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[Capntastic]

When turning a profit outweighs creating an experience.

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

[Raptor85]

Originally indie just meant that it was developed independently of publisher funding/control (basically nobody dictating game changes outside of the developer them self).  Past few years though seems like the term is really just being used as a replacement for retro instead.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

It's also used to justify why the game sucks and is bugged.

Our game sucks? that's normal we're indie , don't compare us to AAA

(it's a tendancy you see when a dev highlights his game with PIXEL/HD RETRO or INDIE  )

[Sik]

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

Except the term "free" also lost meaning... Does a game with IAP count? With ads? One where the developer slapped a "donate" button somewhere? What if the developer has a Patreon account? (not gonna include "second job" here because I think everybody agrees on that one not counting =P)

[Superb Joe]

when i dislike the person making it or consider that they have too much money

[Superb Joe]

When turning a profit outweighs creating an experience.

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

You might say this game feels a bit like the indie game “Braid,” to which I might begin to retort but then simply stop, only to ask “Indie?”, pointing you towards Braid’s $180,000 budget, and then towards a small door. A green “Exit” sign overhead — flickering on and off – beckoning you to enter. You open the door and step through. You are greeted by Mario and Sonic on the other side.

[chances_r]

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

That's not enough.  Indie developers must also live in their parent's basement.  And spend hours in game forums arguing about the true meaning of "roguelike".

[2mass]

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

That's not enough.  Indie developers must also live in their parent's basement.  And spend hours in game forums arguing about the true meaning of "roguelike".

..and 'indie'.

[JWK5]

When turning a profit outweighs creating an experience.

only free games should count as indie to ensure ideological purity

I get the playful jab but actually I wasn't trying to insinuate trying to make a profit was a bad thing, just that peddling broken half-assed games hoping for a cash cow isn't exactly what I'd call "creative integrity", which I guess is how I'd define "indie".

[Canned Turkey]

Pls bui my game I need moni plees
https://maksgams2012.itch.io/walruses

[ProgramGamer]

Your suggested price for "Walruses with military issued flamethrowers" is 59.95$.

[Superb Joe]

pigscene was right about everything

[Capntastic]

I get the playful jab but actually I wasn't trying to insinuate trying to make a profit was a bad thing, just that peddling broken half-assed games hoping for a cash cow isn't exactly what I'd call "creative integrity", which I guess is how I'd define "indie".

I think it's flawed to try to define "indie" by loading it with moral qualities like "integrity".

[ProgramGamer]

I mean, in this particular case it's fairly easy to define "integrity". If you let money influence design decisions for your game in order to make a skinner box with no real substance, then you have no integrity. If, however, you just make a game that you are happy with and you happen to have made something that people are willing to buy, then you have a great deal of integrity. Of course there are gradients in the middle but those are also fairly easy to define.

Sadly, there's no real way to measure this in the real world, so we sometimes just have to hope that the developer of our favorite games are not total douches that happened to have some creative talent.

[Canned Turkey]

*COUGH*phil fish*COUGH*

[FrankieSmileShow]

Indie to me just means the people making decisions about the game are the people working on it directly, with no outsider with leverage on the dev team imposing decisions on em.

[starsrift]

I don't think "indie" is much of a meaningful term anymore, with caveats. The major caveat being, indie is definitely an important term to consoles - and that's quite simple to define, as 'indie' being a title that's not sold on a B&M shelf. Even when it includes titles like Child of Light by AAA studio UBI Montreal.

on the PC, the publisher is nearly eradicated - or rather, the publishers are Steam and GOG. All publishers do these days is offer advertising/marketing, and if you follow post-mortems with any regularly, you should be noticing that more times than not, they fucking suck at that. Small wonder there exists a large push to timed and/or console exclusives among the big publisher studios...

[s0]

on the PC, the publisher is nearly eradicated - or rather, the publishers are Steam and GOG. All publishers do these days is offer advertising/marketing

publishers fund development. that seems like a pretty huge deal to me.

[Capntastic]

Publishing is not distribution.  Distribution is not publishing.

[chances_r]

Publishing is not distribution.  Distribution is not publishing.

I'm curious how people define these two activities today.  Personally, I view them as somewhat distinct.  But I see the terms used almost interchangeably nowadays.