I think it’s a small studio and it’s their first game, no?
Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage
LupertEverett@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The fact that they were there in the first place is a problem.
Why does a game that has been published by some other company calls itself “indie”???
The term itself is becoming more and more meaningless with the passing time.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Kjell@lemmy.world 2 days ago
An indie video game or indie game is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams, and typically without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher,
After inking a partnership with Kepler Interactive, which was officially announced in early 2023, and securing funding from said publisher, Sandfall grew into a studio of about thirty developers, three of whom—including Broche and Guillermin—were former Ubisoft employees.[38][39][40][29][27][30][excessive citations] The funding also allowed Sandfall to expand the manpower contributing to the project beyond this core team, having outsourced gameplay combat animation to a team of eight South Korean freelance animators and quality assurance (QA) to a few dozen QA testers from the firm QLOC, as well as receiving assistance from a half-dozen developers from Ebb Software to port the game to consoles. The studio also hired a couple of performance capture artists; brought in musicians for the soundtrack recording sessions; contracted with translators from Riotloc for language localization; and partnered with Side UK and Studio Anatole as to voice casting and production in English and French respectively.[39][41] Finally, the partnership with Kepler Interactive enabled Sandfall to pay for noted professional voice actors, including Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis and Ben Starr.[35][37]
With a team of 30 developers and dozens of consultants for things like QA, it doesn’t sound like a small development team. And they clearly had support from a game publisher.
Eranziel@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It has to be more nuanced than “self-published”, otherwise everything EA craps out is “indie”.
The definition of “indie game” is a case where there is no easy, clear line to draw in the sand.
LupertEverett@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It doesn’t need to. Definining it as “self-publishing” is enough.
And because of the above, EA games might very well fit the definition, yes.
This clearly shows that maybe we shouldn’t use “indie” to define good games. It should just be used to define “means of publishing”.