/v/GA Spotlight — the Most Pretentious Indie Game category
The “Most Pretentious Indie Game” category, also known as “Pixels Are Art” and its enumerated editions is a category we have featured in the Vidya Gaem Awards since our second show.
It’s been a “featured” (shown in the visual presentation) award annually, as it generally features a varied showing of candidates not seen in other categories.
Names we used for the Most Pretentious Indie Award:
- Meat and Fish Award
- Pixels Are Art
- Pixels Are Art 2
- Pix3ls Are Art
- Pixels 4re 4rt Award
- PIXEL5
- And so on…
Some interesting things about Most Pretentious Indie Game:
Let’s face the music and first, answer a tough question. “Does Most Pretentious Indie Game punch down on indie developers?” Despite it being a negative award, the answer is No. It serves to satirize tokenism of indie games in award shows.
We satirize non-gaming award show mainstays as well (such as “best representation of women/men”), but Most Pretentious Indie was our response to other presentations which implied indie developers “stay in their box”.
To be clear, there is nothing pretentious about working with limited resources and trying to make a good game in a crowded field. The award is merely meant to poke fun at concepts, mechanics, or themes within games that our voters find pretentious or played out.
Our award show showcases indie games through our /v/GA Premiere program. Our volunteer team includes those who’ve worked on big projects and pretentiously big projects such as this one. This category is one of many that raise an eyebrow, particularly because of its quirky nature.
In the 2022 Vidya Gaem Awards, four of the top five “Most Pretentious Indie Game” nominees acknowledged their nomination publicly. That’s a significant number, and a sign that some see the award as an opportunity to both promote their game and take the award at full value — as recognition of their extraordinary work.
In my opinion, it’s become one of our breakout categories. Over the years, a handful of developers have come out in force to acknowledge their nomination.
Indeed, to get a little meta and knock ourselves down a peg, consider that many of the winners of Most Pretentious Indie aren’t that independent— they were published by a AAA publisher, such as No Man’s Sky (PS4), We Happy Few, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm/True Colors, and Tell Me Why.
Most Pretentious Indie Game Winners, by year:
- 2012: Fez
- 2013: Gone Home
- 2014: Broken Age 2
- 2015: Her Story
- 2016: No Man’s Sky
- 2017: Life Is Strange: Before the Storm
- 2018: We Happy Few
- 2019: YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
- 2020: Tell Me Why
- 2021: Life Is Strange: True Colors
- 2022: We Are OFK
- 2023: Goodbye Volcano High
Analysis:
Some of the award speeches for Most Pretentious Indie Game touch on the winning game’s efforts to convey a heavy topic but are missing the mark. Other years fight pretension with pretension and burst into a full-out musical number (such as in 2020's winner, Tell Me Why) or a critique of the game’s premise.
Take a look at the “Pix4ls 4re 4rt 4w4rd” speech from the 2016 Vidya Gaem Awards (speech below):
Yet another open-world game with a pastel color scheme, exploring an open world with nothing to do but just look at the sights. Perhaps at a time the game could have been described as ambitious, but clearly the final product disagrees with such labels. We have to constantly take a step back and remember “Oh yeah, this is an indie game that somehow got a bigger advertising budget than most AAA games.”
Either way, Sean Murray’s lovechild boasted about a rich, player-run universe with a deep story, state-of-the-art visuals, and a revolutionary genre mix, yet fell flat on its face in the delivery when they forgot to include gameplay with their game. This game wasn’t some sort of indie with potential, big hopes and ambition. It was just another treasure trove of misinformation and straight-up lies.
Regardless of what went on behind the scenes, they still promised more than they delivered. In the end, only a bearded manchild who refuses to wear shoes can develop an entire, literal universe, without a single line of dialogue deeper than incoherent babbling.
This speech doesn’t diminish the fact Most Pretentious Indie is a negative award — rather, the speech explains why No Man’s Sky won, all without spoiling the game's plot. It gives the game a fair bit of ribbing proportionate to the attention it received in the gaming community.
Although “Most Pretentious Indie” wasn’t the only award No Man’s Sky won that year (it also received several other negative awards), the game wasn’t doomed to fail because our voters said so. Hello Games took inventory of the game's criticism, added new quality-of-life features and gameplay modes (such as multiplayer), and listened intently to its community over the years.
Ultimately, No Man’s Sky won our “Biggest Redemption in Gaming” Award in 2020 (speech below).
Five years ago, No Man’s Sky came out on a hype train riding through the stars. Unfortunately it very quickly crashed face first into the first celestial body in its path. Lambasted by /v/ and Reddit alike, it was as if the entire collective internet came together to laugh at this game and how horrendously it failed to deliver on its promises.
But now? It’s honestly not a stretch to say it’s become one of the best bang-for-your-buck games on the market. With consistent free content patches bringing new experiences and swathes of bugfixes, the game has managed to gather an extremely dedicated following that can actually play together finally.
It’s pretty clear after everything was said and done that Sean Murray wasn’t a lord of lies like Todd, he was just a guy who got a bit in over his head when talking to press, and didn’t stop to double-check whether his promises were feasible. But props to Hello Games, they took the criticism like champs, buckled down, and decided to set things right.
And honestly? Right now that’s a very welcome change of pace. Let it live on as a sign to devs that they don’t need to just pump and dump games. Spend some time focusing on the wrongs and rights, and reward your community for their dedication, and in the end, it’ll come out alright.
Now, /v/. Apologize.
The Vidya Gaem Awards are one of many outlets for people to voice opinions. I don’t think anyone should take a negative nomination (or a win) as a personal attack, or much less a stopping point in your career as a game developer. As a project by and for 4chan, we are only as big as the people who nominate, vote, and work on our show and those who recognize us and give us attention.
If you or your favorite game was nominated, take the nomination (or win) as a sign the game piqued our voters’ interest, and it was interesting enough to progress to the voting phase. You don’t owe anybody an apology for being yourself. But you can always improve your craft and prove us wrong in the years ahead.
The Vidya Gaem Awards are an award show for video games from 4chan’s “/v/ — Video Games” board. It is an award show that features both positive and negative award categories, has been held each year online since 2011, and is made possible by a group of volunteers who work on the project for free. Learn more about “What are the Vidya Gaem Awards?” here.
Disclosure: I am the current Head of Outreach and the former Executive Producer of the Vidya Gaem Awards (2013–2015, 2017).
