He then ran down a string of recent hits developed by independent devs and studios: Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Helldivers 2, Clair Obscur—even the venerable Minecraft, an archetypal indie superhit before Mojang was sold into the Microsoft stable.
I mean, by that definition he’s not wrong.
It’s just that the way that works is indie devs become big enough to either become whatever the hell triple A means or get bought by whatever the hell triple A is.
Magicka was an indie game, I really struggle to fit Helldivers 2, a Sony-published sequel to a Sony-published game, into that same bucket. Ditto for Larian. Divinity OS? Sure. Hasbro-backed multi-studio Baldur’s Gate 3 with its hundreds of millions of budget? Myeaaaaah, I don’t know.
I think the real question is how you keep the principles that make indie games interesting in play when the big money comes in. I’m all for an indie-driven industry, but I’m a touch more queasy about a world in which major publishers use tiny devs as a million monkeys with typewriters taking on all the risk and step in at the very end (sometimes post-release) to scoop up the few moneymakers.
Indie is kind of a fraught term in whatever genre it’s used I feel like. It has too many connotations and too few clear definitions. How much big label backed mass produced “indie rock/pop” did we not get back in the early 00s music scene, for example. Same with gaming: see the whole Dave the Diver being nominated for best Indie Game despite being backed by NEXON debacle.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is tricky because while Hasbro was involved it was still self-published by Larian. It doesn’t feel right to me to call it an indie game, but… how exactly should we define them then? Is there a budget cutoff where a game is no longer allowed to be called an indie? If Sandfall uses their huge budget from the success of Expedition 33 to make a blockbuster sequel but stayed with Kepler as publisher would we refuse to call it an indie game?
I mean, by that definition he’s not wrong.
It’s just that the way that works is indie devs become big enough to either become whatever the hell triple A means or get bought by whatever the hell triple A is.
Magicka was an indie game, I really struggle to fit Helldivers 2, a Sony-published sequel to a Sony-published game, into that same bucket. Ditto for Larian. Divinity OS? Sure. Hasbro-backed multi-studio Baldur’s Gate 3 with its hundreds of millions of budget? Myeaaaaah, I don’t know.
I think the real question is how you keep the principles that make indie games interesting in play when the big money comes in. I’m all for an indie-driven industry, but I’m a touch more queasy about a world in which major publishers use tiny devs as a million monkeys with typewriters taking on all the risk and step in at the very end (sometimes post-release) to scoop up the few moneymakers.
Indie is kind of a fraught term in whatever genre it’s used I feel like. It has too many connotations and too few clear definitions. How much big label backed mass produced “indie rock/pop” did we not get back in the early 00s music scene, for example. Same with gaming: see the whole Dave the Diver being nominated for best Indie Game despite being backed by NEXON debacle.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is tricky because while Hasbro was involved it was still self-published by Larian. It doesn’t feel right to me to call it an indie game, but… how exactly should we define them then? Is there a budget cutoff where a game is no longer allowed to be called an indie? If Sandfall uses their huge budget from the success of Expedition 33 to make a blockbuster sequel but stayed with Kepler as publisher would we refuse to call it an indie game?