Opinion: I think it is very fair to say that if a game is indie, it's indicative of its poor quality

[WC4Life]

pokoko said:

It's a false dichotomy and most people who believe it are only hurting themselves.

What does "indie" even mean? By the literal definition, Insomniac is indie. So is Bungie.

A lot of people think it means team size. Where, then, is the dividing line? 20 people? 50 people? 100 people? Seems kind of silly.

I've got a better dividing line: games that interest me and games that don't. I don't give a rat's ass about the size of the team that made the game, I don't care if people call them "indie" or "AAA". All of that is completely irrelevant.

Some games from smaller studios are good, some are bad. Some AAA games are good, some are bad. I've spent over 100 hours in This War of Mine and would take it over Assassin's Creed any day of the bloody week.

If people want to base what they play one these little labels, that's fine with me. Don't blame me for chuckling, though.

"indie" is used as industry term, pulling out dictionary means total lack of context. It is vague term and needs to be inspected case by case. Generally speaking it means smaller team sizes, smaller games, barebones graphics, smaller pricetag etc. because there is no major funding from publisher.

 

If we take 100 indie games and 100 big publisher funded games, the difference is instantly noticeably. My opinion is that from those 100 indie games, when picked blindly, the quality of gaming experience can be called poor compared to publisher funded games. It means you need to do your research when buying indie games and mass market just won't do that in the scale.

 

I'm not against indie games. There are great gaming experiences that manage to top even those big titles. But listing 1-2 indie titles that were great does not mean the overall quality of indie games are on par or even close.