yeah is definetly not, weird i dont really remember the game being "masked" as an indie but a lot of outlets were convinced it was? "Best indie of the year!" and stuff like that.
Dave the Diver, one of the most successful indie titles of the year, is not an indie title
- Thread starter Aquova
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But they are a small to mid sized studio. They don't have access to the parent conpany's staff or of other subsidiaries.
Yep, for example look at the IGN review:
Also this Eurogamer article:
Indie RPG and sushi restaurant sim Dave the Diver reaches 1m sales
Dave the Diver has been making waves since its full release on Steam last month, and the indie game has sold over 1m co…
www.eurogamer.net
They note there that it was published by Nexon and that the dev is a subsidiary, but still comfortably call it indie.
I don't agree with 4; you can manage marketing / light publishing for a 1-person indie game you weren't involved with and still be an indie studio.
And I would change 2 to be broader in scope: some X amount development budget cap. I don't know what that cap is because I'm not an analyst on that stuff, but it probably has to be some number small enough to not include games that received large cash infusions from larger companies, and small enough to keep the team size under something like 15 for 2 or 3 years worth of development time. I picked 15 arbitrarily because I think Sean said that was the max team size leading up to No Man's Sky's launch. And I'd consider NMS to be the outer edge of what is sensible to be called indie. I think Hello Games's size is more like 25 now due to the success of NMS.
They have Indie as a genre on steam, and both developer and publisher is Mintrocket, so they are both hiding the fact they are Nexon and calling themselves indies. Its quite blatant in my opinion.
The headcount over at Larian is similar to Valve's.
These corporations have entered the mainstream. At some point you're getting far away from the notion that the team is a bunch of underdogs independent of a major organisation with lots of resources to sustain itself.
Common sense would call bullshit on Capcom Business Division 2, Square Enix Business Division 3, Xbox Game Studio 331 or Ubisoft Montreal just slapping on a different label and being touted as an indie team just because their output resembles indie games, which is exactly the case with Dave the Diver.
But Hello Games were clearly backed by Sony in some way. Maybe they only got the E3 presentation spot, but likely there were more assistances especially in terms of marketing - no idea if it's disclosed how much Sony was involved.
The English language is not based on "vibes." Words have a standardized structure and a specific meaning. That's why dictionaries exist. Just because some people want to pretend the meaning of a word doesn't mean that's actually the meaning of it.
If the argument is, "the previous definition of indie games is not correct anymore in describing the current landscape of indie gaming" then it's time to decide on a new, exact definition and update the world of it.
I'm a fan of using language in a way that most people would actually understand what I'm saying, so yeah I'd call it an indie game in casual conversation and most people would know what I mean without quibbling about the source of funding for the game.
It's tagged as indie because people use that tag to look for games with a certain aesthetic, scope, and performance requirements. The number of people who would reject a game because it's not an indie in the strict, "nobody else owns this company" definition is miniscule. Why would they hide this?
Those are user-defined tags though.
If you click Mintrocket, it redirects you to Nexon.
On the main menu, Nexon is sitting on the bottom of the screen the entire time in plain sight.
And at no point does it even look like Mintrocket is trying to pretend that it's an indie dev. When you look them up, one of the first things you find out is that they're a division of Nexon.
Well, that's not really a factor I consider important, for the same reason that indie music albums may be made on the cheap, but might get some marketing or distribution by a major. As in those cases, I consider NMS to be an indie game at the heart of it. Marketing and publishing determines the potential revenue, not what the game itself turned out to be.
Sean was very clear that he refused outside funding during development, both when their office got flooded (and lost months of work), and then again when he had to remortgage his house when the studio was out of money near the end.
It's like calling Hearthstone an indie game because it was initially made by a small team at blizzard.
& CS2 is an indie game as well. 1.8 million peak players must make it the most successful indie game ever.
Dictionaries don't define words. They document how words are used.
Here's the September update from Merriam-Webster for example:
Hell, the Oxford-English dictionary has a constantly running list of new words and updated words right on the front page of their website.
I do feel as that there's a difference, though. As it was a team inside blizzard they could increase the amount of people working on it easily, while a subdisiary has its own finances.
Indie as a term is used to categorize devs together so you can easily find and support independent developers. Billion dollar corporations being eligible for these awards and taking attention away from those who it was originally meant to celebrate is yet another black mark on the industry.
Aesthetic, scope and performance is an interesting qualification considering indie games vary enormously in those three.
But I have no real opinion on what qualifies as an indie apart from the fact you cant be apart of an massive conglomerate, which in this case they obviously are.
I'm talking about the developer chosen genres, not the tags, so they are really calling themselves indies.
But I'm conceding on the other points, that seems obvious enough.
Any journalist worth their salt should not be calling the game indie if its that easy to see the connection to Nexon.
Is this a regular occurrence? Also, wouldn't that be entirely on the media and the award givers
Oh, gotcha. I didn't even realize there were developer-defined genres for Steam games.
That's what this thread is entirely about, the game being nominated for best indie at the Golden Joystick Awards.
Any game developed by a small team that is part of a larger corporation, is NOT Indie.
Yes, It Takes Two is Indie
Yes, Hellblade 1 is Indie
No, Pentiment is NOT Indie
There are some exceptions though, I feel like the most recent Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares are not considered to be Indie, but they kind of are?!
Yes, It Takes Two is Indie
Yes, Hellblade 1 is Indie
No, Pentiment is NOT Indie
There are some exceptions though, I feel like the most recent Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares are not considered to be Indie, but they kind of are?!
The point is there is a standardize list of how words are used and meant. You don't just decide individually you want a word to mean a specific thing. If a word's meaning changes with society, then it gets updated, but everyone should then be using that meaning. A word is not supposed to mean differently to different people.
It's already happened in this case. So many people in this thread trying to be "technically correct" when that's not how normal people use language. Indie nowadays means a lower budget game made by a smaller team. Nobody cares about the specifics on how it was funded.
Yeah this is how most people use it, considering the user-generated search tags and general way everyone talks about games.
People on this site really want to be pedantic about this shit.
i could swear i had this debate 30 years ago only it was jesus jones, and not dave the diver
some people were really miffed when you pointed out that kylie was indie
some people were really miffed when you pointed out that kylie was indie
I think an important thing--for people that are dismissing this--to consider is that the biggest hurdle for indie devs to get their game out there is publishing and money. Indie devs can't advertise their games well besides word of mouth/Twitter, so it makes sense to be upset that this dev is a subsidiary of a large company like Nexon.
and this is how the gaming public gets snookered, by not noticing the difference, and also by not giving a damn about the difference. so a big company can direct a team to make an indie-looking game and take up huge space in THAT market all because polygonal characters and art.
"wow this game is really cool and slick and well made"
"wow this game is really cool and slick and well made"
Making actual independent devs compete for an award with a title funded and marketed by a large company is extremely lame. I don't care if you think indie should mean "it's 2D and looks low-budget".
This is about the common sense of indie game devs having to directly compete for an indie game dev award with Nexon, the enormous, multinational, multi billion dollar corporation - something which they do care about and which really looks like an error from the site in question.
Might as well nominate Armored Core 6 for the award as well if these terms don't have a common sense meaning.
On paper this would be the proper solution, but the problem is that budgets and precise team sizes aren't often disclosed so we can't accurately denote games by these metrics.
It's indie in the same way that child of light is indie. As in they both aren't indie at all. Small team? Sure. Indie? No way.
Not on exact numbers but we know they weren't paying for performance capture and photorealistic graphics. It can be a determination based on the result not the effort
There is no real clear definition for indie, but for awards ostensibly about awarding independent development, I think it is important to have some level of standard to avoid big companies involved, IMO.
and really it fucking should not. people using words wrong over time and letting the meaning degrade CAN be corrected instead of just passively accepted. and it's not like its the new general use just because you and your friends all have the same wrong impression.
looking like you can't afford to make better does not make you an independently published or developed game.
I was stating a fact of what it means, not what happens in reality.
It's not an indie and that's okay. I mean it literally isn't. You start to get elastic with the term and it loses meaning
A false indie, low-budget/small team or indie-like is a fine term if you really want to categorise, but really it doesn't matter that much
A false indie, low-budget/small team or indie-like is a fine term if you really want to categorise, but really it doesn't matter that much
"Involved in AAA development" to "Shigeru Miyamoto" is a vast chasm, but yes Miyamoto could make an indie game. Even more, random AAA devs you've never heard of can, have and should make indie games.
No Man's Sky is developed and published by an independent studio of 26 people
How the fuck is it not an indie game.
The industry is going to probably need to figure out a lot of new type of vocabulary in lot of ways.
Is Dave the Diver an indie title? Yes and no.
In the spirit of how we as an audience have expectations of an indie title, yes it is definitely an indie title.
In terms of it actually being created by and independent studio? No, it most definitely is not an indie title.
The question then becomes: What matters more? The spirit of how we have defined the "spirit" of an indie title, or how the game was financed and developed? If it is just spirit, then that opens up questions: what counts as "indie spirit"? Is a low budget title made by a big gaming company and/or backed by a major publisher an indie title? Is Song of the Deep, developed by Insomniac Games, an indie title? Is Valiant Hearts, created and backed by Ubisoft, an Indie title?
But what happens, if only the way the game was developed and funded matters? Is Baldur's Gate 3 an indie title? It was developed and published by Larian. Is Witcher 1 an indie title? That too was developed and published by an independent studio, that wasn't big at the time?
These questions are difficult to answer, and betray the fact that the word Independent Game is not something theit can be easily defined. Where do we put the line? What counts? It's an interesting question.
Is Dave the Diver an indie title? Yes and no.
In the spirit of how we as an audience have expectations of an indie title, yes it is definitely an indie title.
In terms of it actually being created by and independent studio? No, it most definitely is not an indie title.
The question then becomes: What matters more? The spirit of how we have defined the "spirit" of an indie title, or how the game was financed and developed? If it is just spirit, then that opens up questions: what counts as "indie spirit"? Is a low budget title made by a big gaming company and/or backed by a major publisher an indie title? Is Song of the Deep, developed by Insomniac Games, an indie title? Is Valiant Hearts, created and backed by Ubisoft, an Indie title?
But what happens, if only the way the game was developed and funded matters? Is Baldur's Gate 3 an indie title? It was developed and published by Larian. Is Witcher 1 an indie title? That too was developed and published by an independent studio, that wasn't big at the time?
These questions are difficult to answer, and betray the fact that the word Independent Game is not something theit can be easily defined. Where do we put the line? What counts? It's an interesting question.
