this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
328 points (99.1% liked)

PC Gaming

11987 readers
389 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
EXiLExJD@lemmy.ca
UncleBadTouch@lemmy.ca
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
328
John Romero says indies are the future of game development: 'These people are the ones that make triple-A studios go, 'Wait a minute, we need to start doing this'' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MudMan@fedia.io 56 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

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.

[–] GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

It's simple

Game I like = Indy

Game I don't like = soulless committee designed AAA trash

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It often boils down to that, sadly, and it's gotten to the point where I just don't like using either term anymore.

[–] GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

After People insisted that Sony backed Palworld was an indy. I knew the term had lost all meaning.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (17 replies)