Like movies, video games have contributed to a massive and diverse industry. The video game market place Steam has over thirty-thousand games available for sale and only 47% of developers sell their games using steam. This article will teach you what you need to know about the diversity in the gaming market, the games that came out of home projects, and what you need to know for you young gamers. Here at GKIS we care about the internet safety of your young gamers and we want to protect them from digital injuries. Check out the GKIS Social Media Readiness Course to prepare your tweens and teens for the dangers they will face while playing games and interacting on social media.
What is an indie game?
A video game can be classified into one of two groups based on who produced the game, AAA games and Indie games. AAAgames are produced by a major company that can back the game’s production with money, personnel, and any other resources the production may need. Indie games are produced by either a small team or a single developer with minimal resources at their disposal. An indie game developer is typically a single person with a good idea and access to game developing software.
A video game is a large time investment for any developer. Large game developers have teams of experts who each work on the pieces of the game resulting in a short production time. Indie developers, on the other hand, typically have minimal resources. They often crowd-fund projects and make sacrifices to release games in a reasonable amount of time. Indie developers tend to rely on social media for brand awareness and marketing.
Well Known Indie Games
Indie games may start out as small passion projects, but well-made games can gain popularity and become just as popular as AAA games. When an Indie game becomes popular enough, AAA publishers may buy the game from the original developer. This allows the publisher to put their formidable resources behind the project and then reap the rewards of the new and improved game. Here at GKIS, we put the formidable resource of Dr. Bennett’s years of knowledge and experience as a licensed clinical psychologist to work to create the Screen Safety Essentials Course. The Screen Safety Essentials Course provides parents and children with access to a comprehensive program that will help families to create safer screen-home environments and foster open communication.
Here are some Indie games you may recognize:
Minecraft
Minecraft is an incredibly popular Indie title, having sold over 200 million copies to date, and was sold to Microsoft the company behind the Xbox game console in 2014. Microsoft has since updated Minecraft with new content, released two more games under the Minecraft title, and expanded the game into other profitable areas such as toys.
Undertale
Undertale is a game that was crowd-funded and released in 2015 with an estimated 5.8 million users. Created by a single developer, this game has reached a level of acclaim that Nintendo licensed one of the characters to appear in one of their own games. The game also has its own line of merchandise and a much-anticipated sequel currently in development.
Among Us
Among Us is a more recent success story of a small social deception game that rocketed into the public eye, and boasted 60 million active users a day at the peak of its popularity. The game was very popular amongst YouTube and Twitch creators, which acted as a very successful marketing campaign. The game has become so popular that, during Halloween, kids were running around in inflatable costumes of the Among Us space suits.
The Benefits of Indie Games
Without a big corporation behind them forcing big decisions, indie developers can make any game they want. For example, Cup Head is an extremely difficult game with an art style designed to be an homage to the early era of hand-drawn cartoons. Some games are designed off of a single weird concept or a specific labor of love based upon an obscure passion.
Most indie developers try to get the funding they need to produce a game using crowd-funding. Crowd-funding is when a designer puts out a concept of a project online and gets funding from the potential fanbase to make the game through a mixture of donations, pre-purchasing the game before development begins, and additional benefits for backers of the game. Benefits can include anything from your name in the credits of the game as a backer to having input into a part of the game or a character in the game being named for the backer. Crowd-funding allows a developer to pool money for a passion project from people who are excited about the game. Crowd-funding success helps to attract investors because it reflects customer interest.
The Dangers of Indie Games
Indie games have been a source of some of the greatest titles of the last two decades, but that doesn’t mean that every Indie game is going to be like Minecraft. Indie games can be whatever the creator wants, and that’s not always a good thing. For example, some developers push the boundary of horror games and explore themes AAA horror would never touch. For example, The Binding of Isaac is one of the most popular Indie games of all time. The game explores themes of child abuse, religious extremism, and child suicide.
Indie games can explore any theme no matter how dark or twisted and the limit to what can be made is limited only by human imagination. That doesn’t mean all Indie games are horror games. But the range of themes available is significantly more diverse than the AAA scene for games.
What does this mean for your young gamers?
Within the gaming industry, Indie games are incredibly diverse. The diversity of genres and topics can create games that range from poorly made first attempts to truly frightening horror games and all the way to amazing successes like Minecraft.
So, what can you do for your young gamers online?
Read the summary.
If your child wants to get an Indie game it will often come from a website that allows developers to post and sell their games. There is a store page on Steam associated with a game that will give you a description of the plot, gameplay, pictures of the game, and reviews from people who have played the game. This will allow you to make an informed decision if this game is right for your child.
Our family course is designed to bring your family closer and get your kids working with you to stay safe on the internet. Our connected family course is outcome-based and will help you close screen risk gaps and increase family closeness and cooperation.
YouTube
You can often find YouTube creators that have recorded gameplay of popular new Indie games. If your child wants to play the new game their favorite YouTuber is playing, watch one of their videos with them. It’ll show you what kind of game your child is looking at, and you’ll get to hang out with your kid while you do it.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching advances in the video game industry and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Coble, V. (2021, September 30). 10 most disturbing psychological horror indie games. CBR. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.cbr.com/indie-games-disturbing-psychological-horror/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Among us revenue and usage statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/among-us-statistics/.
Curry, D. (2021, November 11). Minecraft revenue and Usage Statistics (2021). Business of Apps. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/minecraft-statistics/.
Donnellan, J. (2021, June 8). 50 best indie games of all time. Cultured Vultures. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://culturedvultures.com/best-indie-games-all-time/.
G., D. (2021, November 1). 45+ video games industry statistics, facts, and trends for 2021. TechJury. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://techjury.net/blog/video-games-industry-statistics/.
Lowry, B. (2017, November 29). This is what sets ‘indie’ and ‘AAA’ video games apart. Windows Central. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.windowscentral.com/indie-vs-aaa-which-type-game-you.
Mikolić, M. (n.d.). Undertale stats by Playtracker Insight. stats by Playtracker Insight. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://playtracker.net/insight/game/1122.
Oddo, M. V. (2021, August 2). What’s an indie game anyway? Collider. Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://collider.com/what-makes-an-indie-game/.
Video games have come a long way since Pong was first released in the 1970’s. Advances in gaming technology can enhance the experience for adults, but for children more realistic games are harder to distinguish from reality. At GKIS, our Social Media Readiness Course is designed to prepare your tweens and teens for the unexpected dangers of video games and social media sites. Our course is backed by Dr. Bennett’s years of experience helping tweens and teens who have already suffered digital injury from the unforeseen dangers found online. In this GKIS article we will cover the evolution of graphics and the steps gaming companies take to make games seem more real.
Video games Are Evolving
Video games are based in technology, and since players got their hands on Pong there has been a push to
advance that technology. Originally, video games were played using bulky arcade cabinets. The first home consoles were very restricted by their hardware. Games were flat and involved a character moving around the screen like a piece on a board. This all changed with the introduction of 3D graphics in the early 2000s. For the first time, video games had physical depth and the characters on screen moved more like a real person would.
Video games are striving every year to create a more realistic virtual environment. Games now have wind that moves individual leaves on tree branches, light that dances across the surface of the water, and characters that look real from a distance. Modern video games have advanced technology to foster a sense of extreme realism and maximize immersion. With such engaging digital experiences, it is important that children are provided with boundaries so as to prevent screen-time overload and digital injury. Our Screen Safety Essentials Course grants you access to weekly videos with parenting tips and coaching from Dr. Bennett that will help you pull your child out of their digital world and back into ours.
Motion Capture
It can be difficult to program a character to move in a realistic way. The awkward way early 3D characters moved unfortunately hampered immersion. Recently, the gaming industry began to use motion capture technology to solve this issue. Motion capture is a technique whereby a real human being is recorded in a studio as a program captures their motion and applies it to the game character to make the movement look as real as possible.
In a game called LA Noir, you are a 1940’s detective. One of the major objectives of the game is to interrogate suspects and solve crimes. For authenticity, developers created the characters with real facial expressions. The game used an advanced motion capture system to record the real facial expressions of the voice actors portraying the game characters. Players can tell what a character is feeling or if they’re lying based on facial expressions alone. The game uses very real human empathy and natural social cues as a part of the game, offering deeper immersion and better quality overall.
Real Game with Real Fear
Realistic graphics are fascinating when they’re used to make a character blink and breathe like a real person. Immersion is the goal, especially in horror games. Early horror games were limited in what they could create by the consoles of the time. However, as modern technology has evolved, new possibilities have opened for the horror genre.
Games can include motion-captured characters with realistic looks of fear and pain on their face. Horror games originally wanted to compete with the horror movie industry, but horror games now have the ability to do more than movies ever could.
For example, a game called Dead Space takes the classic zombie movie genre and sets it in a futuristic space station. An alien artifact mutates humans into nearly unkillable monsters. The game makes great use of body horror to drive home the alien nature of these dead humans. Body horror is a type of horror derived from twisting the human body into unnatural shapes creating nightmarish monsters. Our mind still sees that the monster is technically human, but is terrified by how wrong it has become. For example, in Dead Space, the zombie you are tasked to fight is a human with an open chest cavity and arms twisted in unnatural positions with sharpened bone where hands used to be. The key feature is that they still have a human face attached to the monstrous form to remind you that they used to be like you.
Immersion in horror games
The main thing horror games have over movies is the personal nature of the narrative and fear within. A zombie movie may be scary to watch as your favorite character fights for their life. However, an immersive game like Dead Space can make you feel like you’re the one fighting for your life. The immersive narrative attempts to draw you into the character’s shoes and, for the time you play, you can believe that you’re really in danger. The narrative takes on a whole new depth as suddenly you’re the one backed into a corner with only a handful of ammo and your wits.
Another dimension is that a game doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. When you run out of ammo, you know that you’re the one who’s going to die. Often when a gamer talks about an experience with a horror game, they speak in the first person. When I first played Dead Space, I remember the adrenaline rush I got when I had no ammo, because I knew I was going to have to fight my way out with my bare hands. The memory of playing a game differs from a movie because it stores itself as if the player had physically been there.
What does immersion mean for kids?
Realistic video games can be frightening and exciting to play. But at the end of the day, a player can still distinguish the game from reality. The same can’t be said for children exposed to the same things. Children have a harder time separating fantasy from reality.
As video games strive to be as close to reality as possible the task only gets harder. An adult who plays a particularly realistic horror game may have trouble sleeping for a night, but a child will suffer far worse than any adult.
Even outside of horror, we have shooter games that strive for realistic blood and death. Sniper Elite is a game that will follow the bullet fired from a sniper rifle through an enemy to show bones break and organs rupture as the bullet penetrates their body. These advances in immersion are great for taking a player into the world of a game, but only as long as that player has developed enough to pull themselves back out.
What can you do for your young gamer?
ESRB Ratings
Most video games come with an ESRB rating on the box to let players and parents know what type of audience the game is suitable for. If a game is rated for an audience older than your child, the game contains content inappropriate for their age group.
Our Connected Family Course is designed to help keep your family connected in a world separated by screens. Backed by years of psychological research our course is designed to keep your family connected and working together to prevent digital injury.
Play games with your kids
Make sure the game your child is playing is appropriate and get some fun bonding time in. You can learn what the game your kids are playing is really like by just spending time with them while they play. If a game is inappropriate, it’ll be hard to hide for long.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching advances in the video game industry and co-authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Walker, C. (2010, December 22). Video games and realism. Wake Forest News. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://news.wfu.edu/2010/12/22/video-games-and-realism/.
I love playing video games! My first article discussed the benefits of gaming. But the truth is, most popular games aren’t designed for kids. They’re designed to attract us and keep us playing. The more we play, the more money the gaming industry makes. Violence and sex attract gamers. But research has demonstrated that exposure to this content can negatively affect a child’s brain. However, child development experts have not been able to pull violent games off the shelves. The best they’ve done so far is accept the game industry’s offer to develop their own rating system. Today’s GKIS article covers why experts are concerned about child exposure to video game violence and why the research hasn’t been enough to make a dent in the global game industry’s annual $183billion revenue.[1]
Most kids start playing video games before adolescence. Content, time spent playing, ability to be interactive, and player vulnerabilities must be considered when determining effect.[3] This makes for messy factors to control for quality research and controversial opinions about the risks of violent video games.
mental rotation, tracking, and toggling between tasks[5]
problem-solving
strategy building
goal setting
and increased confidence, social connection and networking, cooperation, and self-esteem.
Social benefits are particularly valuable for players who may be isolated in tiny towns or who have disabilities. Gaming can also teach important job skills and offer profitable e-sport tournament competition.
The Risks of Gaming
Research has demonstrated that gamers who play violent video games show more aggression toward others. It has also found that gamers show a decrease in friendliness, positivity, and helpfulness.[6] It’s also been demonstrated that gamers are less likely to emotionally react to violence over time. We call that sensitization to violence.
For example, a 2014 experiment also found that gamers were less likely to help and injured person, rated violent acts as less serious, and were less likely to respond to fights.[7]
Another study found that exposure to violence created the idea in children’s heads that violence is an acceptable form of problem-solving. It can also lead to a mean world syndrome, defined as a belief that the world is dark and dangerous.[8]
Video games are not designed for young kids.
Video game companies develop games for kids, but they amount to a small percentage revenue. The average age of gamers is 32-years-old.[14] Since 2009, the top-selling video games are rated mature.[15] Because of good marketing and pester power, a significant portion of those sales come from parents of young kids.
Young players are so common on video streaming sites and MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), they’re referred to as squeakers due to their child voices. Child predators hunt for victims on gaming platforms.
For example, in PokémonGo, predators have been reported to place lures, which are in-game items that spawn rare catches. Children close by will notice the new location and travel to catch the Pokémon unaware of the trap being set.[16]
Regulating Video Games
Attempts to block violent video game content from kids have been unsuccessful. Since the 1972 release of the first popular video arcade game, Pong, parents have worried about the impact of video gaming on their children. Just like our kids, we have largely become desensitized to its impact. From 1976, when parents succeeded in getting the video game Death Race pulled from the shelf due to the little gravestone that appeared when a character was killed, to now, we’ve come a long way. Or have we?
In response to video game players committing violence, several lawsuits have claimed that game manufacturers were negligent by selling violent content that is harmful to children. Few have succeeded due to first amendment (free speech) rights claims and insufficient evidence.
City ordinances attempting to limit gameplay by unaccompanied minors in public places have also failed. Law professors and psychologists argue that the evidence is too flimsy to make solid claims that video games cause violence. For instance, if video games cause aggression why is the rate of juvenile violent crime is at a thirty-year low?
A particularly impactful blow against state regulation was the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011). This ruling concluded that the California law restricting the sale and distribution of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional. The ruling stated that “speech about violence is not obscene” and is “as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best in literature.”
Video Gaming Rating System
To counteract consumer complaints and stop legislation, the video game industry created the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994. This voluntary and self-regulating board rates content and classifies video games based on the appropriate user age.
Most stores refuse to sell video games that don’t have an ESRB rating. Similar rating systems exist in other countries. Overall, ESRB ratings have been somewhat successful in limiting child access.
RP (Rating Pending) – this is placed on games that have not yet received a final ESRB rating
EC (Early Childhood) – suitable for ages 3+, these games tend to be educational and do not contain any inappropriate material
E (Everyone) – suitable for all ages, may contain mild fantasy or cartoon violence
E10+ (Everyone 10+) – suitable for ages 10+, may contain mild language, fantasy, or cartoon violence
T (Teen) – suitable for ages 13+, may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, blood, infrequent use of strong language
M (Mature) – suitable for ages 17+, may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, strong language
A (Adults) – suitable for ages 18+, may contain prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content, gambling with real currency
Tips for Parents
Check the ESRB ratings before purchasing.
Engage in video game play with your child to learn about the game’s content, and to model appropriate play.
Set clear rules as to how long play can be at home and away with your free GKIS Connected Family Agreement.
Monitor your child’s online gaming conversations to make sure there are not taken advantage of or threatened.
Set up gaming stations in a family community area (never the bedroom) to optimize supervision.
Encourage your child to engage in alternative activities for a healthy balance, learning, and enriched learning.
Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Dylan Smithson for providing us with an experienced and balanced perspective about gaming. If you missed his first article, Is Your Child a “Professional Gamer”?, it is well worth the read!
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
[5] Holfeld, B., Cicha, J. & Ferraro, F. (2014). “Executive Function & Action Gaming among College Students.” Current Psychology Curr Psychol 34.2: 376-88. Web.
[8] Justin C. (2015) The Problem with Exposing Kids to Sexual and Violent Content. https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-problem-with-exposing-kids-to-sexual-and-violent-content/
[9] Laura S. (2013) 8 Ways Violent Games Are Bad for Your Kids http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-st-john/8-ways-violent-games_b_3875846.html
[10] Petry, N., & O’Brien, C. (2013). Internet Gaming Disorder & the DSM-5. Addiction 108.7: 1186-187. Web.
[11] Petry, N., Rehbein, F., Gentile, D., et al. (2014). An International Consensus for Assessing Internet Gaming Disorder Using the New DSM-5 Approach. Addiction 109.9: 1399-406. Web.
[12] Kuss, D., Griffiths, M., Karila, L., & Billieux, J. (2014). Internet addiction: A systematic review of epidemiological research for the last decade. Current Pharmaceutical Design, 20, 4026–4052. 10.2174/13816128113199990617
[13] Strittmatter, E., Parzer, P., & Brunner, R. (2016). “A 2-year longitudinal study of prospective predictors of pathological Internet use in adolescents.” Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 25(7): 725.
