Gaming Lounge

[puggsoy]

Let's try this out here first to see if it'll warrant a better discussion in a thread.

Does anyone else feel like indie games often have far more playability than most retail games? The best example I can give as of now is (not Minecraft) Terraria. This game wasn't made by some big time company like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft, but rather a handful of individuals aiming to make a game. This same game has managed to siphon over 500 hours of gameplay from me, and will do so even further once the upcoming content update is released. Cube World, now released, seems to be absorbing more of my time as of late as well, now that I finally have a handle on how to approach things. The most time I've ever clocked on a retail game was Pokemon HeartGold (mostly through nostalgia), at about 90 hours. What are your thoughts?

I really think that "indie vs retail" is way too general a scope to have an opinion on which is better in this aspect. I've played a lot of indie games that I've spent many-an-hour on (Psychonauts, Super Hexagon, Bastion), and some that I've barely touched after completing them (Little Inferno, Rochard).
Same goes for commercial games; games like Poker Night at the Inventory and Team Fortress 2 are always fun, while others the Professor Layton series, while fantastic, can't really be played much after completion. Some, like Far Cry 2, haven't even gotten me to finish them yet, due to the 80% I've played being enough for me.

To be honest, I find it hard to say one side is more playable than the other. This could well be because I don't own a wide enough range of games from both sides to make a good judgement, though.