The Ambition of the Independent Video Game

By substituting “independent video game” for “short story” in The Ambition of the Short Story, (mashedmarket) turned the essay into a manifesto of sorts for indie game developers.

The Triple-A game is exhaustive by nature; but the world is inexhaustible; therefore the Triple-A game, that Faustian striver, can never attain its desire. The independent video game by contrast is inherently selective. By excluding almost everything, it can give perfect shape to what remains. And the independent video game can even lay claim to a kind of completeness that eludes the Triple-A game — after the initial act of radical exclusion, it can include all of the little that’s left.

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