The Tale of Anita Sarkeesian, or How Geek Culture Lost Its Mind and Can It Be Gotten Back?

Let the shouting commence!

Due to a combination of burnout and health problems, I haven't been blogging for a while. Now that everyone has forgotten I exist, I am starting again, in order to fix a serious problem: I am still employable in the game industry.

Look. I'm 43 and I have 2 kids. The game industry doesn't want me, and, if it ever does, it'll just be to make me do 80 hour weeks and ruin what's left of my life. So I'm going to solve the problem by saying things that make the game industry think I stink like old fish.

And, if you want to piss off gamers, here is the number one thing you can say: "Women are human beings, and they deserve to be treated with respect."

And no, I'm not about to talk about Penny Arcade. There's a much bigger, more significant ongoing story that's been going on since I started my blogging sabbatical. So let's talk about Anita Sarkeesian!

(If you know this whole story and don't want to wallow in the absurdity once again, just skip to the last section. But I think the tale is surreal enough to merit multiple tellings.)

Anita Who Now?

I really think this story is fascinating, and, despite all the virtual ink that has been spilled on it, there are fresh things to say. So here's some background to the story. It's a good one.

Anita Sarkeesian made videos on YouTube for her channel, Feminist Frequency. It's what you'd expect: Analysis of popular culture from an "Are women in it? How are they portrayed?" kind of perspective.

They were decent videos. A little dry. Some people criticized them for not being up to the LOFTY quality standards of YouTube (chuckle). The standard, young male, testosterone-poisoning, Make Me a Sammich crowd that gets mad whenever women are discussed in any context, tended to come out and shout, but other than that, it was pretty quiet.

Then Sarkeesian did a Kickstarter, to fund a series of videos called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. The idea: To prove that women in video games might, get this, not be portrayed in a well-rounded, three-dimensional way (when they are portrayed at all).

When I heard about this Kickstarter, I kind of shrugged, because women being portrayed badly in video games? Duh. Might as well have a Kickstarter to prove the moon exists. But anyone who takes time to call out game designers for crappy, hack storytelling is doing The Lord's Work, so I hoped she did well.

Instead, She Pulled In a Fortune

Turns out, she struck a nerve. As obvious as her conclusion was, a lot of people were thrilled to pony up bread to make some noise about it. And good for them. Her goal was $6000. She pulled in over $150000. Because, it turns out, fixing even an obvious problem involves people making some noise about it.

The Kickstarter was a phenomenal success.

And the testosterone-poisoning crowd LOST THEIR MINDS.

Tales Of Moral Courage In Video Gaming

If you ever have any doubt that nerd culture has some nasty, toxic issues with women, the harassment Anita Sarkeesian received should dispel them entirely. Her Wikipedia page lists all of the abuse she received, but the most infamous example is the anonymous and gruesome Flash game where people could beat her face.

Folks, this is beyond trolling. This is profound psychological damage. This is Invest In a Bulletproof Vest territory. That Sarkeesian persisted in the face of all of this shows her virtual balls are well bigger than mine. I would have hid under the bed and never come out.

This is surreal! It's a Monty Python sketch. And here's the thing! What was she trying to do?

Was the trying to eliminate Twinkies? Cancel My Little Pony? Make some giant James Bond laser and blow up Mount Rushmore? No! She was trying to make some lousy YouTube videos! To prove an obvious thing everyone knows!

(You know how everyone knows it? Because, in every one of the million discussion threads that bring out people to put down Sarkeesian's work, the arguments are always: It's not a problem. It's the creators' right. There's no need to make this video. The production values suck. Women don't spend enough on games to be considered. [WRONG!] Nobody ever says her actual conclusion is wrong. For the same reason there aren't impassioned arguments about whether adding two and two gets you four.)

So the money came in, and, unlike certain other Kickstarters I could mention, the promised product is forthcoming.

Videos That Exist!

As of this writing, three of the videos are out. They're exactly what you would expect. Carefully considered, methodical in their arguments, decently made, a bit dry, with occasional sparks of true brilliance.

I often see guys online saying that her videos are pointless and don't prove anything. This is how I know that they never bothered to, you know, watch them. Don't believe me? Go to this one and skip to 7:40. If anyone has come up with a better display of the tired hackwork that so often passes for video game story-telling, PLEASE send me a link.

One thing you'll note about her video pages is that commenting is disabled. Something that is inexplicably considered a horrible crime by the testosterone crowd. Setting aside that YouTube comments are the most useless way to make an argument about anything anywhere, I think it should be a rule that once the death threats start coming in, you are allowed to start controlling the channels by which people communicate with you. Duh doy.

(You will note, for example, that having YouTube comments disabled has affected my ability to give my opinion not at all.)

Now On To the Main Question

So that's the prologue. Nerd culture, as a whole, engaging in the biggest over-reaction/freakout in the history of freakouts. Whenever these videos are discussed anywhere, go to the comments and read the rage. (Which, you will find, is not unanimous, but not hard to find at all.) This, again, is far beyond mere trolling. Sarkeesian has poked a huge, sensitive nerve in the entire culture.

Now here is the thing, the point, the puzzle, the question at the heart of the whole mess ...

Why are guys so mad about this?

Y U So Mad?

(All nerd-based blog posts are federally required to contain 5% Pony content by weight.)

It's a handful of YouTube videos, saying an obvious thing in a quiet way. Why the rage? Why any rage at all? Why not just go on to the next video?

The obvious reason surely has much to do with this: Humans are naturally loss-averse. In other words, people with privileges (the privilege in this case being young men having video games made to please them and only them) get very angry when those privileges might be taken away. Some people just never learned to share their toys.

This is a lot of that, but I think there's more. I think it's a real mystery, and, as much as it's been discussed, I think it's important to prod it a bit more. (Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it really is that simple. But it's at least worth thinking about, when I'm not going on about esoteric design issues or making fun of the stupid new Star Trek movie that was stupid.)

I have a self-serving reason: my two daughters are some of the biggest nerds in nerdworld, and I want them to grow up in the sort of geek culture where they can say things and have opinions and write games without getting harassment or death threats.

So, if you missed my blog, it's back. I've missed a lot of good stuff to talk about, and this is one issue I want to talk about a lot more. And thank you, Anita Sarkeesian, for tolerating a lot of garbage to say True Things. And hopefully make game stories better. Because it's needed.

Am I unemployable yet?

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Go To Bed, Grand Theft Auto. You're Not Drunk Enough.

I've decided to get back into blogging, because not enough people are angry at me. I was going to wait and come up with a careful, well-reasoned article, but I'd rather jump back in with a cheap shot instead.

I've been playing Saint's Row IV and enjoying the heck out of it, because it reminds me of when Grand Theft Auto games were wild and wacky and fun and hadn't yet deluded themselves into thinking they had deep, profound things to say about American society. I was guardedly optimistic about Grand Theft Auto V, until I read this quote from Dan Houser, Rockstar's head writer and VP:

"If GTA IV was a classic New York story, [GTA V] is the endpoint of the American dream."

Yeah. Great. If we're cool, I'm going to go back to flying through the Matrix and shooting alien ships with my Dubstep gun now.

(I was also going to comment about how GTA V kind of lost me when, after 100000 games, they announced a game with three main characters and they STILL won't allow you to play as a woman. But the dialogue in geek culture has degraded to the point where even saying, "Um, women exist." is super-controversial, so I'll just leave that one there.)

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What Makes a Choice Interesting?

Recently I was on a panel at Pax Prime, discussing indie role-playing games. During the Q&A, someone asked a really good question. Good enough to take up a little sacred space here in my blog.

The topic of discussion was about giving the player choices, and how those choices could affect the storyline. I've always tried to put in my games many points where the player is asked to make a decision or voice an opinion and where his or her choices can shift the plot. The question was:

What makes a choice a player has to make an interesting one?

What decision points lead to satisfying gameplay? I think a good decision point has three qualities ...

1. The options need to be clear.

The player needs to understand very clearly what is being decided. Suppose that the player is deciding whether some army stays behind to defend a city or goes off to attack the enemy. The player needs to know what is being decided, exactly how to choose each option, and what the possible consequences of each choice are.

2. The options need to be distinct.

The choices need to be clearly different from each other. Otherwise, the act of making a decision isn't satisfying. A good example of where this often wasn't done was in Mass Effect 3. Shepard, the player's main character, was often asked about attacking the enemy, and the choices often came down to, "Yes, we must destroy them!" and "Certainly, we must slay them now!" All I could think at these points was, "Shut up, Shepard."

3. All of the obvious options are available.

You can't cover all the options. We aren't trying to write an AI or simulate an entire world here. But we can't let the player feel frustrated because some obvious option was neglected. Suppose, for example, you catch a poacher out in the woods and are trying to decide what to do with him. Let Him Go, Turn Him In, Kill Him, and Talk To Him First To Find Out His Situation should all be expected choices.

Something I Left Out

There is one thing I have purposefully left off this list: It is not necessary for the decision to have a major impact (or any impact) on the game at all. Sure, if you're making the player make lots of decisions, you should try to make some of them eventually count. But it is legit to have a character ask the player's opinion about an issue and then have that answer not affect the game. Sometimes it's useful to have the player make decisions for role-playing and world-building purposes.

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Ten Awesome Comedians Most People Have Never Heard Of

I've long been a huge fan of stand-up comedy. The other night, after a really good Patton Oswalt live show, the friends I went with asked me if I could recommend anyone else to check out. My answer was a long, long list. They asked me to write it up as an e-mail. Then I remembered that I have a blog that needs filling with fresh content!

Man, but I love Content.

So. Stand-up comedy. It is a huge and varied field. If you're the sort of person that likes to split up a huge, varied field into two arbitrary chunks, and yes, I am that sort of person, stand-up comedy can be split in two arbitrary chunks.

The first chunk is big, mainstream comedy. Larry the Cable Guy. Bill Engvall. Jeff Dunham. Jeff Foxworthy. Dane Cook. Jay Leno. Mainstream comedy tends to be fairly unchallenging stuff, such as observations about the differences between the sexes (or the races, or the sexual orientations). I am a contemptible big-city latte-swilling elitist, so I don't know much about such things.

The second chunk is alternative comedy. A bunch of weedy little nerds, playing smaller halls full of people you'd probably want to beat up to take their lunch money. People like me. Comics in this arbitrary chunk tend to me more odd and experimental, with surreal or character-based humor, weird delivery, lots of unpredictability, and occasional jaunts into the dramatic, the disturbing, and the painfully offensive. They tend to be liberal, but not always. Odds are, you haven't heard of a lot of the comics on this page, which is why I’m writing this. I love recommending things.

Here's some funny stuff. Assume the links are not safe for work or children. I'll give a few intro pieces and then, if something really tickles you, a recommendation for where to go from there. This may involve spending money. Please spend money. A lot of these folks, talented as they are, don't make a lot.

Disclaimer For Touchy, Angry Internet People (If you are basically sane and sensible, ignore this section.)

Some of the things I link to here are really offensive to right-thinking peoples. I do not endorse the contents of the linked videos. Of course. I don't care for some comics I linked to, but I mentioned them because they belong in a survey of the field. If you don't like one of these people or I don't mention someone you love, you should get really REALLY angry at me. Finally, I've only mentioned comics who are alive and actively working, because this is a vibrant and active art form. (Sorry, Patrice O'Neal, Mitch Hedberg, and George Carlin fans.) All I wanted to do was post a bunch of funny YouTube links and waste your afternoon. Why are you so angry?

OK. Seatbelts on? Then here we go.

1. Patton Oswalt

The great gateway drug to alt-comedy, a tireless genius, one of the funniest people alive, and the voice of the Remy the rat in Ratatouille.   You want to know whether this brand of comedy is for you? Then listen to this, his famed steak house routine. If that goes down easy, his Sky Cake (his awesome deconstruction of religion) and KFC Famous Bowls routines are terrific.

Want More? - Oh, there's a lot of it. His Werewolves & Lollipops album is fantastic, and all of it is on YouTube. Or you could, you know, spend money.

2. Louis C.K.

I shouldn't be putting this guy at #2. Patton is #1 because he's my sentimental favorite, but Louis has been on fire for the last few years. His TV show on FX is mind-bending and terrific, and his last two comedy albums are as good as any ever created.

The big gateway for him is this viral video about how "everything is amazing right now and nobody is happy." Or this incredibly dirty and hilarious portrait from a crumbling marriage.

Want More? - Get his albums Chewed Up and Hilarious. They are as good as this stuff gets.

3. Paul F. Tompkins

It didn't get long to get to the obscure folks here. Paul F. Tompkins alternates between comedy and storytelling, and he's terrific. My personal favorite routine is his decisive answer to the eternal question: What's better ... Cake or Pie? And this hilarious routine about his mother's conversion to atheism before she died is a perfect example of the weird edginess of alt-comedy.

Want More? - His album Freak Wharf is a delight. On the free end, his HBO special Driven To Drink is on YouTube, and it's a great example of the storytelling end of his work.

4. Maria Bamford

Her specialty is playing different characters with wildly varied voices, and she is as good at is as they get. Patton Oswalt described her as an alien who came to Earth to tell racist jokes about humans. She is very good recorded but far better live, where you can see how she uses her face and body.

To get a good look, go to YouTube and watch the Maria Bamford Show, a 20 part series of short films showing off many of her best bits and characters.

Want More? - Her album Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome is very good, but it loses something from not being able to see her. Go. Spend money!

5. Amy Schumer

Foul-mouthed, profane, and hilarious. She is coming up so fast that she should almost be considered mainstream at this point, and very good. She is not unlike Sarah Silverman, a comparison that is probably starting to annoy her greatly. She first gained a lot of attention for her routine on a Comedy Central roast, and her recent special is on teh YouTubez.

Want More? - Buy her album Cutting and play it for your grandmother.

6. Aziz Ansari

Reasonably well known for his roles on Funny People and Parks & Recreation. His bits on Craigslist and bedsheets are great examples of his awesome nerdy hostility.

Want More? - Intimate Moments From a Sensual Evening is a great album. You can get his newer special, Dangerously Delicious, on his site for five bucks. Worth it.

7. Eliza Skinner

You haven't heard of her. I just picked her as an example of the countless insanely talented people toiling in show business, producing awesome stuff in the hope of breaking big. It makes me angry that she isn't rich, but Hollywood is a merciless place. Her videos are fantastic.

Want More? - So do I! Will someone please give this woman a multi-million dollar development deal?

8 & 9. Garfunkle and Oates

A comedy music duo based in L.A. I've linked to their videos on this blog before. They are one of the best examples I can think of how YouTube can help someone get the fame and career they deserve. Their YouTube channel can murder an afternoon. These three are my personal favorites. They tour, and they're a lot of fun live.

Want More? - Their albums All Over Your Face and Slippery When Moist are on iTunes!

10. Kyle Kinane

Kyle Kinane is a bitter, angry misanthrope on stage, which is already funny. That he can be so angry while saying things that are perfectly reasonable and true makes him excellent. For example,here are his routines on Trader Joe's or insomnia.

Want More? - His album, Death of the Party, is super-solid.

And Others

There's so much good stuff out there. Some examples, in no particular order ...

Eddie Pepitone. Tig Notaro. Donald Glover. Brian Posehn. David Cross. Zach Galifanakis. (Now more of a movie star.) Dana Gould. (This routine is killer.) Nick Swardson. Sarah Silverman. Doug Benson, king of the stoner comics. And, of course, the legendary Margaret Cho.

It's a varied field. If you don't like one (Sarah Silverman can be incredibly polarizing, for example), you might like another. But if you put any of those names into YouTube, something will pop up that is worth your time. If I didn't mention someone awesome, tell me about them in the comments!

And go to live shows! They're great. They make money for people who deserve money. And it'll get you out of the house. Don't forget to tip your server.

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I Took the Bing It On Challenge ... AND LIVED!!!!

Since you are currently on the World Wide Internet, as it is called, you are probably able to use what is called a Searching Engine to find the things you want, be they My Little Pony jpgs, or Gangnam Style parodies, or ... well, I don't know. Erotica? Anyway, since you are using a Search Engine, I can say, with some confidence, that that engine is named Google.

However, you may not be aware that Google is not the only Searching Engine (or search engine, as the technocrats call it). There are actually several of them. For example, Microsoft spent more money than an unaided human brain can comprehend to create one called Bing. However, its market share is still only around 15%, as it is not Google.

To increase Bing's user base, Microsoft created the Bing It On Challenge. This 21st century techno-version of the Pepsi Challenge has you use a computer to enter five search terms. Then it shows you the Bing and Google search results, side by side, and rearranged slightly so you can't instantly tell which is which. You pick which of the search results is better. Then the thing tells you if you preferred Google or Bing. And, if you preferred Bing, WHY WERE YOU USING GOOGLE ALL THIS TIME, YOU DUMB IDIOT!?!?

Here is a commercial for the Bing It On Challenge. Watch it, if you dare.

(A quick aside about this commercial. I find it fascinating. I am amazed at how abrasive and arrogant the Bing guy is. I want to never, ever, ever use Bing, just to make that guy sad. In the very unlikely event that a Microsoft marketing person reads this, a little unsolicited advice: When you are trying to sell things to technical people, remember that this is a demographic that responds very poorly to bullies.)

Well, I can never resist a good challenge, so I took it myself, and Google won. Not by a huge amount, but by enough. And the reason why was pretty interesting, which is why I am writing this. It doesn't mean Bing is a worse search engine than Google, or bad in some Universal Sense, but I think it says a lot about how search engines work and why making a good one is so difficult.

The thing about a challenge like this is that when you buttonhole someone and say, "Search for five things! Now!" this on-the-spot person will probably just grab five well-known proper nouns. Justin Bieber. My Little Pony. Muffin recipes. Stuff that is easy work for search engines. Every single one is going to be able to handle that stuff. But that is not how I (and, I suspect, many others) use Google.

The reason Google became so popular in the first place is because of its almost supernatural ability to guess what the user is thinking. A search engine must take a random clump of nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and so on, and then tease from those words the specific thing the user's brain desires. In other words, it's an artificial intelligence problem, and a very deep one.

The reason Google took over the world is that it knew you were thinking of Justin Bieber even when you didn't type in Justin Bieber. If you put in "annoying teen singer", the words "Justin Bieber" will appear somewhere on the results page. (And it does, on both Google and Bing.) Google isn't as good as it used to be, but it's still pretty darn good.

(By the way, all search results described are as of 5:30 PM, Pacific Time, Sunday, September 15, 2012, Seattle, U.S.A., Third Planet From Sol.)

The search results below are for me using a search engine the way I, personally, use a search engine. Which engine, Google vs. Bing, is best written to match my aging, dumb brain?

Let's find out!

1. For a first test, I picked a real life thing. A friend once told me that I had to check out this Penny Arcade webcomic. Next time I was at a computer, I tried to, but I couldn't remember the strip's name. I went to Google and searched for something much like this:

the cartoon about video games

I think most people would reasonably agree that, if you put this term into a search engine, Penny Arcade should show up on the first page.

Google - First hit is the Wikipedia page "List of television programs based on video games". Fourth hit is Penny Arcade. Pretty good.

Bing - The first two hits are, oddly, general pages for the Cartoon Network. Lots of cartoons, but none specifically about video games. Penny Arcade doesn't show up in the first five pages.

The Winner - Google.

2. I'm still in a nerdy mood, so I pick something a geek might want to hunt for: Classic 80s SF movie Blade Runner. What would you look for if someone told you about its awesomeness but you could only remember the rough description:

the movie where the hguy hunts androids in the future

I mistyped "guy", but I left it that way. Let's see how well the engines handle that.

Google - Wikipedia page for Blade Runner is entry five. As a bonus, the sixth entry is the Wiki page for "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which is the story Blade Runner is based on. Nice work.

Bing - Blade Runner wasn't in the first five pages, but  "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is at least on page 3.

The Winner - Google.

3. No more nerdiness. Let's pick a factoid from history. Something juicy. I think we can all agree that there's only one particularly well-known answer for:

the girl who killed people with an axe

Google - Wow. There are a lot of female axe killers out there. The Wikipedia page for Lizzie Borden is down at hit 8.

Bing - First entry is a Yahoo Answers page where someone answers the question. The second hit is the Wikipedia page for Lizzie Borden.

The Winner - Bing, narrowly.

4. Now I'm going to pick something serious. Something real. Something I bet a million worried teenagers search for every day:

how do you get aids

Google - First hit is a basically accurate kidshealth.org article titled "How do you get AIDS?" Second hit is a similar article from aids.gov.

Bing - Top three hits are the same as for Google.

The Winner - Tie. Thank goodness. It'd be worrying if either one messed this one up. If some shenanigans caused the first hit to be some bad information (such as that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, which some people actually believe), it could cost real, non-hypothetical lives.

5. For the fifth one, I decide to engage in a bit of whimsy. I wanted to know just how willing these search engines are to sacrifice their own interests in order to help me:

what is the best search engine

Google - First hit is an about.com article called "The 10 Best Search Engines of 2012," that describes the pros and cons of ten search engines. Google and Bing are in there, of course.

Bing - The first official hit is the same. But it's right below an ad link for, you guessed it, the Bing It On challenge. Because of how the page is laid out, the ads look an awful lot like real links. It's kind of shifty, and Google does a much better job of making ads look distinct from results. But hey, if I'm just evaluating quality of search results ...

The Winner - Tie.

What Have We Learned?

Not too much, really. I know that Google AI’s approximation of human thought matches the way my brain works better than Bing's. But who cares? Someone else might use the exact same search terms to fish for entirely different answers. And maybe Bing is better at predicting those.

Microsoft isn't trying to prove that Bing is the be all and end all of search engines. They're trying to get people to give it a shot and they’re hoping that a portion of them will stick with it.

It's a tough job, though. If someone is used to using Google, Bing merely being as good or a little bit better won't get anyone to switch. To get people to actually break a habit requires a big improvement. Very difficult. If that's your goal then getting your targets to actually try the new thing is an absolutely necessary first step. Hey, I gave Bing a try. Didn't work for me, but at least I looked at it. So, victory!

Pity about that commercial, though. MAN, but that guy is a jerk.

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A Little Bit of Genius at PAX

There were things I saw at Penny Arcade Expothat I wanted to go on about. Something besides Microsoft trying to push us into our exciting Windows 8/Internet Explorer 9 future by providing the world middling adaptions of ancient Atari games for some reason.

There was one game at the Indie Megabooth that deserves special attention from all humans. Not only was it funny, but it has perhaps the best elevator pitch in the history of the human race:

OK. You're a guy living in the suburbs. You have a wife, two kids, and a secret: You're actually an octopus in disguise.

Obvious jokes aside, how can you not want to try that game? Especially when you know it's called Octodad: The Dadliest Catch.

Octodad!

This game is the purest epitome of the Indie spirit. (How's that for a pull quote?) It's unique, intriguing, utterly bananas, and no major publisher will ever do anything like it.

Sadly, the gameplay is focused on maneuvering the octopus, which means struggling to do normally simple tasks with an odd control scheme. I am a little skeptical about how much this particular style of gameplay can catch on. On the bright side, if it's priced cheaply enough, it can make a ton of sales based on the "Oh God. I have to try this out." factor.

My unsolicited advice for the developers: If the game turns out to not be that fun, sell it for five bucks. You'll move a lot of copies based on morbid curiosity alone.

Edit: Oh, yeah. You can support Octodad at Steam Greenlight here. I voted for it. KEEP INDIE GAMES WEIRD!

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How Indie Games Can Be Cheap and Awesome

I got to go to PAX over the weekend and be on a panel and see cool gaming stuff and meet lots of cool people and fans of my games. One of the things I learned is that a lot of people actually read my blog. This is very gratifying. Although it terrifies me that anyone thinks my opinion is in any way significant.

PAX is great, of course. Though it is in the unenviable position of being permanently unable to satisfy the massive demand for tickets.

(Sure, its success will probably invite others to copy it with their own gaming cons, but those dopplegangers won't be the same without the presence of all the big companies showing off their stuff. And big companies won't go to a lot of cons, as they need to set aside at least a little time to make games. So, from now on, if you manage to score a PAX badge, just cherish it, knowing that your attendance the following year is unlikely. Just think of PAX as a hot but extremely unstable boy/girlfriend.)

I had a lot of little epiphanies while looking at the many, many highly promising indie games on display at PAX. (The PAX 10 looked cool as always, but the much flashier Indie Megabooth next door seemed to be sucking up its oxygen.) And here is the biggest one:

16-bit graphics are an awesome thing, and more indies should use them.

If you don't know what 16-bit graphics are, think early Nintendo/Super Nintendo. If that still doesn't ring a bell, look here. Or here. Or here. Or especially here.

If you are a small game developer, you have a big problem. You want your game to look great. But graphics can be expensive. Or very expensive. 16-bit graphics solve the great mystery of writing a game with a small team and no budget: making decent production values cheaply in a short amount of time.

Here is what 16-bit Nintendo-style graphics have going for them:

1. They work. Heck, people wrote awesome games using them for years.

2. They look good. It's amazing how evocative an icon you can make with a few well-chosen pixels.

3. They're cheap and quick to make. One talented artist can produce a game's worth in an entirely reasonable amount of time.

4. You have the power of nostalgia working for you. To a whole generation of gamers, those icons are as warm and comforting as a Snuggie.

5. Because of #4, anyone who takes cheap shots at your graphics looks like a jerk.

6. Versatility. With care, they can blend with much more detailed and 3-D effects. Fez is a fantastic example of this. You don't have to be pure when you use this style.

Right now, this style of graphics is seen as a pure nostalgia play, a way of saying, "Look! We look like a Nintendo game! We're silly! Tee hee!" But I think 16-bit graphics are better than that. They've been used in a million great games, and they can be used in a million more. The more people use them, the more they will be seen as an entirely legitimate art style, which in turn will make them available to more generations of poor, promising designers.

Indie devs, don't be afraid to be cheap! It is your sacred right and responsibility as an Indie!

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