From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

Because, as Kotaku points out, "Clair Obscur" is a multi-million
dollar, triple-A quality game made with by sizeable number of people
(only 34 in the core company, but developer Sandfall Interactive
outsourced a lot of the work to third-party contractors), and they
have a publisher. They seem pretty far away from the idea of "Indie"
as most people think of it: the garage programmer who, with a lot of
grit and no funding, creates an unpolished gem.

In the case of "Clair Obscur" --and the Indie Games Awards-- the
ultimate de terminator seems to be if "a developer [has] independent freedom"... although even then it isn't clear Sandfall should qualify
(or third-party developers working with triple-A publishers like EA _shouldn't_). And while game awards are usually nonsensical, in the
case of small independent developers, they CAN make or break a
company... so having bigger-named developers included means a lot of
smaller, "real" Indies are excluded. So it does sort of matter.

Myself, I'd use the size of the development team as the primary
qualifier; if your game needed more than, say, ten people to create
then you've broken out of "Indie" territory and launched yourself into small-developer land.

[Of course, even that's hard to count. If you use a
third-party engine or assets, do you count the people
who created that in the total developer count? What if
you outsource work, like Sandfall did, for cinematics
or character models? How and where do you draw the line?]

Hell, it could be as simple as: do you have a proper office where
people come to work, or are you doing it all at home? Are your
developers doing it full-time or is the game something they cranked
out as a hobby?

How do you define "Indie"? Where do you draw the line between an
independent developer, a small or mid-sized team, and triple-A?




----
* story here https://kotaku.com/indie-game-awards-iga-igf-gdc-clair-obscur-expedition-33-2000644070


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/18/2025 8:01 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

COE33 is an interesting looking game. I'm kind of suprised no one's
brought it up here before. French turned based souls-like, but with
real time parrying. Beautiful graphics,interesting premise and NPC interactions. I watched over an hour of a certain stream about it, but
I'm still undecided if I want it myself. IIRC it's got difficulty
levels if anyone's afraid of souls-like/parrying.

I thought of bringing it up myself, but with my conflict on what I've
seen I still haven't decided what to say about it.

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

Because, as Kotaku points out, "Clair Obscur" is a multi-million
dollar, triple-A quality game made with by sizeable number of people
(only 34 in the core company, but developer Sandfall Interactive
outsourced a lot of the work to third-party contractors), and they
have a publisher. They seem pretty far away from the idea of "Indie"
as most people think of it: the garage programmer who, with a lot of
grit and no funding, creates an unpolished gem.

I'd say it's more about coming from a country not known for AAA games
had more to do with it, and a relatively unknown (by me at least) one.

Larian won some various indy awards in 2023 too for BG3 too, also a multi-million dollar game, which really ought to be considered AAA. But smaller studio technically independent I think, and also not in US/Japan/Korea.
--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 16:01 this Tuesday (GMT):

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

Because, as Kotaku points out, "Clair Obscur" is a multi-million
dollar, triple-A quality game made with by sizeable number of people
(only 34 in the core company, but developer Sandfall Interactive
outsourced a lot of the work to third-party contractors), and they
have a publisher. They seem pretty far away from the idea of "Indie"
as most people think of it: the garage programmer who, with a lot of
grit and no funding, creates an unpolished gem.

In the case of "Clair Obscur" --and the Indie Games Awards-- the
ultimate de terminator seems to be if "a developer [has] independent freedom"... although even then it isn't clear Sandfall should qualify
(or third-party developers working with triple-A publishers like EA _shouldn't_). And while game awards are usually nonsensical, in the
case of small independent developers, they CAN make or break a
company... so having bigger-named developers included means a lot of
smaller, "real" Indies are excluded. So it does sort of matter.

Myself, I'd use the size of the development team as the primary
qualifier; if your game needed more than, say, ten people to create
then you've broken out of "Indie" territory and launched yourself into small-developer land.

[Of course, even that's hard to count. If you use a
third-party engine or assets, do you count the people
who created that in the total developer count? What if
you outsource work, like Sandfall did, for cinematics
or character models? How and where do you draw the line?]

Hell, it could be as simple as: do you have a proper office where
people come to work, or are you doing it all at home? Are your
developers doing it full-time or is the game something they cranked
out as a hobby?

How do you define "Indie"? Where do you draw the line between an
independent developer, a small or mid-sized team, and triple-A?

----
* story here https://kotaku.com/indie-game-awards-iga-igf-gdc-clair-obscur-expedition-33-2000644070

Indie, IMO, is about the size and closeness of the employees? it is
vauge tho
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:01:05 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

How do you define "Indie"? Where do you draw the line between an
independent developer, a small or mid-sized team, and triple-A?

To me, indie is more about who is in control of the direction of the
project and how it's funded.

Since most folks here probably haven't been involved in the various
points on the spectrum of software production, I'm going to use a
different example... HVAC companies.

An HVAC company can be a one-man-show who does literally everything
from marketing his services, to selling new equipment to literally
handling all aspects of installing the thing and mechanically
servicing it himself.

He may start out that way and as he progresses or gets older he might
decide that his knees and back are not keeping up with his passion for
doing something better than his competition, or he is just getting
burned out by trying to wear too many hats so he decides to branch out
and add a couple of employees and trucks.

That's going well so he starts to recognize the benefits of scale, so
before you know it a couple of employees become 50 total, with 10
trucks.

Then one day a private equity firm comes along looking for smaller
HVAC companies to buy out, in order to get their customer list and
consolidate. Maybe he sells out, maybe he doesn't.

A guy I knew since highschool was in that situation. By the time he
got to the last stage he was kind of tired of working, so the $32
million buyout sounded right for him.

The company is no longer indie after the buyout, because you now have
a group of financial and marketing douchebags looking how to squeeze
the maximum amount of profit out of the operation. So if you get
lootboxes attached to your air conditioner in the near future you know
why :)

Point is, indie is a matter of who is in control of decisions... not
size or number of employees.

If it becomes design by committee, it's not indie one way or the
other.. This is what has happened to most AAA games.

And most people define an AAA game by the size of the budget.
Unfortunately, Joe the Plumber typically doesn't have the budget to
fund a GTA 6 himself. So by the nature of what they are, those games
become douchebag-driven instead of the vision of an indie talent.
Features like DEI sensitivity start to creep in as they decide to
pander to targeted demographics, in order to maximize profit, instead
of doing what someone who actually gives a fuck wants to do with the
game.





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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On 11/20/25 6:00 PM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:

Point is, indie is a matter of who is in control of decisions... not
size or number of employees.

If it becomes design by committee, it's not indie one way or the
other.. This is what has happened to most AAA games.

This was an insightful read, thank you for the write-up!!
--
Pranav Chiploonkar
------------------------------
mail (at) pranavchip (dot) com
https://pranavchip.com/pgp.asc


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

https://www.engadget.com/the-game-awards-raises-an-old-question-what-does-indie-mean-205211035.html
It's all bullshit. Keighley just wants to have his cake and eat it too, and Obscur33 devs are certainly going to keep their mouth shut and accept any awards and praise -- deserved or not -- that is thrown at them.

rms

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:01:05 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

A parlay bet on the Indy 500. I never got the distinction. It always felt
like it was lifted off the music industry to me. AAA makes no sense to me either. I've never heard anyone refer to single-A or AA games in all the
time I've been here.

But I'm probably just an old fart who remembers when *everything* was
produced by a 2-6 person development team.
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:01:05 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

A parlay bet on the Indy 500. I never got the distinction. It always felt >like it was lifted off the music industry to me. AAA makes no sense to me >either. I've never heard anyone refer to single-A or AA games in all the
time I've been here.

But I'm probably just an old fart who remembers when *everything* was >produced by a 2-6 person development team.

When "Indie" often referred to a one-man company.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

On Sat, 22 Nov 2025 06:36:48 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Xocyll wrote:

Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

On Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:01:05 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Kotaku has an article about how "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" is up
for the Indie Game Awards, and they bring up an interesting question:

What really qualifies as an Indie game these days?

A parlay bet on the Indy 500. I never got the distinction. It always felt >>like it was lifted off the music industry to me. AAA makes no sense to me >>either. I've never heard anyone refer to single-A or AA games in all the >>time I've been here.

But I'm probably just an old fart who remembers when *everything* was >>produced by a 2-6 person development team.

When "Indie" often referred to a one-man company.

And the distributor/teamster. Like Garriot dropping off copies of
Akalabeth in Ziplocs.
--
Zag

Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe,
and to utter freely according to conscience, above
all other liberties. ~John Milton
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