Tyrone Rodriguez, founder of a developer and publisher of various ports of indie games such as NightSky (developed), Cave Story (ported), and VVVVVV (ported), was asked in an interview with IndieGames.com if he had an opinion on the recent criticisms of Japanese games by indie developers as Johnathan Blow and Phil Fish, and if he felt they were justified.
Even though Japan has a massive indie scene and has for years, Tyrone couldn’t name many doujin games that weren’t awful, except for Cave Story of course. When the popular series Touhou was brought up, he mentioned he wished it would “just go away”. Fat chance. He did mention Omega Boost, Vib Ribbon, and Parappa the Rapper as good games however.
When Konami was mentioned, that’s when he decided to bite some heads off. Tyrone is quoted as saying “Konami doesn’t make good stuff.” and that Hideo Kojima should stop making games and start making bad movies. “He’s terrible at making games, Metal Gear is good in spite of him. I haven’t enjoyed a game of his since maybe the original Metal Gear Solid, maybe.”
I couldn’t disagree any harder with him, I loved MGS2 and MGS3 for different reasons, but he’s entitled to his opinion.
After voicing his opinion of Kojima, Tyrone then dropped in his two cents on a peeve he has with the indie label. He said “The main thing I want to see from indie developers is to stop calling themselves indie developers. You’re either a game developer or you’re not. Indie has nothing to do with it. It’s like this cool buzzword now. Do you make games? Okay, then you’re a game developer.”
Have to agree with that, if I hear the word “Entrepreneur” one more time I’m going to flip my desk with the fury of 1000 suns so I know how he feels. I wouldn’t say indie developers are all smug about it but the label is very quickly becoming overused and losing meaning. A statement also made by Tyrone who thinks that the label is devaluing and belittling. However, he himself is not above using it to describe himself on his Twitter profile.
Rian Quenlin
Amendment: Somewhere between the time I posted this and now, he has removed “indie” from his Twitter profile.