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.