Nobody has a responsibility to support anyone they choose not to support. That is the whole idea behind capitalism. The ideas that the paying consumer wishes to support is what lives.

I love indie games. I also love top tier games. However, I only buy those games that I think deserve my money. Games that offer me an experience that I am looking for. Whether that experience is artsy or just a distraction, it all depends.

Hey folks -- this is a pretty quick summary of what was honestly an all-over-the-place ("wide-ranging" is putting it kindly!) 45 minute long talk, but specifically on "responsibility" & comparisons to music, I'll cut and paste here what I said (which I honestly didn't totally remember & had to go back and find):

"There are a million other little reasons that aided this, but this consumption model is part of the reason prices have raced toward the bottom on the App Store: it's all part of this pervasive view that says that games are simply the things that fill the spaces in between our lives -- that they’re little more than time killers and diversions.

For too long we’ve been relying on this model that says that games are more or less interchangeable products, marketed and sold as products, and if they’re all just slight variations on the same theme, or if they do little more than give our thumbs something to do in idle time, of course we’re going to be wise shoppers and choose the cheapest among them.

An album purchased on iTunes can cost nearly ten times as much as most people are willing to spend on a game -- even when that album itself is actually embedded in the game -- [the slide here is of the $1.99 NOBY NOBY BOY app sitting right on top of the $11.99 NOBY NOBY BOY soundtrack] but by and large people don’t buy an album to listen to it once and complain it only took 30 minutes to complete.

People value music more because it adds an emotional pitch and rhythm and color to life, it speaks to something more essential, it reminds them of a place and time, it reminds them of where they were when they first experienced it and who they experienced it with.

And there’s no reason that we shouldn’t also be aspiring to that same exact sort of resonance in whatever small ways, crafting experiences that invite people to return to them, not because it extends a dollar value, but because it feels like a place they actually want to re-visit, or adds that same color and rhythm.

And all of us with a vested interest in games, no matter on what level, have the responsibility to talk about games in these terms, in the same way we talk about the creation and the emotion of other arts: to make them feel less like black magic delivered on discs, and more a process and a result attainable and achievable by all, especially as we move into the decades and generations ahead."

Etc. etc.!

The talk will hopefully be on the Vault pretty soon so you can all see it for yourselves!

I don't know about other gamers--but I generally don't buy a game based on how long or short a game is. Size doesn't matter--(That's what she said!!!) Anywhoo. But in general, I don't tend to feel responsible for anything other than me having a good time playing the game after buying a game--there are plenty of great indie games out there--but to be honest--for some reason I don't really enjoy them--They are starting to become more innovative and fun--but there haven't been many that really strike a cord with me. There is a select audience that really digs the whole indie scene--and we could say this for music as well---but neither indie music nor indie games are my cup of tea---until I find something that will really strike the cord of my interest I will probably continue to pass these games by---and in general as with music--as with games---the main responsibility is for the end user, in this case, ME to have FUN--and if not, the responsiblity only lies in the hands devs/publishers.

I don't feel that gamers have a responsibility to support an indie game because it's an indie game, "even if we don't enjoy" it. This view alleviates the developer from their responsibility to make a game enjoyable (and I use the word "enjoyable" in a sense that covers games that are not "fun" but that are enriching in some way). Despite this, I agree with the gist of Brandon's statements. Gamers should support good games, be they mainstream or indie, short or long -- but we aren't, are we? What we are supporting are popular, heavily advertised games, and I am guilty of this just as much as you are. The problem with indie games is that they are still undermarketed in a way that good intentions can't fix -- you just can't outmarket the next modern warfare. Good indie games fall into obscurity far more easily than large scale published games. I don't know what the answer to this is, but it seems like awareness is the primary problem. There are plenty of well-intentioned gamers that want to support good indie games, and even more gamers that would enjoy indie games, but they just don't know about them to support them, and there is no magic formula to emulate, say, the viral phenomenon of Minecraft.

Hey so, on the "enjoyable" part, that's not QUITE the nuance of what I was going for, here's what I said on that, which led into the 'games as product' bit above, and was meant to lead into a broader point about making the process of creating games (which we're exponentially more familiar with in literature, film, music) less opaque to the generations coming up behind us:

"A couple months back there was a conversation going on amongst the people who write about games, who concluded that as soon as we know too much about (or even acknowledge) the process that went into a game, we lose perspective -- we start making apologies for flaws in the eventual product, and we stop being 'consumer watchdogs'.

This is precisely the kind of argument that drives me absolutely nuts. Acknowledging the process is *exactly* what we should be doing -- we should be showing the craft, the art & the science -- of what goes into these things, and why they sometimes fail and don't come out like how we expected them. We should be appreciating them as human attempts to create something meaningful, whether they achieve it or not."

OK!