With some of the new members here, I'm starting to see a lot of game talk that isn't indie at all. While I play a ton of games and a lot of them aren't indie, there are also plenty of game forums where people talk about those. I was attracted to this one specifically because of the indie focus. I'll happily discuss the others, too, no doubt, but for those of you who aren't really sure what indie is, this thread is for you. So what does indie mean? We'll let Wikipedia help out with that some: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_game So chances are, if you bought it in a store, it's probably not indie. If all of your friends, your friends' parents, your enemies, and your dog are playing it, it's probably not indie. There are exceptions, of course, like when Minecraft got huge, but that's rare . Call of Duty 1, 2, 3, 4 are not indie....WoW is not indie....Final Fantasy, Sims, Nascar Racing, NFL? Nope, not indie.
Thanks you posting this! Great contribution, i didnt really know what the word 'indie' meant but this post helped me understand
Thank you! I'm glad you understand it a bit better now. Hopefully it makes sense now why there are so many obscure games being talked about here that maybe you didn't know what they were before.
They're all about gay cowboys eating pudding. Oh wait, that's indie films. Indie games come from small time studios that nobody's heard of until they have that one big release, like Minecraft or Angry Birds. So once these studios have a hit, are they still considered indie?
That depends. Technically, so long as they stick with a small, independent team as they did before, then yes, they are indie. Many of them end up teaming up with larger studios to work on bigger projects later and at that point, they're not, of course. It gets really fuzzy and there aren't really any set rules or guidelines to define them. Extremely successful "indie games" are really rare, though, so there's rarely a need to try to distinguish anyway.
Thanks for clearing that up! I came here thinking the same thing as a lot of the others; I thought this was going to be an Indie Gaming Dedicated Forum. Now that I know it's independent from Indie Gaming, i'm going to leave! (joking). Anyways, thanks again and keep it up!
I generally classify "indie" not so much on the size of the team, as opposed to the amount of funding support they have. I mean, I'd still classify Mojang as an indie company which makes indie games. But they've got a fairly sizeable team now working on multiple games. However, they don't have a massive, multi million dollar company publishing their games like EA or Activision. Having a successful hit (like Minecraft, Angry Birds or Super Meat Boy) doesn't necessarily negate their "indie" status. Signing on with Valve or EA would though. Goram corporate giants. They're all soulless I tells ya. *clings to Mass Effect*.
Thank you for clarifying what an indie game was for me and as well as others. I thought I knew what it was and you just justified my guess.
Indie generally refers to small game development teams that do not have the biggest corporate structure, like seen in MicroSoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc, etc.
The word indie is short for indipendent (i think that is spelled right) anyway it means that we have the control and nobody else
It's interesting to note that 'independent' has somewhat changed it's meaning over the last half-dozen years or so. Valve Software, for example, would've been called 'independent' back before the most recent indie game revival, because they are 'independent' from the publishers they work with - the publishers can't force them to do anything, because their games are self-funded. It didn't use to mean 'small', that's a more recent connotation of the word. In the same vein, many 'indie' studios that are receiving funds from publishers wouldn't previously have been called 'independent'. One example of what used to be called 'independent', but now would not be called independent, and is only still called 'independent' because it awkwardly still exists is the studio and people don't want to demote it's status is 'Introversion Software'.
