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0 pointsang_cire1y ago0 comments

Sadly, people use indie to mean small, rather than it's actual meaning of "independent of a publisher", and it's one of those things that I've nearly given up on fighting.

It's even more sad because the only reason that change happened was big publishers wanting in on the success of indie games as a label and concept, but by definition being excluded, so they pushed their own definition, and people gobbled up their corporate cooption.

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masklinn1y ago

> Sadly, people use indie to mean small, rather than it's actual meaning of "independent of a publisher"

That is way too imprecise a description for it to possibly be considered correct.

Indie is about financial and creative independence aka the publisher does not drive the game.

Many indies still go through publishers because they don't have the means or knowledge to handle distribution. This was even more so back when you had to distribute via physical media, but they start looking for publishers once the game is done or in good shape.

For instance back when they built Bastion SuperGiant had just 7 people and it was entirely self-funded. But they went to WB for publishing, mainly to ensure getting it on XBLA would not be too much of a hassle.

johnnyanmac1y ago

>That is way too imprecise a description for it to possibly be considered correct.

It's the most objective definition. We can easily see if a game studio a) has their own publishing wing (people forget this when saying stuff like "Valve is an indie!"... It's few but they have published others' works since 2004) and b) the game has an external publisher.

But as the GP said, this definition (just like in music) was perverted over the years into CDXS2the modern, colloquial definition that you mention. Much less precise because we do not in fact know how much the publisher drives any given indie, a term locked under contracts and NDAs we'll never see. We simply need to trust a publisher's branding.

But no one is particularly interested in changing the current defintion. Publishers want to have that branding, indies want to have that branding, gamers seem to intuit what kinds of games and styles that "feel indie". So I guess it'll go by the way of the definition of "literally".

ang_cireOP1y ago

"Independent of a publisher" is less precise than, "independent ideas and creative freedom"?

Mine is literally a binary, factual assessment, that is easily verifiable: did they use a publisher?

Yours is a standard that the public has no way to verify, and is regularly is lied about by devs and publishers. Every publisher says they let their studios have full creative control. No one says, "yeah, we interfere in design decisions all the time".

> Many indies still go through publishers because they don't have the means or knowledge to handle distribution.

No, indies didn't go through publishers, small studios do.

What you are describing is just indie studios signing on with publishers, becoming dependent* on them for some aspect of distribution. Literally ditching their indie status.

Why do you think *any* size developer that uses a publisher does so? To gain the advantages of their greater resources.

As another commenter pointed out, this term doesn't originate in video games, it comes from musicians who do not sign on with a record label.

ambichook1y ago

indie is literally a shortening of independent though, the term i believe originated from musicians who would release their music without a label to publish them

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