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Forums - Gaming - What's an Indie Game?

jason1637 on 05 July 2017
twintail said:

Nuvendil said:

 Actually, as a writer, I can point out your definition of indie for writers is wrong.  It means self published and written.  This is because the relationship between publisher and writer goes way beyond distribution, unlike games where publishers frequently do act more or less purely as distributors.  Shoot there are game publishers where that's all you do.

If a project being sizable invalidates the indie tag than...what's the point?  Indie is a word with definite meaning.  It means independent.  Has nothing to do with budget.  It's a profound oxymoron that indies are more restricted in what they can do and still be recognized for what they are than AAA companies.

Sorry I should have developed the at idea more. I was talking about small scale publishing which in a sense is indie. But of course self publishing is where I should have taken the idea. So yes you are right about that. 

Though I actually disagree and agree. There are combining elements. Indie doesnt only mean that you are independent. It also means not being labelled with mainstream aveneues of the industry you are in. And lets be honest, if you have a production budget on a game of like $50 million theres no way you indie - at least in my mind. But again, its a combination of elements and not just one thing so really it depends on the situation. Self funding for instance is pretty important to that too.

 

jason1637 said:

 Most indie games are intended to hit as much people as possible. Gmaes like Minecraft, Rocket League, and Shovel Knight have hit a mainstream audience and most of these developers want these games to be big and become mainstream.

I think there is a difference between what you want from your project and what the project actually requires. 

Of course everyone wants their game to go mainstream. The more ppl buying your game, the more money you are making. But if you can make a game on a budget of $1million you dont require as many ppl to buy into your game as opposed to a game that is closing on 50 (this is just an example)

I think insomniac can be regarded as indie, but I dont see how something like Sunset makes it a indie game. If nothing about the game is changed but MS was given IP ownership, all of a sudden its no longer an indie game? In both situations, MS is still the publisher. They still funded the game. Insomniac needed the financial help of another much bigger company to get the game made. 

This isnt a small studio funding. Is not self funding. Its not even crowd funding. I just dont see how that makes Sunset indie. There is literally nothing independent or non-mainstream about how the game was made. 

Yes Microsoft funded the game so it could stay exclusive to their platform but I still see it as an indie game because it's an independent studio making their own game. While for Spiderman they are making a Marvel game licensed out by Sony.



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Lawlight on 05 July 2017
Nuvendil said:
Lawlight said:

That is absolutely not true. Kickstarter even says that for refunds the pledger has to deal with the project owner.

It's only recently that people have started suing failed kickstarters and they're bring held accountable. But plenty of people took the money and left.

Example of failed crowdfunding projects:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/biggest-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-scams/

It's not a binding act with KS, it is between Creators and Backers, as explained in Kickstarter's terms of service.  Kickstarter is not a party to the agreement but a backer or backers can hold a creator accountable in a court of law if they fraudulently enticed backers to support them.  Obviously the offended party in an agreement has to initiate the process, the law - either penal or civil - is not administered by all seeing gods.

Which is no different than if a company lies to secure an investment from a venture capitalist.  It's illegal, but the process of bringing the offending parties to justice still has to be initiated by an offended member or an observer.

So no, you are incorrect, the project creators are liable and are bound by law to fulfill their obligations to the satisfaction of the backers.

No, you're incorrect. A donation to a party does not make them liable. That is why so many crowdfunded projects just end with the backers having no recourse. Has Molyneux been sued for never releasing the Linux version of Godus? Comcept for the Mighty No 9 rewards? I don't think so.



SegataSanshiro on 05 July 2017
jason1637 said:
SegataSanshiro said:

Indies are lower budget and smaller & independent studios.  You may as well call Valve an indie.

Why does it have to be low budget? If a game is made by an independent studio it's an indie game as long as they own the IP imo. A game for rocket league has blown up and made lots of money which is now being used to develop new content for the game instead of making a sequel. So it has a large budget now but it's still an indepedent  studios game and IP. By you're definition it won't be an indie anymore.

You know CD Red is publicy traded right? if a public company is indie then Nintendo and EA are indie.



Nuvendil on 05 July 2017
Lawlight said:
Nuvendil said:

It's not a binding act with KS, it is between Creators and Backers, as explained in Kickstarter's terms of service.  Kickstarter is not a party to the agreement but a backer or backers can hold a creator accountable in a court of law if they fraudulently enticed backers to support them.  Obviously the offended party in an agreement has to initiate the process, the law - either penal or civil - is not administered by all seeing gods.

Which is no different than if a company lies to secure an investment from a venture capitalist.  It's illegal, but the process of bringing the offending parties to justice still has to be initiated by an offended member or an observer.

So no, you are incorrect, the project creators are liable and are bound by law to fulfill their obligations to the satisfaction of the backers.

No, you're incorrect. A donation to a party does not make them liable. That is why so many crowdfunded projects just end with the backers having no recourse. Has Molyneux been sued for never releasing the Linux version of Godus? Comcept for the Mighty No 9 rewards? I don't think so.

And now you are even more incorrect.  First off, it is illegal to entice people to give you money for the sole purpose of pursuing any activity and then refuse to do that.  That is illegal.  Now if it's purely a spoken agreement, it's very hard to prove.  But then - second thing you missed - this isn't a spoken agreement, it is a public written one, one that is identified as legally binding between project and backer in the terms of service of KS.  Thirdly, the backers have a recourse, it's called a lawsuit.  Civil law puts the onus on the offended party to pursue the matter.  Many law firms would take up the cases you mentioned but if the backers don't make the effort of course nothing will happen.  It's on THE BACKERS to file the suit.  Suits don't just happen without a plaintiff. 

SegataSanshiro said:
jason1637 said:

Why does it have to be low budget? If a game is made by an independent studio it's an indie game as long as they own the IP imo. A game for rocket league has blown up and made lots of money which is now being used to develop new content for the game instead of making a sequel. So it has a large budget now but it's still an indepedent  studios game and IP. By you're definition it won't be an indie anymore.

You know CD Red is publicy traded right? if a public company is indie then Nintendo and EA are indie.

Nintendo and EA have shareholders who hold common shares outside the company and the dev teams, who have control over the board of directors who can also come from outside the company.  And of course, these companies are not dev team controlled in any sense.  Dice is a developer.  Nintendo EAD, Monolith Soft, and Retro are developers.  Nintendo and EA are not.  They are publishers who make heavy use of their brand.

CD Projekt Red I don't know enough about, but being publicly traded doesn't mean they have all of that.  Common stock can be distributed internally, you can even have one guy hold 51% and thus have all the voting power, leaving only preferred stock to be bought publicly, which is purely an means of garnering investment.  You don't have to have a Board of Directors either.  How you structure your company is entirely up to you, within reason.

All that matters to the indie concept is this: who calls the shots on development?  Devs, or some overseeing group be it a Board of Directors, a publisher, an investment group etc?  If the Devs are in control, then they are indie for all meaningful purposes.  If not, they are not.  



Oneeee-Chan!!! on 05 July 2017
gigaSheik said:
Is a game made by Indiana Jones.

No !  Indian's game .



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DarthMetalliCube on 05 July 2017

Independent company, low bugdet, game usually more simplistic graphically and content wise, lower price, concepts often "outside the box"



 

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JRPGfan on 05 July 2017
jason1637 said:

How would you define an indie game?

They typically dont look lik this:

 

You see detail like this, in a game and its most likely not a Indie game :)



PieToast on 05 July 2017

The word "indie" is overused and has lost most of it's meaning. Now it's often used to describe games with genres that don't exist in triple A games and a limited budget even if the game was sponsored by Sony, Microsoft or other big publishers like Ubisoft and EA.



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jason1637 on 05 July 2017
SegataSanshiro said:
jason1637 said:

Why does it have to be low budget? If a game is made by an independent studio it's an indie game as long as they own the IP imo. A game for rocket league has blown up and made lots of money which is now being used to develop new content for the game instead of making a sequel. So it has a large budget now but it's still an indepedent  studios game and IP. By you're definition it won't be an indie anymore.

You know CD Red is publicy traded right? if a public company is indie then Nintendo and EA are indie.

OK but the difference is that CD Project Red is only one studio while Nintendo and EA has multiple studios under them.

twintail said:

 

jason1637 said:

 Yes Microsoft funded the game so it could stay exclusive to their platform but I still see it as an indie game because it's an independent studio making their own game. While for Spiderman they are making a Marvel game licensed out by Sony.

But what has being exclusive got to do anything? EA could have funded the game and it would have been multiplat. 

Insomniac could not make the game, hence why they needed someone else to fund development.

And while Insomniac may own the IP they dont own the game that exists on X1. That belongs entirely to MS and no one but MS can make any decision about the game. So ultimately, Insomniac did indeed make a game for MS because they have as much ownership over it as they do Spider-man. That is to say, none.

This is why there is no PS4 port. This is why Insomniac has publicly said that a PC port is a decision MS must make. Insomniac doesnt have any power or sway over this game because it is not theirs, its MS`s. 

It doesnt really matter if funded or not by another publisher. Microsoft payed Insomniac to make an indie game for them. The game is by an independent studio and they own the IP youre right they don't own the first game but they own the IP. A game made by an independent studio is an Indie game.



Bofferbrauer2 on 05 July 2017

By definition an Indie Studio is a studio which is indepenent from any publisher or other higher entity. This also includes financial backing - they have to get by fully by themselves, which excludes public companies (Kickstarter and the like is ok because you don't give any parts of your company away and thus no say over you're going to make).

They can freely choose any company to publish their games or do it themselves (which is pretty easy nowadays with digital only games, physical releases however not so much).

They can also freely choose which support they want to release their games to.

And most importantly, they have full control over what their  games will be and look like.

An indie studio can be of any size, provided they meet all these criteria.

SegataSanshiro said:
jason1637 said:

So indies cant be AAA games?

No.

Star Citizen says you're wrong



The Nintendo eShop rating Thread: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=237454 List as Google Doc:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aW2hXQT1TheElVS7z-F3pP-7nbqdrDqWNTxl6JoJWBY/edit?usp=sharing

The Steam/GOG key gifting thread: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/242024/the-steamgog-key-gifting-thread/1/ 

Free Pc Games thread: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/248138/free-pc-games/1/