I think pretty much we agree on the indie side of things. My fear about funding is the same as yours. I find it dispiriting that prices of all games except mainstream have now slid into the bargain basement zone and you’re only going to make serious money off that if you sell well – which as you point out is going to hobble the development of anything in the area of complexity. Markup niche pricing can work, of course, when you look at Cryptic Comet’s output.

But, still, I see more trouble here than anything approaching security for most developers.

You point to Empire as an example of a game that existed prior to the development of game literacy but there are a couple of interesting wrinkles there. If it’s the same Empire I’m thinking about, it’s turn-based rather than real-time strategy and that game was almost certainly geared towards gamers who developed their game literacy through even more complex board games, miniatures games and wargames from publishers like Avalon Hill. And playing as they did on mainframe computers at universities in the 70s, those gamers were by no means the average gamer I was referring to in the post.

(Interestingly enough, one of the people who worked on the commercial version of Empire, Mark Baldwin, went on to create The Perfect General, which was essentially a beginner’s strategy game. It was an ideal first rung on the strategy ladder in 90s, which could naturally lead to Panzer General’s beer-’n'-pretzels approach in ’94 then later to Gary Grigsby’s Steel Panthers in ’95 or the more grognard-y Talonsoft games, and perhaps even back to the contemporaneous version of Empire.)

I’m less optimistic about the indie gaming scene since I don’t believe they have as much freedom as most believe they do. As Brian Moriarty pointed out in his An Apology for Roger Ebert speech, most indie game developers have no cushion for failure — Chris Park’s Arcen Games, for instance, was flirting with bankruptcy in November 2010 when Tidalis didn’t fare as well as hoped — and whatever creative decisions they make will be tempered by that knowledge.

Ultimately, gamers will get the games they deserve. If they remain insistent games should remain within that narrow spectrum going from childlike wonder to adolescent fantasies, that’s precisely what will happen since there’s no impetus for change and evolution.

I just think it’s a shame that a medium with such great potential should hamstring itself so early in its history.

Personally I’m torn. Gaming has exploded since the early 1980s when we saw lots of experimentation although it must be said there was plenty of experimentation during the 1970s (I have just discovered a real-time strategy game called Empire was doing the rounds, prior to any development of gaming literacy, and still has a dedicated community today).

We have so many more casual gamers now. Mainstream is a bona fide big business. The public have always been devoted followers of the lowest common denominator shows because, well, they are the lowest common denominator. Everyone can enjoy The X Factor or Bay’s Transformers (I say this with some irony as I am not a fan of either) and games have followed the same grand capitalist model which has led us to pronouncements many times in TV and movies that art is dead and reality is dumber than it once was. And, as you imply, when the children of the 80s grew up they didn’t have time to burn on complex games any more, at home with the satisfying plink-smash of Angry Birds or the time-destroying grind of Tiny Tower.

All of the interesting stuff is happening in the long tail though. We have a lot of impressive indie work going on. Just to pull out one data point, Chris Park tried to do something very different with strategy with AI War. Complex simulations still exist even though there’s no large market for them. These pocket communities remain. I don’t need Activision to develop these.

But I can see your point. How does one progress from Half-Life to a nuclear power simulator? Where are the stepping stones to the hardcore end of gaming literacy? Are we actually amidst a steady decline?

Empire has been continually revised over 40 years so that it’s quite difficult for the outsider to break in. It can swamp the player in micromanagement and the interface is Linuxesque command line and I suspect the Empire community is diminishing as the years progress and not earning enough new blood to feed it. Where is the step into Empire (there are potentials, but that’s another conversation)? Does Empire deserve to survive as it has travelled so far down its own rabbit hole that it can’t make it back out?

I am pessimistic with a streak of optimism. A period of loss is followed by a period of renewal: it is cyclical. Every time we think we’ve lost everything good and great, there’s a resurgence of innovation and art. I’m British – and we used to joke about American TV being useless for high-brow television drama but now it throws out The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men and a host of other excellent dramas. We were already lamenting the consolisation of gaming ten years ago, that the good old days of complexity were gone – but now indie gaming is fiercely strong. There are efforts to make games that teach things and explore ideas that do not involve guns or dragons. It’s when we all agree we miss something – then something gets done to fill that gap.

The real fear I have is funding. I don’t see money moving around this gaming ecosystem as freely as I’d like. It gravitates towards popular games who are forcing the prices down wholesale (that’s a gross simplification but I can live with it for a moment). Even niche games are being mocked for having “ridiculously high” prices. Without the money to fund development, and complex games to some extent are just as expensive to make as a high-powered uncanny valley FPS, the complex end of the spectrum will starve, wither and die.

(There are also larger issues about consumer culture and living in an instant gratification machine, but Jesus I think I’ve written enough already.)

Though not efficient enough due to their internal manpower but I would assume they do not want to expand rapidly, as as one might know, you tend to fall faster when you expand your portfolio – allowing games/employing/upgrading – too quickly.

My thought process with regards to any piece of loot comes down to this: does it complement my character build? Does it mitigate the build’s weaknesses and exploits its strengths?

If you have full-blown OCD, I’m afraid I don’t have any suggestion that might help. You have my sympathies, though. I can see how RPGs and their offshoots can be deeply frustrating for someone with it.

Honestly I wish there was a no-loot option in the game, just give me obviously better equipment every 5 levels and I’d be happier.

At what point in the game would it make sense to stop paying attention to loot?