Games Can Be Indie, Too

That little yellow ship with the claws right there? The most evil thing to have ever been conceived by a game designer.

There is an obvious rift between independent films and big-budget blockbuster films. Both have their ups and downs, but the independent films are usually considered the more ‘artsy’ and intelligent while mainstream films are just bigger and flashier. This doesn’t seem to be just the case for film, however; many can argue that other mediums have this exact same split as well.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy versus Harry Potter. Radiohead versus Green Day. Homeworld versus Starcraft. All of these are examples of the ‘underground’ versus the ‘mainstream’. None of these (in my opinion) are bad; all have excellent traits and qualities. But they are different; Hitchhiker’s is a very humorist story with bizarre and utterly deranged plot points that resonates well with nerds, while Harry Potter is an epic tale of good versus evil that appeals to nearly everyone. Radiohead is purposefully underground and meant to toy with various instruments while Green Day pumps everyone up and uses established punk ideas to rock the house. And Homeworld versus Starcraft?

That might take a bit of explaining for some members of the class.

Homeworld and Starcraft are both PC games from the 1990’s, both revolutionary in the industry. Both are real-time strategy games, which often revolve around starting from scratch to construct a base and build up an army to battle either the computer or other players, which both games do. Starcraft revolutionized the genre of real-time strategy by giving the player the choice between three distinct factions to play as, each unique in army composition and even base-building, but all perfectly balanced so as not to overpower each other, which no RTS (real-time strategy) game had before. Homeworld was even more revolutionary; rather than have players build a base on land, Homeworld gave players a mothership to produce, upgrade, and repair all of their units, all while moving about in all dimensions in the depths of space. Both introduced concepts no other game had done before, and both were critically acclaimed.

But Homeworld was left in obscurity while Starcraft exploded in popularity. Homeworld is almost impossible to have a conversation about, while Starcraft is so massive South Korea has several TV channels dedicated to its existence. Homeworld had a sequel four years after the original hit shelves and only diehard fans of the original bought it, but when Starcraft 2 launched TEN YEARS LATER (an eternity in the video game industry), every kid with a PC scrambled to grab a copy. Why?

Because Homeworld was developed by Relic Games, who at the time were almost nobodies working for Sierra Entertainment, which was not a large video game publisher and would ultimately go under within a few years. Starcraft, on the other hand, was developed and published by Blizzard, an industry giant which was at the forefront of the PC game industry. Homeworld was released no more than a year after Starcraft, which was still shipping copies well after Homeworld was released. Because Starcraft had multiplayer based in a more established vein within the RTS genre (ground-based combat with lots of base-building) over Homeworld’s smaller multiplayer and greater emphasis on a persistent, single-player story.

Both are excellent games. I love both of them, and I have to admit that I’ve spent more time with Starcraft than Homeworld. But Homeworld deserved so much more attention. Even games that tried to follow in its wake by simulating grand space battles have failed to achieve mainstream popularity. Was it the lack of focus on multiplayer or the lesser credit of Relic that prevented it from achieving mass popularity? I don’t know. I may never truly know, even if many people may have well-informed opinions about that matter.

But I do know one thing; both games have computer-controlled armies that will crush you at the slightest sign of weakness, and I can’t understand how they keep me coming back to them.