KCET - Independent Games Feature
Two projects from the 2006 thesis class are featured in an ongoing subsite on independent games at KCET Online.
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"Back in the late '80s and early '90s a wave of independent films hit the art house cinemas all across the United States. Alison Anders, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh, to name just a few, rejuvenated the American film scene by releasing personal, small budget films that spoke to a new generation. The success of these films created a tsunami effect in film studios, which had become complacent with their Die Hard Terminator formula and had been looking for a way out from their spiraling budgets and their video game aesthetics...
The landscape of the video game industry now resembles the conflicted terrain of the film industry of the 1980s. It is estimated that the global market share for video games will surpass $40 billion by 2010, making it the most profitable entertainment industry in the world.
Fortunately, at the periphery of this multimillion-dollar industry is a group of designers, programmers and activists who are producing games - with very limited resources – that foreshadow the emergence of a true independent movement in the gaming industry. These are games that are interested in texture and emotion, instead of addiction and explosion; games that propose a call to action, becoming tools of change for a new generation; games that “modify” the source code of already existing block-buster titles, giving us a glimpse at the ways in which the industry defines our history and ideology; and finally, games that are not games at all, but rather forums to discuss, exchange ideas, and debate what a game should be about."