What's an Indie Game?

[Nuvendil]

jason1637 said:

Nuvendil said:

No because it is developed under contract with Sony, who does have significant influence. And of course investors etc.  

Best way to put it is the development aspect is entirely under the direction of the studio.  Which means there can be investors mind and even publishers, but the studio is in control of the game conceptually and in the development phase.  

That's the key, the developer is in the driver's seat.  There's going to be some grey areas, but that's the basic.  Your game can be huge and ambitious like Star Citizen or small and fairly simple.  

So then it depends on how much control the independent developers have? A game like Sunset Overdrive Microsoft gave lots of freedom to insomniac. I'd consider that to be an indie game but would you?

Like I said, it is a bit grey.  I personally would probably not give it the indie tag given Microsoft did have considerable control over it.  I would sah 99% of the time when it's a contracted game, it's not going to be indie usually.  Honestly, the Witcher series is a more curious case.  The developer operates independent of publishers up until distribution.  So unless they have a large investment group or something over them, they are technically independent. 

And also, Indie is not necessarily different from AAA.  You can be both.