Wednesday, November 21, 2007
GCG Tackles the "What Is An Indie Game?" Question
When talking about indie games, the question often comes up: "What is an indie game?" You ask n people, you'll probably get n+1 answers. I've tackled it twice, myself, and though I'm fairly satisfied with my own answer, I also admit it's hardly the final word on the subject.
Game Career Guide - a media partner of GamaSutra - has now tackled the "What is Indie?" question, in the article, "The Indie Ethos." And they emerge with no real answers, but lots of opinions. An excerpt:
"If it is the developers -- the people -- that make a game "indie," then one still must question what criteria those people should meet. Although it's straightforward to say a team of four developers working with a self-funded $1,500 budget is indeed making an independent game, what happens when the studio is 10 people strong and has a budget of tens of thousand of dollars, but the money comes from the individuals on the team refinancing their homes? What happens when the team is 15 people strong and is backed by several hundred thousand dollars in venture capital? How do both money and team size play into the picture? "There's also an observation by Sam Roberts, director of the Indiecade festival (formally one of the guys responsible for the Slamdance Guerilla Game Developer competition) that I'd like to see verified:
"...there are more low-cost options for musicians and filmmakers nowadays than there are for game-makers. In the last 10 or 15 years, the barrier of entry for filmmakers and musicians has dropped dramatically, with more and more low-cost tools and digital equipment becoming available, and with more and more outlets for releasing finished products. For game developers, on the other hand, the barrier of entry is still quite high, seeing as even low-cost tools require the user to have some knowledge of programming."The final word? There won't be one. The traditional way of making a modern computer or video game (find a publisher who funds development out of advances towards royalties) is still dominant, but more alternatives are being discovered every day for creating and distributing games. Which of those ways are part of the "indie" way may remain in an ever-changing gray area.
But for me, it still comes down to people making the games they want to make without oversight by a third party. If you need to get permission to do what you want to do, or are subject to binding oversight, you ain't indie. That encompasses everything from quick-and-dirty web games like Desktop Tower Defense (still one of my favorites) to pretty major, high-quality (and bigger-budget) offerings like PopCap's titles and Soldak's much more elaborate Depths of Peril. That works well enough for me.
(Vaguely) related rubbish masquerading as useful information:
* What Is an Indie Game?
* Dependent, Independent, and Indie
* Gimme That Old Time Indie Game Development
* Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance?
* Is There Hope For Indie Computer RPGs?
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Labels: Indie Evangelism
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:42 AM (Permalink)
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Heh - the "Dependent, Independent, and Indie" article was written specifically to that post. While it may not change what some people think of when they hear the term, I'll keep evangelizing it. While it's true that "indie" is used to connote the underdog in industries that have matured enough to establish its leaders, you have to remember that a lot of the "top dogs" were once indies / underdogs themselves. Microsoft was once an itty bitty upstart trying not to survive under the protection of IBM. Nintendo once came to Atari asking for their blessings and support (and how would the story have ended differently if Atari hadn't ignored the 'small fish"). ESPN was just a little "indie" sports news channel.
The same is happening with indie gaming companies. They start out small, but if they are serving an important niche that is being ignored by the "big dogs," (which is exactly what happened with casual games), they can explode. But you have to start somewhere.
And when there's an "establishment" of gatekeepers that try to control all distribution (an impossible goal, but it is in their best interest to do what they can to do exactly that), you have to have the little upstarts shaking up the status quo. And that's where the indies come in.
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The same is happening with indie gaming companies. They start out small, but if they are serving an important niche that is being ignored by the "big dogs," (which is exactly what happened with casual games), they can explode. But you have to start somewhere.
And when there's an "establishment" of gatekeepers that try to control all distribution (an impossible goal, but it is in their best interest to do what they can to do exactly that), you have to have the little upstarts shaking up the status quo. And that's where the indies come in.
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