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Comment by jentulman | Hacker News Reader

These bundles are all great. I keep pointing them out to my non-gaming friends as much as possible.

I've dumped my consoles in the last year and moved to finding 'indie' game devs like these because, as the old saying goes, 'It's not about graphics, it's about gameplay'[citation needed] and I don't care how many polygons you can throw at /next big game/ it is almost invariably yet another FPS.

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I don't think it's fair to say it's "yet another FPS". I think that people who only play Indie titles are missing out just as much as those who only play huge AAA releases.

What about people who only play Dwarf Fortress?

You're missing out too - and I say this as someone who used to only play DF. DF is amazing, but there are tons of other games that are just as amazing or nearly so (Minecraft, Fallout, Terraria, Portal, Spacechem ... dear deity, Spacechem. If you buy one game this year, buy it). None of them really compare to DF in learning curve or sheer complexity, but they're all really good.

Who's got the time though?

I view it similarly to any other varied hobby. If you like to cook you can either choose to cook American food all the time or you can branch out and try different styles.

Although, the difference is that hunger and food are pretty constant in relation to each other where as there are just masses of video games. But I think the principle is close enough :)

The problem with this comparison is that an average meal doesn't take upwards of 20 hours to prepare. For someone working full-time, completing a game can be a large time investment.

Generally I play games maybe 2-3 hours a week max due to the double whammy of having a family and working at a startup :) This means for the average game it might keep me busy for a few months at a time. DF on the other hand...

Well, ignoring the atypical nature of the HN crowd: most people, really. According to the BBC [1] the average (non-startup founding...) person spends 28 hours watching TV per week. That's plenty of time to do play games.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12651728

The same can be said for a number of old games as well. GoG's Summer Gems daily sale had a bunch of games that can't possibly compare graphically these days but still surpass modern games in many ways (e.g. Independence War which I would argue is unique in the space shooter genre).

That and my aging single-core computer simply can't keep up with many AAA tiles.

> I've dumped my consoles in the last year and moved to finding 'indie' game devs like these because, as the old saying goes, 'It's not about graphics, it's about gameplay'

Ironically, this is pretty much what made the Wii such a success in the Moms & Dads demographic ...

I absolutely agree, though I've found myself heavily driven to retrogaming for the most part, replaying old games I never played as a kid...and having a blast!

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