it's tempting for me to make the point of comparison that annapurna is to games what a24 is to film but honestly i haven't played enough of annapurnas published catalogue to say

you have an absolute point here with that comparison my friend, I think the only 2 things that i like are WATTAM and KRZ. Not to be judgy or anything but i really think that Annapurna is doing some damage @kingbancho

damage to what?

@quilDewlvy damage to the global image of the video game as art for someone outside the medium.
keep in mind that there are people who believe that something like Journey is the art standard in video games while belittling something like God Hand

In what world is A24 damaging to film as art? This is the first I've heard. Though if that's not what you meant by the comparison, woops

"why we still thniking synthpop?"
??

@Tatsky i think that is not what @kingbancho wanted to say 😊
Cuz there is some Synthpop that seem a complement por a video or movie, nothing wrong with that but not my ideal to have similar approaches in videogames

it's a line of discourse that's admittedly insular and difficult to explain but valid nonetheless imo; the extremely short version would be that a24/annapurna have a 'brand' that only bends the knee to an increasingly narrow, formulaic, and rigid conception of what art should be and they posture themselves as the highbrow and curated alternative to the rest of the supposed schlock out there. most damning instances as far as annapurna goes are probably donut county and the pathless but other games in a similar vein ie abzu and gris come to mind. anyways as with anything you can conjure counter arguments and it all comes down to the idea of annoying art movements and trends thatll inevitably be replaced with some other misplaced ideal

Do you mean synthwave?

@kingbancho I think it would/could be a valid line of thinking, if there was much reason to think that annapurna/a24 are pushing out other games/movies, not that i disagree with the perception (cuz i don't, i don't think it's difficult or unreasonable to see it as an existing worry).
Granted, I know jack shit about a24 so maybe they are, but I really don't get it with annapurna, which i do know a lot about relatively.

it's ironic that the very idea of “art game” (whatever that means) has become a mini industry where more and more games follow a specific pattern of how games should be.

lol my partner and i have this same paranoid annapurna/a24 dialogue constantly! Megan Ellison is a weird figure and I'm reticent to celebrate any billionaire inheritess (and producer of zero dark thirty lol) for her company's hypercurated and stylistically narrow hand-picked darlings. I think there are plenty of compelling titles under both the Annapurna and A24 umbrella but it's worth being vigilant/aware of how each company's "house style" is extremely evident and a bit limiting at this point, and the ways in which indie developers/filmmakers, often desperate for publishing, might be encouraged to preliminarily alter their own work as a sort of (perhaps not even directly demanded, but perceived) devil's bargain to get the promotional/investment power of Annapurna behind the title. I don't really think it's that worrying or bad for a production company to have clearly delineated style preference or whatever but I do think it's worrying when companies like A24 (and increasingly Annapurna) are marketed as and publicly perceived to be "the place for weird expressive stuff" and treated as literally the only alternative to braindead AAA productions, when these producers are really an exclusionary and limited enterprise in their own sense. Im way more wary of A24's hegemony-strengthening effect on the film world tbh; while gaming world is still a stratified mess and indie dev seems totally fruitless as a career for the vast majority of people, there are at least lot more platforms for interesting games to spread and proliferate through word of mouth/itch.io/twitch/etc. Still worthwhile to pay attention and remain a bit wary of any corporate enterprise that faux altruistically claims to "lift up artists" but remains so comprehensively samey lol!

@PansyDragoonSaga Yeah ok fair this is insanely well spoken to a point where I feel unknowledgeable of the situation now lol.
I guess I'm more concerned of more mainstream approaches to this a la Amazon Studios/Netflix "lifting up artists" to where this seems like a way less worrisome approach but I get that the bar is low, and they're all different on the spectrum of worrisome->corporate formula. I don't think I can rightly emphasize with it still, but I throw the towel in on being wrong here

@PansyDragoonSaga That's incredibly true on the note of how marketing has changed the perception of both studios, especially the "only alternative". I've been under the impression that A24 is the only big indie film studio that's actually close to Oscars territory repeatedly, in the sense that it gives directors an outlet, something the Oscars seemingly hated since most if not every A24 film of 2019 was strangely absent from the 92nd Academy Awards (the only nomination being a cinematography nom for The Lighthouse). For the record, my experience with A24 only goes so far as five watched films, so I had 0 idea about its possibility of being this "arthouse" that also has their own standards and possibly exclusionary policies.

I'm still confused by earlier statements about synthpop? It's been made possibly more clear in a Discord server that the meaning behind it is games trying to go for this "artsy" look and using an artsy electronic genre to package it with, but my problem with that statement alone is that synthpop is, by and large, one of the most ill defined and varied music genres out there. It's own aesthetic is least defined, it being a gigantic umbrella for a lot of other music genres. This is insanely semantic and probably only bugs me as someone who holds a heavy music background and interest, but I find the use of the word really confusing. However, I'm willing to believe that my perspective is niche and I'm missing a more wider understanding of what that's inferring.

@quil lol ty!! i think you're totally correct in seeing amazon/netflix as the bigger threat especially since they do so much more internal production and the implied/perceived style confines are like, literally enforced. All of these individual corporate cases are just like, symptoms and illustrations of a truly sick creative economy, Annapurna and A24 just irk me specifically because there's an adjacency of taste between their productions and aspects I appreciate in other work that makes me insecure and suspicious of my own preferences lol. idk, in a better world the arts would be publicly funded and artists would just be able to actually get grants or something and not rely on wealthy children and evil business empires to fund their projects!!!!!!!!!!

i gave annapurna some credit for helping games that were in development for a very long time get out the door, and for a while i didnt see their "brand" as overpowering their games in the same way devolver's tired 2 kool neon psychedelic theme runs through everything they put out (almost turning me off from something like dropsy, which is a legit great game). but their posturing has gotten harder to ignore since last year, and certain personally upsetting to me things like shitting the bed with kentucky route zero's localization process didn't help. not to mention that i never felt like aligning too hard with megan ellison, as pansy brought up

If it's not your cup of tea it's okay. Annapurna has established itself because of publishing a certain kind of game, I for instance like almost everything they've put out, and I would understand why some people would stay clear of their "brand of game", but to say they're "damaging" videogames is just dumb. I've recommended many Annapurna videogames to people who don't usually play them and they've loved them, and then, slowly, they've been moving towards other kinds of games. Why hate these types of games if the other ones that are more "suited" to your taste are not going away? It's amazing when we can have a great variety of games where to choose from.

This thread is so strange to me. I understand the sentiment that Annapurna games came feel same-y in their presentation and themes but as video games they could not be more diverse gameplay wise. What does Outer Wilds have in common with a Sayonara Wild Hearts? And I don't see how any of this could be damaging to the industry when dozens of self-published indie games come out everyday and Devolver Digital has their own output.

@lleon Well, it is a difficult question to deal with here actually, my reviews are nothing more than loose thoughts that do not intend to reach anyone and above all, I do not intend to offend, I would like to make that clear. But, if you think that thinking of Annapurna as something harmful is dumb, well, first:
I think that the image of indirectly selling oneself as one of those sites where expressiveness and creativity are taken into account and talent and authors are valued is actually a bit misleading, I don't know if it is due to a real ignorance of the capabilities of the video game as art or is it worse. But most of the things Annapurna publishes are, as suggested in the previous comments, very formulaic, dressed in a shiny cape.
If you allow me to tell it, curiously, I had a similar experience with a couple of friends; I taught them games like Journey, Sayonara Wild hearts, Gris, The Pathless ... Stuff like that.
One of them had a complete disinterest in these video games, but the other juices all of them, and she said something revealing:

"You know what, Journey is just like Jak and Daxter"

Confused

"Well no no, bad comparison, what I'm saying is ... It's just a normal game really, I mean, you walk, run, jump and go through dangers and worlds, don't many video games do that too? I notice that it is beautiful and very soft, but I don't know if it is correct that a trip through the desert and a ruins should be beautiful and smooth "

That's what she said.
I think she is missing nuances, but her general thinking is quite correct.
It is just an example, and I like Journey, but the tendency to rely excessively on an artistic section instead of digital architecture, kinesthesia, the challenge, the form of the video game itself is very harmful to my eyes, because Thanks to this trend we have an immense amount of forgotten games while something like GRIS instead Problem Attic takes all the attention and, worse still, it is established as the way forward, like "this is the art in video games"

Maybe you don't see it this way, and it's perfectly respectable, but in my environment, as a quick example, I've seen rejection of "Childish" experiences like Octahedron or Nex Machina by other "Mature" ones, like ... Gris or Inside.