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The Game Awards raises an old question: What does indie mean?
- MisterTea 3y agoIndependent developers bankrolling themselves. Next question.
- xwkd 3y agoIf singular, this definition makes sense. If not, then I have to ask: Independent of what or whom?
- MisterTea 3y agoLate 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 3y ago> Independent developers bankrolling themselves Is raising money via Kickstarter or Itch.io bankrolling themselves?
- koolala 3y agoIf they did it themselves. The point of that kind of croudfunding is people investing in the creative vision payback instead of financial payback.
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoYes.
- junon 3y agoYeah 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.
- pdpi 3y agoIt’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.
- dissident_coder 3y agoBaldurs Gate 3 is also technically an indie game by the classical definition.
- nottorp 3y agoIs 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?
- dissident_coder 3y agoAs far as I know the only censorship that was done to the game was the sexual content for release in the Japanese market.
- nottorp 3y agoCensorship doesn't only mean removing content after the fact. Could also be 'don't do that because 8% of our target market wouldn't like it' during early development or in non public versions. Or silly image stuff like car manufacturers not allowing their licensed cars to show damage in racing games. Last one is blatantly obvious, the first one, you'll never know about it because it was internal.
- dissident_coder 3y agoThe CEO has openly stated they were given full creative control of what's in the game.
- nottorp 3y ago
- Ekaros 3y agoI 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...
- nottorp 3y agoBut Valve doesn't make games any more :)
- parasti 3y agoHere'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.
- babypuncher 3y agoThis 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 3y 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.
- dave7 3y agoThose "not triple-A" games are often called "AA" to mean "bankrolled, but not blockbuster".
- drusepth 3y agoFunding 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 3y 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!
- nottorp 3y agoSee 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?
- meheleventyone 3y agoListening to customer feedback doesn’t mean implementing features they want. It means understanding the issues they’re having within the context of what you’re making. For example all the soulslike games have been heavily patched after release based on player feedback, the most obvious recent case being the tutorial entrance in Elden Ring.
- jncfhnb 3y agoWhat did they change about the elden ring tutorial?
- dave7 3y agoCan'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.
- TylerGlaiel 3y agothis is my quote https://twitter.com/TylerGlaiel/status/1724907097031414240 https://twitter.com/TylerGlaiel/status/1724907097031414240
- dave7 3y agoExcellent, that's the one! Sorry, too late to edit. Perfect definition I think.
- autoexec 3y agoI 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 3y agoOne 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.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoI think you could argue that funding a game significantly changes the course of the work, by making it happen in the first place.
- 3y ago
- smitty1110 3y agoThe 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.
- deadly-penguin 3y agoHasn't it always been the Game Advertisements? Perhaps it's gotten more egregious, but the nature of the thing hasn't really changed.
- autoexec 3y agoThis 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.
- madrox 3y agoThe 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 3y agoSorry, 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.
- madrox 3y agoI 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 3y agoI think it's like porn - I'll know it when I see it
- seanw444 3y agoIndie 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 3y agoTFA'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]