Don't really care if this is a bot or not lmao.
There seems to be a sentiment among many modern players that indie games are, for the most part, lazily thrown together projects that should be avoided, yet in the past indie games were seen as adventurous and daring. How did this change in mindset come about? Has there simply been too many similarly themed indie games released?
I think due to the proliferation of free development tools, as well as platforms such as Steam Direct, a lot amateur developers entered the game development scene.
There's nothing wrong with this, I think it's great games are becoming more accessible as a medium. However, the consequence of the influx of unskilled labor is there are many many low quality games out there which has saturated the market.
I still believe genuine quality will sift to the top, but I think 'indie' is now more synonymous with amateur, where it may have meant previously 'small commercial studio.'
Additionally, those former small commercial studios now have evolved into ostensibly AA productions because of the money they made in that 2008-2013 boom.
For example, would you consider Jonathan Blow an indie? Is the Witness, which costs $10,000,000 USD to make, an indie title?
Even something like Spelunky 2, probably had a budget upwards of $2,000,000.
(Look how many people worked on the game!) As for the second part of my question, do you believe it's fair to judge an indie game, oftentimes a developer's first game, and a project of incredible personal motivation, by the same standards in which we judge a big studio release that more often than not belongs to an already established franchise, and is arguably created to make money for a publisher?
No. AAA games have thousands and thousands of people who work on them, with tried and tested gameplay loops and designs which very slowly have iterated over the years.
If you're looking at an independent title, especially if it's original in mechanics, theme, art style, etc. you have to view it in a different lens.
You can't both expect AAA production values and innovation at the same time, the two are not necessarily compatible because the production risk is too high to justify for many studios.