Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.
The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.
IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.
They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.
What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it’s almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?
Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?
Alright i didn’t know they have a publishers.
How? It’s a well defined term. If you don’t have a publisher and are independent, that’s what indie means. It has nothing to do with budget. Even an indie game can be AAA, because the term AAA refers to how expensive it was. These are two different subjects.
That’s not how the term is used. Definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive. Wikipedia’s definition is far more useful.
Take the game “Animal Well.” Go look it up if you haven’t heard of it. Animal Well was programmed by a single person, Billy Basso, as developer “Shared Memory.” It was then published by Videogamedunkey’s company “Bigmode,” the very first title Bigmode published.
By your definition, Animal Well is not an indie game. But it’s exactly the kind of game meant by the term “indie game.” So your definition isn’t a useful one.
Which means Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3 and GTA 6 are indie titles, while the majority of the indie game award nominees and winners are not because they have 3rd party publishers.
Well defined indeed.
Are you trolling? How is GTA 6 an indie title? Rockstar is under Take2 publisher. Same for Witcher 3, which is published by CD Projekt. The developers are CD Projekt Red, two different things. And Baldurs Gate 3 is an indie title.
You should randomly put popular game titles into the mix, without explaining your point. Whats your point again?
GTA 6 is developed and being published by Rockstar Games. BG3 was developed and published by Larian. If you want to be that strict about the difference between CD project and CD project Red, we can ignore it for now.
Blue Prince was developed by Dogubomb and published by Raw Fury. It has a 3rd party publisher, therefore it’s not indie by your very clear definition, no?
Take 2 owns Rockstar. GTA 6 is not an indie title. BG3 is developed and published by Larian Studios. BG3 is an indie title. CD Projekt is the publisher. CD Projekt Red is the developer, there is nothing strict about it, they just have similar names.
I think you confuse with developed without publisher and releasing the game to the public. It’s like saying Steam is the publisher, after the game got released on Steam.
So you would call Half Life 2 and Alyx indie games? But any game published by Devolver Digital like Loop Hero or Gato Roboto aren’t indie despite having tiny budgets and tiny teams?
That’s kind of a ridiculous definition. It makes way more sense to include criterias like team size and budget, however vague they are.
But that is then something else you compare to. Indie refers to be indipendent from publisher when developing the game. At some point at the end of the development, the game has to be published, but that’s not what indie means. And major first party store holder are excluded from this for obvious reasons. But if you want, then count Valve indipendent. That’s not our discussion here.
Indie games aren’t made in a vacuum then shipped off to publishers. Publishers help with playtesting, QA, translating, certification, and in many cases even marketing in the middle of development. Even by your definition it’s not as clear cut as you think.