Connor Dooley

"Art that some people call games, games that some people call art"

Originally this article was a presentation I gave for my game programming class.

What games?

Altgames are a bit hard to define actually.

We often think of games based on production value, with indie (low budget, small team) at one end and AAA (high budget, large team) at the other.

Image showing a double ended arrow with "Indie" and Super Meat Boy on the left and "AAA" and Call of Duty: Black Ops III on the right

Really though, It's more like this:

The same image as before, but with "Indie" moved slightly to the right and "Altgames" now furthest to the left, accompanied by a screenshot from the game "Everything is going to be OK" by Nathalie Lawhead.

But just fitting altgames into our current model of games doesn't really work that well. A better definition (in my opinion) comes from Robert Yang:

Altgames is about an "alternative" from contemporary mainstream indie game design practice and markets

— Robert Yang, #altgames is the no-fault divorce that indie games needs

If this definition feels a bit hard to parse, don't worry. Hopefully, by the end of this article it'll make more sense. In the meantime, an easier way to think about it is that altgames are to mainstream games as punk music is to rock'n'roll. If AAA games are The Beatles, then altgames are The Sex Pistols.

What's in a name?

Quite a bit actually. The name "altgames" seems to be the most popular now, and I think it's the most fitting. Even still, you'll see other names used so here's a brief rundown of some of the more popular ones and why I think that "altgames" is better than them.

Trashgames, B-Games, and Kusoge

Each of these terms refers to the quality (or lack thereof) of the games in question. Altgames is a much broader label that includes "bad" games, so these labels are more like a subset of altgames to me.

Art Games

I go back and forth on this label, but for the most part I dislike it because it seems to imply that other games are not art.

Notgames and Scratchware

Both of these refer to precursors to the altgames movement. The Scratchware Manifesto was written some time around 2000 and Not a Manifesto was written in 2010. It seems to me that the altgames movement is really just the newest iteration on the ideas put forth in these manifestos, making these terms a little outdated.

Now let's talk about a couple games

Sexy Hiking

Sexy Hiking isn't "nice" to play. It's frustrating, the graphics are a mishmash of clipart and other free images, nothing about it is pretty or polished. And that's OK.

Sexy Hiking is not a "good game" in the traditional sense. The controls are frustrating, there’s not much in it that could be said to be “polished”, and most people probably won’t play more than a minute or so when they can’t get past the first tree (I know I didn’t). It also doesn’t make much sense. There’s nothing “sexy” in the game, you’re climbing with a hammer, and your hands aren’t even connected to your body. All in all, it almost seems like the developer doesn’t care if you enjoy the game or not...

Think back to Robert Yang's definition of altgames. Player enjoyment is the most central part of mainstream game design and marketability. It’s easy to look at Sexy Hiking and say “that’s bad design,” but that’s only true if the main goal of the design is to give the player a good experience. Derek Yu (creator of Spelunky) said in an interview with PC Gamer, As a game developer, it's tempting to start obsessing over polish and making sure the player has a nice, comfortable time, and [Jazzuo’s] games are a reminder that we're also artists trying to express something of ourselves.

Queers in Love at the End of the World

Queers in Love at the End of the World is a text adventure that lasts 10 seconds. It has much more content than you could read in 10 seconds, but you only get 10 seconds. To the left of the image there is a piece of art that says "When we have eachother we have everything"

Altgames are especially important to marginalized communities who aren’t represented in mainstream games. White, straight, and male voices are dominant in the industry, and while the level of diversity is growing it still has a long way to go. Queers in Love was created in 2013 for the Ludum Dare competition and according to its creator, Anna Anthropy, It’s a game about the transformative, transcendent power of queer love, and is dedicated to every queer I’ve loved, no matter how briefly, or for how long.

If Sexy Hiking is an altgame because it rejects player enjoyment as the central purpose of a game, the Queers in Love represents the opposite side of altgames, it aims for the enjoyment of a demographic that the mainstream industry isn’t focused on.

Since it only takes 10 seconds to play, I highly recommend taking a moment to go play the game for yourself.

So Why Should I Care?

So now that we know what altgames are, why should we care about them?

  1. Experimentation is often not marketable.
  2. Without experimentation, games stagnate
  3. Altgames uplift the voices that are not represented in the games industry

Simply put, altgames keep games interesting. Without Sexy Hiking, Getting Over It would never have flooded everyone's YouTube feeds. Without people like Anna Anthropy, the diversity of voices in games would be even more scant than it is now. Sure there's a place for the Call of Duty's and the endless sports titles, but do we really want that to be what defines our art form?

I'll leave you with this quote from my favorite game dev podcast:

We are artists, and we should be artists.

— Mark LaCroix, Nice Games Club episode 15, “We are artists and we should be artists.” Demoing; Project Management; Messages.

Sources

The title is a quote from this talk by Nathalie Lawhead

Games

Shown

Mentioned

Some others that I couldn’t fit in to the presentation

Articles

Videos