AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Video games are big business, but some of the most thought-provoking and even popular video games are made by small teams comprised of just a handful of developers. There's no way to know what the next big hit will be, but video game fans may have gotten a hint last night in San Francisco. NPR's Vincent Acovino has more.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And the winner is Consume Me.
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VINCENT ACOVINO, BYLINE: The $10,000 grand prize at the Independent Games Festival awards went to a video game called Consume Me. It's a darkly funny coming-of-age story about being a girl in high school.
JENNY JIAO HSIA: Did you feel fat, stupid and ugly in high school? Because I did and Consume Me is the video game about that.
ACOVINO: Jenny Jiao Hsia's was the codirector on the project. She and artists Jie En Lee say the game's humor is the key to telling this serious story in an approachable way.
JIE EN LEE: I don't know. I feel like these two are super funny. They're, like, super witty. She had to get on stage and make a joke.
HSIA: No one laughed.
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LEE: That's OK.
HSIA: No one laughed when I asked if anyone wanted to buy this for $10 million (laughter).
LEE: I think some people laughed.
HSIA: OK.
ACOVINO: Humor was a shared theme among several of the night's winners. The audience award went to a game called The WereCleaner.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Meet Kyle. He's the best darn janitor at Howlin' Hugs.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: But Kyle has a secret.
ACOVINO: Mason Sabharwal, creative director on the project, says the game started with a ridiculous premise. What if a janitor was also a werewolf?
MASON SABHARWAL: So we basically took that stupid, silly concept and rolled with the cute, the gore, the comedy that came from it.
ACOVINO: Other winners included Despelote, a game about playing soccer in Ecuador's capital city, and Slot Waste, a game that depicts a disturbing factory production line. The thing that these games all have in common is that their staff is small. Game development tools are becoming cheaper and easier to use. The result is smaller teams making more ambitious games. In 2018, just over 8,000 indie games were released. In 2024, that number skyrocketed to over 16,000. And revenue for indie games on Steam, the popular video game marketplace, has nearly doubled in that same time, according to analysis firm Video Game Insights.
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ACOVINO: Just after the IGF awards came to a close, the Game Developers Choice Awards began. The awards featured games from major companies like Square Enix and Sony. But even here, at the night's big event, the grand prize winner was...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Balatro.
ACOVINO: ...Balatro, an indie game developed almost entirely by just one person.
Vincent Acovino, NPR News, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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