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[team_q]

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.

Yeah I agree with you though, I think you would be hard pressed to find a game that doesn't innovate at least on some minor level. I just always considered 'Indie Spirit' to be 'balls out' with no regard to what other people think or care, good I'm glad to see it. Its when you start dialling back features or changing your vision to meet metrics or what your public relations and marketing want that you loose focus.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

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.

While I agree that creative independence is more *important* than financial independence, part of the purpose of the IGF is to highlight games which are good, but obscure (because they have low funding), and which otherwise have gone without notice. I think that's an important part of it. Imagine if the winners every year were all games which were creatively independent but not financially independent: one year may have gone to Okami, another year to Katamari Damacy, another year to Pokemon Snap, another year to WiiFit. Those are all very creative games, but if those had won, nobody would have ever learned about Aquaria, Fez, Everyday Shooter, and all those games which are more known because they won awards there.

[marshmonkey]

it seems like a lot of people think that there should be some sort of profit cap to qualify the submitting studio.

If the studio the game comes from makes over X in profit per year then it should not qualify.

That is the only way to separate out everyones example of Valve and Epic and other guys as being technically independent.

maybe it should be called the F.C.I.G.F. (Financially Challenged Independent Game Festival)

So what happens when a previous qualifier does well with their game and starts bringing in over the X amount of profit? Is the F.C.I.G.F now punishing success - or should that entrant just be happy they have found success and let the torch go on to other developers?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think it's better to "punish" the success of having millions to make games with if it means not "punishing" people who don't have millions to make games with. It's a balance. Because if you do let games by Valve and Blizzard and Id all in, you're punishing people with less funds much more than than you'd be punishing those games by not allowing them in, because the top prize award money is paltry compared to the amount of money their games make every day.

To set up a table so that that's clearer:

[Allow all games]
- Punishment to well-funded games: None.
- Punishment to poorly-funded games: They have to compete with games that cost hundreds of millions to make, and have no chance, practically speaking. The awards that they might win and the popularity that they might gain are relatively large to them, and they'd be denied a good shot at that.

[Allow only independently funded games]
- Punishment to well-funded games: They can't win a few thousand dollars, which isn't much compared to what they already have, and they can't get a little more popularity, which isn't much compared to what they already have.
- Punishment to poorly-funded games: None.

So I think the first punishment is far more crippling than the second punishment.

[Alex May]

If we're just talking about exposure, if a game has a significant amount of funding from any source, even independently-gained, some of that could be used for marketing and publishing. Just look at how much time Introversion spend on marketing their games.

That said, it's not the only prize at IGF. You get press, but you also get publisher interest and then there's the prize which is significant for small teams with next to no budget.

[cactus]

Yeah, I don't see why a team of developers who are already doing really well would want to submit their game to IGF in the first place. Isn't IGF one of very few cracks in the industry where freeware/obscure game developers can sneak in and gain some additional fame for what they do? Do developers who can already get their games shown on the main GDC or E3 exhibit really need to enter their games into IGF? Isn't that a bit like not offering a really old lady your seat on the bus?

If I'd start making some real money from my games, the only reason I would ever think of submitting a game to IGF would be so that I could get a reason to spend some time with other cool developers.

Of course I'm not really objective in this matter since I can only see this from the view of the "underdogs". I'll probably change my mind when people start throwing money at me 

[GregWS]

Yeah, I actually think the idea of fiscal caps could work really well to ensure that only under-funded things make it to the IGF (assuming that the point of the IGF is to increase exposure of obscure titles; if that's not the purpose, then there should be a festival where that is the purpose).

Isn't that a bit like not offering a really old lady your seat on the bus?

Haha!  Good thing Dylan Cuthbert doesn't hang around these forums, because that's the best insult I've heard in ages!

[___]

Isn't that a bit like not offering a really old lady your seat on the bus?

Shit just got REAL.

[Rudolf Kremers]

Sorry about bumping this thread, somebody pointed me at it and I assumed that it was ongoing. (See how I carefully try to avoid blame? ;-)  )

I quite like the self-policing policy that the IGF people have adopted. It should stop most blatant inappropriate submissions, and the grey area ones can be judged individually, without the danger of getting caught up in stupid definition arguments.
So I think this is the best solution.

I wonder how indie film festivals deal with this? (I will try and find out)

[Movius]

I wonder how indie film festivals deal with this? (I will try and find out)

terribly.

[ChrisFranklin]

I wonder how indie film festivals deal with this? (I will try and find out)

Isn't that how Slamdance got created?  Their crappy treatement of games as a medium aside, it was started in response to Sundance being overrun by more mainstream (or at the very least, vastly more expensive) entries.  Via Wikipedia:

The Slamdance Film Festival takes place each year in Utah at the same time as the Sundance Film Festival, competing with Sundance to provide what its supporters consider a truer representation of independent film-making. It champions beginning directors with no or limited budgets."

[increpare]

So we need some IGF alternative then?

[Daniel Benmergui]

So we need some IGF alternative then?

I don't think that an institutional replacement is needed... the IGF still hadn't made a bad move. I think we're discussing mostly the *potential* of something bad happening.

Of course, more contests are never a bad thing

[ChrisFranklin]

So we need some IGF alternative then?

Well I wasn't proposing it as an actual solution; more as an attempt to highlight the fact that indie film festivals face the same problems.

That said, I do think that the IGF is only going to have its bar set higher and higher.  Which is, of course, both a good and a bad thing.  The quality of games that have been accepted and even just entered into the competition has gone up and up in the few years it's been around.  But the days of one or two guys working evenings and weekends for a year or two, pouring their souls into a work, and then getting into the IGF are numbered.  

As has been stated so many times in this thread, it all comes down to what you think the goals of the IGF are.  If it's to promote deserving indie games that otherwise would struggle to find an audience or a publisher, the trend towards highly polished and more expensive games from teams with more people and/or experience is a bad thing.  If you think the goal is to promote indie gaming in general, or celebrate the absolute pinnacle of everything indie gaming has accomplished in the past year, the current trends are right on track.  I think the "How indie is indie enough" arguments are a bit of a red herring; IGF is undoubtedly still about indie games.  The real question is "Which indie games are they choosing, and for what motivations?"  We should be debating the point and purpose of the festival and whether it achieves those aims, not attacking individual games for being too indie/not indie enough.

If anything, that's the biggest failure of the IGF right now: not clearly stating why it exists.  As such you get all of this discourse about why it's failing/succeeding at helping the indie community.  We can't very well say the IGF is heading in a good or bad direction until we know what direction it is intending to head first.

[Chris Whitman]

Authenticity in art is kind of a weird idea.

For some reason, people consider the stories surrounding the art they consume to be important. I guess it makes sense if you look at art/film/whatever as being some kind of communication or message -- it's hard to take seriously the idea that a bunch of suits really care about some artistic message and aren't just doing/saying whatever it takes to get your money.

So people like authenticity (whether you agree with their decision or not, they seem to), and so you can make money with something like that. Of course, marketers smell money and immediately they're all over it, so indie film and indie music and indie games become big business. Of course, then they aren't authentic anymore -- they're just more corporate garbage -- so people need to split off and start a new movement for authenticity.

I wouldn't be surprised if in five to ten years IGF is just going to be another tradeshow for suits to get together and talk about how they plan 'to develop new IP to exploit on an annual or semi-annual basis,' and indie will become a word for whatever it is that enormous corporations are making to look like what people used to make because they actually cared about it.

Then again, maybe not. It happened in indie music and indie film, but maybe games can dodge the bullet this time around. Unfortunately, I think as long as people are more interested in making money than taking a stand, this will probably continue to happen.

[Chris Whitman]

I should probably clarify before the flaming starts that there isn't anything wrong with making a living. Obviously everyone wants to eat food and go out for beers on occasion and not everyone wants to be a revolutionary.

It just happens to be an unfortunate result of making a living that art and culture get steamrolled, to some extent.

[GregWS]

I should probably clarify before the flaming starts that there isn't anything wrong with making a living. Obviously everyone wants to eat food and go out for beers on occasion and not everyone wants to be a revolutionary.

It just happens to be an unfortunate result of making a living that art and culture get steamrolled, to some extent.

Oh, I think you're totally on the right track here.  Balancing income with artistic integrity is an incredibly hard thing that very few people have succeeded with.

Interesting about Slamdance; makes good sense for a festival like that to exist if Sundance has gotten overrun with well-funded projects (many of which are good, they've just got star power and aren't obscure).

And now that I know about that, then I don't see why the same thing won't happen to the IGF (PixelJunk for instance is the perfect equivalent with some of these non-obscure films that are shown at Sundance).

So if the IGF doesn't openly state it's intention, and slowly becomes less "indie," then I think (as I mentioned earlier in the thread) that a new festival needs to be formed; maybe even by us at TIGS.  Seriously, our online profile has risen quite a bit over the past couple years, and it seems like it's still rising now.  So it may as well be us, led by Derek's "The Spirit of Independent Gaming" who provide that outlet when IGF starts becoming a less and less viable option for displaying one's work.  We probably wouldn't have the prizes that the IGF does, but we'd give these games exposure (more so than a single post on the front page I think; "festivals" attract more people).

[marshmonkey]

If I could choose a mission statement for what I think the IGF should represent, it would be:

"The IGF exists to celebrate and reward independent games whose design and creation reflect an end in itself. Games created for the enjoyment or perceived importance of the individual authors, free from the motives or direct influence of others."

yea, not a very concise or sexy mission statement