Indies Have Been Given a Fighting Chance

Look around the mainstream entertainment landscape. Seen any artists lately? I mean real artists. There’s a few still around here and there, but for the most part, the industries have failed us. They tend to hire the worst talent for the best jobs possible, and then let them continuously fail upwards.

I don’t know about you, but the folks in my circle are getting pretty sick of all the uninspired, lazy art and agendized comics, “bestseller” novels, “AAA” games, and “big budget” movies. These projects are no longer worth our time; They don’t speak to us on any level. They don’t reflect our culture.

A quick glance at Indiegogo reveals more than a fair share of inspiring projects that gatekeepers would never consider funding, headed by talented people the industry would never hire, especially not in Current Year. In fact, if seen as enough of a threat, the industry will go out of their way to “cancel” these projects before they can get off the ground… if not through legal action, then through some kind of social media blitz.

And if these projects somehow manage to get past all those hurdles, get funded, and find success, their IP is either bought outright, or a campaign may even be launched by a PR firm to turn the people involved into social pariahs.

The problem, of course, is advertising and reach. These huge companies have budgets we could only dream of, and they’ve mastered the art of pissing it all away to create empty, soulless experiences. They hire celebs no one likes and release sequels, rehashes, and deconstructive reinventions, all fueled by predictable, tired formulas.

Aside from advertising and reach, quality can certainly be an issue for indie projects. Christian media in particular has suffered many of these same problems for as long as I can remember.

But there are many open-source tools for indie game development right now. Indie games are often as popular–if not moreso–than the flagship games crapped out by the so-called industry leaders every year.

And now home computing power and the software we can run on it (especially in the realms of AI, mocap, and 3D) have progressed to a level where it’s threatening the unfair advantage enjoyed by the gatekeeper industries for decades. That’s why they’ve been aggressively funding anti-AI campaigns.

But they were caught flat-footed, and the proverbial toothpaste’s already out of the tube. Indie game developers have never had a better chance at going head-to-head with AAA game studios.

Small animation studios have a much better chance at putting out something truly theatrical, especially if AI and similar “disruptive technologies” keep progressing at the breakneck pace they have over these past three months.

Maybe it’s time for comic book writers who could never afford a quality artist to blow the dust off of all those great ideas they were forced to shelve long ago. That’s not to say they shouldn’t still seek the help of indie artists; A single artist or graphic designer, even a mediocre one, can take this kind of technology and run laps around an artist who refuses to utilize it, and can even go toe-to-toe with industry leaders.

I think it’s time for folks like you and I to use each and every tool we can to level the playing field, be it movie editing software, graphic software, or even AI.

(Note: if you choose to use AI, don’t leave everything to it–AI’s not quite ready for the big-time, yet–but I bet you there’s something it can do to help dramatically speed up your creative process.)

It won’t be an easy fight. They still have their cadre of ghostwriters, lawyers, lobbyists, programmed celebs, compromised critics, “grassroot” bots, social media influencer zombies, and so much more working against us. Heck, companies like Disney and Cosmopolitan have internal AI models they’ve been using in secret for years to further dominate their hold on the industry–tech they thought us peasants would never be able to attain.

And don’t think they have any moral quandaries about using this tech against us. They absolutely have been, and they will weaponize the court of law as much as they can.

But if you’re one of the true artists out there, right now you can legally use this tech to speed up your output and crank your quality and quantity to inhuman proportions. One person can work like a team of people.

We now have the power to build parallel markets similar to what indie game developers have already achieved. We should follow their example.

Together, we can crank out passion projects that resonate with our culture. If we act now, we stand a chance at uprooting and rebuilding these industries into something worth caring about, and maybe even restoring a little of what was lost.