What is Indie?
What is Indie?
Defining the genre
Continued…
I’m not surprised when people link “indie” with “bugger all money”, it’s a reality you can’t escape, there are indie developers out there eating ramen to fund their babies. I am surprised however when these once-starving developers make the big time and finally get some success that they’re seen as not indie anymore. Like there’s some kind of profit-ceiling on “being indie”, even when you’re not bought out by a larger company. I dislike the notion that all indies are unsuccessful and are destined to a life of ramen and starvation, some indies are wealthy people and start off big, skipping the ramen-phase altogether. Saying “They’re not indie if they’re a massive company” is if not a little short sighted then definitely oversimplifying matters. Indie isn’t about quantities, it’s about control. Letting someone pay for your project before it starts implies they have a say in certain aspects, budgets, deadlines, a timeline for them to get some return on their investment. Being free of this is being independent, by definition.
An indie says what?
As weird as it may sound, I think deep down “indie” is a business model. One that both the one-man-band, the medium-sized team and the multinational can probably all chose to abide by if they wish. To be indie is to make a conscious decision to operate with a level of freedom from outside influences that helps insure purity of your creative vision. Whether you’re a huge company marching to the beat of it’s own drum with no publisher lauding over them, or one woman in her backyard trying to make a fun puzzler with Unity that she’s going to submit to the App Store, it’s all indie. If you have full creative control of your original vision and don’t let anyone else dictate to you what you should or should not be doing, you’re subscribing to the indie philosophy.
But at the very core of the question “What is indie?” begs another question. To the person playing the game, how much can the business model the game’s development was driven by have an affect? In terms of player satisfaction, a game should be seen on it’s own merits. “Good for an indie game” shouldn’t be a phrase thrown about so blithely. You as the player either find the game experience enjoyable or otherwise compelling, or you don’t. If an indie game is defined by complete creative control without limits set in place by publishers or investors, and a non-indie game is defined as the opposite, what does that mean to the player? In an every day context, why is it important to define games this way? That’s a whole new tin of delicious biscuits to be explored, one I would like to come back to once this bikkie-induced stomach ache goes away… Ow.
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Nice article. “Indie” is definitely one of those terms defined by sufficient conditions rather than necessary ones, other than the need to maintain some quality of being independent in some way.
Fantastic Leena, really great article that stayed wonderfully away from derogatory terms and really looked at the heart of indie. Well done.
Interesting article. I enjoyed reading it. That’s probably why I wrote a long response.
A clearer definition of terms is needed, as is a move away from using “indie” as a genre. As you say, independent is a business model. Saying that it is isn’t strange – it’s a simple fact. Independent game development is game development with support from a major publisher. As in music, as in video games. The confusion comes from the fact that indie games have a greater degree of freedom as they aren’t necessarily working towards a profit margin and people have come to believe that an indie game *must* or *should* use that freedom. Independent development doesn’t have a particular ethos – its just had one applied to it. There are better ways to describe games that tread from the mainstream norm.
For example, “Mak[ing] a conscious decision to operate with a level of freedom from outside influences that helps insure purity of your creative vision” isn’t indie. That’s simply following your own vision. Yes, indie developers tend to do that more, but that doesn’t make doing that “indie”. Indie is a business model in the strictest, most literal sense – it’s the make-up of your business. It’s not an ideal, or a state-of-being. Getting that confused is what leads to issues over what indie “is”. We have a lot of words in the English language. We should really start using them.