Indie games sites ga-ga for 2d

Ok - you can just put this down to sour grapes if you like and I know that there's many more 2d than 3d independent games produced in a year, but I'm just starting to get a feeling that many of the indie sites that pride themselves on being open to 'grass-roots' gaming, are effectively biased against 3d indie games.

You know, they go ga-ga for endless 2d platformers, shmups and obscure japanese remakes - yet a well produced 3d game (and I'm not talking about my own), is given a quick nod and then it's back to the 2d stuff they feel more comfortable with. In other words, they talk a good game about being open to all forms of independent games, yet they have their own bias and it's not good for indie gaming as a whole.

Why should this be (if it is this way)? If I had to conjecture, it might be that many of these guys also play the commercial games that are predominantly 3d and that consciously (or unconsciously), any indie 3d game is judged against the standard they set. Perhaps it's because to their minds even a small team putting together a 3d game and getting a publisher on-board is no longer 'indie', but 'commercial'.

But if you write a 2d game, hey! There's not many AAA 2d games nowadays, so even if you do have a team and a publisher, it's still 'indie' and that's extra brownie points from the get-go.

Just a suspicion - what do you think?

People who have a preference see things from a particular perspective and they like to fill that perspective with all sorts of things which resonate with it. Because 2d is old-school and has for a long time been more in the realm of what an independent coder can achieve it gets placed similarly to the idea of being independent, ie you don't do what the big companies do. If the big companies make all these super big 3d games, which they do, then it follows that being independent must likely mean being less experienced and less skilled and less likely to understand or aim for fancy 3d engines. Their goals are smaller, their aim shorter, and their intentions less grand. 3d is still seen as the relatively new way to do things and for many people it is just too advanced. And since indie coders more or less encompasses all beginners and all those who want to go it alone, they probably aren't going to be coming out with radical 3d stuff. So yea, like you said, what makes indie indie isn't just that you make stuff yourself, it's the whole culture and mindset of not being the big commercial company. You get the total package.

Exactly. And by taking this attitude consciously or unconsciously, they're retarding indie expansion into 3d.

actually I think 3d graphics make the game look hardcore.
The casual audience just doesnt like 3d games esp. from the first person perspective.

That real time strategy game with the oldschool enemies was 3D and the indie sites went ga-ga over that.

Personally I don't care much for 3D for several reasons, but the most important one being:

Most of the 3D games out there give me motion sickness.

(Oddly enough the 'Descent' series is an exception to that, I could play those for hours... But pretty much any other 3D FPS will have me looking for a barf bag within minutes)

3D games are harder to make. The bottomline is that until games went 3D a game development team consisted of less than 10 people and in many cases were just about 3 people at the core. Once games went 3D, that's when team sizes increased because the complexity increased exponentially (that 3rd dimension is a doozy). To get the same level of polish and flow out of a 3D game takes a lot more skill and for the most part there's no reason to make a 3D casual game because the 3rd dimension rarely adds something to the gameplay and in many cases it actually takes away from it.

Really? I got really dizzy the first time I played descent. But my fragile little brain was used to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom 1 when I played descent for the first time, so it kind of makes sense I guess. :)

I think that the rize in dev teams is not only due to that these are 3d games. It's already to the greater amount of polish generally, the art (gfx, sfx, level design) testing, marketing and so on.

Indy games can be nicely done in 3d nowadays. It primary depends on the game which you would like to do. There are those were you won't be happy until you put a lot of effort into it and there are those which are more easily done.

But i've witnessed that it's harder getting fun out of a real 3d game compared to a 2d game if you're not only just after a 3d or 2.5d presentation of a 2d game. The additional dimension creates more possibilities which you have to take care of in your game design which is not always easy.