On The IGF Awards And Defining 'Indie' Gaming

Thanks to GameTunnel for its editorial discussing the outcome of last week's Independent Game Festival awards, as previously covered on Slashdot Games, and part of a comprehensive GameTunnel IGF section. The writer is particularly concerned that the relatively high-budget, but still publisher-less Savage: The Battle For Newerth won major awards: "IGF has this year shown that a team's ability to raise money is as important as innovation itself. Consider this, if Savage was done on a $50,000 budget instead of a $1.5 million dollar budget, how would it be different? Would things that are in the game have been left out? I believe that the clear answer to this question is yes." What defines an 'indie' game for you, and should there be a maximum budget for IGF-entered games?

Comments

Self-publishing

[Nasarius]

IMO, an "indie" game would have to be self-published. In other words, you couldn't buy it in box form at your local game store; you'd need to get it directly from the developer. A small (or one-person) team is also typical of such games. I have to plug my favorite shareware developer, Spiderweb Software. Jeff Vogel writes some awesome old-style RPGs. Try out Avernum 3 and Geneforge 2 if you like open ended RPGs and don't mind simple (but by no means ugly) graphics. I have no affiliation with Spiderweb other than spending about $100 on their games over the years.

They are like adults beating up children

[bear pimp]

Yeah, it's easy, but it doesn't make you look big. Though I was expecting this outcome, it still sucked. I always thought the IGF was there to 'help the little man', but it seems not. I don't see an easy resolution though: how do you define what we all know in our hearts to be 'indie developers' -small teams of 1-4 people living off next to nothing and working out of a spare bedroom.(usually) Check out these photos and these photos from diygames for the kind of thing I mean. Those guys are true indie developers!!

indie stars

[slothman32]

I've always wondered how "small" moviemakers who get big name stars to be in their movies still count as indie. So it's not made by Hollywood, I am more likely to notice stars than the city it was flimed in. If some famous developer like Wright or Meier used his own money and had no help from anyone else and made the next big thing would it still count as indie?

Definations

[MMaestro]

What defines an 'indie' game for you, and should there be a maximum budget for IGF-entered games?

In about 5 more years, any game not published by EA Games would be an 'indie' game.

On a more serious note : a maximum budget? No way, no chance. There are a number of issues that come up when you try to put something like that in place. For one you have inflation/depression in money value. Another is the fact that some of these 'indie' games are developed by teams which literally span the globe. A $500,000 USD budget limit may seem low for an American developer trying to break into the mainstream, but convert that into say Iraqi dollars and that budget limit might not even be reachable after 3 years of development.

Re:Something like the major film studios in 30 yea

[Torgo's Pizza]

Game prices have risen too high? Taking into account inflation, video game prices have been remarkably stable over the past twenty-five years. Back when the Atari 2600 was first released it cost $200 and game prices averaged $39.95. That's over 25 years ago. If you factor in the consumer price index that same cartridge costs over $100 today!

For someone who claims to be "old skool" you should be extremely happy that instead of paying $90 to watch two stick figures fire dots at each other like in Gunfighter, you get smooth, crisp graphics of actual people jumping and firing in slow motion with bullet casings falling to the floor and smoke rising from the gun barrel. Could things be better? Sure, there's plenty of room to improve and game design needs to catch up to the graphical side. But to defend your piracy because you're not getting "value"? Puleeze... you just like getting stuff for free.

Re:Something like the major film studios in 30 yea

[drewmca]

20 hours of gameplay = $50. That's $2.50 per hour.

A 2 hour movie in the US costs $10. Most movies are actually closer to 90 minutes, but we'll assume 2 hours for simplicity's sake. That's $5 per hour.

You're getting double the value of a movie, which more than justifies the price. And that's on a single player, little replay value game. Take UT2004, at $40, and you get value that's pretty tough to calculate, once you take into account all of the extras, mods, and what not. And of course, that's not counting inflation.

Don't bitch about the cost. If you want to play the game, buy it and keep the developers in business so they don't have the sick their lawyer watchdogs on the rest of us. You aren't getting cheated; you're cheating.