Defining an Indie Game Developer

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."

Comments

Re:Its like music

[Canazza]

Should an indepentendly produced and published game, released in January, that then gets picked up by a publisher in July, be exempt from any Indie awards for that year given in December?

You didn't define independently or big

[tepples]

Indie music is music published independently.

Independently of what?

If an indie game is taken up by a big publisher, its no longer indie.

For one thing, define "publisher". If Valve accepts a given developer's game for Steam, does that make Valve the "publisher"? If Microsoft accepts a given developer's game for Xbox Live Commu^W Indie Games, does that make Microsoft the "publisher"? Now define "big".

Independent, not "indie"

[DNS-and-BIND]

If you're an independent game producer, then call yourself that. Calling yourself an "indie" has little actual meaning and tons of cultural meaning. It's a word like "hyper" or "nexus" that, in some people's [small] minds, makes words next to it look better. It's like how menus in China always have English on them: it's not for native speakers to read, it's so the locals will look at the English and say, "ah, English - this restaurant is international and therefore better." The quality of the product is irrelevant.

And now, you're upset because a big corp came in and sat on your made-up word. Ha-ha! What, they changed its meaning? It didn't have any meaning in the first place, other than to make words next to it look better to easily-impressed insular twits. That's what the brouhaha is all about here - not that MS is going to have a new game channel, but "they stole my cool saying! All the other hipsters at Starbucks won't think I'm cool any more!"

Re:Noun

[cliffski]

Really?
I must have somehow been paying my rent all these years with pixie dust then. Me and the other indie devs who do game development full time all manage to pay our rents and our food bills.
Explain to me how we are not economically viable, but companies like EA who often make a net loss somehow are?

BTW, most fulltime indies do it because they have seen how badly most 'proper' companies are run. By your definition I do not have a job, nor will I ever have one again, having seen how much more efficient it is to work for yourself.