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[eiyukabe]

More important than quote "what "indie" means" quote quote quote blah blah.... is the utility of separating ourselves from the publishing model. It's not about mainstream, maybe a lot of people here are too young to remember but indie has always meant independent from publishers. Even when it became shorthand. I know it gets fuzzy because "what if a publisher publishes their own game? are they indie?" etc, and I say no because there is a separate arm over the development team that has more power than the development team. It's the same model, it's just a publisher within a publisher. I know, I worked in that sort of environment at Namco Bandai America a couple of years ago, and the development team was dragged left and right and told what to do and when to crunch and they were all laid off after Splatterhouse bombed because of management fuck ups.

Let me distinguish further.

To keep the utility of the word "indie", I would say that Valve games are indie because developers have power there (read their leaked employee handbook to see just how much power) and conversely no game with EA's label on it is indie. Even if it was made by a development team at EA, their bureaucracy holds all the power so that the dev team has little more creativity or control than a completely separate entity and will likely be gutted at the end of the project (friend of a friend got fired from EA because he refused to work one weekend when his girl was in town -- does that sound "indie", having your own time dictated for you?). Even if someone makes a game completely on their own and then EA simply bundles it with their label, it is no longer indie because EA is helping them with one of the hardest parts (marketing) by providing a recognizable label, and simultaneously profiting from a percentage or at the very least spreading their brand like the cancer that it is.

Ok, so what's the big deal with the "EA Indie Bundle"? Why should we care? If you are a hobbyist developer, you probably don't need to care that much (unless you plan to become a professional developer in the future). But if you are an indie developer that relies on your games selling to make a living, this is obviously an attempt to dilute the "indie" brand. What's next, an Activision Indie Bundle? Zynga? If the indie label continues to become diluted, indie developers will lose one of the only things they have to keep their company profitable and compete with the big guys; the trust we have developed and put into that label for decades. Would you rather live in a future where you control your destiny and the games you make, or one where you have to go through publishing gatekeepers that dictate everything that goes in your game and then kicks you to the curb with no future royalties when they don't need you? Guess which future the publishers are fighting to create.

[Christian Knudsen]

If the indie label continues to become diluted, indie developers will lose one of the only things they have to keep their company profitable and compete with the big guys; the trust we have developed and put into that label for decades.

Only indie developers care about this so-called indie label. Players care about a good game and feeling like they have some sort of relationship with the people making it. The "indie" label is entirely overrated and it becoming diluted will only affect those making crap games and trying to excuse that by slapping "indie" on them.

[eiyukabe]

Only indie developers care about this so-called indie label. Players care about a good game and feeling like they have some sort of relationship with the people making it. The "indie" label is entirely overrated and it becoming diluted will only affect those making crap games and trying to excuse that by slapping "indie" on them.

That's idealistic but simply not true. Branding matters. If McDonalds opened a restaurant but called it by a different name and didn't associate it with their brand, do you think they would get as many customers, even if they make the exact same food?

Branding shouldn't matter over quality, but since it does, and since corporations use it to their advantage, indie developers do the same. I really wish quality was all that it took to sell a game, but how is someone going to know how good your game is without knowing it exists?

[Christian Knudsen]

"Indie" is nowhere near as powerful a brand as McDonalds. And you're comparing apples with oranges. You'd be better off comparing to other artistic/entertainment products, not mass-produced burgers. Branding is a lot more important when you're trying to sell the same product over and over.

Indie isn't even a "brand" that most gamers care about or are aware of. They buy their games through Steam or XBLA or whatever. Most of the time they don't even know who made the game. Again, the people that care most about the indie brand or label is indie developers -- and they can't even fucking decide on what it means.

[Alevice]

A brand normally in the so called indie scene is the devloper itself. cactus, edmund, fish, etc

[eiyukabe]

It's a matter of degrees, but the same principle. Obviously if EA released a game called Minecraft 2 that would be worse (and trademark infringement), but it's the same principle of deceptive marketing by taking advantage of the good will and trust built between consumers and your competition. It's also lying for any reasonable definition of "indie"; if we just say that words are completely malleable then our discussion and all others we will have become useless. How can consumers make informed decisions when they are being lied to? And even if there is only one person that buys games based on them being indie or at least published by an ethical company (I do so I know that's at least one), then it is wrong to make such a lie as it affects a purchaser's buying decisions through deceit. Unless you believe that literally no one uses the "indie" label as a criterion for purchase, then this is wrong.

I mostly disagree with the apples to oranges claim, but I do see what you're saying. I think this is a close enough comparison and I don't know much about other creative industries to have an intelligent discussion, but I believe the same thing happens in other industries (large record labels buying indie labels and continuing to market them as indie for PR reasons, large internet porn labels using the "amateur" or "girl next door" label when independent pornstars started carving a niche, etc). If this is worth further discussion (and for my own education) I will look into independent film and independent music scenes to see how similar such occurrences are.

Anyway, the reason it concerns me is because I feel strongly that publishers, large movie distributors, large porn sites, large record labels, etc, are bad for creators in the long run, and we should really be trying to remove the publisher overhead so we can have more stable jobs, have more creative control over our IP, reap more of the reward (and yes, we would also have to take more of the risk but if we aren't competing with other games backed by publisher steroids, those risks would be lessened). I also believe that better games would be made in general. I don't believe that the "free market" will reward good games fully, though that happens to a small extent, because you always have the situation where the big guy out-markets the little guy regardless of game quality (publishers threaten sites that give their game bad reviews, fly reviewers to nice resorts to try to improve their score in ways that don't reflect what the user will experience, etc). So I guess I don't like anything that can make EA money as I feel their existence is evil, but I find this particularly repugnant in the same way as a fat american seeing that there is some rice in Africa that starving Africans have cultivated and trying to take it.

[Blademasterbobo]

dear lord this is the dumbest discussion i've ever seen

[John Sandoval]

are you suuuuuuuuuure 

[Blademasterbobo]

yuuuuuuuup

[InfiniteStateMachine]

klei founders opinion:

http://www.diygamer.com/2012/05/shank-dev-ea-indie-bundle-is-a-confusing-name-but-applauds-eas-support/

[kukouri]

The games are indie. They were published by EA, not developed.

What people seem not to be getting about that is this.

A game can be published in different ways. You can handle all development costs yourself and then find a publisher to bring the game to the market in a way better than you could yourself.
Or you can find a publisher during or before developing a game, pitch your idea, and have them fund some or all of the development costs.

The later I can get people not calling indie. You are at the whim of the publisher most if not all of the time in that model.

The first however, how exactly is that not still indie? The game itself is what it is, was developed entirely by whatever team, with their own funds and time. Just the marketing basically is being handled by the publisher for the most part.
If people are going to call the games in this bundle not indie just because they happen to be published by EA, then you might want to look  at every other game you consider to be indie, and see if they used any PR agencies to help market their products.
You should then reconsider your stance on if they are indie or not if they did use any PR firm to help them.

[eld]

Again, these are not bad developers, they've independantly funded their own development, but any publishing contract signed with EA will give EA control to do things, and a bunch of it includes exclusivity, or the fact that one title requires origin.

"REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- EA Partners, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced an agreement with independent developer Trapdoor, to publish Warp™. This unique stealth action game features a top-down sci-fi world with a distinctive art style, addicting levels, hazardous traps and challenging puzzles. The new game will debut on Xbox LIVE® Arcade, PlayStation® Network and PC in Summer 2011.

"Working with EA Partners allows us to expand our distribution to a much larger audience while still being able to retain our creative vision and identity," said Ken Schachter, Founder of Trapdoor. "As an independent studio we are thrilled with the opportunity to leverage the expertise and talent of EA's publishing organization to bring our very first game on console to life."

“If you break it down, it “technically” makes sense,” Jamie continued. “EA published a bunch of cool games made by independent developers, but it’s easy to construe it as a trying to cash in on the indie label. The fact is these games may never have been made without their support, so I think it’s unfortunate that there’s backlash on it — better to applaud them as one of the few publishers that have let developers retain ownership of the IP!”

They're basically regular studios with smaller production budgets and some nice working publishing deals, there's a lot of triple-a production studios like that, with both publishing deals and their own funded work.

Still, I don't think the WARP developers could remove the origin requirements even if they wished to, there's not a single soul on steam that wants their steam bought game to require origin, and no developer would enforce requirements unless it was required by contract.


So there, independant developers, not independantly published.

[Oddball]

A bunch of 'indie' games brought together in a 'bundle' by the people at 'EA'. I bet if it had been listed on Steam simply as the 'indie bundle' then no one would have batted an eyelid, add EA to the beginning and it becomes crime of the century.

[Dacke]

No. But it does become hilarious

[C.A. Sinner]

@The people mentioning Valve: If Valve games are "indie" why aren't they covered on the TIGS frontpage, Indiegames.com or any other relevant indie game site/blog?