I tend to disagree heavily. I would think of it as rather gamey (most games I played over the last year were much more narrative-oriented; this is a quintessential game!). Is there a thing you don’t like? You’ll look good when playing it, and you might even feel cool!
Didn’t knew Glorious Trainwrecks. They are imho indeed a vastly different thing.
Underground Game is a open term. If somebody would ask me if they can use it, I’ll threw a short glance upon them - and either answer “Yes” or “Fuck you” (usually, not that direct - but clearly telling them what I would expect you to change if they want to be in any relation with me); the latter requires them to do something that I personally despise or reject (group specific forms of misanthropy, strong general misanthropy, exploitation of others). Such a dev might still call it a underground game, but where I can I will hinder it, I will - and I’ll never recommend, rate, or recognize such a game. Games might pop up at mastodon or itch, or somewhere else using the term “underground game” (indeed, they did before I started). I might disagree with them being “underground games”, but as long as I don’t despise them, I won’t bother to criticize their usage of the term by them.
Trainwreck is a existing platform, probably with a rather lax curation and no implemented means of monetization; it seems to be directed to people who enjoy rather raw, DIY-style games.
If one of the Trainwreck-Games would come up call itself underground game, and they could do so in their full right - because most of the games there seem to be indeed underground games. But for some I might surely say that they aren’t “good” in the way I search for. Those might be underground games, but I usually don’t recommend such games to others (if they don’t have some spontaneous momentum that they captured, that is so good that it makes the whole thing cool - but this requires some mastery or small chances that are really hard to find by their nature if you don’t have any hints).
I skimmed shortly through the games listed there, and most of them are honestly stuff that I would usually filter out when I search for games to play. Because games that are presented in this style aren’t usually made to be played, but are mostly nice for the people who made them, and maybe even their friends and relatives. After all, these people are often proclaiming that they hammered them together in a few hours themself - and if you ever tempered with game making, you’ll know what short amount of work two or even ten hours are; I guess it is not impossible to make a good game in such a time-frame, but I believe I have yet to see it (at least when it comes to video games: I played quite good easy non-video games that were made spontaneously).
Imho, good Underground Games should be something that the developers thought was worth to invest work in; they didn’t do it to make profit, but because it was exactly what they wanted to make, regardless that it doesn’t necessarily sells, and who stay true to this idea, often releasing it in a non-commercial space without much marketing blimbim (there are a few examples of commercial successful underground games; “The Sea will claim everything” is a wonderful example where I’m quite sure about this; iirc the dev was even afraid of losing their job over it. But these don’t need much promotion from my side.). They don’t always succeed, but they want to the good shit, and want make it right.
The Manifest, this “Sublemmy”, among some other things, are attempts to initiate discussions about game development, and to “coin” underground gaming as a name that allows people who develop, play, and search for such games to find each other. Some are already here; if you recommend a game, it will be found by few, but cool people - that are somewhat likely to play it. Not sure if this can be done by Trainwrecks, but again - would have to take a closer look.
Hope none of this sounds harsh against Trainwrecks or their developers. I sympathize with them and their call, but I probably don’t want to play their games.
As for jams, I see them as a “brain storm”-kind thing that tries to bruteforce good ideas. I don’t like “brainstorming”: Collecting many ideas and practically doing no critical reflection about those ideas ignores, in the end, moral and logical problems in favor of efficiency and a good look, and this is basically one of the main problems that the world suffers from - if you ask me. Nevertheless, I know some good games that resulted from jams. So if you disagree, do jams - and if they make you happy, ignore me; they are not the problem itself.
A small webring with 10 sites atm (we are the tenth); it is not dedicated a “underground game” webring (thought about doing so), but since all who are active there are amateurs (as far as I checked) I think its close enough :).
Leaving the Webring; the thing suffers from pages who are in the circulation, but don’t link back to the ring, effectively breaking it. Might eventually build a Webring, but not sure when.
Nice that there is some activity here, welcome guys! I’m also not apt in video game journalism, but from what I gather the people who made this video were fired from an important mag shortly after releasing this video, and from a short reading this might be connected to them being not compatible enough with the (assumed) needs of the market.
Variations and mods should be okay. Sometimes their value might not be obvious to someone outside whatever niche-within-a-niche you’re in, and that should be okay!
I absolutely agree. To illustrate this: drmortalwombat.itch.io/missile-defencethis is a wonderful C64-fan remake very close to its model. It is a well done, nice underground game that does exactly what the dev wanted to do. Yet it only works well if the “clone”-version has some quality. Creativity in gameplay might make a game worthwhile even if there are stronger technical problems, but if your “Tetris” clone sucks you are out of luck, nobody will want to play it nowhere.
While we may admire the lyrical artist who just pours the contents of their heart, not minding whether anyone will appreciate it… community has value too. I just wanted to mention it en passant, cause it’s a conversation that could branch out a lot…
I want to play the games made by lyrical artists, and I try to make games for people who search art in gaming. And I believe I neither can ( because this production require a professionell production and behavior) nor want (because these games do not interest me) to meet the requirements of the players who form the large of the “current market” as things are atm. If you want to make a living from game dev, this will of course not work out for you.
Didn’t use Wine much lately, but when I do i use usually 2 prefixes; one for 32, one for 64 bit. Winetricks is often helpful; so is the appdb on WineHQ.
They were heavily involved into establishing DRM in the video gaming world.
They were among the first to establish “FreeToPlay”, Lootboxes and whaling, a predatory business tactic.
They accepted right wing extremist games in the past.
They have a kind of monopolist web store for PC games.
They are known to use the embrace and suffocate tactic against community projects in the past (DotA, once a community driven project is now a trademark of Valve).
The linux gaming scene is flourishing, but this comes at the price of dependency. And not all this dependencies can be resolved at the will of the community; many of the users that came over in the last time are probably unable to start a binary without help.
I’ve used proton more often than not with games purchased through GoG. Their contributions to wine and the layer on top is excellent. Sam Latinga is a Valve employee and creator of libSDL, which is also another significant and foundational contribution to FOSS.
Wine and SDL were around before Valve was involved. It is unclear if and how good they can prevail if Valve decides that they aren’t interested anymore. Structures that are lost might be hard to regenerate.
And as for Linux gaming, it wouldn’t be where it is without Valve.
Half on the way to a glorified console for most of its users? The Linux gaming scene is now a reduced mirror of the gaming scene for Windows and the consoles; imo it was to be more interesting before. There was a higher and more vocal interest in smaller and more experimental productions. Nowadays it is the same as everywhere else.
A company can do a lot of good without having to be exclusively good.
Companies do profit, not good. The Linux Gaming scene was once quite sensitive to privacy, self control, and independence. Lemmy is a dedicated left site. But some of the folks here are cheerleading to a monopolist corp like there is no tomorrow. I’m from Germany - if I hear people worrying about what will happen when the benevolent dictator dies (see above in this thread) I get the creeps.
As I already said, Valve has a history of unethical and predatory business tactics. Do you suppose they do these for fun? (and would this improve things in your opinion?)
Private companies are market participants and have to act in their interest, or go eventually down. Valve wants to make revenue with their investments. The Linux community is at best a vehicle, and at worst a target to them.
Four days ago, I woke up, as I usually expect to after going to sleep and I turned on my really fucking awesome Archlinux gaming rig, hit the desktop and decide, hmmmm… I haven’t updated in a while(a week), let’s pacman -Syyuu and get up to speed. Well, I got up to speed and my favorite game, the best game of all time,...
You should change your Distribution. Arch is a rolling release distribution with a strong focus on customization. If you use binaries shipped by another source, problems like those you described are quite likely to happen. Going to a distribution that isn’t that cutting edge (but still cutting edge enough to deliver working drivers/libs) would reduce the risk for such things.
Good idea. I’m using (mostly lurking on) Mastodon (.social), following some people, browsing some tags now and then. Recently noticed the web revival movement (in fact via a certain blog post about a game called “Pete is Hungry”) and I’m using melonland.net (a old fashioned bb-forum) as a gateway to it; don’t be fooled about the obsession with nostalgia among some of the people there - there is some crazy creativity around. I’m using some of the community functions of Itch.io.
My mailbox is also a bit active, I occasionally chat with some people.
A bit OT: I don’t really dwell there, but do you know allegro.cc? Their board is a bit active, and there are many games in different stages of development. Have yet to find the time to take a few strolls there.
The community I follow most closely is the Abstract Games subforum on Board Game Geek. BGG’s defitinition of abstract games is broad, but the people who hang out in those forums are mostly concerned with two-player combinatorial games. The community is small, but some designers are quite prolific.
Hark, thats cool :). Do you also play them, or is it more some sort of fascination for the topic?
I’m afraid thats exactly the barrier I would encounter if I would try to enter these :3. Video games are - while still time demanding - a little bit more accessible.
If you have been around for a while, you may remember this article. It was written in 2000, right about when games were getting to be really big business, but long after the age of shareware, and long before the indie explosion (which I would put at starting around 2008 or so). It is basically a screed against the state of the...
Good find! The Home of the Underdogs is a great resource :).
Its noteworthy that there are different voices within the Scratchware Manifesto. Some of the claims they make ("We want to play good games, and we want making games to be an art, not an electronic sweatshop. This problem, also not unique to the gaming industry, is as old as Das Kapital and as new as The Matrix.", the critique of damages to people and environment through exploitation, and the maiming influence of market-streamlining are the major ones I did notice) are fully compatible with Underground Gaming.
The major difference is that they seem(ed) to believe that through some improvements (mainly the avoidance of publishers and big companies, who they call "vampires") the capitalist system could not only be improved but also work in their favor (see their claims about small productions that landed big hits or their citation of "Lord British" and some others), whereas Underground Gaming sees these problems as inherent to the capitalist system - it doesn't aim to create another B or C-market but to establish a parallel working society that tries to discard the basic rules of capitalism (even if only within a limited space for now, but adding to the "large picture" within our possible means by doing so). It doesn't assume that competition creates better art, even if the consolidation of power within the competition would be removed.
Seeing that the people who signed the Scratchware Manifesto were seemingly professionals working within the industry it is understandable that their aims and direction are less ideologic and more directed toward allowing them to make a practical living from their doing in the long run. This is another big difference to Underground Gaming, that is much more directed to be a hobbyist movement.
I don't want to pan them, as it is always easier to be the clever one afterwards: But imho their idea proved to not work out. "Indie"-Gaming, "Social"-Media and the Internet in general opened up channels to avoid the publishers and big conglomerates, but the structures that they criticized where mostly just replicated in a weakened form as the rules of the market still apply (you already pointed this out in the OP).
Hope all of this is comprehensible - when it comes to questions of political theory, I sometimes suffer more from my language barrier.
Yeah, it is frustrating. I remember a thread where small "Indie"-Devs shared the losses they produced, some where deep in the red. Sometimes I found people who lived on the cost of their partners or family to go into game development. Its indeed not a wise thing to do, but there is a whole industry (book authors, marketing people, asset sellers and especially those who run the asset market places) that prey onto people who try to realize the dream of living from game development.
At least some of the scratchware guys seems to had internet distribution in mind - and while they couldn't foresee the "Indiepocalypse", it would have been possible to foresee that the problem roots deeper. But thats spilled milk. It is - in every case - true that Indie devs rely on the powerful players within the curation segment to gain visibility. It might be noteworthy to point out that the amateurs in this segment suffer from the same problem - amateur streamers, bloggers, reviewers can hardly get any audience, they are also cut out from visibility. It would be great to get some of those who are into this but don't aim to go commercial on board.
About the last paragraph: You are right, if you want to make money making indie games is a bad idea. When I ways younger, I occasionally made some bucks with street music - my average wage per hour easily outweighs the money I made with my online game and music projects combined (I'm defacto slightly in the red here: Paying for Steam and Server costs is easily more than my revenue - not that I regret it). Going in a direction that would be commercially rewarding (might work, might not work) isn't interesting to me: I want to be a game dev, not a entrepreneur - and I'm quite sure many others feel the same way.
I hope that we can establish a place or places where people play the games other people made without the commercial mindset - even through the road seems to there is surely rocky.
Hi. Thank you! Installed what I could; can't resolve the problem that xul, fontconfig, gallium and linux gate are red even after installing the debuginfos I could find :s. But I'm not totally sure if it is successfully delivering the crash data as the "submitted" folder only contains 2 files, even though I repeated the attempt to start several times. The last submitted Bug-URL is https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/search/quick/?query=bp-e8bdb84e-527c-46c8-8138-6dccd0230618
But if I check the details in current crashes, I get: ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384; this, however is not submitted even though both the crash window and submit.log say so.
It seems that Lemmy instances don't work well with each other. Following a community from another instance is finicky, and after following, threads and comments still don't show up unless you manually pull each individual URL into your own instance.
Yeah, at some threads the counter seems to be off. At least the downtimes are strongly reduced by now; do the problems with the communication from another instance still exist?
EPILEPSY WARNING: all the colors of the circle by Thunder Perfect Witchcraft (thunderperfectwitchcraft.itch.io)
Contrast with Glorious Trainwrecks (www.glorioustrainwrecks.com)
How does Underground gaming compare with Glorious Trainwrecks?...
Game Dev Webring (www.rainbowcemetery.com)
A small webring with 10 sites atm (we are the tenth); it is not dedicated a “underground game” webring (thought about doing so), but since all who are active there are amateurs (as far as I checked) I think its close enough :).
The Indie Game Identity is in Danger | Cold Take (www.youtube.com)
When I read the title of the video, I was like what? What year is this? That ship has sailed a long time ago, friend…...
besides wine, what do you need to run non-steam games?
From my understanding, at least one other necessary component is dxvk, and that wine is not enough....
Valve Is A Wonderful Upstream Contributor To Linux & The Open-Source Community (www.phoronix.com)
Your favorite native Linux games?
Let’s leave Steam and other launchers and distribution platforms alone a bit. Also lets stop discussing game engines for moment …...
Yeah, Linux breaks sometimes, we're here for you.
Four days ago, I woke up, as I usually expect to after going to sleep and I turned on my really fucking awesome Archlinux gaming rig, hit the desktop and decide, hmmmm… I haven’t updated in a while(a week), let’s pacman -Syyuu and get up to speed. Well, I got up to speed and my favorite game, the best game of all time,...
Where do you dwell?
Which underground communities do you visit (be it games, art, music, etc.)?...
Post count / Notifications on other instances (lemmy.ml)
The post count for some threads seems to be off, and there seems to be a problem with notifications for other instances....
The Scratchware Manifesto (www.homeoftheunderdogs.net)
If you have been around for a while, you may remember this article. It was written in 2000, right about when games were getting to be really big business, but long after the age of shareware, and long before the indie explosion (which I would put at starting around 2008 or so). It is basically a screed against the state of the...
Can't Start Firefox after updating my OpenSuse (crash-stats.mozilla.org)
Crashes instantly after startup :/. Safe-Mode doesn't help....
Doesn't interoperate well
It seems that Lemmy instances don't work well with each other. Following a community from another instance is finicky, and after following, threads and comments still don't show up unless you manually pull each individual URL into your own instance.