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[C.A. Sinner]

ok yeah i guess you could probably "train" yourself to only like indie games if you wanted to do that for w/e reason, fair enough.

but the point was more that some games don't have "indie" equivalents.

[Paul Eres]

the main reason would be lack of money; if you're poor and can't spend much money on games, the only choice is either to play mostly free/inexpensive games, or to steal games, and i think the former is (most of the time) a better choice

and i do think some genres definitely have better games from corporations (and some genres have better games from individuals), but even genre is a matter of taste. i think corporations are best at FPS/TPS games, JRPGs, and RTS games, but in most other genres individuals win out

[DavidCaruso]

The only genres I can really think of where individuals (indieviduals?) have really won out over larger developers are roguelikes, MUDs, and text adventures (or "interactive fiction.") In other ones larger developers are still releasing the contemporary best games, even if they overall make far less, say, 2D platformers than smaller ones do.

Also many "indie" games are released on XBLA. If you buy and play those games then are you now supporting Microsoft (a corporation)?

[Paul Eres]

i'd also add to that list genres which indies originated: tower defense, hidden object game, match 3, and so on

also if you go far enough back in time a lot of games are blurred between indie and corporate. e.g. what about myst; it was made by a couple of brothers if i remember right, in some type of card program. so i'm not sure i'd count that as either or. the division between indie and corporate is much stronger now than it was 20 years ago

re xbla, most xbla games also eventually get released on pc. but that often has the same problem: if you buy them through steam you're partially supporting valve. so if you want to be an indie purist, i guess you'd only buy indie games direct from developers, so that they get the highest percent of the profits. but i'm sure most indies would rather have you buy the game from xlba than to not buy it at all (or even to buy it *both* for xbla and from them directly when it comes to pc)

[C.A. Sinner]

also battle for wesnoth and frozen synapse are definitely up there with the best when it comes to tbs games. i wouldn't say tbs is a genre "dominated by indies" yet but we're getting there.

[Paul Eres]

i still prefer alpha centauri in the genre of turn-based strategy, but wesnoth would definitely be in the top 5

[DavidCaruso]

Oh yeah, forgot about Frozen Synapse. That's not made by an individual, though, is it? Same with Wesnoth which has a huge community driven thing going on IIRC (though I haven't played it yet.) Dwarf Fortress would probably be a very good example though.

[Derek]

Small teams make most of my favorite games. I like good games that end when they should and don't have very much filler.

Of those small teams, the indie ones dominate in these genres:

Roguelikes
Platformers
Puzzle
Simulation

I'd say they do well in these categories:

Turn-Based Strategy
Multiplayer Team Games
Horror
Adventure
Humor

And actually, I don't see any reason why indie developers couldn't do very well making FPS's and RTS's in the future. Looking at Natural Selection 2, Hard Reset, Hawken, and AirMech it seems quite possible. Same with fighting games (Melty Blood, Skullgirls, and Card Saga Wars).

[Paul Eres]

i also want to mention something: most indie games on xbox are not xbla, but xblig. xblig games have 90% of the profits go to the developer, xbla games only have about 55-65% (i don't know the exact percent, and even if i did there are NDA's against mentioning it) go to the developer. 90% is very good, it's also what you'd get by selling the game yourself on your own website (after e-commerce service providers and paypal feels and so on). so i'd say buying an xblig game is just as good as buying it direct

there are drawbacks to making an xblig game vs an xbla game, though; you can't use as much hard drive space, you can't use online high scores, you can't do "real" xbox achievements, you can only charge between 1$ and 5$, and so on. but overall if i were to make a game for xbox, xblig actually looks more tempting to me than xbla does

[Player Ʒ]

Of those small teams, the indie ones dominate in these genres:

Shmups
Arena shooters
Roguelikes
Arena shooters
Shmups
Platformers
Arena shooters
Puzzle
Arena shooters
Simulation
Did I say arena shooters?

Fixed.

[alastair]

My favourite indie games in the platformer genre at the moment are: Ninja Gaiden 3 and Gokumakaimura.

[Paul Eres]

houkaimura > gokumakaimura

[Derek]

My favourite indie games in the platformer genre at the moment are: Ninja Gaiden 3 and Gokumakaimura.

I think you mean 忍者龍剣伝III 黄泉の方舟 and 極魔界村.

If that's too hard to remember, at least use the real title for Ninja Gaiden 3, which is Ninja Ryūkenden III: Yomi no Hakobune.

Also, those aren't indie games.

[DavidCaruso]

Nah I'm pretty sure he in fact means Ninja Gaiden 3, the NES version had quite a few changes from the original which made it even better. It was made by a small team at the independent developer Tecmo, who worked on the game because they wanted to, and even published it by themselves without taking any direct orders from Bobby Kotick's secret chamber (the one where he keeps the brainwashing gas that takes away devs' creative freedom/indiependence.) 100% indie as shit, and don't let the indie haters tell you otherwise, they probably just only play dudebro shooters where you shoot other dudebros.

[Paul Eres]

there were a couple of bad parts to the ninja gaiden games -- the biggest one are areas that you could only get through because of glitches. avgn goes into that a big in his review of the ninja gaiden games. overall they're great, but they did have a few game-killing parts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t2YvyLqw3c

this may have been more of a problem with the first one than the latter two, though