Financial independence: In such situations, the developers have paid for the development and/or publication of the game themselves or from other funding sources such as crowd funding, and specifically without financial support of a large publisher.One method to define an indie game is the nature of independence, which can either be: Indie games generally share certain common characteristics. Dan Pearce of IGN stated that the only consensus for what constitutes an indie game is a " I know it when I see it"-type assessment, since no single definition can capture what games are broadly considered indie. One simple definition, described by Laura Parker for GameSpot, says "independent video game development is the business of making games without the support of publishers", but this does not cover all situations.
However, as with both indie films and music, there is no exact, widely accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game" besides falling well outside the bounds of triple-A video game development by large publishers and development studios. The term "indie game" itself is based on similar terms like independent film and independent music, where the concept is often related to self-publishing and independence from major studios or distributors.
Best indie games 2010 software#
So-called bedroom coders, particularly in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, made their own games and used mail order to distribute their products, later shifting to other software distribution methods with the onset of the Internet in the 1990s such as shareware and other file sharing distribution methods, though by this time, interest in hobbyist programming had waned due to rising costs of development and competition from video game publishers and home consoles. Indie game development bore out from the same concepts of amateur and hobbyist programming that grew with the introduction of the personal computer and the simple BASIC computer language in the 1970s and 1980s. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to lack of publisher support. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games, and may explore the medium to produce unique experiences in art games.
However, the "indie" term may apply to other scenarios where the development of the game has some measure of independence from a publisher even if a publisher helps fund and distribute a game, such as creative freedom. An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games.