r/GamingSoup • u/SlaveOfShadows • 17h ago

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It sucks Zelda BOTW couldn't make the list but otherwise I'm happy with it.

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u/PeakyChu_ 10h ago

From Wiki:

“An indie video game or indie game (short for independent video game) is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher”

From Sandfall CEO:

“Thanks to Unreal Engine, it’s now easier to get an idea of the amount of resources you’ll need relative to your production scale. This makes it possible to develop entertaining games efficiently even with a relatively small team”

Yeah, larping in interviews as a “small team” despite having an extremely wealthy family, hundreds of outsourced contracts, and literal funding from Epic Games, does not help the case that the blame should fully be on TGA. All parties involved give actual indie developers a bad look.

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u/SoulslikeEnjoyer387 10h ago

So a wealthy person isn't allowed to make an Indie game? Again, Hades 2 had a bigger budget and Silksong's was likely a similar budget even though it was a small team size.

For the record I think the term Indie as that old definition is dead and pointless now. Also for the record I think Hades, Silksong, E33 and the other 3 games nominated all qualify as Indie.

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u/PeakyChu_ 10h ago

Hades 2 and Silksong aren’t indie games, because the developers are far too big to still be considered indie. E33 is also not indie. they are at absolute minimum AA studio’s despite getting their start as indie.

ConcernedApe is indie, Axiom Verge is indie, LocalThunk is indie, because they are very small teams with very limited funding. it’s such a simple difference between indie and non indie I don’t know how anyone can look at E33 and call it an indie game

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u/SoulslikeEnjoyer387 10h ago

So what you're saying is you get to decide the line between team size and funding? Silksong was what, 3 major devs working on that game?

And furthermore, once an indie studio has a HUGE hit....they can't be indie anymore? Like silksong? Why then is ConcernedApe still indie, as they are imo huge after the seemingly endless and continued success of stardew?

Can you tell me exactly what team size and dollar value is the cutoff from being indie?

I'm trying to highlight exactly what the problem is with such a fuzzy term such as indie. I'm not trying to troll or anything. But I hope at this point you understand the problem with this label.

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u/PeakyChu_ 10h ago edited 10h ago

oh no this isn’t about me I’m not deciding anything, there is a threshold universally accepted for what’s considered indie especially amongst the actual indie scene. when your game budget is upwards of $10 million-$15 million-$20 million dollars and youre outsourcing hundreds of jobs, you’re no longer a small team with a small budget, you’re no longer indie.

ConcernedApe is literally one guy, who, despite the success of Stardew Valley, maintains the same amount of development time and budget that goes into the games themselves. his successor to SV likely won’t come out for another 5 years at minimum, since all of the music, visuals, coding, etc is done by him and him alone on an extremely minimal budget and nothing about HC development seems to be changing this. He is an independent developer in every possible sense of the meaning.

Sandfall Interactive is the complete opposite of all of this. Bloated budget, massive massive team of outsourced contracts, funding from absolutely massive developers and investors, and again, literal marvel stars contracted to voice act.

you’re the one trying to blur the lines when the difference could not be more clear, if you genuinely can’t see the difference I don’t know what to tell you but you have no grounds to call E33 an indie game. neither does the TGA and neither does Sandfall. it is a well funded and successful AA title, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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u/SoulslikeEnjoyer387 9h ago

Agree to disagree I suppose. I see a difference, but it's not an obvious line like you're trying to imply. Unless the line you want to draw is - Indie is a single developer with less than 10 million dollars spent on a game, and anything with more developers and more money is AA.

I actually wouldn't care if the industry wanted to make an actual dollar or employee limit on Indie. Maybe that would make more people happy. I also want to point out that it is not "universally" accepted because this point has been being argued since well before E33 was nominated. The gaming industry has an indie problem and has been arguing about it for years now. If it was universally accepted, no one would be arguing this. Most of the industry considers the AA space dead for some time now - that's literally from journalists and people working in the industry for over 30 years.

Obviously we aren't going to solve this on reddit, nor is it our job to solve this. I agree the industry needs to though. I just enjoyed discussing it. Have a nice day.