What does "indie game" even mean?

the last three videos I made on this channel were about three specific games this topic is going to be a little more nebulous a little more abstract so bear with me see I've recently developed some strong feelings about the term indie game and it all started when I was working on a script for another video where I POS the question is lies of P an indie game the answer yes no it's a little more complicated than that so what the heck even is an indie game if you Google the definition of an indie game you get an indie game short for independent video game is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and Technical Support of a large game publisher in contrast to most AAA games let's break that down a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams so how do we identif ify a small development team is that one person 10 people 20 people 50 people 100 people where's the line on Steam there's a game called Seafood a game that is tagged as an indie game now if I remember correctly um tags are chosen by players in the community and not by the actual developers themselves just wanted to throw that out there sefue is tagged as an indie game despite having been developed by 80 people at a company called slow clap and it it was published by a company called Kepler interactive which is a company with over 200 employees is that indie or what about a game like Hades super giant games is a team of 12 employees that sounds really Indie and they publish the game digitally on their own that sounds super Indie but pump the brakes retail copies were published and distributed by a company called private division which in and of itself has a little over 100 employees and to Double Down private division is owned by take to interactive a multi-billion doll games holding company does that make them any more or less Indie Hades being developed by a small team but semi-public by a large publisher leads us to our next topic without the financial and Technical Support of a large game publisher in contrast to most AAA games let's take a look at Team 17 they published the super awesome really cool absolutely wonderful indie game called dredge developed by four people I mean that's like that's about as Indie as it gets except Team 17 is a publicly traded company with about 400 employees and six subsidiaries about as not indie as you can get or what about Dave the diver which controversially took home the best indie game award at last year's game awards despite mint rocket the team that developed them being a small team within Nexon a multi-billion doll games company out of Korea I think we should look at stardo Valley I think it's one of the best examples of an indie game that saw incredible Commercial Success all developed by one guy published by a relatively small publishing Studio which doesn't even have publishing rights anymore except there's one small caveat see the retail copies of the game for PlayStation and Xbox including some Collector's Editions was distributed by five 505 games 505 games is a video game publishing company with about 100 employees owned by digital Bros an even larger video game Publishing Company publicly traded on the Italian stock market making millions of dollars a year and has a little over 450 employees before crazy layoffs this year that cut 30% of their Global Workforce so is stardew still Indie I mean does it even matter what about a game's Vibe can a game feel Indie I've had conversations with friends who genuinely feel games like balers Gate 3 or Hell divers 2 are Indie Games simply based on the fact that the developers are a passionate bunch and that it doesn't matter how many people are on the team or how much money Sony gives Arrowhead or how massive laran Studios really is and while I can respect that sentiment and to some degree relate to that feeling how do you measure Vibes or passion how do you measure the heart and soul put into a video game see I would argue that the the devs artists and writers that worked on the original Assassin's Creed games pumped their heart and soul into those games but that doesn't make me think that Ubisoft is an indie company despite the fact that they are independent they don't have a large studio looming over their heads and they have complete creative control over what they wait a minute is Ubisoft the most Indie Indie company this entire time despite the given definition I'm still unsure what qualifies as an indie game these days see the developer and publisher relationship has changed so much in just the last 20 years that an indie game today would most certainly not be considered an indie game 20 years ago I was talking to some friends on Dryden Thomas's Discord he's the developer of ligh hoof and disinherited I'm going to link his channel below and you should definitely check out his stuff and I was asking them about what they thought Indie even meant Dryden himself had a really interesting thing to say about this he said in my opinion something similar is happening in the gaming space that happened in music maybe 20 years ago where Indie music used to mean financially independent like not attached to a record deal but Indie had a sound and that sound got popular and it started being published by major labels and then Indie was more of a quasi genre like a way to sing and produce and do instrumentation and then ultimately it was another marketing category and this makes perfect sense see Indie has gone from an actual identifier of the type of game you were going to buy to a buzzword used by gaming marketers to evoke a sense of grass rootedness the old two guys in a garage with some duct tape sure we have our Eric baronies of the world but sometimes even they are connected to large gaming companies one way or another I want to pump the brakes real quick I need to clarify something there is nothing wrong I am not casting any shade to Eric Baron for turning to 505 games for physical distribution or chuckle fish for porting these are among some of likely the best business decisions that Eric Bron and his team made there is nothing wrong with a small team of devs or a solo developer turning to a large publisher a porter or a large Dev team for help financial assistance technical assistance there's nothing wrong with that these are all just business decisions decisions that ultimately individuals and small groups decide is the best decision and route for their game to become a financial success there's simply nothing wrong with not being traditionally indie I mean heck we're even talking about how Indie doesn't even really mean anything anyway but you can break from that traditional route and do whatever makes sense for your game and by the way there's also nothing inherently wrong or good about going solo it's really up to you and the individual and what you need the most for your project when you look at it these are just key business decisions that one should make when marketing or creating anything and this my friends leads us to the Crux of my argument indie it doesn't mean anything at all Indie is an archaic term that does less to actually describe a video game you're making or buying than a goldfish can do choosing your stocks and actually making you money I already pointed out to you how identifying what an indie game even is today is near impossible and with how simple it is to publish on sites like itch.io and steam and the relationship between Publishers and developers becoming even more complex Indie do doesn't really do much to sum up what a game is or how it came to be anymore it doesn't really mean anything it's not even a Feeling Anymore sure your game can be lowf like Dave the diver or have that Indie aesthetic like dredge but in the end Indie is just a term that doesn't really cut it anymore and nowadays we're better off with more descriptive terms like solo Game Dev or small development team or self-published Indie can incorporate those things but it can't all at the same time I think it's High Time We Say Goodbye to using Indie as a way to describe video games and move on to greener pastures or at the very least just don't take it as seriously as some people do cuz I mean at the end of the day video games are just supposed to be fun isn't that the point that all being said this is an incredibly difficult topic to cover I did a bunch of research interviewed a bunch of people but at the end of the day everything is so subjective and I definitely didn't cover all of the use cases of indie and I don't think I could in one video because it's just been such a prolific piece of gaming vocabulary for longer than I've been alive not to mention most of these arguments are super subjective in and of themselves listen I've probably ruffled some feathers with you die hard Indie fans out there but the term Indie has just become so muddy and confusing as an actual term used in the gaming industry and I feel like it's just run its course that I personally feel just isn't as useful as it once was what do you guys think do you think that Indie is still a useful term in the gaming industry at all or should we move on to terms like double A games whatever that even means let me know in the comments below and I just want to say sorry this took so long to come out I got sick shadow of the earth tree came out played and beat that started playing nine Souls recently still have a little residual cough so excuses excuses but I'm going to try to make more of these and who knows maybe the next video will be about anyway thanks for watching and uh catch you next time

Channel: Zagy

Views: 1,591

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Id: 5TaQAEC5Ee4

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2024