Underground Gaming

You might have heard that a fairly large board game publisher recently crowdfunded an entry in a well-loved series using AI-generative illustrations. Now, here at Space-Biff!, it’s my policy to pass on any titles that use generative AI in place of human craftsmanship. (...) But I get that many people may not understand such a stance. So let’s talk.

What is art? Are games art? Is "AI art" art?

It's a delightful, beautiful read. It touches on Roger Ebert's views, which are more nuanced than I thought. You know, the famous critic that once said that "games are not art".

The article leans more towards tabletop, but it is interesting from a digital perspective nonetheless.

(and there's tooltip text on the images)

How does Underground gaming compare with Glorious Trainwrecks?

• They are both first and foremost anti-commercial.

• UG sees games as art, GT sees games as a form of expression. They don't feel quite the same. The framing is a bit different, perhaps. GT feels punk rock; UG, I'm not so sure.

• Both try to make it as clear as day that it's not about unfinished games, though I think perhaps for different reasons. UG tries to elevate complete games from the ocean of unfinished projects, while GT seems to want to dissociate from the narrow commercialist vision of completeness, without abandoning all sense complenetess.

  • But notice that GT promotes jams. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems to me that jams are a great promoter of unfinished games, and amplifier of Sturgeon's law.

• Both love and promote modding.

• UG has an inclination towards free and open source software. GT seems agnostic, promoting easy to use tools (klik & play and many others), weird tools (MZX, for example). But notice that Unity is in their list of recommended tools.

• I'd wager that the GT folks are progressist, just not very explicit about it. I think I saw something in that sense, but can't trust my memory.

edit: ONE THING I FORGOR! UG is young and small, but what I've seen here (especially in arcane cache) is trying showcase the best and more interesting games. GT, on the other hand, seems to have a culture of "hey, I made this thing, why don't you dive into it without having any idea what it is?" There seems to be little effort in presenting one's own games, and the curation I've seen there seems to take the form of "this is good, trust me". I've seen more verbose curation "around" GT, but not "in" GT.

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 :).

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...

But Frost's definition of indie is very much his own. It is not non-commercial, but it hinges on not caving to commercial pressures.

Funnily enough, three months after that video, corporate greed led Frost and others to abandon The Escapist and regroup under Second Wind.

(Hi! I'm new here. Expect me to go through and answer some old posts Soon™. I hope I can get used to Lemmy. Never got used to Reddit...)

Which underground communities do you visit (be it games, art, music, etc.)?

Don't feel bad if they don't overlap 100% with this space: as an example I frequently am on intfiction.org, as they are ace and fresh and innovative, even though they yet have to receive the Gospel of Free Software.

Other places I like:

• www.mastodon.art and scroll public timeline
• /p/ (for photography)
• tooling specific forums like AGS forum

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 emerging AAA industry, much of which is still true if not even worse, and a call for smaller teams making cheaper, smaller games.

The term scratchware never caught on, but I think a lot of modern indie and hobbyist works fit into it. On the other hand, some of what we call indie projects are now as bloated and expensive as the AAA projects of twenty years ago.

The central summation is this:

The phrase scratchware game essentially means a computer game, created by a microteam, with pro quality art, game design, programming and sound to be sold at paperback book store prices. A scratchware game can be played by virtually anyone who can reach a keyboard and read. Scratchware games are brief (possibly fifteen minutes to an hour or so), extremely replayable, satisfying, challenging, and entertaining.

I think this is a little too confining, but it was written 23 years ago, when games were almost solely distributed at retail. A broader definition would be more suitable for the digital distribution era.

The underground games manifesto reminded me of scratchware. How do you think the two compare? What ideas do you agree with and disagree with?

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.

When reviewing, I refrain from reviewing older games - mainly because I feel that it is better to search and shed light onto more contemporary games; also, I see the risk of falling into a shallow nostalgia if one focuses to much on what has been - so some stuff that I considered writing about never made it onto the blog.

I fondly remember the video game Taso. It was a quite unique helicopter/RTS-Game; years later, the now adult developer set up a small page about the game

https://tasogame.wordpress.com/

the page does not only provide a DL-Link (playable with Wine/DOS-Box and some tinkering) and a video but also a short description of the Suomipelit scene. If you ask me, this was a result of the (by then) progressive education system of the Scandinavian countries. Education there seemingly often involved the use of "ClickTeam", a software able to create - among other things - small games. A collection of "Click Games" can be found here https://www.create-games.com/museum.asp?tag=museum

Many of the early 2000s "minigames" were made using the "Click"-Language, among them the work of the - back then popular, at least partly Sweden based - Fallen Angel Industries. One of the games released from this Group was Siege: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDIGwrwChNQ - A real jewel when it comes to sound, gameplay, and visual design. It is - among other games of the group - available at archive.org: https://archive.org/search?query=fallen+angel+industries , some of them can be played via Wine.

A vast archive of "Finngames" is available at https://archive.org/details/suomipelit_collection

The scene eventually shifted to the GameMaker; some of its members professionalized, developed more complex games and were a part of the founding base of todays Indie Game Scene.

The developer of Purple Martians, another one that I reviewed a while back had responded on Itch - since he didn't replied to my Post it took me quite long to notice.

After noticing I had some mail exchange with him. Development of the game is still highly active; a more up-to-date version than the one on Itch can be DLed at https://github.com/mweiss001/purple_martians

Greetings

A big recommendation I can dish out to everybody who seeks for some raw underground gaming experience are the works of Hodslate.

I had 2 of his games on my blog already; he is a australian roofworker iirc and is doing all of his games in his spare time, not using any premade assets or textures. His games are raw, dark, and oppressive. Quite like black metal gone video game.

He has quite some output. Didn't manage to play his more recent games till yet.

https://hodslate-productions.itch.io/

Is "Underground Game" in your opinion the right term for a political, non-commercial gaming scene? While some don't mind the term, some seem to be skeptical about it, stating that a self definition of underground is inherent inauthentic (we had, however, the uComix or various literature and press collectives using the term "Underground") or that the association with illegal activity could be a problem; these people, however, seemingly also most often disagreed to the far left political orientation of the Underground Gaming idea, and I'm not sure if those not just aren't bourgeois doubts.

One of the more bolt statements I made about underground gaming is that modding is somewhat under attack by the gaming industry.

I have received different reactions to this: Some agree, stating that modding is incompatible with the modern, usually centralized server structure of multimedia player games, agreed that my idea that the orientation towards professional competitive gaming lead to a stronger orientation towards standardization, or added that modding is incompatible to micro-transactions for skins or similar visual features.

Others told me that the modding scene is still active, but more restricted to specialized titles. Another reply that I received is that there is less a need for total conversion mods as there are more different games available, reducing the need to play "improvised" games.

Checking on ModDB, I noticed that there are few games among the popular or recent mods that are from after 2020; most of the popular targets for modding seem to be ancient for video game standards - I see this as evidence towards my point.

Would you agree that modding is declining within the modern gaming scene? I would be especially interested in hearing active modders about this, and what they would wish regarding their activity.

Hoping that this doesn't look like I created this thing only to advertise my blog, but you can find some examples for non commercial games on my blog, the Arcane Cache:

https://thunderperfectwitchcraft.org/arcane_cache/

If you have done a non-commercial/underground game, tell me - I'll check it out as soon as I can and a) give you feedback and b) review it if I think it is good.

0. Underground Gaming perceives games as a form of art.

1. Underground Games are non-commercial. They shun the logic of the markets and question the capitalist system. They attempt to create and use spaces for free creativity.

2. The Underground Gaming scene considers everybody as equal. Developers and players are both participants in the process of turning an abstract piece into a played game. Every form of group-focused enmity (including, but not limited, to ableism, classism, racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia) is ousted from its communities.

3. The Underground Gaming scene lives and dies by the exchange and interaction from its participants. It can only prevail through mutual support, acknowledgment, and feedback.

4. A Underground Game is a game that its creators consider to be complete. A work in progress or a demo is not considered an Underground Game until it is finished. The possibility to extend a completed Underground Game is explicitly supported.

5. Underground Gaming tries to empower people. It supports the sharing of knowledge and tries to reduce barriers. The scene helps people interested in Underground Game development to reduce dependencies from capitalist corporations, but does not reject creative work if dependencies exist.

6. Underground Gaming supports other non-commercial communities and movements. It seeks exchange and collaboration, as long as they share the fundamental values of the scene.

7. The Underground scene isn’t carried or lead by individuals. Whenever possible, a democratic self-organization for communities is established.

8. The Underground scene is open to editing and modification.