What does it mean to be "Indie" anymore?
- Thread starter aozgolo
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Well I think indie genre now just means an 8bit side scroller. Because that's mostly what I see.
I see "indie" used fairly informally with a lot of personal definitions in the context of game development/publishing.
So, working under that assumption, I offer my own:
"Self funded, and self-published."
Not Self-Distributed, since by necessity is almost always handled by any number of retailers (physical and/or services).
The practical identifier I use is that an Indie game retains full internal creative control and ownership from start to finish.
Which means any game created or funded via publicly traded companies cannot be "indie".
Notice how I've said nothing about the quality or purpose of the game itself (indie games aren't automatically better than any other; in fact, there are a lot of garbage indie games out right now).
So, working under that assumption, I offer my own:
"Self funded, and self-published."
Not Self-Distributed, since by necessity is almost always handled by any number of retailers (physical and/or services).
The practical identifier I use is that an Indie game retains full internal creative control and ownership from start to finish.
Which means any game created or funded via publicly traded companies cannot be "indie".
Notice how I've said nothing about the quality or purpose of the game itself (indie games aren't automatically better than any other; in fact, there are a lot of garbage indie games out right now).
If anything, this post has more firmly shown me that there is no true concensus amongst gamers on what Indie means. I read the Wikipedia definition before I started this thread, and yes I saw where it said:
Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher (Citation Needed BTW)
My question though was if there was really more to it than that? It would seem in the public eye there is. When you say Indie game, people tend to have a very real concept in their minds. It may be fair to say that Indie is a broader term that can apply to way more than these Garage Band Developers who make simple or dated graphic games, but because the term is so well associated with those type of developers, I think it's fair you need to have some sort of designation to separate them.
The big reason I assumed there was more to it is because terms like AAA Games which really only means "Popular Game" is used often as a counter-term to Indie, like you can't be Indie and AAA. Whatever the case may be on the true definition, there's certainly a disconnect between what the word actually means and how it's used, which either means the word has been redefined or we are sorely in need of a better word to describe this particular type of game development.
Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher (Citation Needed BTW)
My question though was if there was really more to it than that? It would seem in the public eye there is. When you say Indie game, people tend to have a very real concept in their minds. It may be fair to say that Indie is a broader term that can apply to way more than these Garage Band Developers who make simple or dated graphic games, but because the term is so well associated with those type of developers, I think it's fair you need to have some sort of designation to separate them.
The big reason I assumed there was more to it is because terms like AAA Games which really only means "Popular Game" is used often as a counter-term to Indie, like you can't be Indie and AAA. Whatever the case may be on the true definition, there's certainly a disconnect between what the word actually means and how it's used, which either means the word has been redefined or we are sorely in need of a better word to describe this particular type of game development.