So you say that a publisher (If it doesn't touch your original work) has nothing to do with your game being indie or not?

That's a good explanation, (kinda what I thought at first) but I have a question now. Quantic Dream's games are indie?

Indie, as a general concept, consists of a free lance artist or team of artists (artist here is in a broad sense) who do stuff they like without restraints of working in a corporate environment.  They are typically free of marketing demographics and so on.  They works, due to their size, generally can be all over.

From a business perspective, Indie means this:

* MUCH lower development costs.  For the console makers, and Steam, it means that they can get content out there and only pay developers if their content sells.  Development costs is pretty much on the backs of the developers.  Their costs would be lower, because they don't have casts of thousands they need to pay.

* Much wider range of quality and originality of concepts.  You are more likely to get experimental concepts done by Indies, and stuff all over the map.  Of course, in this, you will also get a glut of clones of stuff that had worked, but that goes with the territory.  

* Lower production value.  You are not going to get a wide range of voice actors, Hans Zimmer doing the soundtrack, and what is equivalent to Hollywood Blockbusters.  

* Game that feels far more old-school in nature.  You will get evolutionary updates to old concepts.  BUT, when you work with small dev teams, who are trying to make entertaining games, you are going to run into games that feel old school to some degree.

End result, is you have a flood of mixed quality, and a rare gem that will rise to the top and end up turning the industry on its head.  For the console makers and steam, it is like buying huge numbers of lottery tickets, and hoping one takes off and becomes a Minecraft or Angry Birds.   Costs to return on investment is what excites them.  And the rare gems I speak of  are what help the industry from getting stuck in a rut, and dying off from boredom.

If you see my CADERS link below, it started out with casual, retro, and neo-retro.  With the flux of Indie, I then realize that neo-retro can fairly easily be replaced by Indie, because of the nature of Indie stuff being like old school.

Damn, I laughed a lot at that for no apparent reason

I like your vision. I'll have this in mind.

The tools have gotten better, and as the videogame industry has jettisoned talent due to the insane business model they follow of wanting to be Hollywood without box office, the upper end is getting better.  However, I will say that that range is all over the map, because there is no gatekeepers to screen out anyone from coding.  Barriers to entry are close to none, so expect a TON of dregs with the gems out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2

Audio[edit source | editbeta]

On August 20, 2009, Robert Bowling revealed through Twitter that Kevin McKidd, Craig Fairbrass, Barry Pepper, Keith David, and Glenn Morshower were confirmed voice actors for the game.^[41] It was later confirmed that McKidd would voice the protagonist, "Soap" MacTavish.^[42] Fairbrass, who voiced Gaz in Call of Duty 4, provided voice work for "Ghost". Billy Murray confirmed that he would reprise his role as Captain Price from Call of Duty 4.^[43] Rapper 50 Cent provided voice work for the Special Ops and multiplayer modes, portraying "one of the squad [member] voices."^[44][45] The main theme of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was provided by Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer,^[46] while the soundtrack was composed by Lorne Balfe who co-produced 2009 film Sherlock Holmes score with Zimmer.^[47] The soundtrack was officially released on June 1, 2010.

Hans Zimmer did the sound track to Modern Warfare 2.  So, while maybe you thought I was going over the top for effect, it did actually happen.

Want to know non-indie vs indie?  Non-indie hires Eminem to do the soundtrack, while Indie finds some guy off craigslist looking for a break to have their music discovered.  

But guess which one is more likely to come up with an original concept?  Starving artists will go outside the curve of norm to find something.

Edit: Correction, they had Hans Zimmer do the main theme.  My bad...

I agree the Indie word lost the meaning a long time ago.

You see today the Indie Rock that have dozen of Artists with the intelectual "work" owned by big Publishers... instead of Independent meaning the the Indie Rock become a Musical Genre lol.

I loathe the term and use "small developer" instead when I can.  Too many people bring too many preconceptions to the table on both sides.  Some use it to present smaller games as being somehow more pure, others use it to disparage anything that doesn't have a retail release.  Both are just perspectives people force on games.  In the end, that's all they are, games.  I don't judge based on "indie" or "AAA" or whatever, simply on whether I enjoy it or not.

The hatred for smaller developers is getting ridiculous.  Some of the generalizations sound really childish.

It is as good as any, but as I already stated I think the term indie is used to sound hip and to describe smaller games thats all. 

Here is a good video that goes into being an Indie developer: