The Game Awards raises an old question: What does indie mean?

https://www.engadget.com/the-game-awards-raises-an-old-question-what-does-indie-mean-205211035.html

by theshrike79 • 3 years ago

38 68 3 years ago

engadget.com

MisterTea2• 3 years ago

Independent developers bankrolling themselves. Next question.

xwkd• 3 years ago

If singular, this definition makes sense. If not, then I have to ask: Independent of what or whom?

MisterTea2• 3 years ago

Late reply but think of it like this: they are financially dependent on themselves. All involved have to secure any and all moneys to enable them to continue their work.

falcolas• 3 years ago

Independent developers bankrolling themselves

Is raising money via Kickstarter or Itch.io bankrolling themselves?

koolala• 3 years ago

If they did it themselves. The point of that kind of croudfunding is people investing in the creative vision payback instead of financial payback.

lowbloodsugar• 3 years ago

Yes.

junon2• 3 years ago

Yeah dunno why Dave the Diver is on there. Nexon is a multimillion dollar company. They made MapleStory and Combat Arms, among many others. They're about as far from indie as you can get.

Pixel art and cuteness =/= indie.

dissident_coder5• 3 years ago

Baldurs Gate 3 is also technically an indie game by the classical definition.

nottorp8• 3 years ago

Is it? Didn't whoever holds the D&D license (and the copyright for the Baldur's Gate name) censor it^H^H^H had creative input?

mrguyorama2• 3 years ago

People seem to be forgetting that "AA" game devs companies are an established "category" in video gaming. I wouldn't have considered the Divinity series from the same devs to be indie back when it came out.

Indie to me means a SMALL team (less than 20 total) selling something that is primarily a passion project, and not controlled by a larger entity. IE Minecraft stopped being indie when it was bought by Microsoft even though the team didn't get very large.

I'd love to hear a counterexample though.

Ekaros3• 3 years ago

Not just multimillion. It is multibillion euro company. And I think it is generally understood they are on the more exploitative end with their games...

junon2• 3 years ago

Yep, absolutely.

Linosaurus• 3 years ago

When describing a game that looks like it had a smallish team and graphics budget, ‘indie’ is a useful shorthand. It sets certain expectations.

Certainly marketing and media (as evidenced by the article) find this useful, but I think many consumers also are more interested in the game than in the creators. So it makes sense that this language shift happens.

But yes it certainly misses the theoretical point of a category like that.

And would be nice if it was replaced with a technically correct word. ‘Indie-like’?

pdpi• 3 years ago

It’s a weird world where I find myself saying that Dave the Diver isn’t really an indie game but Baldur’s Gate 3 is.

autoexec5• 3 years ago

I agree that indie has become an aesthetic. I suppose it was inevitable that once major game companies saw gamers embrace the creativity and freedom indie games brought they'd try to capitalize on that "trend" themselves in the most shallow way possible.

It seems like with every successful break from mainstream culture you'll see corporations attempting to capture the counterculture and homogenize it back into something they can control and sell back to the same people who tried to free themselves from those same corporations and the constraints they imposed in us in the first place.

Ekaros3• 3 years ago

I always questioned if Valve is an indie studio. They are private company and haven't had publishers for good while... Shouldn't this make them indie?

Then again they are also one of the largest retailers of games in world...

nottorp8• 3 years ago

But Valve doesn't make games any more :)

babypuncher• 3 years ago

This battle has already been raging in the film industry for decades. Technically, an independent film is anything financed independently of the major film distributors. This includes some very expensive effects-driven movies like Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which makes this definition not particularly useful to the average moviegoer.

So instead most people stick to a more loosely defined colloquial definition, rooted more in a film's budget and artistic aspirations, that often includes "indie-like" films from notable indie filmmakers, but financed directly by one of the major studios.

nlawalker• 3 years ago

Indie is not an aesthetic

I suppose, but it rolls off the tongue way better than "not triple-A", which I think is in the ballpark of what most people are shooting for when they use "indie" to indicate an aesthetic or vibe.

The technical status of a game or developer as independent is very rarely relevant to me, except as a signal that they are more likely to produce games that exhibit the "indie" vibe.

dave73• 3 years ago

Those "not triple-A" games are often called "AA" to mean "bankrolled, but not blockbuster".

drusepth2• 3 years ago

Funding is a bit of a red herring since there are plenty of "indie" developers/studios producing games with funding of all kinds (kickstarter, presales, even VC, etc).

My opinion as someone actively working in the field is simple: an indie game is a game where the creator(s) of the game have full control over its vision.

Funding is adjacent in that those who've funded are the most likely ones to be able to exert control over the finished product, but funding is the enabler, not the result.

As soon as the creator(s) of the game start to sacrifice their vision of the game in favor of stakeholder demands, it very quickly falls out of that "indie" category for me.

rjbwork• 3 years ago

As soon as the creator(s) of the game start to sacrifice their vision of the game in favor of stakeholder demands, it very quickly falls out of that "indie" category for me.

I don't think that's really true. Customers are stakeholders and listening to customer feedback and making changes even if they conflict with your initial vision can be a good thing!

nottorp8• 3 years ago

See the 'customers don't know what they want' discussion a few days ago here on HN.

To bring out the massively overused example in gaming: would you have had the Soulsbornes if they relied on customer feedback?

autoexec5• 3 years ago

One of the advantages of indie games is that devs are making the games they want, not games that appeal to customers and stakeholders. Indie titles can give us things we never knew we wanted, and can appeal to people in small niches whose voices would be quickly drowned out when effort is spent trying to make a game that will appeal to the masses.

The mega-corps of the video game industry are already maximizing for widespread appeal/profits. Indie games are where we look to break free from that mold and explore something new and original.

drusepth2• 3 years ago

Haha, I almost added a footnote explicitly excluding players/customers because this is way more of a grey area, but I didn't want to dilute the original message.

However, you're right. Player feedback is arguably even more important for indie devs than big-studio devs, since they're often operating on what feels fun versus operating on player data (especially from previous games, industry metrics, their own industry experience, etc) and getting that raw feedback of "is this actually fun?" is vital.

The big difference, however, is that the creators of indie games still have the "final say" on that game game. It's generally a Very Good Idea to listen to your players (and listen hard!), but it's rare that your studio will e.g. have its funding pulled if you _don't_ listen to them[0], unlike with (some) publishers and other stakeholders. That's a big difference IMO.

[0] With the obvious caveat of equating funding == sales when you try to release a bad game after not listening to players

theLiminator• 3 years ago

Curious if star citizen should be considered indie then?

autoexec5• 3 years ago

My opinion as someone actively working in the field is simple: an indie game is a game where the creator(s) of the game have full control over its vision.

Even if the mega-corp paying the dev team's salaries pinky promise to be hands off on creative decisions, the dev's themselves are going to be extreemly unlikely to do something that will piss off or threaten the mega-corp who pays their bills. That's why it's important that "indie" really means "independent"

Kickstarter, patron, tip jars, and any other form of support where internet randos throw money at something isn't really a problem because it doesn't stop them from making games free from the constraints imposed by mainstream video game industry.

CuriousCosmic• 3 years ago

Even if the mega-corp paying the dev team's salaries pinky promise to be hands off on creative decisions, the dev's themselves are going to be extreemly unlikely to do something that will piss off or threaten the mega-corp who pays their bills. That's why it's important that "indie" really means "independent"

There are some publishers that I think have actually generally upheld that social contract to not interfere. There aren't a lot of them but they exist.

One that comes to mind is Annapurna. They pick up in development indie games, more or less write a blank check, and offer their advertising/name recognition. I'd still consider them indie personally because the games are all fundamentally indie developers that got lucky and got bankrolled but otherwise don't get interference.

seba_dos1• 3 years ago

Are Portal 2, The Witcher 3 or GTA 5 "indie"?

Are Disney movies "indie"?

Why?

Ekaros3• 3 years ago

Portal 2 might be... Witcher 3 and GTA 5 fail as they are by or backed by publicly traded companies.

Once the company or parent is traded on public market they cease to be indie to me.

Buttons840• 3 years ago

Can you give an example of a game where the creators didn't have control?

dave73• 3 years ago

Can't remember who said it, I think probably Rami Ismall? But I can't find the source. Something like: "If there is another person, company or entity that while not actually working on the game, can significantly change the course of that work - that is not an indie game".

Basically, indies should be in control of their own destiny. This seems like a very reasonable definition to me.

autoexec5• 3 years ago

I kind of like this, however I do think that if EA funds a subsidiary or even just a team of developers making a game, that game shouldn't count as "indie" even if they promise to be 100% hands off.

Just accepting money from a major player in the video game industry is going to "change the course of that work". I prefer my indie developers to be, you know, independent.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc• 3 years ago

One thing is a giant corporation „promising“ something - the other thing is reality where the promises of corporations are exactly worth nothing and you can bet on them breaking it as soon as it’s convenient.

BobaFloutist2• 3 years ago

I think you could argue that funding a game significantly changes the course of the work, by making it happen in the first place.

darzu• 3 years ago

Most indie games have a publisher and publishers have a lot of control.

mrguyorama2• 3 years ago

We have multiple well known, well respected indie PUBLISHER'S now, like tinyBUILD and MicroProse (new) and even Humble Games, at least until Amazon milks the final few drops of value out of the Humble brand.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

In a lot of cases the relationship is not that. Instead, the publisher takes a healthy cut of the revenue for doing all the things that isn’t directly developing the game: marketing, testing, release, sales, etc.

Oftentimes the publisher can act as an advisor or matchmaker for finding the right people to solve problems. But this is meaningfully different from taking control of the game’s development.

sp332• 3 years ago

Looking at Rami's twitter, I found these two: "made by studios that swear on social media", and "only give 200 gamerscore". https://twitter.com/tha_rami/status/1729470607798989273

TylerGlaiel• 3 years ago

this is my quote https://twitter.com/TylerGlaiel/status/1724907097031414240

dave73• 3 years ago

Excellent, that's the one! Sorry, too late to edit. Perfect definition I think.

smitty1110• 3 years ago

The real question about the Game Awards is how much more can they sell out before people stop caring. It has become an unholy cross between E3 and the Golden Globes. And by "Golden Globes" I mean the old school, pay-to-win Golden Globes, where suitcases full of cash were exchanged for votes.

autoexec5• 3 years ago

This is the truth. I'm not sure where a reputable award would come from, or how to keep them honest, but it seems like an award coming from journalists will be doomed to fail thanks to corruption and lack of integrity. The incestuous nature of journalism, advertising, and industry makes it all but inevitable.

deadly-penguin• 3 years ago

Hasn't it always been the Game Advertisements? Perhaps it's gotten more egregious, but the nature of the thing hasn't really changed.

parasti• 3 years ago

Here's a solution: just come up with a name that better describes the award category. Maybe that way different categories of games won't be lumped together to compete against each other.

madrox2• 3 years ago

The Independent category is antiquated, started in an era where it was quite obvious if a creative work was outside the normal pipeline. The Game Awards adopted this category the way it adopted many trappings from awards in other industries. However, there's so many ways to make and distribute games now that it's simply impossible to define this category without making it either highly controversial or effectively meaningless.

Let's stop trying to define what indie means and just retire it as a 20th century idea. Stop trying to be like the Oscars and go your own way.

adra• 3 years ago

Sorry, but "games that haven't shoveled sequels or a bunch of prior art" just doesn't have the same je ne ces quoi to me... Even then, sea of stars would still be considered largely derivative in style. Cocoon looked like a pretty novel game though.

madrox2• 3 years ago

I can’t tell how serious you’re being here or what you’re implying. This is a weird straw man. There have been excellent AAA and big budget games. If you’re saying you’d like a category for originality I’m sure there’s a way to put that, but that wasn’t the indie category either.

intrasight• 3 years ago

I think it's like porn - I'll know it when I see it

seanw444• 3 years ago

Indie is literally short for "independent". If it is financed and developed independently of outside influence, it is therefore indie. I think people conflate indie with low-budget. They are not the same. And I don't mean low-budget in a disparaging way. Low-budget has its perks, and can end up really cool.

aidenn0• 3 years ago

TFA's example of Baldur's Gate 3 is a great example of this (though I'm not sure the degree to which Hasbro retained creative control; it almost certainly wasn't zero, so that's a point against it).

[edited to replace WotC with Hasbro]

The Game Awards raises an old question: What does indie mean?

Related Stories