this draws extensively from my experiences as an IGF judge witnessing arguments over what is indie
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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:
This doesn't upset me at all. I'm disappointed.
i saw the image before the title and did a double take cuz i couldn't possibly agree with you more
I was expecting Pillars of Eternity 2, I forgot about Outer Worlds existing.
I really wanted to fit in PoE2 but it got pushed out by more recent/popular games haha
I assume that's also why Subnautica didn't make it, despite being the most ... lively discussion I can recall
Oh wow, a reference to The Outer Worlds! Even so, I definitely think more could have been done to make it as difficult as possible to distinguish from Outer Wilds. (Maybe use more similar-looking screenshots?) Just thinking creatively about how to upset more people.
If a studio (say, Mojang) starts out small and self-funded, and makes a game (say, Minecraft) before growing and getting bought out (by say, Microsoft) and continues to push out updates for that game as a much larger team funded by their new ownership, is the game indie or not?
I think this is the point where we enter the theory of Game Dev Studio Of Theseus; if everyone leaves a game studio and is replaced by new employees but it has the same name, is it still the same studio
A studio is a philosophy of how to make a game, as boiled down into a dozen phrases like "the player tells the story" or "a feature isn't finished until it's been tested" which are recited as mantras to ward off the production hell demons.
is this why my entire career has been so infested with production hell demons
... What's an indie publisher?
Are Devolver or Team17 excluded because they're public companies? Or is it okay because they mostly publish games from indie studios?
Is any publisher publishing an game made by an indie studio an indie publisher? Are EA and Nintendo indie publishers??
time to make a second chart for what is an indie publisher
I would argue Devolver was an independent publisher before 2020, when it was entirely dedicated to publishing games by other small companies. Now it's more of a hybrid studio/publisher that still holds enough willingness for risk that's important to publish indie games.
Outer Worlds should be where Stray is, shouldn't it? Structure Neutral/Creative Rebel? Private Division is an 'indie' publisher afaik
Private Division is merely a publishing label for Take-Two, who absolutely are the AAA-est of AAA, and thus as far as I am concerned are an indie publisher only in the sense that they claim they are
yeah, private division is take two trying to seem hip and cool and with it. and any studio that works under them tends to be absorbed into them and brought in house, see Roll7 of Rollerdrome or Star Theory formerly of ksp2 before they were brought in-house under the name "intercept games" (that story was messy and awful, schreier had a good piece on it). at which point i think they cease to be indie when it's no longer an independent company producing the game, and it's merged into another awful tendril of the colossus
Right, fair enough- it does mean though that Hades, commonly a heavily respected 'indie', would be in the right-most column, interestingly enough
Edit: Wait, no, Hades' physical copy only was published by Private Division
I mean I think the interesting irony IS that there are beloved "indie" games like Ori and the Blind Forest that would fall into that column yes
Thats why everyone gets into these arguments
A game is indie when it's made by a single auteur and largely impenetrable to anyone else; I liked Toady One before he sold out and went corporate
they coulda been real art if only Kojima had mocapped Quiet's little striptease dances himself like a true warrior
I think that's a joke, on how they cooperated with an indie game studio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitfox_Games). It is technically corporate, yeah, but it's independent of any publisher. So like, technically, he did "sell out and went corporate". But that's like, one of the most unflattering descriptions possible.
putting both Outer Wilds and The Outer Worlds on this grid is some kinda flex and i want to yell at you for it but also i'd def do the same if i was clever enough to think of it
Wasn't Undertale a Kickstarter project? Does that still count as self-funded?
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