A Bundle Less Humble?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 7, 2012

Craig Stern (Telepath RPG, etc.) takes the recent Humble Indie Bundle to task for its inclusion of the excellent (but not really indie) game Psychonauts in a blog post at Gamasutra:

Humble? Sure. Indie? Not So Much.

I wasn’t gonna make a big deal about this one either, but Craig makes some pretty convincing arguments.

I’m pretty okay with “indie” being kind of a vague term. I’m even down with it being something of a marketing term. ‘Sall good. But that flexibility doesn’t mean “indie” is devoid of meaning, as I’ve stated before. And indie means much more than “cool” or “unique,” and those are really about the only things that Psychonauts has going for it that really seem indie. It’s very cool. Very different. Stylistically out on it’s own, taking chances that few mainstream titles dare to do (and for good reason, sadly – the game was a commercial flop).

But it’s a game that was publisher-financed to the order of $13 million or something. Not a record-breaking sum by any stretch, but it is still firmly standing in the big-budget mainstream development world.

Craig’s right. Are we not taking a stand because the Humble Indie Bundle is so really cool and we love it, or because Psychonauts is so really cool and we love it, or both? But “indie” isn’t a value judgment. Non-indie games can be awesome. Indie isn’t a brand. It’s not a genre. It’s not a style. It’s not a measure of creativity or quality. And it sure as hell doesn’t hold the monopoly on cool.

So that’s what indie isn’t. Now, what isn’t indie?

If Microsoft paid you to produce the game, it’s probably not indie. Ditto for Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sega, Activision, and pretty much any other publisher.

If you actually wrote out checks or otherwise transferred hard cash for more than a million dollars – let alone over $10 million – during development of your game, it’s probably isn’t indie.

If you NEED to sell over 100,000 copies of your game in order to break even, it’s probably not indie. If you need to sell a million copies or more just to break even… come on, seriously? So not indie.

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Dave Toulouse said,

I was reading the interview with the Humble Indie Bundle on RPS (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/07/a-humble-interview-with-the-humble-indie-bundle/) and something got me to scratch my head a bit:

Q: “With Limbo originally published by Microsoft, Psychonauts by THQ, Majesco, and so on, do you think you’re pushing the boundaries on what indie can really be?”

A: “… all of them are in the situation where the IP is owned by the studio …”

So if you deal with publishers but keep your IP it’s “indie”? What does it make you if you DON’T deal with publishers? More “indie-er”?

If the “indie” label was a bit confusing before now there’s no way of knowing what it is anymore unless you ask the definition to every person you talk to just to make sure you understand what the other is talking about. Even if imperfect just checking if a publisher was involved was a good start. Now it appears it just depends if you feel like X game is indie or not. If it’s “innovative” then it’s indie and if it’s not it’s AAA?

Anyway I think I won’t be using the “indie” label anymore. It just confuses everyone and doesn’t really mean anything it seems. It’s just some category found on Steam or something. I’ll just call myself “a guy making games in his basement”. Actually I think “indie” might have come from something like that at first…
ChrisH said,

I really dislike how “indie” has become this catch-all term for any game that’s quirky, retro, low(ish) budget, etc. As one of those ‘bedroom coder’ types, it doesn’t do me any favors to have my games compared with those that took 8 people 3 years and $3,000,000 to make.
Califer said,

I got the bundle and was awfully disappointed that Psychonauts ignored my mouse for the most part. Made it impossible to change the controls or even get part the “look around” tutorial until I started hitting enough random keys on the keyboard. The mouse would move around on menus, but I couldn’t click anything.

But no, I wouldn’t call them indie by any means. And especially not the EA Indie Bundle. What a joke.
Rampant Coyote said,

I hate to retreat on that label, though, because we had it first, goldurnit!

But yeah, back in the old days most studios got to keep their IP. It wasn’t until much later that big publishers learned that the little studios had no idea what to do with their IP rights and would surrender them without a fight.

Owning your own IP rights is necessary but not sufficient criteria for indie. I think it’s useful as a first-pass filter. But the way I personally envision the games revolution, this is going to be a common thing for all developers, not just the indies. 🙂
Charles said,

What does owning the ip have to do with independence anyway? If you depend on a publisher to survive you aren’t independent. If you don’t survive and own the ip it dies with you when you go under. Or it gets salvaged for next to nothing.
Rampant Coyote said,

Sounds like I need to revisit an old blog post about why IP rights are so important to independence. 🙂
Charles said,

Did I just come accross as a noob AGAIN? 🙂
Rampant Coyote said,

Way too many folks in this business have made the same mistake. I guess that’s why we’ve had the rise of the indies, though, so it all worked out in the end.
Andrew said,

Not exactly on topic, but I just stumbled over the fact that Dead State has begun a Kickstarter. I figured that’s the kind of news you’d want to pass along to everyone here, and sooner rather than later.
Dave Toulouse said,

Funny thought about owning IP. I’ve stick to my IP, no publisher, still penniless. Maybe it just sucks. Could be. Anyway.

You know how indies always struggle to find money? Well in some case maybe selling their IP wouldn’t be such a bad plan. Oh sure your IP is worth more than anything in the world… If you can market it that is…

Are game developers just 1 trick ponies? Can’t you use the money from selling an IP to get something else going on? Yeah for some people it works. For others it doesn’t.

Fact is that if you invest in some project you are gambling unless you can predict the future (in that case good for you). You can either take a bet and win a lot or sell it away and still allow you to keep doing what you like doing which I guess is making games…

Oh I admire people who stick by what they created. I’m still not at the point of blaming someone who sold away their creation though. We all just want to create games and sadly to this day it still requires time and money.

It’s nice to hear about “indies” who kept their IP and still make it. What about all the others who kept their IP and didn’t go anywhere though?
Rampant Coyote said,

I don’t have any problem with indies – after they’ve given it a run – selling their IP later on. That’s the whole point – it’s their option. I’m not saying they have to take it with them to their grave. What I’m talking about is the standard practice in the industry when the publisher loans you enough money to finish the game (against your potential royalties, AFTER they’ve deducted their own expenses) – in installments that they can cancel at any time – and oh, by the way, the IP now belongs to them, now, no matter what happens. So once the deal is struck, while you may have given birth to the idea, it is now somebody else’s baby while in development. In that case, it’s clearly NOT INDIE.

And no, I’d say 99% of I.P. isn’t worth much. But as I’ll posit in a blog post next week – I.P. rights are the rights to have other people make you money. Maybe not much, but otherwise you’re only a hired gun making somebody else money.
Albert1 said,

This is what happens when you go the “glamour”, “trendy”, “stilish”, etc way.
Much better when it was simply “shareware”!
Anon said,

I don’t know much about IP rights but even I can see that Psychonauts isn’t an indie game. It was published by Majesco back in the day (the company that brought us such immortal classics as the BloodRayne and Cooking Mama series).

Interestingly, while most commenters think that Psychonauts is “a great game” and applaud its inclusion the game was a veritable flop back in the day and people like me expected Tim Schafer to get tarred and feathered for this. He is still around, though, and what better way to increase awareness by sneaking an older game that hardly makes any money now into a popular indie bundle (/the/ indie bundle, of course).

But is the inclusion of Psychonauts really a problem?

As an indie author I’d be more worried about this:
HIB5 included arguably some of the best and/or most successful indie titles of the recent time. And it generates half-a-million sales, putting large wads of cash into their developers hands.

How can Joe Sixpack indie developer with a lesser known IP at his hands compete with this?
Answer: He probably can’t and will stay “poor”. If only less prominent indie title would be included the bundle wouldn’t be as successful. (See other indie bundles for comparison)
Anon said,

Addendum:

What I often see in indie discussions is “indie” meaning “financially independent” (as in “self-published”).

But what about creative independence?

Yes, of course: Many (all?) publishers order their contractors/studios to produce a game exactly after marketing specs, send in executive producers to control this etc.

Take Kickstarter on the other hand: Is a game that is exactly made after what the pledging public wants/expects an “independent game”?
Or is a “real” indie developer that jumps onto the kickstarter bandwagon to finance his work only using a different method to pay for his meals?
Isn’t that the same except for a simple change: Customers paying in advance replacing publishers financing a game in advance?

Yes, the customer may indeed get exactly what he wants (=pledged for) but that may also be the case if the publisher does his homework with market surveys etc. to produce a game the paying public wants (Call of Duty seems to be the only popular first person shooter right now – of course they are pumping out sequel after sequel…).

The real “indie” developer may be rather someone like Jay who uses his regular job to finance his game creations. He can decide what game he produces, what he stuffs into it, how much time he spends on polishing and he still can give a damn about how many people actually play it.

Satisfaction is of course very subjective and Joe Indie Developer may want a lot of people to play his creation – but how far will his artistic vision cave in to satisfy the audience?

The whole thing might just be a little more complex than reducing it on financing.
Justin Alexander said,

Dave Toulouse wrote: So if you deal with publishers but keep your IP it’s “indie”?

That sounds like a reasonable definition from a certain POV. “Indie” means “independent”; and by controlling their own IP, these studios have remained independent.

But, yes, there does seem to be something wrong when a studio that spends $50 million on a game while controlling the IP is suddenly “indie”.

OTOH, “low budget” doesn’t necessarily cut it. If EA decides to spend $100,000 developing a cheap game, I wouldn’t call that indie.

So is it a combination? It has to be low budget (how low?) and the studio has to maintain their IP?

What if an indie developer later sells their IP? Does the game stop being indie?

In the specific case of Psychonauts being included in the indie bundle: While I would agree that Psychonauts is not an indie game, the proceeds are (I’m assuming) going to Tim Schafer’s current efforts which I think I would be comfortable describing as indie.