Competing for Indie-Hood
Brent Fox of NinjaBee has taken a stab at defining "indie." Well, more like ranting about the use and misuse of the term. I don't think it will ever have a final, agreed-upon definition which can really be misused because ... well, that's just the nature of indie.

If you hang out in certain gaming forums long enough, you'll find Brent's analysis to be a subject that is all too familiar. There is often a bit of grousing over who is more indie than whom, and whether or not some company that isn't indie enough is trying to 'cash in' on the term that more rightly belongs to someone else:

NinjaBee: Indie Game Developer Definition

Now, I used to work there, so I may be biased. But I first ran into these guys when they were a "guns for hire" studio that had barely survived the last recession. They were down to a skeleton crew looking to go indie more out of desperation than anything else. Outpost Kaloki had been developed on their own dime, originally shopped around to publishers without success before they decided to take it indie in hopes of recouping some of their losses. It was self-funded, and self-published.

Brent, Lane, and Steve put their livelihoods on the line to try and live the dream and chart their own course in the games biz. And they've been extremely generous and supportive of the indie community for years. When people talk about the indie gaming spirit, I think of these guys just as readily as some dude in his parent's basement making free games that would have looked at home on the Atari VCS. Any definition of indie, in my mind, has to include them.

But I think it goes beyond a self-esteem or insecurity thing, as Brent suggests. Indie games must compete with each other as much as they must compete with mainstream titles. They must compete for recognition, awards, and - yes - sales. The difference in production quality between high-end and low-end indie games can be even larger than that of mainstream triple-A titles and the top indie offerings.

When you've spent the entry fee to submit your game to the IGF for consideration, and find your game has been beaten by a game which obviously cost 100x as much to make, some issues of fairness are going to get called into question. It's unavoidable.

While I resent it being used in this way (by myself as much as by others), to some degree the "indie" label is used to reset the expectations on the audience. Slap an "indie" label on a game with lower production values that would otherwise be met with nothing by contempt by gamers, and at least some fraction of the audience might be willing to give the game a second look and try to see past the lack of gloss and current-gen graphics. But when "indie" can apply to a game that cost a half-million dollars to make (and looks it), it leaves the bulk of indies out in the cold. Nobody wants to compete in a category where they are hopelessly outclassed.

So arguments about who is and isn't indie really revolve around attempts to level the playing field. I doubt there is a good answer. Limiting games by budget would be a ridiculous exercise. What's the difference between paying a professional artist thousands of dollars to create content for my game, and getting him into donating all his time for free? From the player's perspective, not a thing.

Ultimately - for me - it's about the games, not the labels. I think the little guys suffer more from lack of attention than anything else, which is why I try to evangelize the best of the indie games. There are a lot of overlooked gems out there. And I like hearing the stories of these guys who bring games to their audiences outside of the conventional routes - who are able to bypass the old middlemen and gatekeepers to get their visions and creations more directly into the hands of the players.

Beyond that, I try to stay disinterested in who might be "more indie" than whom. It doesn't really matter.

Labels: Biz, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:00 AM (Permalink)