Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

In Defense of Big Media…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 25, 2015

GOTG-posterYes, I take my potshots at AAA. I’ve been there. Kinda. And I’ve seen where it’s been going.

But my ripping on the games coming out of the big publishers are due to their origin – designed (or at least constraints imposed on design) by committees and suits for minimum risk and maximum Return-on-Investment, with “checkbox innovation” dictated by marketing people and a “just like last year’s hit, only bigger” mentality. Not the developers themselves.

I’ve worked shoulder-to-shoulder with these guys on big titles and chatted with them in our individual indie foxholes. The game developers at the big studios are no less driven, knowledgeable, and passionate than any indie, and probably a good deal more on top of their game than most of the low-budget developers cobbling together one of the first games and adopting the “indie” title. No, the designers, artists, programmers, and other development team members working in the trenches of the games industry are – as a general rule – some pretty sharp folks who dearly love games. And many of them would love to go indie and make their own games, if they didn’t have to worry about pesky things like paying the rent and making sure their family is insured.

And while it’s a different medium, I just wanted to share this little tidbit from filmmaker James Gunn, director of a little film you may have heard of called Guardians of the Galaxy, after he found himself the butt of several jokes about his making big superhero movies:

Whatever the case, the truth is, popular fare in any medium has always been snubbed by the self-appointed elite. I’ve already won more awards than I ever expected for Guardians. What bothers me slightly is that many people assume because you make big films that you put less love, care, and thought into them then people do who make independent films or who make what are considered more serious Hollywood films.

“I’ve made B-movies, independent films, children’s movies, horror films, and gigantic spectacles. I find there are plenty of people everywhere making movies for a buck or to feed their own vanity. And then there are people who do what they do because they love story-telling, they love cinema, and they want to add back to the world some of the same magic they’ve taken from the works of others. In all honesty, I do no find a strikingly different percentage of those with integrity and those without working within any of these fields of film.

“If you think people who make superhero movies are dumb, come out and say we’re dumb. But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a ‘serious’ filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken.”

Okay. I’ll get along with my regularly scheduled indie evangelism and occasional AAA-bashing later. (Although these days, I almost feel pity for the AAA biz, truth be told… it ain’t the titan it used to be.)


Filed Under: Movies - Comments: Read the First Comment



  • Cuthalion said,

    Well said (and quoted).

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