Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses Game of the Year from the Indie Game Awards
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 day agoI don’t think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.
Besides the Ai talk, why do you think so? It is an independent game, without a publisher.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 day ago
They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.
What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it’s almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?
Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Alright i didn’t know they have a publishers.
How? It’s a well defined term. If you don’t have a publisher and are independent, that’s what indie means. It has nothing to do with budget. Even an indie game can be AAA, because the term AAA refers to how expensive it was. These are two different subjects.
TheRealKuni@piefed.social 1 day ago
That’s not how the term is used. Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. Wikipedia’s definition is far more useful.
Take the game “Animal Well.” Go look it up if you haven’t heard of it. Animal Well was programmed by a single person, Billy Basso, as developer “Shared Memory.” It was then published by Videogamedunkey’s company “Bigmode,” the very first title Bigmode published.
By your definition, Animal Well is not an indie game. But it’s exactly the kind of game meant by the term “indie game.” So your definition isn’t a useful one.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Which means Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3 and GTA 6 are indie titles, while the majority of the indie game award nominees and winners are not because they have 3rd party publishers.
Well defined indeed.
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Are you trolling? How is GTA 6 an indie title? Rockstar is under Take2 publisher. Same for Witcher 3, which is published by CD Projekt. The developers are CD Projekt Red, two different things. And Baldurs Gate 3 is an indie title.
You should randomly put popular game titles into the mix, without explaining your point. Whats your point again?
Segab@beehaw.org 1 day ago
So you would call Half Life 2 and Alyx indie games? But any game published by Devolver Digital like Loop Hero or Gato Roboto aren’t indie despite having tiny budgets and tiny teams?
That’s kind of a ridiculous definition. It makes way more sense to include criterias like team size and budget, however vague they are.
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 day ago
But that is then something else you compare to. Indie refers to be indipendent from publisher when developing the game. At some point at the end of the development, the game has to be published, but that’s not what indie means. And major first party store holder are excluded from this for obvious reasons. But if you want, then count Valve indipendent. That’s not our discussion here.