How widespread is the concept of “indie games” now, or rather, not even a concept, but this combination itself, because many perceive its essence differently. What was born as a definition of the form of game publication has turned into a whole conventional genre that is actively used in everyday life. And used wrongly. What we are now accustomed to consider an indie game? Simple in visual terms, projects that do not pretend to be hit games of the entire generation, but captivating with their special, specific, I would call it “old-fashioned” beauty, their own, as they say, soul, interesting ideas regarding game mechanics, and sometimes very serious plots. But does an indie game have to be like this??

Publisher’s Warm Wing

I’m afraid I’ll have to start with a stock phrase about the definition of the word "indie" itself. Indie is an abbreviation for the English "independent", that is, "independent", and thus we get the main aspect that separates indie games from non-indie – this is whether the development studio has a large publisher behind it or takes on all the marketing routine itself. And dependence here should be taken not as a metaphor, but in the most literal sense. Why? Let’s start with who the publisher is?

A publisher is a company to which a developer comes, presents his idea, and if the publisher likes it, he takes this developer under his warm wing, feeds him and pleases him. This continues until the developer brings his idea to life in the form of a new game, and then the publisher helps promote this game so that as many people as possible know about the game, and most importantly BUY it. And the publisher himself receives a large percentage of this, and depending on the agreement concluded with the developer, he also receives the rights to publish all subsequent games in the franchise, if one is planned.

It follows that the more successful a game is, and success is always measured by the number of copies sold, the more profitable it is for the publisher. Therefore, the publisher will do everything to not only advertise the game and release it to the masses, but also make it interesting to the mass player, and not to individual groups of interested. And this is done in a very, let’s say, “unpleasant” way: the publisher begins to invade the developer’s “personal space” and dictate its terms.

The developer understands that without a feeder, his idea will not reach the final stage, and therefore he has to make compromises with the publisher: cut off everything that he does not like, and add what the publisher considers necessary. And this directly affects the concept of the game, from the plot to specific mechanics. And it can be even worse: the publisher begins to demand an urgent release of the game, tying its release to a specific date or event, and as a result the games come out crude, buggy or with a bunch of cut content.

New ideas are scary

And so it turns out that games with grind, towers, etc.d., which everyone seems to hate so fiercely turn out to be the most successful. The mass audience is much more willing to buy grind games rather than plot-oriented projects that are deep in concept. Publishers love money, and can you blame them for that?? I think no, that’s the business. Among the developers there are many talented guys who have brilliant ideas and dream of implementing them in their games. But ideas are not always met with enthusiasm, no matter how unique they may be. Everything is subjective, and players for the most part are capricious and are not always ready for “updates” in the usual scheme.

A good example is Resident Evil 4: the game is objectively excellent, but was received very coolly by many fans of the previous parts for its bias towards a shooter and the generally increased dynamism of what is happening. And I know that the game is now considered a great piece and has paid off handsomely, but it cannot be denied that many refused to accept the game during its release years just because of the innovations.

And this is normal, everyone has their own tastes: someone may like one thing and not like another; some people love Assassins Creed: Odyssey, while others hate Far Cry: New Dawn and vice versa. Publishers make an investment with the expectation that in the future it will be returned to them a hundredfold. New ideas are always a risk, and the publisher does not like risky investments, especially considering that the cost of feeding the developer and creating his brainchild costs considerable sums, and this cost is growing every year. But there are also working schemes that have already proven themselves, which are likely to bring in a lot of income again. This is where the “grind/tower” stamping in Ubesoft games comes from.

And this pressure from the publisher, interference in the concept, demand for changes, and, in the end, setting strict deadlines encourage creators to look at the development of their game differently.

How independence is born

What if I create a game at https://casino-betway.co.uk/login/ my own expense, or better yet, create a good demo, put it up on Kickstarter somewhere, and people will support me with a pretty penny, and then I can completely make the game of my dreams! But it doesn’t always work this way, and not every developer can attract enough attention to his work, simply because his project may turn out to be niche, for a narrow circle of players. Then the developer has to tighten his belt: where there is a small budget, there are corresponding technologies and the level of complexity of the operations performed. Yes, many, many people are attracted primarily by the beautiful picture, but also many players consider this to be of secondary importance, and the priority is given to getting pleasure directly from the gameplay itself. So it turns out that 99% of the total mass of indie games look like they say hello to projects of the 90s.

And here we get the second and third points that define indie games: self-publishing a game, without pressure, but also without financial support and advertising promotion, entails small budgets that the developers can afford, and small budgets entail some sacrifices that the developer makes in the process of creating the game, and most often, these are graphics; and here we can add the quantitative composition of the group of independent developers – these are guys and girls who are ready to work primarily for an idea, and not for money, and how many are ready to devote several years of their lives to this, or even more??

But here the boundary between indie and non-indie also becomes blurred: how to determine which team can be considered indie and which not? Here we have Red Barrels – the creators of Outlast – a studio of 12 people, do their games look cheap?? And there is the ultra-popular in our time and relatively rich CD Project Red, which itself published The Witcher and is going to publish Cyberpunk, but they employ about a thousand people, and their projects have impressive budgets and no less impressive appearance, at least in relation to the Projects you can’t say for sure that they are making any sacrifices. Can we call them indie developers and the third Witcher an indie game??

I just want to say that not everything that is pixelated is indie, just as not everything that is pixelated is indie. Indie games are a concept that, on the one hand, is simple to define, but on the other hand, it has very blurred boundaries, so it becomes not so easy to say that there is an indie game and an indie developer. The huge number of cheap (in terms of budget) gaming crafts in pixel style that have flooded into Steam in recent years has encouraged players to allocate a special category for these games, somehow generalize them, come up with a common name for them, so that in one word they can determine whether the game is worth their attention or not, and this word became “indie”.

This conventional term has turned into a designation for a fictitious genre that never existed, but with which people want to highlight this or that game. I will not say that this is wrong, and I do not pretend to be the truth of the first instance, but I think this definition is erroneous. Perhaps it’s time for the modern industry and players to find a new definition for indie games, one that would allow them to separate projects of different weight categories and not lump them all under one brush just because of their visuals.

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Well, first of all, “indie” is not a genre, that’s enough, stop it please. "Indie" is a production label, like "arthouse" or "author’s work", the proverbial "AAA" or "B". In the sense that the genre is a platformer, it is a first-person shooter, it is a strategy. And how many people and for what money this strategy was put together – no one should care, it remains a strategy.

Secondly, the concept of “indie”, as a game released without the guiding hand of a publisher, was relevant until the early 2010s. And now, in a world where there is Kickstarter, where there are a bunch of digital distribution platforms to enter which you don’t need to sign any complicated contracts, where there are special indie publishers and a wagon and a small cart of other differences in the process of publishing a game, in its production, etc.d. this term completely loses its relevance in its “oak” interpretation.

Now “indie” is most often just a designation of a form factor, such as “a game made by a small team for (relative to AAA projects) little money”. And quite a long time ago “indie” ceased to be “for the idea”.

More often they say that if a game is made by 5 people and the budget is tiny/raised through all sorts of crowdfunds, then it is indie. But indie is not a genre, but a convenient definition that describes certain conditions/standards in game development. Thanks for the post, good topic.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to start with a stock phrase about the definition of the word “indie” itself. Indie is an abbreviation for the English "independent", that is, "independent", and thus we get the main aspect that separates indie games from non-indie – this is whether the development studio has a large publisher behind it or takes on all the marketing routine itself.»

Well, in fact, starting from the lexical meaning is not only wrong, but rather sometimes even more misleading. Let’s move a little from games to music. For example, there is such a thing as indie rock, which was formed in the UK as opposed to classic rock (one of the reasons was the high price of tickets for “dependent” rock bands), in America it was also called alternative. So, as they existed, somewhere from the 80s, many groups began to sign contracts with labels, accordingly losing their independence. In addition, in the 21st century, indie rock has become a general name and can be classified as anything; you can listen to two completely different groups and then find out that they both belong to this concept. Moreover, their sound cannot always be classified as rock at all)

This is where I probably won’t agree. Loev’s position will be closer to me in this regard.
By placing the definition at the forefront, and what exactly it forms the concept, dissonance occurs. In other words, cringe.
This reminds me of Drew’s videos, where he customized Overwatch to fit a mob, although, well, komon. Moba is moba, and overwatch is overwatch. And the fact that Overwatch is a multiplayer arena, based on the name of the genre, does not make it a mob. A genre is, first of all, about tropes, about its internal characteristics, and you can’t fit all the tropes into 4 words.

I guess that “indie” has become more of a kind of (very general) designation for a set of formal solutions. By the way, even the use of the word “genre” in relation to games is rather arbitrary, since, roughly speaking, there is no game-novel, game-story, etc.d.
Games today really lack a concept equivalent to the concept of "small press" in the world of comics. This concept denotes works created within small publishing houses, and despite the fact that formally (i.e.e. in form) they may be indistinguishable from “independent” comics and samizdat, their final appearance and content were influenced by editors and publishing policies, not just the vision of the authors.

Well, if many players consider “indie games” a genre, then this is purely a problem of those same players, their casualness and lack of enlightenment in this matter)

so the fact of the matter is that “indie” should not denote a genre, but it turns out that a huge number of games that can be classified into a variety of genres are called indie by many players, usually because of their minimalistic (or pixel) graphics and two-dimensionality

Relevance-shmactuality. "Indie" is exactly what it means: a project without a publisher. The only exception is indie rock, which somehow distinguished its sound and can hardly be called a separate genre.
And what you are talking about is a common substitution of concepts. If you really need to separate cheap games into a separate pile, then please come up with a separate name for this pile, and not distort an existing one to suit your needs.
For example, there is a perfectly suitable concept “author’s game”, why not use it

Your author’s style in writing some wordisms is truly surprising with its… um… nihilism?

I understand the idea, but “not everything that’s pixelated is indie” and “not everything that’s pixelated is indie” is essentially the same sentence