Something that I’ve been finding funny lately is seeing people on social media and Backloggd list Balatro and Animal Well as their single solitary GOTYs of the Year. Like, there is obviously no question that these were significant releases for the year, and they deserve praise and recognition, but, like, it seems like a weird gesture to me to declare them to be GOTY, as in, the best game released in this calendar year (once again I feel like it is not unfair to point out that, though the question will always involve significant overlap, identifying what the best game released this year is different from identifying what game I, as an individual, declare to be my favourite game released in this calendar year).
On one hand, sure, it’s maybe good to be recognizing that as the industry descends further into predatory excess and schmaltzy, hedonistic aesthetic bloat, that there’s no inherent value to maximalism when it comes to the creation of video games, or even any medium. Bigger is not inherently better, and, yeah, for sure, I can see how someone would walk away from Balatro feeling more satisfied than they did with whatever fuckin’ number or spinoff or subsidies we’re on for Call of Duty. There surely was a point in time where, on an industry and criticism level, there was a measure of indulgence not unlike the individual indulgence above, in not recognizing the amount of overlap between what journalistic outlets or awards or whatever were declaring The Game Of The Year, and what was the game released this year that had the most expensive production or the most pixels or whatever. I mean, you know, at some point, if anyone wants video games to be taken seriously as a form of art, what people who play them consider to be significant needs to be less about, say, objective things like the complexity of its production or the splendour of its audio and/or visual sensation, or what someone as an individual felt about it, and more about questions that are both a bit subjective and a bit objective, as in, a sense of craft, or creative vision, or perhaps with video games it’s more than fair to consider whether something is fun and/or engaging to be an important thing to consider in the act of declaring something to be great or significant.
On the flip side, though, there’s no inherent value to minimalism either, and indie games aren’t really necessarily small or light or short or any other adjective like that purely out of choice, it’s often just a necessary constraint to be able to make something alone or with a small team, within a timeframe that is realistic and conducive to creativity. So, like, it’s not like it’s a purposeful aesthetic choice or somethin’ for Balatro to have such a limited amount of content. It is very economical in what it does with that amount of content, and I’m not gonna say it’s a bad game because you can play it for 5-10 hours and come away feeling like you’ve wrung it dry, but, still.
It’s not even like it’s impossible for solo devs or very small teams to make something that doesn’t necessarily feel small or light or short, case in point, Undertale. However, we must also reckon with the fact that the creation of Undertale in its totality consumed surely countless hours of Toby Fox’s free time, which, at least until the official release of the game, was hideously undercompensated, if not entirely uncompensated (maybe even after the release of the game, its sole primary creator and the small team of other contributors still has gone relatively undercompensated, I wouldn’t know the over/under on that).
So, I guess what I’m saying is, like, I dunno, when I have seen Backlogged entries or people on social media loudly declaring Balatro or Animal Well as The Best Or Most Significant Game of 2024, I kinda side eye that declaration, 'cause, like, I dunno, I don’t want to say that that is a sign someone is easily impressed, but it does kinda seem like a position that someone would feel is iconoclastic or meaningful for them to say in public, because they maybe just don’t play a lot of smaller indie titles. It’s almost kinda like a backhanded compliment towards those games and indie games, to me it kinda sounds like someone feels the need to declare that Indie Games Are Here To Stay, or it’s more like a snide indirect dig at the excesses of AAA. For the latter, I mean, fair, but I dunno, as good as Balatro and Animal Well were, I’m not even alone in this thread in pointing out that they weren’t even necessarily the best or most significant indie games released this year, and I don’t even know if it was even all that strong of a year for indie games. So, I really do feel like there’s a slight tinge of disingenuousness to that declaration. Like, you know what I mean? Indies Been Here, for like, many years by now. Maybe either one of them was your favourite indie game, or even game, this year! But the best?
But, also, idk, maybe you feel the need to make this declaration in contrast to a perceived status quo because you didn’t play other indie games this year, or the AAA games you played were the slop ones. I certainly don’t see people talking about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in the same way of it being AAA, even though I think by the end of it all, the FFVII remake project will probably be the most expensive single thing Square Enix has ever done, maybe even ever will do given the nature of that particular beast. Sega is a AAA developer, Atlus is, idk, at least Double A Point Five, BioWare, Capcom, Nintendo are in the GOTY conversations. Even if I often agree and think the dismissal is fair, sometimes I think AAA (derogatory) is often used kind of like a shorthand for “expensive game I don’t like,” rather than how I would perhaps use it from more of the James Stephanie Sterling Triple AAAAaaaaaaAAAYYYY sense, of “expensive game that vampires profit of off while the people who actually do the work often work in abhorrent and exploitative conditions.”
Of course I’m also trying to justify my GOTY pick by trying to avoid pointing out that, sure, yes, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was also made with exploitation, and the primary beneficiaries of its distribution are the vampires, but, you know. I just think we, as the most enlightened video game players in the world, can approach this topic as something more serious than “saying a good-but-limited-in-scope indie game was the best game this year to stick it to the plebes,” and actually talk about videogames as a craft, with thousands upon thousands of passionate and dedicated artists, many of which are really trying to make something of significance and lasting cultural value. Those who have Industry level resources enabling their work are not better or worse than those who don’t, either.
Side thought another project from this year that blows apart my earlier analysis regarding the lack of inherent value in either minimalism or maximalism would be UFO 50. I mean, I haven’t played it (not a hater, just not something that I’m too keen to look into urgently) but from what I can tell from both just the premise of it as well as the passionately positive reception here and elsewhere is that it is a very fascinating mix of both minimalism and maximalism, in terms of creative execution and just the substance of it as a game. It’s minimalist in the sense that it’s composed of pastiche of games from a simpler era and distilled into a very engaging and approachable experience. But, it’s maximalist in the sense that it’s that but 50 fucking times, and presented as an alt-history time capsule with aesthetic and creative throughlines woven throughout the whole anthology. Like, again, I am probably a hater of NES games if I’m being totally honest, and if we wanna talk about something not having inherent value I think retro aesthetics are often corny at best if not outright deceptive. But the developers of UFO 50 even thought of that, they’re actually upfront about how it’s an intentional idealization of retro games, which is honestly my biggest gripe with retro aestheticzation. It so often seems to be annoyingly coy about its own lack of authenticity, like, no, video games didn’t look like that back then, the genius of how certain developers flourished under those technical constraints and used them to their advantage doesn’t overwrite the mountain of other games that just looked like ass, perhaps largely because of those technical or time or money constraints, and have descended into the dustbin of history through understandable if undeniable mediocrity. Honestly I don’t think I will really love it when I end up playing it, but, just the premise and execution just seems to have a panache I can only respect.
As always in my contentious haterly posts, present company is always excluded and/or excused!!