Edmund McMillen thinks mainstream video games unashamedly borrow ideas from riskier, more ambitious indie games – and as the designer behind indie hits Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, and the upcoming tactical RPG Mewgenics, he's coming at this with experience.
He shares his thoughts in a recent Reddit AMA, responding to a fan who wonders, "It feels like there's never been a better time to be into indie gaming, do you think devs have been feeling the same way? Or does that lingering sense of unsustainably that plagues the AAA industry impact indie devs as well?"
McMillen simply observes, "When the money dries up, the mainstream gets scared and takes less risks."
"You get tons of sequels and games that play it safe by being just like that game that did well before," the developer continues. "But for indies, it doesn't effect much at all. In the end indies are the ones who take the big risks because their financial risks are low."
"Then the mainstream grabs what worked with indies and repackages it in safe way and cashes in," McMillen concludes. He throws in a winky face emoticon for emphasis, and I think it's justified.
Think of how (arguably, at least according to The Game Awards) indie game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 inspired people to start begging Final Fantasy developer Square Enix to return to turn-based combat – not the other way around. That's a winky face moment, for sure.
On his own creative process while creating indie games, McMillen says in another comment how "I get a feeling and an idea or a mechanic and rattle it around in my brain till it becomes all pulpy and sicky, [...] plan becomes a thing, thing becomes stuff and soon enough a baby comes out of my anus!" See, you'll never get Ubisoft saying something like that.
