In another thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2157) on this forum, cyrus_zuo writes: ... Always goes back to "what is an Indie" comments, which I think are always worthwhile in considering. Over the past weeks I have seen a number of discussions on this board about that very topic, but everyone seems to associate different things with the word 'indie'. Not just what it means to be an indie developer, but also what kinds of games indies are 'supposed' to make.

We hear about 'indie' versus 'mainstream' and 'hardcore' versus 'casual', but what exactly do these things mean?

I have been in plenty a meeting where two people ferociously argued about two completely unrelated things, simply because they were using the same words to describe them.

So in order to get the terminology straight, I decided to write up a simple taxonomy of game development. Hopefully, this will reduce the confusion a little.

Feel free to disagree :)

FUNDING
It costs money to make games, and someone has to provide this money:
In-House. The developers are employees of a publishing company.
Publisher-Funded. An external studio that is funded by a publisher.
Self-Funded. The developers largely provide their own funding.
I think it's safe to say that the majority of the members of this forum are Self-Funded. To avoid confusion, I deliberately did not use the term 'independent' to describe this last category.

TEAM SIZE
Game development teams can be large or small, and even consist of a single person. The size of the team is directly related to the demands of the game.

Typically, In-House and Publisher-Funded teams will be large. Self-Funded teams can also be large but the majority seems to be small. Many Self-Funded developers work part-time on their games, many even purely as a hobby.

The size of the team doesn't really matter for this discussion; I only included it for completeness.

THE PLAYERS
We often say that we make games for the ‘casual’ player as opposed to the ‘hardcore’ player. But what exactly does this mean? How do we measure ‘casualness’? I think it is a combination of two metrics: Effort and Intensity.

Effort measures how much a player has to invest into playing the game. Bejeweled has very simple rules, so it isn't hard to learn or play. Dweep (or Grek!) is quite a bit tougher because it requires you to actually think in order to solve the puzzles. Quake, or any other FPS, requires even more effort to play. Not all players are willing to invest huge amounts of Effort into playing games.

The second measure is the Intensity with which people play. In other words, how often they play and for how long they play. Some players will spend little time playing (or play on an irregular schedule) while others spend their every waking moment on games. (Note: maybe there is a better word for this than Intensity.)

Two examples: I like FPS games but I only play them once in a while. It takes me quite some Effort to learn and play these games, but I play them with low Intensity. My father, on the other hand, plays card games (low Effort) almost every evening (high Intensity).

PUBLISHING
How are games delivered to the customer, and who does this?

Games can be sold as:
Retail
Low-Cost Retail
Web/Downloadable/Shareware
Games can be sold by: A publisher
The developer (self-publishing)
Affiliates
Combinations of these are possible.

CONCLUSIONS
With these definitions out of the way, let's see which ones are usually associated with 'mainstream' and 'indie' (although your personal interpretation may vary):

Mainstream games:
are created by In-House, Publisher- and Self-Funded studios,
typically require a lot of Effort to play,
are often played with a lot of Intensity,
are sold through Retail,
are sold by a Publisher.
Indie games: are created by a Self-Funded developer,
typically require no or a modest amount of Effort to play,
are played with little or a modest amount of Intensity,
are sold as Shareware,
are sold by the Developer and Affiliates.
Of course, these are generalizations. Not all mainstream games require a lot of Effort to play, while some indie games do. In addition, the meaning of these terms changes over time.

CLOSING REMARKS
There are other metrics. We could also measure the Originality of game designs, but in my opinion both ‘mainstream’ and ‘indie’ have their share of original games as well as derivatives. So, making a distinction based on this metric isn't really fair.

Being Self-Funded doesn’t necessarily make it easier for a developer to pursue original ideas. There may be no publisher who insists you make your game “the same as last years hit, but different”. On the other hand, making a truly original game is a big risk -- because there are no guarantees anyone will actually buy it.

Finally, to some people, ‘indie’ (or ‘shareware’) means ‘amateurs’. Anyone can create a game and put up a web-based store. Unfortunately, if the majority of these efforts are crap, this negative impression rubs off on the rest of us. I think the only way we can get rid of this label is by producing a lot of high-quality games to provide the critics wrong.

I hope this little article makes it a little easier to discuss the various types of games (and developers) out there. It won't do us much good to think we're discussing the same thing, when maybe we're really not :)

The end. (phew!)

I would question the effort/intensity part of the equation. At the moment, low intensity/low effort games are a popular market for the shareware/indie people but there are still plenty of exceptions, and it might just be a passing thing. My own definition of indie includes every genre of games.

Indie/shareware games, have, it semms, recently gotten a reputation for being slight, casual, derivative and amateurish. Certainly there were a few people talking about that impression in the slashdot post. Which is sad, but the reality is that the majority of indie games are slight, derivative, casual and amateurish... or at least 2-3 of the aforementioned. But that goes with the territory I guess - anyone can become an indie. I do really hope that the public perception changes to something more like mine though - that indie games can be anything and everything.

I have no great love of internet distribution, self-publishing, self-funding, or low intensity, low effort games. To me the lure of being independent is summed up in the very word itself. I do what I want. Therefore I would hope the true definition, and perception, of indie games would be that it is where the most diversity can be found.

How important is it to come up with a standard definition of "indie?" What is at stake if we don't? In the mid nineties the term I heard bandied about was "lone wolf," which was a individual or small group. But lone wolves had the same goals as the big shops; they wanted to land a contract. It was a point of pride to be a lone wolf and find a publisher. But now with self-publishing, these same lone wolves are calling themselves indies, even when they land a publisher contract. I've mostly thought it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves. Having a label to slap on us provides us with some unity, so that's one benefit there, but is there a discernable benefit via the consumer? Can spreading the news on "independents" raise revenues?

I love this topic. I always learn more and change my opinion by the time it is over. The one thing that strikes a happy chord in me is that a year ago we were discussing if the games are shareware or independent or what... I think that most of the group is now defining themself strictly as Independent. That in my mind is progress towards some sort of unity. (hmm...unity and independent don't seem to go together)

I still believe that if the indie companies all work independent of each other and try to ignore that each exists when marketing their goods, that they will not reap as many rewards as they would if they were a part of an "Indie network" of sorts. Part of something that people can identify with. Which is why I think just the name indie means so much. Now the industry just has to change the perception. That will take time, but I believe it is already well underway.

I wrote a really long stream of concious editorial on this one months ago: http://www.gametunnel.com/html/contentid-5.html
I think that my opinion hasn't changed a ton.

Indie games seem to be taking the old arcade market and providing them with games to play.

I hope you don’t mind if I resurrect this old thread. I was searching though the archives trying to find a definition of Indie Game Developer. I think Matthijs did an excellent job of defining many terms. Elund asks if it is important to come up with a standard definition of "indie and what is at stake if we don't?” Good question. The reason I am interested in an answer is because this forum is called the “Indie Game Developer Forum”. I want to know who this forum is for. If I start posting comments about how my business works, or what worked and didn’t work in some of my games, are people going to tell me, “well that’s fine for you in YOUR type of business, but it doesn’t apply to INDIE developers.” When someone posts a question about “game pricing” in these forums, it is assume to be about Indie games. Or in the recent Game Pricing thread, trends in retail games were identified and the question was asked “do think indies should follow suit?” How can you participate in these discussions if you don’t agree on what Indie means? I guess in this case, you can enumerate different types of Indies and discus how the pricing might apply to each.

Obviously, we will never get everyone to agree on an exact definition. But if we don’t have some general boundaries, I don’t even know if my company is considered Indie or if people will find my posts relevant.

I guess my real question isn’t how do you define the term “Indie Game Developer?”. The real question is “Who is this forum for?” or “Who are the member of this forum?”

You might also find some helpful info in the Indie FAQ on this site:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/indie-faq.htm

I'd almost go as far as to say that this forums should be more considered a "downloadable" games forum. For example, James, it's debatable whether your company is "indie" or not- but your opinions will certainly be valued as one of the more "successful" downloadable game companies out there.

I definitely like the term downloadable games. It is a great way to describe games like Ricochet/Rebound. I think much of the discussion here is about downloadable games or shareware games.

But there are also a lot of independent game development companies working on retail games. My company used to be one of them.

I guess an easier question to answer would be “Am I Indie?” To answer that you would need to know more about me and my company. Even if you couldn’t care less about debating what is “indie” and what isn’t, you may find my story interesting.

Reflexive Entertainment (http://www.reflexive.com) was started in 1997 by four profession game developers who quit our jobs at another game development company to start our own. (Yes, it’s a common story.) We thought we could make a demo, sign a deal with a publisher, and make the next big retail game. We setup an office in the home of one of my partners and we all worked long hours for significantly less money than we had been making before. Sound rather Indie so far. We were able to get “angle funding” from a relative of one of the partners. This was a huge gift. We had enough money for the 4 of us to draw minimum salaries for 6 months. Is that still Indie?

We worked on a design document and demo for big retail game for a couple months. Before long we realized the project had gotten very big and we had no idea where it would end. We decided to regroup and start a new project of much smaller scope. Something we would have FUN MAKING and something that could finished without the funding of a publisher. We created Swarm (http://arcade.reflexive.com/gameinfo.aspx?CID=0&AID=30), a little arcade space shooter inspired by Crystal Quest but most people think it is asteroid. We developed our own payment processing system, posted the demo on our web site, submitted it to every shareware web site we could find, and tried to get commercial/retail game web sites to review it and host the demo. This all sounds very Indie. Eventually we let Real Networks sell the game on their web site. This was before the “Real Arcade”. Back then we had CDs pressed and paying customers could either download the full version, or have it shipped to them on CD. We thought we were going to be rich. We thought we would have to spend half our day fulfilling orders and would end up hiring someone to do that. It never happened. The game did well for 1997, but not enough to keep paying the salaries of four game developers who all wanted a raise. But now at least we could so we were a proven team. We had shipped a game as our own company. (Not to mention all the games we made when we worked for “the man”)

We went back to developing our big project (Zax). Somehow we convinced Hasbro Interactive to pick it up. They flew a producer and their art director to meet with us in our home office. They liked what they saw, we agreed to some terms, and they started sending us big milestone payment check each month. We hired more employees and leased office space. Now we had employees, and office, a publishing deal, and “advance on royalties” checks coming in every month. Are we still Indie?

While working on Zax for Hasbro, we were approached by Activation. They had seen our Zax pitch and thought our engine would work well for a Star Trek game they wanted to make. We gave them some terms and they were ready to give us the contact except for one thing. They wanted our “A Team” working on their title not on Zax. We had planned to hire mostly new guys to do the Star Trek game for Activision while most of us continued to work on Zax. The Star Trek project was put on hold indefinably. A few months later Hasbro decided their Interactive division didn’t make much sense and they canceled most of the projects including ours. Activision was very pleased and we all started working on Star Trek Away Team. A few months later, we found a publisher to pickup Zax and now we are making two retail games for two different publishers. Eventually we ship them both. Now we shipped Swarm on-line and two retail games and we have two development teams and a burn rate in excess of $100k per month. Are we still Indie?

After the retail games shipped, the publisher hunt starts again. Time to make demos, write design documents, and pitch ideas to publishers. In the mean time, I start making a little Arkanoid type game called Ricochet Xtreme (http://arcade.reflexive.com/gameinfo.aspx?CID=0&AID=29) just for fun. Eventually Reflexive (my partners) realize Ricochet has potential and the development teams aren’t doing much else so we polish out Ricochet and sell it online. Eventually we get a publishing deal with Black Isle/Interplay to make a retail RPG. We worked on Lionheart (http://lionheart.blackisle.com/) for almost 18 months. Meanwhile we continue to sell Ricochet on your web site, in Real Arcade, and any other way we kind find. We enhanced our digital rights management (DRM) system and payment processing and repackaged it to make it reusable in other games. We built an affiliate network of web sites referring their eyeballs the Ricochet and Swarm demos and getting a cut of the money anytime someone buys the game. Now we are sending royalty check to affiliates every month! Meanwhile, we still work on Lionheart for Black Isle and get milestone check from them.

One day we came across “Crimsonland” It was a cool little action shooter distributed as freeware. It was version 0.9 and clearly had some parts that needed more development. We signed an exclusive distribution agreement with the developer and gave him an ADVANCE on royalties and lots of suggestions for how to finish the game. Now we are funding external development! We also start giving our DRM to other developers who integrate it into their game. The Reflexive Arcade (http://www.reflexivearcade.com) is born and we start selling 20 different game on our web site and have dozens of affiliates driving traffic to Reflexive Arcade or hosting a re-branded version of Reflexive Arcade on their web site. Clear Channel Communication put the Clear Channel Arcade (http://www.kiisfm.com/jacor-common/section_games/gamedownload.html) on the web sites of their 900+ radio stations. Now other web sites are selling games made by other people and we process the sales and send out the royalty checks to the affiliates and the developers. Are we still Indie?

After shipping Lionheart we pitch other retail game ideas to other publishers. We get paid by a big publisher to make a “Product Vision Demo” but the game is never picked up. We decide to stop working for retail publishers and focus entirely on “downloadable” games. We improve the Reflexive Arcade, sign up more developers and more affiliates. We put our own games in more portals and on-line publishers such as Game House and Shockwave, and we start work on a whole new wave of downloadable games. We recently shipped a fallow-up to Ricochet named Ricochet Lost Worlds (http://arcade.reflexive.com/gameinfo.aspx?AID=96&CID=0) and have a couple more new games in development. Does our refocusing on downloadable games make us more Indie?

Anyway, that’s my sorry. I guess it isn’t all that important weather you consider it Indie or not. But there are a lot of fuzzy lines because we fund the external development of some external games and process sales for game on other web sites made by other developers. But at the same time, we do the common stuff like make our own games and sell them on our own web site and on bug portals like Real Arcade.

Heh, don’t get to worried about who's indie and who's not, there is this thing I refer to as "The cult of the indie game developer", it's sort of a religious group who's creed demands that they constantly draw the line between who's really indie and who's just a poser or some other ridiculous crap.

Mikes right, It really is about making games for the downloadable market. And there's no one who can really say what the TRUE meaning of Indie is. There are game studios like Monolith who refer to themselves as Independent Developers because they aren’t owned by EA or some other umbrella corporation.

I think the same people who are all caught up on the meaning of indeed are the same people who will debate what REAL open source is vs. Wanna-be Open source. And which license is the REAL open source.

Typically all I see from these groups are an air of superiority and haughtiness from a position of weakness. I wouldn't take them too seriously.

I didn’t mean to get into a debate about “The cult of the indie game developer” and who is more indie than whom. I was just wondering if indie includes any form of retail games or “independent” developers working on projects for publishers. It sounds like it refers to only to completely self-funded games which are almost always downloadable/shareware games.

Since we were not owned by a publisher, or anyone else, I always thought of ourselves as in independent developer. Obviously, we were very dependent on having A publisher but we weren’t tied to any specific one. But I guess we weren’t really that independent. And it sounds like we were certainly not “Indie” according any definition from the Indie culture. But at the same time, we did make some Indie games on the side. (self funded downloadable games) Now we have ditched the retail publishers and gone totally Indie (or at least totally self funded downloadable).

The interesting thing is the downloadable games business seems to be getting less “Indie” friendly. The development of most downloadable game is still self funded by the developer, but “publishers” are becoming very dominant and controlling. Event if you fund the development totally on your own, the publisher (Real Networks, Pop Cap, ...) are taking a lot of control away from you. Some portals like MSN Gaming Zone are telling us they will not take a game we developed unless go through a “publisher”. And Real is telling us they won’t take our game unless we allow them to put their version on a bunch of other portals and we are not allowed to have directly relationships with specific sites. Real also wants to have an exclusive on the ability to sell subscriptions. If we agree to Real’s deal, we will not be able to put our games on any portals that have a game subscription service that competes with Real’s “Game Pass”.

I didn’t mean to get into these specific details. My point is it is hard to be independent and competitive at the some time even in the downloadable games space. Even if publishers don’t fund you or your games, they still want to own them anyway.

Personally I wouldn't classify Reflexive as indie, but I don't think the label is all that important.

Well that begs the question Steve, what do you personally classify as an Indie? :)

I wrote a little article for DIY games on the topic of the online distribution channels

http://www.diygames.com/index.php?p=405&more=1

I guess that means I won't be publishing any game I make with real ;)


I guess what I was trying to say Chris, is you are the only person in a position to say if you are indie or not. It's not really a line that is drawn by someone else. You guys develop, fund, and sell your own games. Sounds indie to me, regardless of what you've done in the past.

I understand what you're saying Dan. I was just wondering what Steve's definition was since he doesn't classify Reflexive as an Indie.

My personal definition of an Indie company is pretty simple. A company that self-publishes and has a direct connection to their customers. A game company that can survive without a publisher. What's weird is that by my definition Pyrogon wasn't a real Indie developer. They were a retail oriented developer in the downloadable market.

Heh, that's also interesting info about RealArcade.

Originally posted by Dexterity
Personally I wouldn't classify Reflexive as indie, but I don't think the label is all that important.

I now understand that when were making retail games for publishers that was not indie at all. But ever since 2001 (when Ricochet was made) we have had what we called our SFG division of the company. This is the division that worked on Self Funded Games. They created games, created technology to sell and distribute games online, and established relationships with affiliates. When we saw that the SFG division was more profitable that the retail/publisher division, we chose not to pursue a new retail contract when your last one was terminated. Now we only focus on SFG.

So, do you say you don’t consider us indie because you think we used the funds from retail publishing deals to fund the downloadable games? (which is somewhat true but mostly not)

Or is it because all of our SFG games were published on big online portals? (in addition to our direct sales on our own site)

Or is it because we started the company with a little angle funding?

Or is it because our SFG division has become so successful that that we now publish other peoples games and license our DRM to other developers?

Sorry. I don’t know why I even care. It’s not like it matters who labels us what. But I am just curios what the mind set is of the administrator of the forum.

Originally posted by Chris_Evans
Well that begs the question Steve, what do you personally classify as an Indie? :)

I already wrote up my definition of indie in the Indie FAQ (http://www.dexterity.com/articles/indie-faq.htm).

Ironically, Reflexive is mentioned as a successful indie in Steve's Indie FAQ, even though they are not an indie according to his definition :).

Originally posted by James C. Smith
So, do you say you don’t consider us indie because you think we used the funds from retail publishing deals to fund the downloadable games? (which is somewhat true but mostly not)


Are you still working on retail deals today where publishers are funding the development? That was my understanding, and if so, that's the main reason I wouldn't classify Reflexive as indie. If you did retail development for a while and then used those funds to stop accepting publisher advances and self-fund all your projects from then on, then that's a different story, and I'd more more inclined to say you are indie.

But as I wrote in my definition in the Indie FAQ (http://www.dexterity.com/articles/indie-faq.htm), the term "indie" has some fuzzy edges. When I was doing both retail and shareware development at one point, I wouldn't have classified Dexterity as an indie because the primary business model was primarily about making money via publisher advances, which means giving up some creative control.


Or is it because all of our SFG games were published on big online portals? (in addition to our direct sales on our own site)


Nope, that doesn't matter IMO.


Or is it because we started the company with a little angle funding?


Do you mean "angel" funding? That wouldn't by itself exclude you from indie nirvana IMO.


Or is it because our SFG division has become so successful that that we now publish other peoples games and license our DRM to other developers?


Not a problem to me... still indie there.


Sorry. I don’t know why I even care. It’s not like it matters who labels us what. But I am just curios what the mind set is of the administrator of the forum.


For me there are two key factors, and they aren't black and white. The first is creative control. I believe that to be indie, you have to maintain final control over all creative decisions. If someone else can overrule your creative decisions, you aren't indie -- you're dependent on someone else. The second is self-funding new product development. Obviously there are many financing models, but IMO to be indie you need to fund your own development to the extent that you have total control over how the products turn out. If you have an angel investor that lets you make all the product development decisions, to me that's indie. But if that investor is looking over your shoulder too much and telling you how to do your job, that's not indie.

So it all comes down to control. And in that sense, "indie" is more a matter of degree than of essence. The more direct control you have over your financing and creative decisions, the more indie you are. You can lose that control either by becoming dependent on some other entity or by becoming excessively interdependent (i.e. multiple stakeholders in the business pressure it to go in a certain direction, such that no one person has much control).

Other people's definitions may vary of course, but that's the paradigm I use. On the basis on indies have total control over their projects, it implies that indies titles have the potential to be more creative than their less independent retail counterparts.

So as indie businesses grow, I think they naturally become less "indie" because outside pressures can begin to restrict creativity and remove some of that control. How much freedom do you really have? For example, do you have the freedom to direct Reflexive's resources to spend three months developing a game just for fun and then give it away for free just because it's something you want to do? I do have the freedom to do this if I want to, and no one can stop me if I decide to do it. But you might not have that degree of freedom because you have to answer to investors about how their money is being used. Dexterity certainly has other stakeholders that are affected by my decisions, but in terms of creative control and the investment of Dexterity's cash, the buck stops with me. Well, perhaps my wife would say otherwise. :eek:

>> Are you still working on retail deals today where publishers are funding the development?

Nope. We shutdown that division and refocused all our efforts on self funded downloadable games. Reflexive does not make retail games for publishers.

>> Do you mean "angel" funding?

Doh! Yeas, that would be angel funding not angle funding. And like I said, it was a gift from a relative. He does not own a majority of the company and does not restrict our creative control in any way. He is not involved in any business decisions weather that are day to day decisions or long term decision.

I think your statements about creative control sum it up best. How can you be Indie if you have to answer to investors, publishers, or anyone else. But by that definition, I think it would be hard to have employees end continue to be indie. If you have the livelihood of several employees depending on the success of your business could you really “spend three months developing a game just for fun and then give it away for free just because it's something you want to do?”

Then in that case I would say Reflexive is an indie -- previously I thought you were still developing retail titles with publisher advances. Again though... others might define this differently.

The idea of having absolute creative control is the "indie" ideal. You always have people to answer to, and in the real world there are compromises to be made. But I feel that an indie is more free to take risks and make mistakes than a non-indie, both on the business side and the creative side.