Game Tunnel's Stinky Top 100 Indie Games List

Derek Yu over at TIG Source has an awesome post entitled Game Tunnell's Top 100 Indie Games List...Makes Me Sad.

"What we have here is an indie gaming news site run by a Reflexive employee, hosted by a Pop Cap studio, running a list called “The Top 100 Indie Games” that is little more than a portal front page."

I won't link the list directly - you can follow Derek's article if you want to look at it. The problem isn't necessarily the list itself, but mostly the intentions of the list, and how it's being treated by the community. The intentions seem to be purely for the selfish interests of Game Tunnell. As Derek indicates, many links in the list have referral codes in them, and of course the games listed are only those that have been reviewed by Game Tunnell in the past.

Even worse, many people in the community are treating this as some representative list of the best indie games out there. It's definitely NOT representative of indie games. People who think so are clearly missing out on a lot of the games discussed at TIG Source, in addition to a plethora of free Flash games. Make no mistake about it, Flash games are most definitely a part of the indie game space. I hope whoever finds that list will quickly ask "What else is out there?" Here's another nugget from Derek's post:

"It’s like someone farted at the dinner table and no one wants to admit that it smells. Over at the Indiegamer forums I just know that the conversation is going like this: “Honey, this chicken is delicious!”

WELL YOU KNOW WHAT IT SMELLS TERRIBLE IN HERE AND IF THINGS KEEP UP THIS WAY NO ONE IS GOING TO WANT TO EVER HAVE DINNER WITH US."

This might be a bit brash, but it is this passion that makes me proud to be a part of the independent game community.