The discussion you link is not exactly a tempting basis for a discussion: so much of it is based in the perception that indie devs are pretentious pricks. (I'm sure some are, let's not argue over who.)
I'll lay down what I think are useful definitions.
Any game that it made without being financed by a third party can be thought of as an indie game in the loosest sense. This includes people at any point in the spectrum: from students and hobby devs to for-profit companies with full structures.
A large studio that retains its independence may relinquish the "indie" moniker if they grow big enough that they start absorbing other studios and teams or taking on the role of a publisher for other dev studios. This does not necessarily invalidate the indie status of their prior work. (Let's call this "the Mojang rule", based on Notch's assertion that he no longer considers themselves an indie dev based on having done pretty much this. Valve also falls under this rule.)
The "indie movement" is a facet of the total of indie games and is probably best described by the principles it espouses including:
- Creative integrity. The ability to design a game without having to answer to external pressure outside themselves, their audience and their means/tools.
- Experimentalism. There are trends and Follow the Leader tendencies in indie games as much as any other creative industry, but the leaders in the field espouse and promote pushing the boundaries of what is done in games, be it in art style, gameplay, narrative or technology. (The more rational ones acknowledge that experiments may fail: the leaner indie business models make failure less costly than it does for risk-adverse publishers.)
- Digital distribution. The current indie movement would not be possible without it as traditional brick and mortar publishing has to fight with the scarcity of shelf space where all but the bigger players are bound to be locked out. The distribution model also allows for more equitable compensation of devs for their work, whether self-publishing entirely or using a third-party market like Steam or mobile app stores.
The current indie movement hit "the big time" starting around 2005 and vastly expanded around 2008, though elements of it existed as long as video games have.
Not all indie games (by the very loose definition we gave) ascribe to be part of the indie movement.
edited 21st Oct '13 6:49:58 PM by Elle
I wanted to post this in the Indie Game The Movie topic, but I felt this related to video games in general.
So about a month or so ago, I saw Indie Game: The Movie I thought it was pretty decent, so I looked around the net for others opinions on it, and this happened to capture my attention:
http://www.learntocounter.com/forums/index.php?topic=1219.0
While most of the posts on here flat out diss the movie about a year before it was even released, and they seem to have a different idea about "indie" games, basically. I'm not going to say I agree with them fully (Except maybe for Phil Fish, given with what happened to him later on and Team Meat to a lesser extent) but I came away with a different perspective. It's nice to look at both sides of the coin, but anyone's thoughts about this?
Don't Press Your Luck too many times in life. You'll just get whammied.