Sad to see that so many FANTASTIC games ended up with nil, because E33 stole the show so hard, but it’s tough to argue that they didn’t deserve each one.
I’ll argue it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a beautiful game. The music is amazing, the scenery is lovely, and the English voice acting surprisingly good.
But its gameplay is bog standard JRPG battles with a basic parry mechanic. Nothing original or otherwise interesting there.
I feel it deserved every award it received for being a work of art, but Game of the Year? No.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Moby Games lists 121 people in the credits for Blue Prince and 416 for Clair Obscur. At some point, the number of people who worked on a game is nearly arbitrary once your publisher enlists a QA contractor or starts localizing to more languages. I don’t think it’s ever been murkier territory to try to classify a game as indie.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The original meaning of indie was independently published. I would think having a publisher would pretty squarely put you in the not indie category.
DaedalousIlios@pawb.social 2 days ago
Kepler, IMHO, is the exception, because they are specifically a coalition of indie devs pooling resources to give other indie devs the best shot of success.
And to the comment above yours: I think any devs who don’t have a board of investors or any obligation to anyone but their fans counts as “indie” in my still-honest opinion.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 days ago
What we think of as the rise of indie gaming was when they started getting publishers to promote them. You needed one in order to be listed on XBLA back in the day.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
When I think of the rise of indie gaming I think about the early 2000s when people could put their game on their own website and things like Steam were coming out. The Xbox doesn’t even cross my mind. Consoles were very much not the realm of indie games until like the Wii U.