Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
So if an indie game blows up because it’s great then it’s not indie? That’s a silly way to define it.
Have some mid-sized studios co-opted the term? Sure. Expedition 33 is on that AA spectrum, but a game by a very small team? In what definition is Celeste not an indie game?
Here’s one definition. If you go to the Steam page for Deltarune, it says “tobyfox” as developer, that’s a (nick)name. OneShot (2016) says “Future Cat LLC” but that seems to be made up since Steam asks for “company name”. Celeste’s “Maddy Makes Games Inc.” seems real, however. Therefore, Celeste isn’t indie.
You still haven’t defined anything. So if a game is only made by one person, it’s indie? Games made by very small teams aren’t indie?
Look, I get it, “indie” is actually a bit of a nebulous term, and is often co-opted by medium/large size studios who want to pretend to be “better” than the AAA games, but no reasonable person would call Celeste “not indie.”
The first two examples are clearly made by multiple people. They just haven’t registered a company. I good rule I found, not for games but just in general, is that if it’s a registered organization it’s probably not as good as you think it is otherwise.