An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most “AAA” (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games.
To me it looks like the kind of game with risks and innovations and gameplay you’d never see in a Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed or Wolfenstein franchise. Is that totally negated by having a large publisher?
I'll go with the Supreme Court pornography definition. If it feels like an indie game that's good enough for me.
I don't care if it's 3 people who did the work in a public library because they didn't have the capacity to rent a workspace or 3 people 100 layers of corporate ownership underneath a mega-corp. Did the small team's vision get executed with the only constraints being budget and creativity, or did it get dictated by someone else to meet some corporate goals?
But I will say, specifically in terms of awards, that removing anything with big bucks behind it at the time of development (and arguably if there were serious publishing resources after the fact) has merit, because it's so easy for money to corrupt the results.
Indie music has been around forever, with a wide range of artists from different styles contributing. It means being on an independent label and many artists of many different styles contribute to it.
Indie rock is a particular style that evolved out of the indie music scene. It has a particular sound and some consistent themes. It evolved out of but is not limited to the indie music scene.
There are sever non-“Indie music” bands that make “Indie rock”.
Pixel graphics, avant-garde play styles, weird themes. These are hallmarks of the “indie style” of game development, and evolve from not necessarily having the resources of a large studio. But they themselves become the definitions of what it means to be “indie”. Consider turntables and record scratches in hip hop. Consider 8 track recorders in techno, and 4 track recorders in garage music.
I think the quote from CB sums it up: “The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called… COWBOY BEBOP”
An Indie game is one that has a single independent developer. The developer is artist, composer, programmer, and wears every hat of the business. That’s an indie game.
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