The concept of an "indie" game is pretty simple. It's a game that is self-published by a developer that is not part of another large corporation and so doesn't have big corporate funding behind it. It can also be expanded to include small scale "indie" publishers with limited staffs and budgets that don't really fund games but instead provide some basic help with distribution and marketing in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Sometimes it can be used to describe smaller games that have the small budget of an indie game even if they have major publishing behind them, especially if those games are made by studios that are not part of the publishers supporting them and are under their smaller scale publishing label, like EA's Unraveled series. I don't really think Unraveled is an indie but I at least understand when people use the term to talk about games like it.

Psychonauts 2 is a game that was published by Microsoft, one of the largest companies in the world and the owner of a major video game platform. It was created by a Microsoft subsidiary, Double Fine. It clearly had a big budget, as you can tell from the level of polish, the number of assets, and the fact that they were able to spring for expensive indulgences like a Jack Black musical number.

This may not be an AAA game the size of Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed, but it's one step below that, and had more money behind it than probably 99% of the games that come out every year, and even more than 90% of the games that come out with a non-limited physical release. It almost certainly cost more than many 1st party Nintendo titles.

It's not an indie.

Now I understand that when it was first conceived it was by an independent Double Fine relying on crowd funding, and that's part of why it even came to PS4 in the first place (to satisfy the crowd funding obligations) but Double Fine was purchased by Microsoft 2 years before the game came out, and if you think that the version we got is anything like the version we would have gotten had that deal not gone through, you're wrong. Double Fine was sold in part so Psychonauts wouldn't have to be an indie game and could instead live up to the high budget image Tim Schafer had in his head.

And it worked! I loved Psychonauts 2. It was my favorite game of 2021! The budget was used wisely and the game is beautiful and hilarious and touching and wonderful. But it's not an indie.

I am very frustrated by the fact that the term indie has been made completely nonsensical in recent years. It's now a meaningless term that is just used to refer to any game that's slightly quirky or not an AAA title. This PlayStation indies sale also includes a bunch of games published by Deep Silver (a major publisher) and even developed and published by Sony itself, like the Patapon remasters. It has games like Darksiders III made by THQ Nordiq (not an indie) and games published by Devolver Digital (if you're big enough for an E3 style conference you are no longer an indie publisher.) It has the League of Legends spinoff made by Riot and a bunch of licensed stuff, some of which may actually be indie by some definitions but some of which is not.

People will say this doesn't matter and I'm just an old man shaking my fist at a cloud, but I think it does matter for 2 reasons.

1) Words should mean something in general if they are to be useful, otherwise they're just sounds.

2) More importantly, calling big games indie hurts visibility.

A big "indie" sale on PlayStation (one of the major platforms) is a great way for smaller games to get noticed and purchased. It's a chance for games that don't have the marketing budgets to compete with the big boys to have people look at their wares and check out something new. This is severely undermined when you throw a bunch of big games in there and force those smaller games to again compete with the big boys for attention and, more importantly, dollars. It's like having a screen reserved for "art" films at your theater and sometimes putting Marvel movies on it. It squeezes out the people you are claiming to help.

And while you can argue that on a digital store there is no "shelf space" issue, that's not true in a big sale. The PlayStation indies sale has over 1,300 games available, and it's not the only sale going on right now. People don't have limitless time to shop for video games. Even enthusiasts like me groan when they see over 50 pages to go through in order to check out what's on sale. We know that curation matters and this is the opposite of curation.

I love Psychonauts 2. It is probably in my top 10 games of all time. I think it's great that it's on PlayStation so more people can experience it and I am all for it being made more affordable, but it is in no way an indie. There are other sales going on now where it could be included. It hurts indies when a space is set aside for them and big games with huge marketing attention (Psychonauts 2 got a bunch of big awards attention, and even co-branding deals) get put alongside tiny projects with no money for marketing that may only be noticed in a sale like this.

The term Indie should have some kind of meaning to it.

i say this sympathetically- but as a fellow (although admittedly haphazardly) genre dick- the term 'indie' is now fully plastic- whether it's games, music, or movies- what once meant something specific and financial now tends to refer to vague matters of scope and aesthetic.

in other words if it's commonplace to refer to a band like The Killers as indie rock, i really can't fault the gaming industry calling something like Psychonauts an indie game.

it doesn't make a ton of historical sense, but i understand the shorthand.

@mellotronrules: I understand the "aesthetic" argument but it is utterly inapplicable to Psychonauts 2. It is an incredibly polished looking game with very high budget visuals and extensive music/voice acting/etc... It is every bit the big budget title.

In terms of genre...that also doesn't apply. It's a 3D platformer. Nobody would call Mario Odyssey (a game that might have had a smaller budget though I don't know) an indie game. Likewise Crash Bandicoot 4 would not be called indie.

You want to make the argument that a game like Patapon is "indie" even though it's made by Sony then yeah, there's an argument there, but none of that applies to Psychonauts 2.

i mean i don't take issue with any of your larger points, but again- erosion of the term 'indie' is underway- whether we like it or not. again- a band like The Killers, which sells out stadiums and is signed to the Universal Music Group- is described as 'Indie Rock.'

out of curiosity (because i myself don't know)- how would you describe something like our friend Josef Fares' Hazelight Studios- because although they receive support from the Electronic Arts, i certainly would describe their games as 'indie' for shorthand since it's useful to quickly describe the size and shape of those games.

@mellotronrules: I fully realize that the term Indie has been eroded and I am saying that's bad. I don't think of the Killers as indie-rock, I think of them as alternative rock, but I know people use the term indie rock to refer to them. In slight defense of the Killer being Indie at least they signed to an indie label at first, though that didn't last long. But I would object to The Killers being part of an indie music festival.

I do not think of Hazelight games as indie. I don't really think they are of a particularly small size and scope. It Takes Two has a ton of polish and many different high fidelity environments, different styles of gameplay, extensive voice acting and expensive cinematics, etc... It clearly has a bunch of money behind it, and we know where that money came from (the EA publishing deal.) However Hazelight is a mid-sized independent studio so at least there you have an argument that they are indie, and so I wouldn't have the same reaction to seeing It Takes Two in an indie game sale that I do to something like Psychonauts 2.

What it comes down to is that when games like Psychonauts 2 and, to some extent, It Takes Two are called indie the term basically covers the whole industry outside AAA. It basically means "anything that's not Call of Duty" or of equivalent size.

I will note that for some reason games from certain publishers never really get called indie. I would bet that Balan Wonderworld had a lower budget than It Takes Two but because it's from a major Japanese publisher nobody considers it an Indie.

Okay.

1) Wasn't this game crowd funded, long before Double Fine "got acquired" (See: Double Fine ownership wanting retirements / financial security)?

2) Consider this Sony / Playstation's corpo payback for Xbox putting MLB on Game Pass day one (which was due to MLB, but Xbox still allowed it to happen).

Psychonauts 2 is without doubt the greatest offering on Xbox in recent memory... and it's a game Xbox had NO HAND / input in developing, they just bought the dev.

This is Sony / Playstation saying even "the best" Xbox has to offer is "just an indie," and one MS / Xbox only got because they opened their wallet, which is Microsoft's M.O.: Xbox is that kid in youth sports who didn't make the team on talent, but had rich parents who bought their kid a spot on the team in exchange for new uniforms'n shit.

This is a "fuck you" to Xbox / Microsoft.

The Killers definitly used to be Indie. They got rejected by major labels and ended up signing for a small-time UK based indie label named Lizard King Records. Now they're obviously a huge rock & roll band that fit more in line with Bruce Springsteen, but they still have the same roots and fanbase as bands like Arctic Monkeys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand that all gained popularity in the same timeframe. Most of these bands are no longer on indie labels and honestly i don't see them mentioned all that often as indie-bands anymore, unless an article is written about the start of the career or when you're digging through music genre's in which every rock-adjacent band with artful flourishes gets gobbled up into the term indie together with every solo artist that puts a flute or a violin on their songs.

Sticking to the game-side aspect now, I wonder if checking which publisher releases something makes much sense in a world where AnnaPurna & Devolver Digital are such juggernauts. Do we know whether a small-time studio gets more support from a Deep Silver or a THQ Nordic than a team gets from an massive indie developer like Devolver Digital? Should we focus on the team-size of the developer? Should we just embrace the duality of Indie & AAA and leave it at that?

@nameredacted: But.. how so? "Haha! We're gonna label your game an INDIE and put in on SALE!!!! OOOoooo How does it feel that we've extended this promotional spot in a way that we don't extend to many developers even though they beg us for a spot in our upcoming sales because we hold an iron grip on who gets to be invited to sales!!!!!!!"

Heh. I think this is less about indies being disrespected [though I do understand bigsocrates' points and I agree that indie game is a term that has lost much of its meaning - practically almost anything that is not AAA nowadays], and more about PlayStation's sales and promotion whims overlooking something (and/or finding excuses to fill out a sale).

I the term Indie didn't lose it's meaning it was never defined it's just a catch all for games that don't look AAA.

Indie is either games with smaller budgets or a title from an independent studio if your going to really define each category you'd get an indie sale that's technically correct but doesn't look quite right.

Plenty of small studios have had break out hits and as a result make games on a far bigger scale like Supergiant, an independent studio for sure but using a budget you would not consider indie.

Or PUGB they tick both indie boxes but Player Unknown Battlegrounds became one of the biggest games on the planet and currently behind Callisto Protocol, is that still indie.

Having an indie sale based on game that don't look AAA is probably easier, and fits in with what people think indie should be anyway.

Hades cost more to make than Psychonauts 2 even after the acquisition if you start splitting hairs you'll lose yourself.

@onemanarmyy: I don't think Devolver Digital or epecially Annapurna (which is funded by a billionaire's daughter) should be considered indie either. These are just smaller publishers but they aren't bedroom operations and they fully fund at least some of their games.

We definitely should not embrace the duality of AAA and indie because there is still a huge difference between something like Psychonauts 2 and a true indie like Stardew Valley. It makes the terms pointless.

@thepanzini: I have no idea where you got the idea that Hades had a higher budget than Psychonauts 2, but I think that's almost certainly wrong. Psychonauts 2 had a budget in the 8 figures. It is much more technically impressive than many games that are clearly not indies like Kirby or Mario, so I don't think it's right to say it looks indie either. It's just not indie on any level.

@bigsocrates: Spot on. It's been an increasing problem over the past 5 years or so. The recent nadir being Game Awards' "Best Indie Game" award nominees being 4 games from large publishers and one backed by Sony.

In the case of Double Fine, they were a publisher of others' games as well. So didn't even pass the "Well technically..." test pre-Microsoft.

Personally I put a lot of the blame on understaffed and overworked games media outlets who don't even cover a fraction of the available games but will, for example, grind their staff into dust to get them to finish Elden Ring in a week. So a bunch of "indie"publishers show up with prepackaged marketing spin and they just swallow it wholesale.

I don't know if anybody saw the brief outburst of Twitter discourse on the difficulty actual indie devs face getting attention for their games. But the reactions, or lack thereof, from within games media was informative. Those few that did respond generally had a vibe of "Actually it's completely impractical to cover the 1000s of games each week... are the unwashed plebs out of earshot yet? yes? good! We need to workshop another dozen 'THERE ARE NO GAMES LOL!' jokes before not-e3!"

I used to think Giantbomb were about average here. But I actually think they might be one of the worst. Jeff Gerstmann the human may have known what was up, but Jeff Gerstmann Editor-in-Chief oversaw completely credulous and inadequate coverage of this section of the market. I think it's only going to get worse now that he's gone too.

I consider Annapurna and Devolver ($1b publisher, part owned by Sony and Netease amongst others, with multiple subsidiary studios of their own) to be the biggest Nonsense peddlers here, but not the worst. I reserve that title for several of the "Indie Houses" collective.

I'm sorry, but this is crap. It's a dumb handshake meme agreement where "Games media who want you to think they cover Indie Games, but don't." and "Publishers who make money on the idea they sell indie games, but don't." shake hands on "Well actually the word indie has no meaning!"

I've always seen it as indie developed but I think you're morally right. If a big publisher or console manufacturer gets involved, it's no longer an independent product.

Is something technically Indie when the studio devs have been living/breathing the industry for decades and using their own network in order to make these things happen and get exposure?

Some might say that's a different argument altogether, but what makes self-published titles different from what's considered an Indie game?

When does a company stop count as being 'Indie' and become seen as a big thing? Publishers like Annapurna Interactive are called Indie too, when will that change?

@bigsocrates: Maybe I'm misremembering then but the point is you can't really use a games budget to determine what's an indie.

9m is the estimated cost of Psychonauts 2 but 9m in San Francisco, USA is very different than 9m in Poland or China.

You can't even trust the number people on a game either, Bright Memory was supposedly made by one person but had a load of outsourcing support.

@shindig: Until Sony bought Bungie they were technically indie despite receiving a 100m investment for their new ip.

Roblox would also be another one, at what point did Minecraft stop being indie after 50m copies sold or when MS bought them.

@thepanzini: Psychonauts 2 budget was way over $9 million. According to the Washington Post it was at $13.5 million BEFORE Microsoft bought them...with over 2 years left until launch.

I never said that you could determine a game's indie status through its budget, but rather whether it had the support of a publisher. However the games you're talking about like Roblox and Minecraft did not have a huge budget to start with. They were big hits and that allowed them to expand their offerings but they were both pretty modest when they began, thus the graphics. Minecraft was definitely an indie until Microsoft bought it, and it started out as a true indie one man operation.

Both Destiny and Destiny 2 were funded by Activision. Bungie took over publishing when it got spun off from Activision and you can argue about whether it was an indie studio then (not really in the aesthetic or size sense but technically) but the games certainly were not indie games.

There have been true indies with 7 figure budgets, often because the indie studio got a lot of money from a previous game that was a big hit. But these kinds of marginal arguments are not really my point because there are areas where there are difficult decisions to be made. Psychonauts 2 is an easy call.

i don't know what a handshake meme is, but i'm talking about contemporary vernacular usage of the word 'indie' when it comes matters of pop culture. i understand it rubs people the wrong way (and i'm not saying you can't shake your first at it), but you can't put the genie back in the bottle now that it's just as frequently used to describe an aesthetic or approach as it is a financial relationship.

people readily describe graphic fiction, games, movies, or music as 'indie' while knowing nothing of their financials. it might righteously piss off the punks- but i think there's less of them than there are unassuming people just trying to vaguely describe a shape, size, or sound.

@mellotronrules: Would you believe that a Western RPG and a Western movie typically refer to completely different things thematically? Context is an amazing thing.

"Indie games" is a commonly accepted term for a certain type of game. One with some fuzzyness around the edges of its definition, but also a term that is generally well understood by people who develop and take an interest in said games.

It's also generally considered to have a definition that precludes the inclusion of big budget incest simulators with Hollywood voice cast.

That may seem harsh. But it's really only people external to the scene, (big publishers/overworked games media whose expertise is elsewhere/weird gamers who hear a word and would rather invent a definition that includes the 5 games they play each year than accept they are unfamiliar with a significant chunk of current games,) who are pushing for the inclusion of this stuff.

i don't disagree with anything you're saying per se, but i'm also ostensibly talking about people 'external to the scene' because the context of this conversation is a top of page 'Playstation Indies' promo on the Playstation Store.

of course someone like a itch.io patron is going to have a different working definition of 'indie' in a gaming context- but my guess is that isn't who Sony marketing is expecting to target with this sale. consumers don't typically care how something is financed, and my guess is if someone were to describe themselves as a twitch indie games streamer- they'd be more likely referring to a general size, look, or tone of game they play rather than communicate a particular anti-corporate mentality...they're working for Amazon, after all.

Well, I'm not interested in Psychonauts 2 so I would agree with this.

@swthompson: "you're choosing to have a fit over a made up definition in your head" is quite a stretch here considering there is a definition on this very website that claims ' “Indie” or “independently developed” games are video games which are developed by a studio without the support of an external publisher.' Psychonauts 2 clearly had the support of Microsoft. I understand that semantics arguments can be petty or annoying, but this has a meaning that some companies recognize (IGF did not nominate Psychonauts 2 for anything and I can't imagine that was because judges didn't enjoy it) while others don't (this sale). But I guess I agree with bigsocrates on this, so I'm probably one of the worst people on the internet with them.

I think it's weird how many people are just like "fucking deal with it, it's been this way." OP is obviously aware that it's this way, more just frustrated by it. And has been writing about this since Psychonauts 2 was released.

I also spent a couple minutes scrolling through the indie sale before I decided that it wasn't worth it to actually look for the indie games within the sale. Although I did get Tesla Force for under $10 so that was cool, I only knew it was on sale because I wish listed it.

I personally go with indie as in just independent, they where not influenced creatively and was developed at a smaller studio. If a small indie dev goes to a major developer for financial help because they believe they need more funds for there idea to be fully realized, they can be involved financially or as a publisher, they can risk there money rather then the smaller developer, but they do not get to influence the creative portion of the process. They can give the money with sensible strings attached with goal posts like you need to have something playable after x amount of time, it should be released on x platforms. But if there coming in and saying market research says the main character should be a male, when it was intended to be a women, or there needs to be online multiplayer, then that's not independent.

Thatgamecompany was very much funded by Sony, and probably with restrictions on platforms, but they probably didn't tell them to go and make a game where you where a flower petal. I would still consider that game and studio independent.

The amount of money they get or have doesn't matter, and where they get that money doesn't matter, and even who published it. If it was made independently at a small studio without major influence from a major game developer, or that money was given without strings attached that would influence it creatively, then it can be considered indie in my eyes. Double Fine when Pychonuats 2 was started was not a major developer, and probably got sold with the deal being Microsoft doesn't get to drastically influence the game creatively (and Microsoft probably bought them for there creativity), but im sure they could help financially. So even though now they are most definitely a part of a major developer, the studio and game was independent at the time. And they probably got Jack Black the same way indie movies get major actors worth millions, sometimes they just want to be a part of that project because they believe in it, or want to work with a certain person. But i can also see Microsoft tossing him some money because Tim Schafer wanted it. Either way i don't see Microsoft as the one saying they needed Jack Black in this game.

Anything Double Fine makes now i would definitely not consider independent, but this games roots are in independence.

And reasonable minds can disagree. Like at what point is a major developer a major developer? I think we would all agree that Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Activision/Blizzard and EA are major developers, but i can't tell you the cut off. On this very wiki it lists Valve as independent, which i would agree with because i believe its still majority owned by Gabe Newell and not publicly traded and nobody can tell them what to do. But they are so big that its hard to look at them as an indie. How literal do you take independent? No aid whatsoever from any outside source? They can only get publishing help from other small developers? Or can a major developer came in late in development and believe this thing is going to be a big hit, but it needs millions in publishing support to get the attention it needs?

This reminds that I bought a copy and haven't played it yet.

Is Psychonauts 2 worth picking up for 50% off? I enjoyed the story and characters in the first game but it was barely playable, and unless this is a big improvement I doubt I'm gonna have the patience to finish it.

@noboners:

' “Indie” or “independently developed” games are video games which are developed by a studio without the support of an external publisher.'

Plenty of games we'd view as indie would struggle on that second part, a lot of indie games have a publisher to help with physical distribution or marketing, like Devlover who'd descibe themselves as indie.

And not counting games pushed by first parties and major pubs without direct support.

Death's door & Sifu being recent examples of games not directly supported by a publisher but were massively signal boosted through first party events/showcases.

@theonewhoplays: As I said in my into I loved the game and think it's absolutely worth $30. It plays much much better than the first game (which I played back to back with it) and has a fixed camera. It is a good playing modern 3D platformer. Is it as great as Mario Odyssey or other top tier 3D platformers? No. But if you loved the writing and characters from the first game those are still present here, and it plays much much better. I highly recommend it.

@theonewhoplays: I definitely think it's worth it if you enjoyed the first one at all. They made some major improvements to the combat to make it snappier and make your psychic abilities more practical for combat and fun to use. The story is very well executed as well. But it is still a platformer first and foremost. So if you don't care for platforming, this might not hold your interest.

@thepanzini: the marketing/distribution factor is a good point that I suppose I just don't consider into the development of a game (or most other media really). At that point the creative process is usually finished and the publisher/host console is making an investment based on what the final product is or is going to be. They did not help with the creation of the game; they merely helped with getting the word out there because it helps their business too. Even games like Braid and Castle Crashers were a part of XBLA Summer of Arcade, but those are definitely still indie games.

(Edit: I replaced development with "creative process" to try and avoid more confusion)

@noboners: Most developers are approached very early even if its just marketing/distribution knowing thats taken care of, the dev will have more time and resources to spend elsewhere.

The Ascent Developer Was Approached “Early in Development” for Xbox Console Exclusivity Source, and Stray releases this month into PS Plus on PS5 its was first seen two years ago.

@thepanzini: oh good call with the trickle down effect. I still don't think it changes how I feel about indie games, but it is a good point.

Many people missing the point here and arguing over edge-cases. For the majority of games it is not difficult to delineate between "indie" and "not indie". Randomly select 100 games from all video games and I guarantee you won't get more than 1 or 2 that are difficult to categorise either way.

The fact that the boundary is fuzzy for that ~1% doesn't mean it's reasonable to claim that a $0 bitsy game is AAA or $20m multi-developer FPS franchise is "indie".

It's blatantly obvious that Cuphead is the only game in the original post's image that is even remotely ambiguous.

@noboners: @bigsocrates:

Cool, I'll give it a shot :)

We are firmly in the "what's 'alternative rock' actually an alternative to?" era of indie video games.

If Psychonauts 2 can't be indie because if had funding from a first party or major publisher.

People are gonna have to reevaluate what an indie is, after the Epic vs Apple what got a glimpse of what the true cost of exclusivity was.

Epic paid the Subnatica devs 6m just to give their game away and that was an older title, which has already been on game pass & ps now.

Yesterday Xbox showed ~30 indie's launching into game pass plenty as console exclusive and that number will rise significantly by years end.

With 20m subs on game pass and the service not making a dime it must be spending a fortune on content.

This has gone on for years with ps plus dating back to summer of arcade.

Psychonauts 2 might not be indie but it looks indie and that's as diffinative as you can be really.

Cuphead was self published yet clearly had backing from MS. How can a game made by a handful of people not be indie, when something like Ark had a lot people on it.

@thepanzini: I have no idea where you have gotten the idea that Psychonauts 2 "looks indie" but it is flat out wrong. Psychonauts 2 looks like a very high budget 3D platformer. It has production values on par with Ratchet & Clank for PS4 (though the PS5 R&C game looks better) which nobody would call indie. This assertion doesn't make any sense to me. It "looks indie." Does Mario Odyssey look indie to you?

Just getting a promotional slot from a platform clearly does not make something "not indie." That's not a publishing deal that's just being included in the equivalent of a festival. Just like an indie movie being picked up for distribution by Netflix doesn't make it not indie an indie game landing on game pass doesn't either. It's about whether the game was funded independently originally and whether a publisher had some kind of developmental involvement.

People who say that Psychonauts 2 was made "independently" by Double Fine because Microsoft didn't do much creative tampering are missing the major point that by the time Psychonauts 2 came out Double Fine had literally been part of Microsoft for 2 years. Double Fine can't make a game independently of Microsoft because it is Microsoft.

This is not an edge case scenario at all. The company was purchased well before the game was finished.

@bigsocrates: I conceded it might not be indie in my last post but it doesn't looks indie to me which I don't think is a crazy statement to make.

Also the first few lines from the op is making a much broader statement.

The concept of an "indie" game is pretty simple. It's a game that is self-published by a developer that is not part of another large corporation and so doesn't have big corporate funding behind it.

Journey was fully funded by Sony they own the ip yet its in the Guinness World Record as most awarded indie game.

By your definition it's not an indie.

@thepanzini: At this point we have to agree to disagree because I really cannot think of an indie game that looks like Psychonauts 2 and you haven't brought up any examples. It is a super polished game with a metric ton of high quality assets and expensive voice acting etc.. There are non-indie games that look indie (Patapon looks indie) but I have no idea what looks indie about a 4K 3D game with a high level of polish. It's more stylized than super realistic games, but again, so is Mario Odyssey and Psychonauts 2's art looks more expensive than Odyssey.

Please do not quote me selectively. Right below the definition you cited I said:

Sometimes it [the term Indie] can be used to describe smaller games that have the small budget of an indie game even if they have major publishing behind them, especially if those games are made by studios that are not part of the publishers supporting them and are under their smaller scale publishing label.

Obviously that would cover something like Journey. Now do I personally consider Journey to be an indie game? No. It's a small second party game for Sony. But I recognize that by some people's definition it is an indie game because it had a small team and restrained budget. That's not the argument we're having here.

I also don't really care about things like awards or especially the Guiness Book of World Records, which is a scam thing. Awards shows are based around trying to get ratings and attention to themselves so if a game is popular and they think they can pitch it as an indie, they will do so. They're not going to abide by a strict definition if it will cost them viewers.

But even if you want to go by awards and say that Journey is an indie because it won indie awards (and again, I don't really care that much if Journey is labeled an indie or not) that doesn't work for Psychonauts 2 because it won awards in lots of award shows where it wasn't nominated in the indie category.

Like sure, but I have been waiting for that game to go on sale since its been out and I'll take 50% off.

ha i certainly think so. going one step further- i'd wager if one were to conduct a blind study and ask individuals off the street for their definitions of 'independent' developers and 'indie' developers, or maybe even 'what is an indie game' vs. 'what is an independent game'- you'd almost certainly get a variety of answers.

which is not to say some are right and some are wrong- but rather once words loosen up in common usage, it's time to use more precise words. it's probably why one hears a lot of 'self-published indie game' though some might call that redundant.

It's been a long weekend here and I've been playing a bunch of indie games over the last three days; Tile Cities (good!), Please fix this Road (Meh! amazing graphics, taken too many tutorial lessons from Nintendo,) Tametsi (good!), Apico (Decent! Needs something between "tutorial" and "end game" to keep me playing though), Unexplored 2 (OK! overambitious and the worst thing is that not enough people played Unexplored 1 to be adequately disappointed by its sequel), A=B (Excellent! but hard and very niche)

These are indie games. And as indie games with enough ratings on Steam to qualify the 'positive' rating to 'very/mostly positive'. They are the bleeding edge of indie game popularity. 99.9% of indie games are smaller, more obscure, more 'indie' than this.

Despite this. Titles of this size are apparently too obscure for the video game definition experts here to even consider.

Both Webster & Oxford dictionaries added a definition to "literally" that means "figuratively." That was the day English words no longer held any meaning.