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Oh those guys? Yeah those are just the dozens of professional voice actors we could afford to hire with our tiny baby game studio budget! And those guys? Yeah that's just our 7-person "engineering" team. What do you mean your entire studio is 4 people?
suck off me
(for the record I'm not dunking on Hades or Hades 2 as a game this is just something that pisses me (and I assume only me) off)
Honestly, I know it's technically accurate to call various games "indie games" but it feels viscerally wrong to describe highly successful and famous game as indies. I don't think you can convince me (on an emotional level) that the statement "Terraria is an indie game" is not in some way inaccurate, despite it being constantly said.
Like, if you want to make an argument where the only requirements for being an indie game is that you self-publish, you could make the argument that a huge chunk of video games are indies because they are made in house and published in house. But I don't think ANYONE will ever call GTA V an indie game simply because it was made by Rockstar and published by Rockstar.
I feel like for an indie to actually be an indie in the modern day and age, it actually has to be somewhat small, otherwise you're just a regular ass video game company. When you sell millions of copies, have dedicated PR managers, a lawyer or two on retainer, how can anyone argue that you are an indie studio?
I agree with some of this but Terraria is definitely an indie game. It's been around forever and was significantly smaller in scale when it released years and years ago.
I just can't feel it though. Indie means small to me, maybe inaccurately so. I look at Terraria, and I see fame and fortune. Fame and fortune to me, are somewhat antithetical to the concept of an indie. I know you think what you want to think, that's fair, but I don't get how you see it. I guess you have a different definition of indie? I don't know. I just find it extremely difficult to see from your perspective, when Terraria is so famous and so well established that it is routinely compared to industry giants like Minecraft and what not.
It's famous and cemented, and that sort of disqualifies it from indie status from my perspective.
Indie games can be popular. Balatro was made mainly by one guy and it's still indie despite becoming wildly popular. I get it if the game gets a publisher to do a sequel or whatever, but something doesn't stop being indie just because people like it.
Im sorry but I dont see how success doesnt mean a game isnt Indie. Like take Undertale. Wildly successful but an indie game. (Not trying to start anything) I just assume we see this quite different.
I feel like it's a fair moniker for any studio that doesn't have a board of directors and keeps any stock private and within the company. It's a way different model from Activision/Blizzard/Ubisoft etc.
Sort of? Like, your argument makes sense, it totally does. I just don't feel it, if that makes any sense. I know working off emotions is not a good decision when it comes to things like these, but I just can't find myself looking at these companies and giving them that moniker.
Like, from my perspective, Supergiant Games has a lot more in common with Activision/Blizzard/Ubisoft than, well, if you want an example, @Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net's game is a much better fit in my opinion. I just can't get it through my head that comrade has anything in common with Supergiant Games. If comrade was placed into a room with the CEO/whatever of Supergiant Games, would they have more in common than if the CEO/whatver of Supergiant Games was placed into a room with the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment?
I think we gotta either get a different term for medium sized indie studios, or for the very small ones.
Independent Studio and Independent Developer are two different things. The latter would be a small company that has employees, while the latter is just a person and some friends making a game.
So yeah, I think using "Studio" instead of "Developer" makes sense
You're right but what about Nolla games? It's like, 4 devs, a sound designer, and a band they asked to make the music, but it's a studio. They made the best roguelike of all time. Feels wrong to put them in the same category as Supergiant that's almost 10 times as large in dev headcount alone.
idealizing the solo developer like this is probably some kind of cultural brainworm most of us have even if we're on the side of supergiant counting as indie because there's not even 50 full-time employees and they aren't a publisher for other people.
does that make valve an indie studio?
Valve isn't indie, but there is a bit of truth to it. Staying private and not being obligated to tear apart your company chasing AI or whatever has made Valve significantly less ass than the publicly traded studios. That air of not being super corporate is what some people think of when they say indie, I think.
From a purely vibes perspective, the only true indies are mods, romhacks, and other user-created content like custom maps and levels. It has everything that one associates with indies: less mainstream, more creative, janky, not compromising vision for the sake of marketability, just being fucking weird.
The real divide is between mods/romhacks/custom maps and stand-along games, not small dev vs large dev.
I mostly just use indie for anything where the creators and core team actually enjoyed working on the project.
not really, rockstar has studios and a publishing arm and those studios are not independent.