What if it is commissioned by a corporation? 

That makes no difference. It's still made by an Independant Studio regadless of whether it's commissioned. If that studio is then bought by the company that commissioned it it's no longer an Independant Studio. It is pretty easy really.

I didn't say it didn't look alright. I said it didn't look AA. None of that comes close.

Are we talking games or the studios themselves? I could agree that the studio is independent if they actually are not owned by a company but if a Large corporation commissions or funds a game from them it's not an indie game.

But the fact people are arguing over the definition, means it's really not pretty easy.

Here, this might help everyone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_game

Insomniac Games are an independent studio, however the games they produce are not independent games.

Stop reading any other responses and read this: Indie either means 2 things:
-small/big games made by small/big teams that are independent (this can be a generic 8 bit throwback or something like Star Citizen)

-small games made by small teams in a AAA studio with a publisher backing like Ubisoft

Out of curiosity. If a company like Activision or EA had created and developed titles like Fez, Castle Crashers or Cave Story, would they still be rated so highly rated (High 80s Metacritic)? And of course so highly talked about and respected by the gaming community?

It's rather 95% shovelware, 4% good games, 1% masterpieces

You should just see the amount of bad indies coming out on pc that fly under everyone's radar, you can occassionally stumble upon them on steam sales.

Games that are made independent of a publisher. Unless indie has become it's own actual style like it has in music?

That is exactly what's happened. As soon as an Indie starts to look like a AAA or mid tear game, people immediately argue it's not an Indie. It's as if some people want Indie to mean 'bad 8 bit graphics game'. It's born out of a need to reduce a list artificially ...

I do find it odd that this independent studio/game is being developered on other people's money. Hardly independent. :P