PALGN Debate Series Semifinal 2 - VOTING CLOSED

[Toastfarmer]

Hello everyone and welcome to the penultimate debate of the PALGN Debate Series. Our participants are mangaman and Aftershock.

The topic is

'Indie games are critical to the games industry.'

Mangaman is the affirmative and Aftershock the negative.

The winner of this debate will face Passa in the PALGN Debate Series Grand Final. Best of luck to both participants.

[mangaman]

heh-loh, i'm back again! first a funny computer, now a topic i go what the.... ^^". Okay, lets see how i do this time round, my brain is kinda fuzzy in holiday mode xD.
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picture this, the newest game on the market: mario paintball. next months next best release, wow expansion pack 4. anticipated release of the year: metal gear solid 5. this being so, does it mean that game companies are completely reliant on these franchises to survive. perhaps. but what about indie games, what do they provide for not only the gaming companies, but also for the gaming public as consumers?

heya once again to another exciting debate in this palgn series. as you're all aware the topic of this debate is that indie games are critical to the gaming industry. "Indie games" is defined as "any game created by a company not backed by large company finance or is a self-published company, and "gaming industry" is referring to all participants within the gaming market. I'm gonna be debating the affirmative side, so that means indie games rock xD! I will argue this through two main arguments, firstly, indie games promote the innovative development of ideas, conventions and potential genres of future gaming, and secondly, indie games provide the gaming market with an increased variety and range of games available as well as diluting the market power of the dominant gaming corporations. =D

In a capitalist society, consumer is king. They choose what is cool, what is different, and what is appealing to them overall. Indie games play a vital role in creating innovative new ideas for future game developments by providing something that is unconventional, interesting, and a fresh approach to gaming. A game that provided such attributes has been the 'Broken Sword' series. Published by Revolution games, Broken Sword offered gamers a new approach to the RPG genre. By superimposing upon 2D comic book elements, they were one of the first series to offer in-game cutscenes pre-animated in a format the game did not utilise on its own. Shortly after, the successful Final Fantasy franchise on PSOne followed this trend and displayed several animated cutscenes at various points throughout the game in UI format. Without Indie games the development of games in general would not have progressed as dynamically or efficiently without them. Aren't they great? =)
Even games like Katamari Damacy and Sam and Max have provided a fresh new face to the gaming industry, differing from the conventional gaming genres. Games like these have by themselves offered the gaming industry, new, radical and often unheard of genres much like a game where you roll stuff into a ball, or hit buttons to co-ordinate a dancer onscreen. These developments have led to giant dance machines, franchise mini-game factories and other weird wonderful gamey stuff that floats around in the market today. Truly, indie games have brought us a lot. Without them, we'd still be playing our Mario 7 game over again, and our Wrestlemania 38 one more time. Indie game companies help provide this basis for larger game companies, as well as provide a good deal of competition for the market, which i'll next explore after Aftershock's shot at indie-ness.

Ho-kay, shock away after me Aftershock (hahar.....doh.)
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check out my deviantart at http://mangalphantom.deviantart.com

[Toastfarmer]

Aftershock's reply period of 48 hours has passed but in the interest of having an actual debate I will give him until midnight to reply, otherwise I'm going to have little choice but to award the debate to mangaman. I'll PM Aftershock and hopefully he can get his response in.

[Aftershock]

Man i got the shit end this time... Ah well.
Apologies for lateness, ive just been piled high with assignments.

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Indie games are not critical to the games industry.

In this debate, ill put forward some really convincing points that will show you how well the industry would survive without indie games. For one, indie games offer a tiny percentage of all money spent on games.

If this amount of revenue was to be removed, the gaming industry would experience nought but a small hiccup, and a large percentage of gamers would not notice. There are a large number of gamers who do not play indie games, and even more who don't know they exist.

Which brings me to my second point as to why they're unimportant.
Market coverage.

The vast majority of Indie games are PC-only, which means that they reach a limited, hardcore audience. Most people do not have a gaming PC, hence cannot run these games, or if they do, run with such low graphical quality that they are dismissed.

And on to you manga.
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[mangaman]

Hey, you made it Aftershock m'man. One debate is better than none! Woohoo, I got arguments to use this time instead of plain rebuttal =D! ah well, on with debating.
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Back to the second round of debating. As the affirmative side, I previously discussed the innovative effects indie games have on future gaming in my previous argument. Here, I will further develop my stance on why Indie games are in fact very important to the gaming industry, by exploring how they provide consumers with a wider variety of games and competition to the market, to support the needs of the gaming industry. But before I jump into my next argument, I would just like to point out some flaws in my opponents case.

My opponent stated that, "...large number of gamers who do not play indie games, and even more who don't know they exist."
Perhaps gamers aren't aware of the existence of individual indie titles, but when browsing through games on a shelf in a game store, they're definitely there to be aware of. Any other game that one isn't aware of, not Mario, not Sonic, something different from the norm, you'd be intrigued to pick it up and see what its about. It would be better to say that, even though Indie games are not the driving the force behind the majority of game sales today, they do provide the gaming consumer with the additional benefit of being able to choose from a wider range of games from just franchised titles.

This brings me to my second argument: that indie games provide the gaming market with an increased variety and range of games as well as dilute the market power of the dominant gaming corporations. Anyone would know that in any industry, competition plays an important role in helping businesses thrive. Without it, consumers have a limited range of products to choose from, very marginal price differences, and no incentive to buy just the one particular product. With added competition, businesses are forced to try harder to capture consumer attention with better product and price offerings to the competitors. In turn, this results in better overall product quality, competitive pricing being readily available, and a wider range of products for the consumer to choose from. Competition, is what Indie games provide to the gaming industry.
With this added competition, gaming giants have to try harder to produce games other than another mario party sequel, or sonic racing game. After all, better quality games for gamers like us can't really be a bad thing can it =)?
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okey, your turn A'Shock.
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check out my deviantart at http://mangalphantom.deviantart.com

[Toastfarmer]

Well this appears to be over, vote away.

[Big Pete]

You'd have to say mangaman wins on default. Bit of a bummer considering Aftershock was hit hard with assignments and such.

BTW Azza and Lord Haart have voted for mangamans first post, I'm sure they meant those votes to be counted overall.
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[Aftershock]

Sorry again team, I was just scrambling to get a bunch of things in before the end of term.

Manga deserves this one.
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[Toastfarmer]

Okay well obviously Mangaman has taken out this one. This means our Grand Final is between Passa and Mangaman. It will begin tomorrow and run Wednesday to Wednesday, then voting will run from Thursday to Sunday with a winner declared the following Monday.