About Indie Game
Indie game stands for independent video game. The phrase ‘indie game’ is based on similar ones like independent films or indie music. It is a video game that’s usually made by smaller development teams or even individuals on their own without financial or technical support from large game publishers. This is a direct contrast to AAA games. The indie term also applies to games with creative freedom even if they’re funded by publishers.
Indie games are often very innovative, experimentative, and explore games as art. They can afford to take risks which aren’t taken by AAA games and are unique. They are usually sold through digital distribution channels as a result of lacking publisher support. Indie video games have become even more popular over the last two years, going by the increased number of indie releases and the higher price they demand on Steam, arguably the biggest marketplace for indie titles.
What Makes an Indie Game?
While there is no standard definition for games to be classified as indie, they usually share certain characteristics. These are:
Independence: Indie games are either financially or creatively independent. They are funded themselves or from sources like crowdfunding, and even if they have a publisher, their game has been made without too much influence from them.
Team size: Indie video games are often developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies which are formed to develop the game. A great example of this is Undertale, which was made by one developer: Toby Fox, who wrote the story, programmed it, and even created music for it.
Budgets: Indie games are made off of smaller budgets which are usually from the pockets of their makers or from crowdfunding.
Creativity: Indie games are usually noted for their innovation, experimentation, and creativity. Limited graphics are often compensated for by gameplay innovation or unique narrative styles.
Some notable examples of indie games are Transistor, Minecraft, Subnautica, and Celeste.
What's The Difference with AAA Games?
The key difference between an AAA game and an indie game is the budget and scale. Indie games tend to have a much smaller budget, more unique mechanics, shorter stories, and more stylized art. At the same time, AAA games are typically made by big companies, have lots of content, are built by using the latest graphics technology, involve large teams, and have a franchise attached to them.
Large companies specializing in the creation of computer games approach their projects globally. They expect millions of players, that’s why these games are very cinematic. Games from major publishers are made not by 1 or 10 people, but by thousands. Of course, such games are beautiful, but their price is high.
On the other hand, independent developers make the game for themselves, and therefore very often give them a strong personal character. Indie developers do not have the opportunity to create large and technological games, so they make games with unique gameplay. As a result, indie games are small in size, have low system requirements, and have extraordinary gameplay.
How Popular is It?
In 2019, Valve published a report that shows the growing popularity of indie games among gamers and increased profits for their developers. According to the company, they wanted to change the opinion of the majority that the popularity of indie games is too small due to the constant releases of large-scale games for modern consoles and PC. The company believes that it was Steam that helped many indie game creators achieve success and excellent financial performance.
One of the published graphs showed the growth of games that had managed to earn more than $10,000 in the first two weeks after the release. In 2019, this figure increased by 18% compared to 2018.
The number of games earning at least $10,000 within 14 days of release tripled in 2019, compared to 2013-2014 when indie games first started appearing on the Steam platform.
Valve also reported that in 2019, games in the first two weeks earn 24% more than in 2018.
Indie games remain popular in 2022 as well. According to the Video Game Insights Report, in the first half of 2022, 6,015 new games were released on Steam, 5,895 of which were indie games. At the same time, 4 out of the 10 top-grossing games were indie releases: Core Keeper, Dread Hunger, Raft, and V Rising.
All this suggests that the popularity of indie games is constantly growing because gamers already know what is an indie game and are ready to pay for this type of games.
Indie Game as a Cultural Definition
The definition of indie games, for some people, is not about funding and publishing. The term “indie game” is often used to define everything that’s not mainstream. Games developed by big companies to sell millions of copies could never be indie, while niche games developed by small teams definitely are. The issue with this definition is that it uses the public perception of how big a project is, and we all know that marketing is a great tool for changing how we see things.
Games such as Ori and the Will of the Wisps are often defined as “indie,” even if Moon Studios is actually owned by Microsoft. Ori looks indie, and Moon Studios maintains a small team working on their games. But if they don’t keep their copyright, and if they actually need to answer to someone above them in the company’s hierarchy, can they still be considered independent? So far, Microsoft seems to be willing to give their studios all the creative freedom they want. But would this posture remain if sales were not high enough?
Let’s take another example. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was developed by Ninja Theory with no external funding. Ninja Theory also published their own game. So even by the most limiting definition of indie, which claims no publisher can be involved in the process, Hellblade is still an indie game. It might be weird, though, to think of a multimillion-dollar project involving hundreds of employees as an independent project. That’s why some people defend that Hellblade is not indie.
However, if we take the definition that an indie game must be “small,” where exactly do we cross the line? How many people must work on a project for it to be considered indie? Four? Five? And what about funding? What’s the max budget a game can have to be indie still? What if a crowdfunding campaign goes better than predicted and a single-person team makes millions of dollars? Does the game stops being indie? Lastly, what is mainstream anyway? PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds started as a small project, but soon the game became such a massive success that it launched a new wave of battle royale fever. If public perception is indeed the rule to define indie games, PUGB would have started as an indie and then stopped being independent. This is also a dangerous definition because it can lead to the conclusion that an indie game cannot be highly successful.
The cultural definition of an indie game is confusing and imprecise because it is highly subjective, incapable of creating a rule everyone can use for analysis. Even so, this is still a common way of discussing indie titles, as players and critics alike use their own perception of what’s mainstream to define the limits of the indie industry. Nevertheless, this kind of definition is so broad that marketing teams can sell “small” games with indie makeup, even if AAA companies actually own them.
The discussion of what an indie game is has been going on for years, and it will certainly last much longer. The biggest source of disagreement is that we don’t define what we actually mean when we use “indie game” to describe a project. Of course, we all have our preferences, but we should be aware of the many different ways a popular term is used for the sake of a constructive discussion. We hope this brief introduction to the debate can be of service the next time you argue with a stranger on your favorite gaming forum.