Free for All: Island of misfit games

Call me naive, or perhaps call me stupid. To be honest, I am not sure which one applies to me more. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment, or at least I am very forgiving. Either way, I have a lot of fun exploring the edges of MMORPG gaming. I live to dig through websites, searching for a title I haven't heard of. Often I am a little more than surprised when I find a brilliant world tucked into one of the many gaming forums I visit, and I think "Why didn't you email me? Didn't you know I was looking for you?"

I try to act as the filter that these tiny games couldn't afford. It's hard to get a well-written press release out of a team whose community budget consists of hardly enough to eat out for the weekend. Don't worry, I tell them, let me come to you. Someday, if I have anything to do with it, that tiny game will have enough players to pay for more patches and updates.

See, I like misfit games. I like to give them a chance.

I should insert a specific nod to independent gaming as well, but for the sake of clarity I will skip that. A misfit game can have a massive budget and still suffer the same undeserving fate that a college project can, both of them never reaching their full potential. Even then, I think I need to verify what I mean by misfit. Certain keywords fire off knee-jerk paranoia, as though even giving a chance to a less-than-perfect game will spread some sort of infection throughout the entire genre and will reward lazy developers who spend their energy on "pulling the wool" over gamers' eyes.

When I say misfit, I mean a game that perhaps features rough translations, an odd art style, a many-years-long development cycle, cartoon settings, casual access, or laggy performance. We all know the type, and we know the feeling of satisfaction as we wipe the really horrible ones from our hard drives. If a game doesn't work, it only receives probably two and a half chances before I scrub it away. Hit "undo" several times, though, and you will see the moment I am trying to draw attention to: the moment that I read a forum post calling the game "a broken piece of crap" or "unbalanced." I will download a game that is described as "a joke" quicker than is probably healthy, despite the fact that the game might turn out to be a dud.

Over the years I have learned a few things about the industry. Essentially, it is a lot like other forms of entertainment in the way it loves to make promises. Grand, sweeping promises. As someone who needs to stay on his toes in order to avoid wasting time, I've grown weary of CGI trailers that look absolutely nothing like gameplay, and I've gotten tired of IPs that might or might not make a very good world to actually live in. I've learned that sometimes -- no, many times -- that hundreds of developers do not always translate to hundreds of hours of pure gaming bliss.

This does not mean that I do not enjoy reading about those new blockbuster titles, or that I do not "ooh" and "ahh" while watching those beautiful trailers. But for every huge announcement, I need some time within the cold, stiff reality of a game gone semi-sour. These ugly ducklings are a counterbalance to the titles that can do no wrong (until a month after release, of course). Many downtrodden games deserve a second look because the nature of the business almost always guarantees that the near-failures became near-failures for reasons that had nothing to with the genius of their original artists, composers, and writers. In fact, many of the blockbusters became these sullen worlds I am referring to, due in large part to poor marketing, player boredom, overexposure, and no small sense of entitlement.

For the record, I'm also talking about the games that are actually very playable and enjoyable, but that are crawling by with just enough of a budget to cover one or two bug-destroying developers who spend more time looking at lines of code than anything. These hard-working die-hards are exactly why I will give a game a chance after so many players called it quits or found ways to use the titles as punchlines. Sure, these gems-in-the-rough had a bumpy start, and yes, they still have their issues, but they also have their depth, their stories, and their beauty.

I also believe that it is the duty of the press to include all types and sizes of games in coverage. This inclusion will make for a stronger design DNA, tighter communities, and developers who are more likely to take chances instead of bombarding us with promises that are really only coverage for the same six ideas.

Is it strange that I am attracted to games that have such rough reputations? I am not sure it matters. After all, my mother is not going to be worried sick at 3 a.m. because I'm off gallivanting around with WURM Online -- these are games we are talking about, after all. A change of scenery might be something to try if you find yourself continually disappointed by games that promise something you've never seen before, only to tell you that familiarity with World of Warcraft will make the experience much more enjoyable.

Troll around this site, search some articles from years ago. Find a title or two that people seemed to have forgotten or have wanted to forget. Type the name into Google, and if registration is still open, sign up and hit "download." Yes, you might have a moment of frustration or two. You might find yourself asking, in chat: "How do I get unstuck?" several times. But if you find yourself having fun, don't worry -- the infection won't spread. You will not be contributing to stupid developers, but rather you will be giving that game a chance to stay open one more day, to have one more bug fixed.

If you're lucky, the game lives on and continues to mature. Broken games can often become not-nearly-as broken games. The communities become tighter, self-policing groups of friends. If you stick around, the chat window becomes more like a conference call to an extended family.

So remember these two rules:

1) Never believe what you read online.
2) Never believe what you read online.

If a columnist or writer is trying to convince you that the game you're most interested in is a waste of your empty megabytes, ignore it. Remember, free-to-play games cost you nothing. The download costs you nothing. The registration and character creation? Absolutely nothing. If you happen to subscribe to the theory that somehow these games will strap you down like Malcom McDowell and brainwash you to spend spend spend, even then you can still download and see for yourself.

Each week, Free for All brings you ideas, news, and reviews from the world of free-to-play, indie, and import games -- a world that is often overlooked by gamers. Leave it to Beau Hindman to talk about the games you didn't know you wanted! Have an idea for a subject or a killer new game that no one has heard of? Send it to beau@massively.com!