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Defining an Indie Game Developer

Posted by Soulskill on from the bigger-than-a-breadbox dept.

NinjaBee Games writes "A continual debate rages about the nature of making independent games. 'What is Indie game development?' This argument endures throughout the year, but it's almost never heard louder than right after the announcement of finalists or winners of an Indie game development contest. The debate currently is in full swing after Microsoft's recent announcement that they will be changing the name of the Xbox Live Community Games section to Xbox Live Indie Games. In light of this important debate, Brent Fox of Indie developer NinjaBee has written a blog post in which he claims he has finally found the 'clear and undeniable' definition of Indie."

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You didn't define independently or big by crossmr · · Score: 2, Informative

    a publisher also publishers the game..pays for distribution, packages the game, ships it, etc.

  2. Small labels distributed by the majors by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    Anyone can write an application, and put the compiled binary up on their website, and "self-publish".

    Not without a jailbreak, if your game's genre is one best displayed on the living room TV. As of 2009, video gaming on home theater PCs is still commercially insignificant, in part because most of indie game developers' potential customers aren't aware that PCs can be connected to TVs.

    What's curious is that in the indie music world, "indie" just tends to mean independent of the "major" record labels (There are four, right? I'm not a big music person).

    Even the smaller record labels tend to be distributed by the big labels in North America.

    The problem is that there is no direct analogy to the "Big Four" in gaming.

    There's a Big Three of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Without their digital signature, your game is confined to the desk.

  3. Re:Does it matter? by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seriously, what's the big fuss?

    It has to do with the console makers' qualifications for developers. Nintendo, for one, states on its web page that it requires developers to have a leased office and previous published titles on some other platform. This means a smaller studio might not be able to port even a finished PC game to a Sony or Nintendo console or a Sony or Nintendo handheld. So I'd almost venture to define "indie" as "not qualifying for a PS2, Wii, PSP, or DS SDK".