No and in fact I wish the whole video game industry would collapse on its own weight, including the indie devs.

I sometimes buy VNs instead of torrenting them. That probably counts, yeah.

>>4533
based

>>4534
That's extremely selfless of you.

>>4537
Years and years of biting the hand that feeds.

years and years and years

PSX graphics are a bit of a fad in indie games lately. I don't hate them, but it's kind of "meh" to me. Generally those graphics have aged very terribly unless they were stylistic, which the indie games generally aren't. Good to see indie games find success, though, of course.

>>4540
I liked the PSX graphics revival at first, but find that it's become really overused to the point that I'm sick of it.

I think retro graphics are great but it shits me off badly when they don't commit fully to the aesthetic and force it to be 4:3 aspect ratio

>>4542
Does it need to be aesthetic if they're going for more of a style that's limited by their artistic/modeling ability rather than just trying to be nostalgic for nostalgia's sake? Although with the direct King's Field reference like what's in the OP I guess it is trying to look like that.

I hardly play games anymore so I don't think my opinion means much, but something about modern indies cause me to just want to avoid them. Maybe they're too moved by fads (like the psx grafix) or surrounded by pop-internet marketing that it just annoys me. It feels like there's more 'soul' in random off-beat games from before the modern big-shot indie scene (starting from something like Braid I guess). Games like Disaster Report, Umihara Kawase, or Disgaea just on their face seem more interesting to me; these games that are just kind of off the beaten path of the industry, rather than being in this lineage of indie on-line marketing.

>>4544
Have you played Signalis? If you want to talk about "soul" then I don't think there's any better way to express it than a love letter to the survival horror genre filled with cute robot girls in a sci-fi wrecked station.

>>4545
It certainly is cute! My point is more silly the more I think about it, but I guess I'm not talking about game quality here, but the aura of internet hype around these things. Now I feel like some lame hipster hehe. Signalis immediately falls into a bunch of cool trends (cute anime girls, psx survival horror) that reduce the allure to me, you see? I think this is the secret to why certain individuals will claim all modern games lack soul, while old ones magically do somehow. A game like, uh, Lifeline for the PS2 just seems more interesting because of its context as a mild oddity in the industry at the time, while Signalis is just another indie with cute anime girls or a psx style that is inspired by silent hill or resident evil. I know it's so reductive to talk about stuff like this, and I'm sure it's a great game that I would enjoy, but somehow this makes almost everything released now seem so uninteresting to me.

>>4546
Does Hollow Knight/Silksong fall into the same category as well? It's probably my favorite metroidvania of all time and it doesn't really have anything trendy in it except for being a metroidvania which wasn't all that huge when it came out. It didn't even really rely that much on funny internet references either. Most everything about the game was contained within itself and that's why I think the sequel has great promise. The devs aren't really chasing any trends and are simply trying to perfect the genre with their own theme. Most of the internet hype behind it is built off of good will and appreciation of the original which is about as traditional as one can get.

>>4547
Hmm... yeah Hollow Knight is prob something that avoids the thing I'm talking about methinks. Other modern indies I'd say similarly would be: La Mulana, Momodora, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Rain World, almost all traditional roguelikes. Cruelty Squad is an interesting one, because it is this super unique thing, reminding me of weirdo indies like Space Funeral or Revenge of the Sunfish, but it birthed a bunch of annoying internet stuff to the point where the dev also hates his fanbase.

>>4532
The AAA industry is financed by the same people that rob you at gun point to "collect taxes", It's never going to actually collapse unless there's a major event that makes the state not be able to waste money on retarded stuff like video game culture wars.

>>4542
>>4544
How would you do sort of low fidelity graphics without being pigeonholed into "trying to be x"? I kind of want to try making a game and I'd probably aim kind of low in terms of graphics since I'm not really an art person. I don't want to make a PS1 or N64 game or even evoke nostalgia, I just want the graphics to be doable for me while still looking decent. I just think it's easy for people to use a certain generation of consoles as reference instead of trying to come up with something completely new. Plus it's not like PC didn't exist alongside the PS1 and N64 and I'm sure there are plenty of those older games you could run in widescreen these days, whether they work well with it or not.

>>4532
LMAO

>>4550
>I don't want to make a PS1 or N64 game or even evoke nostalgia, I just want the graphics to be doable for me while still looking decent.
As long as this is what you're doing, I think you're fine. It's quickly becoming just another tool for indie devs to make cheap games as you're saying. If you're not tryharding the psx look, it's effectively just another artstyle.