Take that, arty-farty fart pants!

David Jaffe, he of the hulking Olympians and clown-faced vehicular homicide-rs, has fired a couple of salvos towards the supposedly pretentious "indie" game scene, as well as those "bitches" in the journalism department who prop up such games. From his twitter:

"Reality is, we work for the gamer and we want them as happy as they can be. We will push as hard as we can to get it perfect for every gamer until the time has simply run out… That said, I agree…  SO F*CKING SICK of artsy fartsy in this industry. Get f*cking over yourselves bitches."

So fucking sick? It's as if Jaffe thinks that arty games are actually encroaching on his territory, which of course they're not. Just like with film or paintings or what have you, 95% of those aren't necessarily "arty," and 98% of people don't pay attention to the ones that are.

Basically, his argument on his website boils down to the fact that so-called "art" games are pretentious and aren't any fun to play. And that games journalists prop them up because it leads to higher readership or something. This is out and out bullshit. First, it's probably true that most art is pretentious, or at least seems that way to a person who is clearly, um, unpretentious, to say the least. Second, as I've stated on a couple of occasions, I reject the notion that games need to be "fun." They don't need to be fun. You can play the ones you enjoy, the ones that you find fun, just as you could go watch Iron Man instead of watching Antichrist. But maybe you crave the insight that something like Antichrist can provide, just as sometimes you want to play a game like Fragile Dreams instead of Halo sometimes.

Maybe indie games/art games (two very different things, by the way) haven't quite gotten to the point of actual artistic relevance or insight that people expect, but there's nothing wrong with trying. What Jaffe seems to resent is anyone who does try, who's outside of the studio system, and that, to me, reeks of assholishness. Where would someone like Daisuke Amaya be if he wasn't allowed to just run wild with his ideas? More than likely, Cave Story would have been half the game it turned out to be.

I hate the self-congratulatory stance he takes, basically saying "I make games that cater to a player's every whim and am not the least bit apologetic about it," yet this is the kind of attitude that has made for such stasis in mainstream gaming. He claims that only one or two great "art games" gets released every year, but I can think of several off the top of my head that have come out this year. Mostly, what I hate is that he calls out independent games journalists (like the Vigigames crew) for feeding a supposed "sub-industry" while simultaneously congratulating Destructoid, who also wrote a similar piece and are most definitely part of the "big games" boom and bust industry. You want to decry a lack of insight in gaming? Why not start with the websites that are more than happy to give veritable blowjobs to Bald White Dude Shooting Things 4: Ultimate Punishment Extreme Edition?