Well, the Internet has its pitchforks ready, and it really wants to give PlayStation Europe chief Jim Ryan a big fat poke in the chest – but of all the dumb things the executive’s said recently, this isn’t one of them. Asked by Games Industry.biz about the lack of indie games during Sony’s E3 2017 press conference, the executive had two honest – if a little too honest – answers.
“One of the things we have realised is that these video collages of ten indie games shown in a minute, is almost meaningless,” he said. “Nobody can really learn anything about the games in that sort of time. It is almost viewed as wasted time.” Does anyone really disagree?
Ryan added that, during the launch period of the PlayStation 4, the platform holder almost wanted to evangelise indie games so that both fans and the media took its stance seriously. It’s now dedicating that time to PlayStation VR. “Right now, we have tonnes of indie content on the platform,” he continued. “And the fact that we elected […] not to give it its own spot on the stage this week, in no way means it is not important, or it is not there, or we don't worry about it.”
Ryan concluded that indie games are “less relevant” these days, but he meant in the context of an hour-long press conference and not in regards to the category itself. Of course this is the part that’s being (unfairly) misquoted, and will ensure that his nightmarish week of interviews drags on. Personally we don’t have a problem with the comments, but he could have phrased them better.
And it may be something Sony needs to look at because, while Ryan’s generally talked sense over the past couple of weeks, he makes it very easy for his words to be twisted. And that’s not a good look for the company he’s representing as a whole. It does beg the question, though: do we want gaming executives to be honest – or do we just want them to tell us what we want to hear?
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 60
So what, that's 4 interviews now where he's either said something baffling, PR BS to the max, or easily misconstrued,
Give it a week. He's gonna say if you want a 4K Blu-ray player we have a product for you, its called a Blu-Ray player.
And then hell be gone Don mattrick style. XD
“One of the things we have realised is that these video collages of ten indie games shown in a minute, is almost meaningless,” he said. “Nobody can really learn anything about the games in that sort of time. It is almost viewed as wasted time.” Does anyone really disagree?
NOPE not at all, if your gonna show indie games then they should either have dedicated time in the presser so they can be fully explained or their separate presser
How about those 3 minutes trailers of nothing but cut scenes? Talk about meaningless...
@Sinton Such as...?
See this is what I loved about Microsoft's presser over Sony's. Every indie game Microsoft showed wowed me. I love seeing that great indie games are coming to playstation even if it's in a short montage.
@get2sammyb Off the top of my head, Ubisoft's reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2 (at E3) and Activision's boots to the ground reveal of Call of Duty: WWII (own show).
Just go the Nintendo route and answer every question with "we have nothing to announce at this time" or dodge them completely.
I disagree. The conference needed exactly the type of variety indies bring to the table. Having all those narrative driven AAA games back-to-back made them all feel less special. They should have stayed more true to the concepts they launched the PS4 with.
I always enjoyed the indie segments shown in the past and it's a bummer they were cut this time round.
Besides who wants play games that look ancient? Why would anyone want to play games that have pixel art graphics, 8/16 bit retro art styles?
@Wesker I certainly think that's a fair counter-point, but in Sony's defence one of the chief criticisms they've had with these pressers in the past is that they're too long. I think they heard the feedback from E3 2016 (which was a lot shorter and tighter) and ran with it because everyone thought that format was hugely favourable.
Maybe they went too far, but I can see how they ended up shoving loads of stuff in the pre-show because they wanted to keep the main event fast and tight.
There's a balance here.
@BAMozzy Why would anyone want to play an inferior game just because it looks prettier?
Edit: prettier being entirely subjective, also.
translation: we are the market leaders and don't need indies right now. but we'll be back if we ever need them again!
@BAMozzy Depends on the game really. I play a lot of indies, and they usually get played while im waiting for sonething. Quick bash on Binding of Isaac before work, but of nuclear throne while waiting for my fiance to get ready.... that sort of thing.
I love me some AAA, but I tend to play them for a few hours at a time. Indies fit a niche for me. Personal opinions and all that!
Because they belong on mobile/smatphones most are never played that i got free.
Never ever listen to anybody until the physical copy is in your hands, in this case he should zip it Nintendo do.
indie games are “less relevant” these days, Oh boy
@get2sammyb I enjoyed the longer press conferences because it gave guys like Sean Murray and Alex Williams the time to sell us on a vision. By blending indies with AAA games in press conferences, I think they successfully legitimized indies to the mainstream gamer and told a story about the PS4 with more diversity and imagination. God of War, Spider-Man, and Days Gone all look like 10/10 games, but they also feel like a bit of known quantity, to me.
Funny! The question of Sony's commitment to indies didn't come up on E3 2016, and if I remember correctly, there was no announcement of indie games at that conference.
Another issue that people are complaining is the conference duration. And again, E3 2016 conference clocked around 1 hour, and nobody took issue with that at the time.
The hypocrisy continues.
What he meant;
'All the indies have been given away on the igc. Unless you want ultra chess and coffin dodgers we ain't got nothing to show you.'
@Wesker "They successfully legitimized indies to the mainstream gamer and told a story about the PS4 with more diversity and imagination."
This is kinda Ryan's point, though. He's saying he believes they've successfully told that story and chartered that territory, and now they want to do the same for VR.
@manu0 Exacty
@get2sammyb I don't think they did that for VR. The VR section was weak and poorly presented IMO. Maybe they should have had Jim Ryan up there instead of Sean Layden because the VR segment didn't stand out at all in that way.
I agree about the video collages. If you're only going to show 5 seconds of footage of a game, better show nothing at all. Or highlight one specific game. But in that case, watch the pre-show.
@Wesker Fair. To be honest I'm playing devil's advocate a bit, I mostly agree with you. But I can also understand what they are trying to do.
As I said previously, they can't win.
Last week it was "not enough talking" after prior complaints of too much chat.
Now people are moaning about "not enough indies" after previous complaints about too many.
My advice to Sony - not that they need it, or would pay any attention to little ol' me - would be 'carry on as you are', since it seems you're going to piss off half the people all the time, regardless.
Despite Jim Ryan seemingly attempting to evolve into a being with his foot fused to his mouth, I can't fault him here. Indies aren't like back in 2013 either - lots of them have big followings, their own booths, or a publisher like Devolver with their own shows. If you say Sony don't care about indies, I can't say that's true, just looks at the space they take up on the store and how many of them are pushed with PS+ giveaways and weekly deals.
@get2sammyb Cool. I also think it was wise for Sony to do a more measured conference with truly solid games that will absolutely come out and be high quality. No Man's Sky under delivering, Dreams disappearing, the negative rumours circling about FF7, the lack of information on Shenmue, Rime being dropped, all reflect poorly on Sony.
@THRILLHOU @kyleforrester87 I was referring to Jim Ryans comments 're Backwards Compatibility!!!
A good game is a good game regardless!!!
@BAMozzy There are some fantastic 8/16bit indie games around.
@CB7Tuner91 True but MS conference was twice as long as Sony's. Caue for the first tine in a long time they actually had games to show.
@CB7Tuner91 I dont want to be a **** but they dont have much else going on do they?
@Paranoimia Too True! I remember all the 'IndieStation' comment from E3s prior. Now thry dont have enough? Personaly i liked the longer press events but that too was complained about.
@BAMozzy good stuff!
@Flaming_Kaiser And according to Jim Ryan, no one wants to play games that look ancient!!! That was HIS comments regarding Backwards Compatibility....
And just because the Xbox games don't appeal to you, they have several coming up in the next year - and I can only think of Ori that's 'Indie' - unless you count the 'timed' exclusivity of PUBG as Indie. But Forza, Crackdown, State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves are coming this year - maybe not as many as the year just gone but still 'games' that Sony gamers won't be able to play...
@CB7Tuner91 But there is about another 50 million who buy consoles for AAA titles. Thats been proven time & time again with indieStation meme & PS+ worthless its just indies etc. People must have very short memories if you cannot remember the stick Sony got.
E3 is for AAA, psx is for indies.
@3Above Now it's IndieBox
@BAMozzy It's true though about bc, I rather play 4k crash and wipeout remaster rather than play the ps1 or ps2 original.
@BAMozzy To be fair, that's another misquote (though it was a dumber comment). He was talking specifically about a Gran Turismo event where they had the PSone, PS2, PS3, and PS4 versions, and he was asking why anyone would play the PSone/PS2 versions of GT with the PS4 version there.
I think... That's actually a fair point. Who'd play FIFA 94 when you could play FIFA 18, right? (Still a dumb thing to say!)
Can't we all just appreciate what Sony have given us over the past 20 years?
Im putting the kettle on, who wants a cuppa?
@Wesker But these company do use Twitter. If Sony put Dreams at this years E3 it would not help, as you've got people already moaning about the shown games releasing early 2018.
Sorry but I don't buy it. First people say that indies are super simple 8 bit looking games, usually platformers. If a game can be understood in a few seconds, it is precisely those. Taking 2 minutes out of a one hour conference to show some indies "Look, they exist and we support them" is all they need.
Probably NMS backfiring after they hyped it so much and also people saying "Cool but I will wait till it hits Plus" is what are making them shun indies now. Or ignoring Vita as that tends to have many indie games.
@get2sammyb I hate that when jim ryan talk, gamers misquoting him all the time, I rather have honest interview to see where playstation is going rather than have reggie like suit that can talk hours but say absolutely nothing.
@sinalefa They don't even show gran turismo in their e3 press conference, there's no way they put indies in there. Indies are good, but at this point in ps4 lifecycle, they're just cherry on top rather than reason to own ps4 (if you don't have ps4 by now, indies titles wont change your mind).
Indie games get a bad rap. Many complain about Plus being all Indies. Trolls love the term IndieStation when talking about PS4.
Yet so many indies get a 80+ critic score and are great games!! Some even hit AAA quality. The lack of Indies may be do to the vocal minorities hate for indies. The truth is Indies have played a important part in PlayStation value to the majority of users.
@banacheck I personally think the conference had too many similar AAA action adventure titles shown closely together. Dreams was promising a completely different flavour of game, so I think it would have been welcomed for that reason.
@wiiware
I don't think anyone uses indies as a big reason to get a console, but I feel some of these devs could use the love. Specially when Sony was so vocal about supporting indies.
I have only heard people complain about indies. Especially in relation to PS+ and how they're all we get.
Now they complain about Sony not showing off more?
I can absolutely see the majority of viewers switching off when the indie trailer reel comes along.
@BAMozzy fair enough. I see your point about the pixel art thing though. It was done to death up until about a year ago.
@manu0 except if you actually read the article he didn't say that. He's saying they need to put more focus on their own vr device instead of indies which is fine and makes perfect business sense
@Wesker he didn't say they did but like they did for indies back in 2013/14 he wants to do the same for vr
@BAMozzy what are you talking about most of the games ms showed were multiplat and timed indies. Crackdown 3,forza 7 and sea of thieves were the only triple aaa games they showed and no state of decay 2 isn't triple aaa it's aa at best
@dark_knightmare2 but they didn't, so it was a poorly conceived idea.
It is a shame - I feel a little bit like indies were used as an example of the ps4 being 'for the players' at launch and now content had picked up the aren't as important. However there are some cracking indies being made and as long as sites like PushSquare keep giving them the attention they do then they will still get launched and I will still buy them (then rant when they go on ps plus for free).
@Sinton It was the most meaningful trailer for me since the 2008 trailer of BG&E. I needed this.
But they got one of the biggest indie games ever coming! Did everyone forget about Undertale? It's even coming to the Vita...
@TimeforTravel Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to a sequel to BG&E. The trailer, however, showed only cut scenes, no gameplay. Therefor I would learn more about a indie game that's part of a one minute video collage, than I have currentlt learned about BG&E2.
@sinalefa They support indies, playstation is the only console that have undertale for example, but sony want short e3 conference, so no indies or gran turismo on their conference.
Show indies people complain...dont show Indies people complain.
I think there's a time and place for everything. E3 is where you're expected to bring your big guns. It's probably part of why they held off on showing some of their other games in the works. there are other shows where you can show off indie games, and just shoving ten of them into a two minute montage is just lip service and not the attention the indie games deserve.
I'll say it, since he won't and nobody else does. Fact: Indie games DO NOT sell consoles, period, end of story. I was shouting it at the start of the gen, when the focus was indies over AAA and I'll shout it now. If Sony had filled this show with indies what would people be saying 'TOO MANY INDIEZ!' Now, that doesn't mean you should ignore them completely, but for once I totally understand his point. People just love to complain about anything Sony these last couple weeks. Certainly I wasn't thrilled with its press conference nor have I agreed with a lot of the stuff Ryan has said lately. This is much ado about nothing however. MS filled its show with indies because, much like Sony when this gen started, it has crap all for exclusives. Nintendo needs indies because it has crap all for third party support. Not that hard to figure out, people need to start using commonsense and stop flying off the handles over every comment. Some things coming out of Sony lately have been dumb, this is not one of those times.
@Wesker
Having indies wouldn't change the fact that outside of Japan Studio, pretty much all of Sony's first party games now are carbon copies of Naughty Dog games.
I dislike indie games for the most part, they aren't held to the same standard as AAA games despite sharing the same market space and often rely on a single gimmick to sell themselves.
@THRILLHOU One of the games that caught a lot of peoples eye at MS's E3 was the Pixel art Bladerunner inspired - The Last Night.
For anyone really interested in seeing Sony's 'indie' games, just subscribe to their youtube channel. It seems every day there is a new 'game-play' trailer or two for a new upcoming indie game...
I don't 'dislike' indies but if I am 'generalising' then I would say that I don't like indies. The reason I can say this in a 'general' statement is that the majority have little/no interest to me at all but, as with almost everything, there is an exception and there are a few 'indies' that are outstanding. Unfortunately, I think these are the exception rather than the rule but I can see others that find a lot of indies 'interesting, fun etc.
I don't dismiss them because they are 'indie' but because what they offer to me is often not what I want to play or enjoy. I can say the same for AAA fighting games too as I won't every buy or Download one of these - even if free and more likely to download a lot of the 'indie' games over any AAA fighter...
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