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Depending on who or when you ask, indie seems to be a genre, a scene, a vibe and a controversy generator for the game awards. Why can't we seem to find any common ground on a term that seemingly just means independently produced? In today's episode, we discuss the different qualifiers (and disqualifiers) for anything from one person twine games to teams of 33-400 people with a roughly $10million budget. Y'know, the little guys.
MAGfest, The Protoment Act III, King’s Field, Katamari Damacy, Super Monkey Ball, Sim City, Paper Larva Artist, Magic The Gathering, Tunic, Awesome Games Done Quick 2026, XBLA, Cave Story, Yume Nikki, Braid, Castle Crashers, Braid: Critical Theory on the Joy of Ludic Expression - A Soulja Boy Review, Jonathan Blow provides his thoughts on women, Super Meat Boy, Bastion, Fez, Sword And Sworcery, Planet Coaster, Humble Indie Bundle (back when it was good), Aquaria
Is it an indie game if they don't have a publisher? (0:25:02)
Devolver Digital, Blumhouse Games, Outersloth, Aggrocrab, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Undertale, Big Mode, Animal Well, Star of Providence, Double Fine, Psych Odyssey,
Is it an indie if they don’t have a big budget? (0:37:49)
Shovel Knight, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, World of Goo, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Deltarune, Laika Studios, Dave the Diver, Nexxon, Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Mirror’s Edge, Despelote, Owlboy, FF7 Remake
Game Ratings: Game Awards Indie Game of the Year Winners (0:57:33)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Gone Home, Sea of Stars, Chrono Trigger, MGSV, Chrono Cross, The Messenger, Limbo, Mario Party 1, Trials HD, Ms. Splosion Man, Journey, Disco Elysium
Is it indie if they don’t have a CEO? (1:26:17)
Sandfall Interactive, Remedy Games, Larian Studios,Supergiant Games
Is it indie if a small number of people worked on it? (1:45:08)
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Our Valued Customers, Clair Obscur barred from Indie awards due to undisclosed AI usage, House House, Untitled Goose Game, Big Walk, Peak, Big Butt Bobby, Rayman Origins, Rayman 64
Closing Thoughts and Question Zone (1:59:04)
A game primarily funded either through the developers themselves or individuals who believe in their dream, e.g. working for free in their spare time, from previous game revenue, or from crowdfunding. It should not involve investments from other corporations or individuals expecting a return of greater value. Critically, an independent studio does not have a publisher who isn't also themselves.
An indie game can be divided into categories of scale, none of which has an agreed upon term at present. I think the maximum threshold for an indie game will be a title started and developed without initial support from a major publisher and visibly has a more restricted budget than major triple A releases.
On the lower end, an indie game is a borderline hobby game produced by a team that could fit in a motel room and is often characterized by strong artistic vision and experimentation aided by the small team size and relative lack of corporate oversight. These are more in the category of an art house indie game or passion project.
Ultimately, indie is a spectrum and a game feels MORE indie if it has a strong authorial voice, compensates for fewer development resources with innovation, and is less visibly under the direction of dominant publishers and marketing trends.
It's tough to pin down today when the term is so diluted and access to easy-to-use tools is the most open it's ever been, but an indie game to me is one which is made by a small studio or team with little to no financial backing from another party. Indie publishers complicate this and blur the line, but there's the matter of scale to consider with this. Is Demonschool an indie game despite being funded and published by Ysbryd Games? Based on the publisher's output of smaller titles with modest costs, you can easily say "yes". What about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which runs on UE5, is much larger in scope than what one would think of with independent games, but was still funded by Pacific Drive and Sifu publisher Kepler Interactive? Technically "yes". But as the number of publishers shrinks year over year and funding for independent projects becomes more scarce, the definition blurs further. Maybe the term "indie game" should be redefined to consider the financial logistics of development and distribution less than the the level of creative control that developers have over the project. Games like Dave the Diver throw a wrench into this line of thinking as well, but these are the pitfalls of trying to define a term which has been misunderstood and at times pigeonholed into reflecting particular styles or aesthetics rather than simple realities of how a work came to be, and even then the complications don't end.
tl;dr fuck man if it wasn't made by Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, EA, or Ubisoft, call it whatever you want
When I think indie, I think that anybody could make that game if they had the skills rather than if they had the money. If you have the money to access stuff like mo-cap or a bunch of external contractors, it's hard to call that indie anymore. Games like Expedition 33 or even Dispatch, I feel are something in between AAA and indie. They deserve all the love and recognition of course, but I dunno, it's kinda hard to draw the line of whether to really call them indie games imo. But then there's a game like Date Everything where it's got a horde of AAA voice actors but leans more on the indie side in terms of the rest of their dev team. Again, I think we just really need a term for something between AAA and indie. AA? A?
AssistantTurtlemover says -
An Indie Game is a game made made independently from a traditional publisher that could intervene financially, creatively or technically in the process of the creation of the game Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Final Fantasy X, Shadow Hearts, Legend of Dragoon, Lost Odyssey, Andrew Bluett’s FFX Retrospective, Lonely Magic - Rebecca Sugar, Steven Universe is really really good yall - it turns out all the “Filler” episodes have setups and payoffs for worldbuilding and emotional beats IMAGINE THAT, Tenchi Muyo, Tenchi Universe, Captain Harlock, Fantasian, Blue Dragon, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, Troll 2 4K Restoration, Best Worst Movie
