Artsy-Fartsy Indie Auteur Sells Out - Thank God
Calls of “sell-out” – few, and mild, but real – hit the web this week with the news that indie auteur Jason Rohrer, maker of sensitive allegorical titles like Passage or Gravitation, had inked a deal with a leading interactive ad firm, Tool of North America. Most folks were understanding: Rohrer needs the money. He has survived on little money and a sponsorship deal while building a career and a family of four. At the same time, Rohrer’s defection to the world of Mad Men hits a sore spot for the fledgling indie community. While it’s pretty clear that, definitionally, Rohrer has sold out, indie gamers have never taken a moment to figure out if “selling out” is bad - and how they should do business in the first place.
If you don’t know Rohrer from his games or his fabulous Esquire profile, let me introduce you. Rohrer makes simple, short games in a lo-res pixelated art style. His best-known ones are simple but captivating allegories for human experiences: Gravitation models the process of creativity; Passage is nothing less than a simulation of an entire human life from birth, to (maybe) marriage, to death, with memories of the past and roads not taken always on the edge of the game window. Rohrer’s work is popular and not a little twee – he makes Wes Anderson look like a thug – but it’s definitely “artistic,” and so is its maker. I didn’t get a chance to speak with Rohrer at this year’s Game Developer Conference, but I saw him at the expo, and can vouch for his charisma. He’s tall and electrified, with passionate eyes that convey unfakable enthusiasm for his craft. People with day jobs don’t have eyes like that.
But Rohrer has a family to feed. And in indie gaming, that’s tough. While commercial indie games that hover around the $20 price point and the 5-hour gameplay mark can turn into hits – think of Castle Crashers, Braid, and World of Goo – we’ve also come to expect a steady stream of genius little free and Flash games like the works of Cactus or Daniel Benmergui. Admit it: when you think of “indie games,” you want to pay little or nothing. You’ll feel good for shelling out cash to support The Path on Steam, but beyond that? You’ve come to expect the web to give you a steady stream of weirdo new radical whatevers to check out every week, or even every day. And you assume that these creators can just keep giving this stuff away for free with, at most, some silly ad sitting next to it.
(Although if we could get a hip new game on Kongregate framed by a Jason Rohrer banner ad? That might be kind of wow.)
The stars of indie haven’t shied away from looking like hippies. At this year’s Conference, the indie gaming scene had a beautiful, communal week together. Creators from around the world – most of them startlingly young and crackling with carefree energy, weird hair, and a little genius – met up, sometimes for the first time. They hung around each other’s booths at the expo and cheered each other’s games at the Independent Games Festival awards ceremony. And the year of love continues: Mark Essen, aka Messhof, recently told Edge Online about talk of renting a cheap group home in Sweden and, one assumes, living on pickeled herring and working by the light of whale fat until they’re done changing the world.
That’s great when you’re young and single – but Rohrer’s not. Passage sells for $1 for iPhone/iPod, but that won’t pay the rent. The Escapist signed him to a game dev/sketchbook deal that didn’t last; Between was funded by Esquire in connection with his profile. As he explained on Robert Ashley’s A Life Well Wasted, Rohrer also received actual, Medici-style patronage from a game industry figure, Jeff Roberts. Roberts has apparently helped other indie gamers – Jonathan Blow thanks him in the credits of Braid, and I’ve met one up-and-coming indie creator who talked about a similar patron but declined to name him. Patronage from wealthy game execs is noble. But it’s not exactly a business model.
Going indie isn’t about avoiding business but controlling it. The myth of the indie creator who ditches a big studio to strike out on his or her own comes up now and again – a gushing Kotaku profile of Phil Fish, maker of Fez, eagerly took that tack – but successful indies support their games by just starting their own studios, like Jamie Cheng at Klei. While a lively debate sometimes flames on message boards about “what is indie,” in practice, nobody’s drawing lines or calling “Judas.” That moment where so-and-so band shocks the world by signing to such-and-such major label, or by selling their song to this-or-that TV ad - has not come to this space. And it probably won’t.
I grew up fawning over hardcore bands and renegade artists. And it makes me feel a little old to say this, but indie needs to understand business. The captivating little Flash games that can start a career have to lead to a career path that pays the bills, and the people who can turn it into a business – or get a tolerable day job – are the ones who’ll last. Folks like Rohrer might do better getting a big paycheck and making little free games on the weekends.
But I doubt he’ll have that same look in his eyes.
24/06/2009 at 8:56 am Permalink
Speaking purely as someone whose entire hobby consists of faking being important on the web while going to grad school, I don’t see what’s stopping Rohrer from still making artsy games in his spare time. It’s not like he was producing games every week anyhow.
24/06/2009 at 6:59 pm Permalink
They are very small games.
24/06/2009 at 9:28 pm Permalink
I do hope he continues to squeeze out a game or two from time to time. Passage and Gravitation are two of my favorites. With Passage, I swear, the music alone is enough to make me tear up, and given I have two daughters, in Gravitation I have a hard time leaving the little girl.
Still, I can’t get mad at him. Good for him getting a job and getting paid.
I’ve always taken issue with the concept of “selling out” anyway. I mean, yeah, we all want to be artists, etc., but we all also need to, you know, eat. I mean, getting paid to do what you love should not be considered a bad thing. Sure, no one wants to compromise their ideals and their artistic integrity, and in the previous post, I suppose I did just argue that the appeal of the indie game community is that the reduction of boundaries affords a higher level of depth and content
But if doing your art allows you to open doors that lets you do some form of your art for money, I really see little wrong with that.
25/06/2009 at 2:19 am Permalink
Well I never got the idea of selling out for an artist of anyone. There goal is to do what they want, and get paid for it. So when someone does find a way to do that, they are immediately not what they were. That doesn’t make a lick a sense to me.
Being independent makes it tougher to make, but in exchange there is no limit. Getting a paying gig gives limits in exchange for it being easier to make. Each are good and have there own part to play. So why hate the other part. Each line of a code is important, so why wouldn’t the use of it not be. I know I am not making much sense here, the short hand is I don’t get it.
25/06/2009 at 3:22 am Permalink
You’re making tons of sense Mykal. Of course, I’m saying this because i’m in total agreement.
25/06/2009 at 8:04 am Permalink
“Selling Out” is a misleading term most of the time. An artist can only truly “sell out” if they sacrifice their beleifs for the money; this does not mean getting a paying gig is selling out. Unless every game he produces from now on features cans of Dr. Pepper, or have the goal of getting a better insurance rate, he’s not really a sellout, he just likes to support his family.
Am I a sell out because I work a 9-5 because I’d rather eat something other than ramen on a daily basis? Sure, it slows down my writing work, but being broke and homeless could end up being an even bigger hindrance. Are you a sell out because you do not dedicate every minute of the day to your blog?
The people screaming “sell out” the loudest are just jealous and selfish. I wish him the best of luck, and hope that a steady paycheck allows him to produce new and even better works. Of course I”m also looking for the chance to sell out myself
25/06/2009 at 8:48 am Permalink
VOID hit it on the head. Starving artists, most of them anyway, whether they admit it or not, want to sell out as well.
25/06/2009 at 6:48 pm Permalink
I try to be “creative” while keeping a day job. I can tell you first hand that it kind of sucks. I actually thought about writing a post about balancing a freelance writing gig with a paying gig, since I’ve heard that this might be the future of writing, but it was too depressing. I keep thinking of what I could do as a writer if I weren’t working 40 hours a week. But my professional career also suffers, because I haven’t really advanced it in the seven years since I started writing for Pitchfork. I do a good job, but I’m doing the same job I’ve done since I was in my 20s. And I don’t know what’ll break the impasse.
I don’t mean to sound whiny, either - writing even part-time has brought me into amazing situations that no day job could compete with, and my kid still sorta knows what I look like. But it ain’t easy.
25/06/2009 at 8:04 pm Permalink
STR
Dude, I am so with ya it’s not funny. When I was writing politics and not getting paid, I kept thinking, if I didn’t have to worry about this family to support, I could just dedicate myself to that alone, and maybe, you know, “make it”. But the whole working to keep a roof over the head kept getting in the way.
Now that I found a paying gig writing freelance about internet games, it’s nice to bring in the extra change, no doubt, but I keep thinking, again, if the day job didn’t get in the way, MAN I could take the writing thing some serious place.