The Why Of Indie Games: An Introduction/Dear Esther

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August 18th, 2012 | By

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Today I would like to introduce a new column. I have always been an avid reader of game industry articles, both mainstream and Indie. There is a common trend in these articles. There are previews, news, and other fact related articles. Then there are your opinion pieces; reviews and editorials. They are all fantastic and serve their purpose. We need news and everyone loves reviews. Editorials, on the other hand, are an interesting beast. As a part of the ‘Magic: The Gathering’ community I came to understand that editorials are a subject of much controversy. People dislike other people’s opinions, because they are founded and strong in their own. Well, I would like to introduce a new type of editorial named “The Why of Indie Games.” Each week, on Saturday, I will present a game that I have played, either in the past or recently, which I feel deserves further discussion beyond that of a review. It is my personal opinion that games should not just be played; rather, there is a reason beyond fun for their creation. This stems from my belief that some games have greater purpose, and as with anything that has greater purpose, it creates a need for discussion. I also want to support discussion in the comments box below, as my opinion will only be the opinion of one man. Therefore, I will simply serve as a jumping off point for all of you, not as a final word. So pour yourself a fine glass of brandy, carbonated beverage, and a cigar if you please, and enjoy the first discussion topic: Dear Esther.


I have spent good hours with Dear Esther. After my recent surgery, I decided to delve into the mysterious ‘Half Life 2′ mod. I had read about Dear Esther. My eyes had glanced over reviews. I was prepared to not play a video game. I was still woozy from medication, and shooting enemies in ‘Bastion’ seemed like a nauseating affair. So, as I could not possibly take a stroll, I played a game which gave me that ability. But one does not so much play Dear Esther. Rather, it exists a literary work, or a personal interactive story. Even if it presents a broken one at that. Much of the explanations of Dear Esther‘s purpose are the reasons for the criticism it has received. Does the world need these interactive experiences?

One reviewer was especially critical of Dear Esther‘s use of the video game medium. The Chinese Room’s mod is posed as a classic case of right story, but wrong medium. But why must the video game medium be pigeon-holed? Are there not room for personal pieces of work in the world of games? Dear Esther‘s is conceptually foreign in a medium which takes pride in “play.” But just as people enjoy music and paintings that are personal to the artist, there must be room for that in the video game medium somewhere. People who have complained about Dear Esther have often complained about the fact that it is not a video game; however, if one is to go to a concert they are expecting to see music, but if they find they were rather headed to an art gallery they will likely be unprepared and upset. In the same vein if one expects to turn on Dear Esther and experience a traditional video game experience they will be sorely unprepared for what Dear Esther attempts at expressing.

Now, if I was to pose as understanding or having concept of what the narrator in Dear Esther wanted to convey to Esther I would both appear foolish and be acting fraudulently. I do not have the insight or knowledge to know the exact message the developers wanted to purvey to you and I. What I do know is that there were emotions, to which I can relate, that the narrator expressed; regret, anguish, and longing. Throughout my history gaming I would be hard pressed to find a game which pulled those emotions from the chamber of my conscience I feebly attempt to hide them. Dear Esther forced me to reflect. There stands the true triumph and purpose of Dear Esther. It exists as a reminder of reflection in a medium which all to often serves to pull us away from reflection.

I could easily congratulate The Chinese Room on the graphics and soundtrack, which are astounding; however, I cannot help but revel in the moments where I remembered how human I am, in a genre which often aims to make us feel more than. Dear Esther is an experience all its own. It is the developer’s reflection. Perhaps taking the hour and a half to play only reminds me of the power of self-analysis, but that reminder has taught me that while video games are fantastic, it is nice to lean back and think about my life, whether good or bad memories arise.

While Dear Esther may be an unusual medium for the expression of self-reflection, it may also be the medium that needs it most. Because regardless of how often we game, we still have a life and consequences to live with.

If you have yet to play Dear Esther you can check out The Chinese Room’s official game website where it is available for sale.

You may be interested in:

  1. One Step At A Time: ‘Dear Esther’ Now Available On Mac
  2. ‘Dear Esther’ Mac Port Confirmed To Be “On The Way”
  3. Spreading Its Wings: ‘Dear Esther’ Released On Desura
  4. ‘Dear Esther’ Pays Off Indie Fund Loan In Less Than Six Hours
  5. Haunting Bliss: ‘Dear Esther’ Soundtrack Released
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About the author

(62 posts)

A gamer with a weakness for the philosophy of games and what they mean. In love with RPGs and Puzzle games, as well as anything innovative. On the side of gaming, Petey is a sports enthusiast and statistician. Follow Petey @IndiePeteyIGM on Twitter.

  • Florian Veltman

    I find that “playing” Dear Esther was an interesting experience and a well constructed piece. I personally like to think of it as they do in musical terms, as an “étude”. Great composers make symphonies but also write études to try out a particular musical concept or other, which they may reuse in some form in a later symphony. I consider it as such because of the length of the game and the amount of “play” as you say…

    What I found weird when playing Dear Esther was the amount of immersion: you feel like you’re actually playing the character narrating everything, like a first person game should, so you feel absorbed in the story in a way only games can do, yet at the same time, because of the lack of impact the player has on the story (nothing throughout the game really depends on the players performance), you have the feeling of watching some strange movie.

    To me Dear Esther kinda shows the power of first person games, in the most minimal form it can take.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001769899351 Reno Evangelista

    Rule 1 for critics of any media: Never let the creator’s idea get in the way of what you have to say about the piece.

    This entire article led up to you saying you didn’t know what it was about and that probably the devs did. This is an extraordinarily bad way to review. You could have a some point convinced me that Dear Esther was not a badly put together pretentious walking simulator, but you didn’t. There is no in-depth analysis of the game, no explanation as to why it made you react the way you did, no understanding of how the game actually works. Instead your conclusion boiled down to “well, I guess I just don’t know.” This is the same kind of ignorance that has people thinking that things like poetry and abstract art have something to do with people’s “feelings.” Thanks for wasting my time on that.

    I don’t dislike Dear Esther because it isn’t a game. I dislike it because it’s a shit game. It’s being dragged along a linear corridor with a vague understanding of what is actually happening while the game tries to desperately distract you with pretty graphics so that it doesn’t have to produce anything of substance. In short, Dear Esther is FFXIII.

  • http://www.facebook.com/petemascio Pete Mascio

    I think in your comment you bring up an interesting point all its own. You’re led down a linear path but must interpret things for yourself. I’m not attempting to pinpoint the exact meaning of the game and that is not the purpose of the article. Rather I am saying why Dear Esther and games in the vein of Dear Esther should exist. It leaves room for interpretation and in that can make it an experience which becomes personal to you, as it did to me.
    I also never said I did not know what the game was about generally, I simply stated that I could not specifically know the exact experience of the creator. I do know that the game is an expression of specific emotions, which are easy t pick up on throughout the game. Anguish, despair, loss, etc. Perhaps it remains abstract to you, but it may mean something to people out there.
    I believe that Dear Esther is necessary the way poetry is necessary. It allows for a relatable experience to some. No, I could not tell you the exact story of the main character, but I can tell you it made me feel emotional. Even if that is unexplainable, for example if someone cries listening to a song, it was worth something. But I think it is unfair to write off Dear Esther just because it does not mean something to you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/petemascio Pete Mascio

    I like your reference to the “etude.” Dear Esther was an experimental game for certain. I think games like Dear Esther in the future may become less of an “etude” and more of a well-written symphony. But occassionally it does take a work pushing the boundaries of what we believe a work should be to bring the work to a more ingestible version of the work. Games made because of Dear Esther will possibly be more focused on making their story interactive, but still allowing for user interpretation. In this way the first person adventure can continue to grow and create new experiences for those looking for that type of experience. What do you think the next logical evolution in games of this type would be?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001769899351 Reno Evangelista

    Please don’t talk about poetry as if it’s emotional gibberish. That’s an insult to every poet born before and after the 1800s. God, the 1800s sucked.

    No. Saying that someone feeling something as a result of a work does not validate it’s artistic merits. Millions of people feel something as a result of Twilight, but you’d be hard fucked to find a writer or critic willing to crown it the 21st century’s greatest achievement.

    Games like Dear Esther are exactly what the industry doesn’t need. Another way to make a cheap, formulaic, easily exploitable games that poorly imitate what another game has done well (in the case of Esther, Yume Nikki is the game being ripped off).

    And if all you’re doing is trying to validate the existence of something, what’s the point? What do you do as a critic that hasn’t already been done? Lots of people are going around shouting about how they’ve been “touched” by games like Dear Esther. It’s bullshit. The function of a critic is to make me look at something in an entirely different way, which this article fails at doing completely.

    All this teaches anybody is that the video game industry is full of sheep who’ll bend over the minute something starts pretending to be “deep and meaningful.” Esther means nothing. It means nothing. It has no gameplay, it has no story. It’s pretty (questionably) and it sounds nice (also arguable) and that’s it. There is nothing beneath it’s shell of “artistry.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/petemascio Pete Mascio

    The article works more to validate the existence of games in the spirit of Dear Esther. You can hate Dear Esther for every day for the rest of your life. It does not matter to me. This is a forum for coming to a conclusion on the growth of games. As Newton said “We stand on the shoulders of giants.” In that way you and I and everyone else who reads this can come to a logical next step in the evolution of games like Dear Esther.

    This is often the problem with this type of interaction. A message gets lost upon a smart person like youself and it angers them. Lost in that anger is the semblance of trying to lend a helping hand. Maybe, to you, Dear Esther was the wrong way of expressing what it expressed. That is fine. I get it. But rather than just use this forum to take 4 paragraphs at a time to bash Dear Esther and those who enjoy Dear Esther, present the next step.
    You can destroy walls in minutes, but it takes much more thought to build them. So build me the proverbial wall. I know why you think Dear Esther is wrong. But the other games that could come to exist from Dear Esther could improve upon its formula. Paint me a picture of those next games. You are the perfect type of person to do so. Criticism is easy. Creativity is much less common. Please bring discussion, not just detraction.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001769899351 Reno Evangelista

    The thing is games that surpass Dear Esther already exist. Journey does everything Dear Esther could have done and better. Yume Nikki already accomplished the idea that wandering itself is a kind of gameplay. Portal and Bastion make something out of the voiceover narration style of storytelling that Dear Esther just doesn’t. Esther does nothing new, and building on it is ridiculous when you can build on the better games that it steals from.

    What needs to be “built” is a higher bar of expectations and satisfactions. People have to stop accepting bad FPSs and crap movie tie-ins and demand that games be something more. People have to stop believing that having a film director or a novel writer as part of the game’s team is a point in its favor when what it really is is a taxidermy sculptor trying to play the bassoon. And most of all is that people have to stop defending games like Dear Esther and make it clear that this is not the direction that video games should be going in, to block off that one path so that the DEVELOPERS of all people are forced to be creative and try something new.

    Encouraging this kind of thing also encourages that you would buy it again if they repackaged it in a Sci-Fi setting. It encourages things like Tale of Tales’ terrible “notgames” where you spend a minute walking toward a bench and another minute listening to a song in Polish. That is five dollars for two minutes of your life they have wasted.

    Some of the best games out there are the ones where interaction and storytelling are integral to one another: Oiche Mhaith or To The Moon, as examples. Games that play with the idea of forcing a player into the linearity that games like CoD or Dear Esther take for granted are also fantastic: Shadow of the Colossus and Spec Ops: The Line. Even literature directly translated into game form tends to heighten effects by putting you in direct control of a character who was previously just a stranger on a page: The Rudest Party Guest and Cold Equations.

    There is so much that has been done that is better than Dear Esther, and for you to glorify it as something to “build” on rings plenty false. Games like the ones I mentioned are the ones that should be celebrated, but instead they’re just pushed under the rug in the indie community for either being too triple A or too obscure (ridiculous hipsters). Instead what gets the fame and the awards are smug little corridor simulators that aren’t sublime so much as they are “safe” and “inoffensive.”

  • Lupin

    This seems kinda like Proteus…

  • http://twitter.com/adammcdonald Adam McDonald

    I think a problem with a lot of story-driven games is that the creators have a particular story and message in mind. Dear Esther has a very specific story in mind. I have not played it (the concept doesn’t appeal to me, and find “art games” like this annoying), but my impression is that it would fit them medium a bit more if there was some player choice. I think the next logical step for interactive stories or “experience” games is a level of choice, even if it’s just branching paths. The biggest stumbling block may be the creators themselves accepting that their favourite or most personal or most emotionally heavy version of the story being presented won’t be what every player experiences.