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[increpare]

[...] IGF should promote more who's in the shadows rather than a software house that works for such high names...

The problem, I think, with this view is, as Alex has previously said, that the IGF shouldn't (IMHO) be just viewed as a PR platform for getting various 'independent' games developers presumably signed up to publishing companies.

[Eclipse]

[...] IGF should promote more who's in the shadows rather than a software house that works for such high names...

The problem, I think, with this view is, as Alex has previously said, that the IGF shouldn't (IMHO) be just viewed as a PR platform for getting various 'independent' games developers presumably signed up to publishing companies.

surely it isn't (at least not only), there's also game connection for that, but if it's going to award games published by sony.. oh well we should rename it Game Festival.

[Corpus]

Look at it this way: $20,000 is considerably more valuable to a tiny self-funded indie team than to a company that's funded by Sony.

[Daniel Benmergui]

Look at it this way: $20,000 is considerably more valuable to a tiny self-funded indie team than to a company that's funded by Sony.

That's sort of a good point... the prizes actually tell what kind of teams are expected to win...

Maybe the cash prizes are remnants of the original IGFs, and maybe they will go away as the target of the contest shifts away from the "indies as self-funded devs" concept.

[agj]

[...] IGF should promote more who's in the shadows rather than a software house that works for such high names...

The problem, I think, with this view is, as Alex has previously said, that the IGF shouldn't (IMHO) be just viewed as a PR platform for getting various 'independent' games developers presumably signed up to publishing companies.

hax

[GregWS]

and I certainly hope it doesn't slide into the dark side.

Well, if it does, then I think TIGS will have to create it's OWN awards show/event during GDC, possibly right across the street (I vaguely remember from my art history class last year that back in the 1800's some French artist did this to showcase his works when the main art festival didn't let him participate; he got a place in Western art history so it must have sort of worked...).

We can't let them get to us as I see it, and TIGS is getting to be quite prominent ourselves too.

Now, were we only true gentlemen, we could afford to give out $20 000 prizes...

[Alex May]

Since this has been bumped (shame on you Borsato ) I will point out a couple of things

* Q-Games (PixelJunk) are not the same as Q Entertainment (Lumines etc)
* PixelJunk games are allegedly funded with the proceeds of other titles

The latter point is important. Would you call Flashbang Studios indie? They are funding their free Unity games with profits from other games (IIRC). Would you call me indie? I work in games full time, and anything I make here is done in my spare time and is therefore funded by making mainstream games. The studio where I work has a game called Explodemon, for which no company except the studio itself has put forward funding. It started as a prototype in Game Maker that the design director worked on in his own time for a year having never done any programming before, and it is excellent. Whenever we have down time between projects we put developers on to Explodemon. It is the same situation. The product is self funded; the studio isn't owned by any other company; it has been made without creative input from anyone except those making it.

My opinion doesn't necessarily reflect that of my employers.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I... I'm really not sure where I stand on this. Pixeljunk Racers doesn't really seem to fit in with the spirit of things, but I suppose there isn't any technical reason why it shouldn't be there. Had it showed up there before it hit the PSN store no-one would have blinked an eyelid, but now that it has been out I can see why people object.

Most downloadable games are self-funded by developers though, and on Wiiware most are self-published, including LostWinds.  It would have been weird to put LostWinds up for IGF though, IMO.

(My opinion doesn't necessarily reflect that of my employers)

(I would really like to make a game for IGF next year. I didn't think Tumbledrop was good enough to enter because it is my first game, but I might aim to do something for next year)

[Alex May]

Racers was last year; this year Q-Games are entering both PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Eden.

It is very hard not to feel disappointed that they've done that, as an entrant. As Jon Mak points out it raises the bar to the point where many of the games submitted to the IGF which are perfectly good may be redundant.

If it were me, I wouldn't have entered them. But they must be proud of their work, so I guess it is up to them. There is a part of the entry form that asks you to specifically tick a box to declare that you consider yourself "indie" and that your game conveys the "indie spirit". So I guess they must have ticked that

[___]

Disappointed is a good word to describe my feelings on the matter as well.

[Eclipse]

Disappointed is a good word to describe my feelings on the matter as well.

how classy this gentleman is...

Eden looks very nice but the gameplay seems not so interesting, monsters seems more a casual game than an indie game to me.. i don't want to shoot on sight over pixeljunk decisions, but it feels strange..

also all the games on xbla, wiiware, psn and the vast mayority of pc games are self funded nowadays (yes you need to be lucky to have a publisher pay for you today, expecially for pc games) but a lot aren't what i should call indie

[simoniker]

Wow, is this thread going to get bumped on a yearly basis, then?

Firstly, expanding on what Haowan said, it's true that the PixelJunk series is self-funded. In fact, the series is self-published in Japan, where the Q folks work. (Sony picked it up for U.S. publishing because they think it's great, I would presume, they didn't pay for its creation. This is a really important point.)

I do think that Sony's push for the series is perhaps confusing people as to its
'independence', but I do understand the worry, because indie is very mutable as a term.

But I'm not really interested in arguing on a case by case basis. The point is, the IGF wants to honor indie projects of all sizes that have creator control and are created by smaller, more agile teams. Our rule is that you self-select whether you are indie or not. In the recent past, everyone has been pretty good about this, but we do think carefully about each game that enters and whether it's suitable.

Other than that, you guys must know by now that we have no intention of 'sliding to the dark side'. As you may have spotted, last year's worries about PixelJunk came to naught because it wasn't even a finalist. The best games pick themselves.

Feel free to follow up with me and Matthew/Steve from Flashbang at chairman at igf dot com if you have other questions on this. And good luck to those who entered!

Simon Carless
[IGF Chairman.]

[Alec]

I personally feel that creative independence is what is more important here than financial independence.

If a game has a play mechanic that is truly wonderful, exciting, well-implemented, it quite quickly separates itself from the pack. All money can get you is solid production values, which aren't the focus of the IGF. You can't buy creative spirit.

[Zaphos]

I personally feel that creative independence is what is more important here than financial independence.

If a game has a play mechanic that is truly wonderful, exciting, well-implemented, it quite quickly separates itself from the pack. All money can get you is solid production values, which aren't the focus of the IGF. You can't buy creative spirit.

Quickly, someone tell will wright he can submit spore!

[Corpus]

Well argued, simoniker

[team_q]

Quickly, someone tell will wright he can submit spore!

What are you talking about? The interesting creative parts of spore were essentially castrated by committee.

[___]

I think we need to go back to the amateur vs indie meme.

[Eclipse]

I think we need to go back to the amateur vs indie meme.

and WE WILL

Anyway i'm really glad about Simon posts, well argued and organized, also: Monsters is a mere tower defend style game, more casual than indie, and not so original indeed, so possibly it will end like racers.
Eden is much more interesting but behind the beautiful style it seems to lack a real gameplay...

[GregWS]

I think we need to go back to the amateur vs indie meme.

This was a meme?

Well, I don't know about all this, but I think there does need to be some reasonable guidelines for who qualifies as indie, as Q really doesn't (even though I do like some of their stuff).  If you just go by self-funded, then don't most Valve games qualify as "indie" too?  And that just defeats the purpose of indie even being a category, as there are so many self-funded games now.  Small team could be used as a qualifier, but studios like Q could just make small team games (and I'd bet that they'd be better than large team games too).  They still wouldn't be "indie," though.

[Zaphos]

I think we need to go back to the amateur vs indie meme.

This was a meme?

Briefly ... it was mostly just a response to a really poor article on game set watch.

What are you talking about? The interesting creative parts of spore were essentially castrated by committee.

I didn't think that, but okay.  It's sort of an 'insert your example here' thing anyway; my point was just that I think there are projects that show creative independence and yet would be very strange to call indie.  Perhaps by your standards their aren't projects like that, which would be interesting, but I don't want to focus on spore in particular.