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109-795: Video games had been part of the SXSW within the SXSW Interactive branch; in 2006, the festival launched "Screenburn" as a special portion of the Interactive branch for video games, and later renamed this to SXSW Gaming in 2013. Matthew Crump, a veteran game developer, joined SXSW in 2012 and spearheaded the efforts to create the SXSW Gaming Awards to premiere during the 2014 festival. The new awards in fifteen different categories were announced in September 2013 to be awarded during

218-481: A retro style of the 8-bit and 16-bit generations , with simpler graphics atop the more complex mechanics. Indie games may fall into classic game genres, but new gameplay innovations have been seen. However, being "indie" does not imply that the game focuses on innovation. In fact, many games with the "indie" label can be of poor quality and may not be made for profit. Jesper Juul , an associate professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts that has studied

327-445: A commercial entity could. The industry had started to coalesce around video game publishers that could pay larger developers to make games and handle all the marketing and publication costs as well as opportunities to franchise game series. Publishers tended to be risk averse due to high costs of production, and they would reject all small-size and too innovative concepts of small game developers. The market also became fractured due to

436-491: A continuous build process and informs users about the parts of source code that have issues and on which platform(s) these issues arise. A debugger is a computer program that is used to debug (and sometimes test or optimize) other programs. GNU Debugger (GDB) is an example of a debugger used in open-source software development. This debugger offers remote debugging, what makes it especially applicable to open-source software development. A memory leak tool or memory debugger

545-519: A further boost by the use of crowdfunding as a means for indie developers to raise funds to produce a game and to determine the desire for a game, rather than risk time and investment into a game that does not sell well. While video games had used crowdfunding prior to 2012, several large indie game-related projects successfully raised millions of dollars through Kickstarter , and since then, several other similar crowdfunding options for game developers have become available. Crowdfunding eliminated some of

654-525: A game as indie is from its innovation, creativity, and artistic experimentation, factors enabled by small teams free of financial and creative oversight. This definition is reflective of an "indie spirit" that is diametrically opposite of the corporate culture of AAA development, and makes a game "indie", where the factors of financial and creative independence make a game "independent". Developers with limited ability to create graphics can rely on gameplay innovation. This often leads to indie games having

763-472: A game developed by two people. Microsoft continued to follow up on this promotion in the following years, bringing in more games onto XBLA such as Super Meat Boy , Limbo , and Fez . Sony and Nintendo followed suit, encouraging indie developers to bring games onto their platforms. By 2013, all three console manufacturers had established programs that allowed indie developers to apply for low-cost development toolkits and licenses to publish directly onto

872-433: A gaming platform. At the time, shareware was generally associated with hobbyist programmers, but the releases of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 and Doom in 1993 showed the shareware route to be a viable platform for titles from mainstream developers. The current, common understanding of indie games on personal computer took shape in the early 2000s from several factors. Key was the availability of online distribution over

981-481: A hobbyist programming magazine that users could share their programs with. Over time, ASCII saw the opportunity to publish game development kits, and by 1992, released the first commercial version of the RPG Maker software. While the software cost money to obtain, users could release completed games with it as freeware or commercial products, which established the potential for a commercial independent games market by

1090-426: A lot of time on these issues, and not on the actual development. Also, in closed-source projects, the development teams must often work under management-related constraints (such as deadlines, budgets, etc.) that interfere with technical issues of the software. In open-source software development, these issues are solved by integrating the users of the software in the development process, or even letting these users build

1199-425: A message related to these factors, something that could not be done in mainstream titles. In comparing indie games to independent film and the state of their respective industries, the indie game's rise was occurring approximately at the same relative time as its market was starting to grow exponentially and be seen as a supporting offshoot of the mainstream works. Indie games saw a large boost in visibility within

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1308-705: A number of dedicated investor-based indie game funds have been established such as the Indie Fund . Indie developers can submit applications requesting grants from these funds. The money is typically provided as a seed investment to be repaid through game royalties. Several national governments, through their public arts agencies, also have made similar grants available to indie developers. Prior to digital distribution, hobbyist programmers typically relied on mail order to distribute their product. They would place ads in local papers or hobbyist computer magazines such as Creative Computing and Byte and, once payment

1417-466: A popular form of distribution even with availability of bulletin board systems and the Internet. By the 2000s, indie developers relied on the Internet as their primary distribution means as without a publisher, it was nearly impossible to stock an indie game at retail, the mail order concept having long since died out. Open-source software development Open-source software development (OSSD)

1526-429: A publisher. Indie games are distinct from open source games . The latter are games which are developed with the intent to release the source code and other assets under an open source license . While many of the same principles used to develop open source games are the same as for indie games, open source games are not developed for commercial gain and instead as a hobbyist pursuit. However, commercial sales are not

1635-406: A requirement for an indie game and such games can be offered as freeware , most notably with Spelunky on its original release and Dwarf Fortress , with the exception of its enhanced visual front-end version while its base version remains free. The onset of indie game development is difficult to track due to the broadness of what defines an indie game, and the term was not really in use until

1744-443: A service that included some indie games, though these drew little attention in the first few years. In 2008, Microsoft ran its "XBLA Summer of Arcade" promotion, which included the releases of indie games Braid , Castle Crashers , and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 alongside two AAA games. While all three indie games had a high number of downloads, Braid received critical acclaim and drew mainstream media recognition for being

1853-542: A single person, though often with support of artists and musicians for those assets. More common are small teams of developers, from two to a few dozen, with additional support from external artists. While it is possible for development teams to be larger, with this comes a higher cost overhead of running the studio, which may be risky if the game does not perform well. Indie teams can arise from many different directions. One common path recently includes student projects, developed as prototypes as part of their coursework, which

1962-537: A software developed by a large group of volunteers shall naturally tend to have developers spread across all time zones. Developers and users of an open-source project are not all necessarily working on the project in proximity. They require some electronic means of communications. Email is one of the most common forms of communication among open-source developers and users. Often, electronic mailing lists are used to make sure e-mail messages are delivered to all interested parties at once. This ensures that at least one of

2071-523: A successful project it is very important to investigate what's already there. The process starts with a choice between the adopting of an existing project, or the starting of a new project. If a new project is started, the process goes to the Initiation phase. If an existing project is adopted, the process goes directly to the Execution phase. Several types of open-source projects exist. First, there

2180-492: Is a " I know it when I see it "-type assessment, since no single definition can capture what games are broadly considered indie. Indie games generally share certain common characteristics. One method to define an indie game is the nature of independence, which can either be: Another means to evaluate a game as indie is to examine its development team, with indie games being developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies that are often specifically formed for

2289-490: Is a programming tool for finding memory leaks and buffer overflows . A memory leak is a particular kind of unnecessary memory consumption by a computer program, where the program fails to release memory that is no longer needed. Examples of memory leak detection tools used by Mozilla are the XPCOM Memory Leak tools. Validation tools are used to check if pieces of code conform to the specified syntax. An example of

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2398-600: Is analogous to independent music or independent film in those respective mediums. Indie game development bore out from the same concepts of amateur and hobbyist programming that grew with the introduction of the personal computer and the simple BASIC computer language in the 1970s and 1980s. So-called bedroom coders, particularly in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, made their own games and used mail order to distribute their products, although they later shifted to other software distribution methods with

2507-450: Is need for tools to aid participants to collaborate in the development of source code. During early 2000s, Concurrent Versions System (CVS) was a prominent example of a source code collaboration tool being used in OSS projects. CVS helps manage the files and codes of a project when several people are working on the project at the same time. CVS allows several people to work on the same file at

2616-530: Is primarily referred to as an "indie game" because of its success in the Western market. It is one of the most influential indie games, also contributing to the resurgence of the Metroidvania genre. Doujin games also got a strong interest in Western markets after some English-speaking groups translated various titles with permission for English release, most notably with Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale ,

2725-554: Is simply those with little to no experience in the games industry, although they may have computer-programming skills and experience, and they may come in with ideas and fresh perspectives for games, with ideas that are generally more personable and close to their hearts. These developers are usually self-taught and thus may not have certain disciplines of typical programmers, thereby allowing for more creative freedom and new ideas. However, some may see amateur work less favorably than those that have had experience, whether from school or from

2834-443: Is some debate as to whether independent game development started prior to the 1977 home computer revolution with games developed for mainframe computers at universities and other large institutions. 1962's Spacewar! was not commercially financed and was made by a small team, but there was no commercial sector of the video game industry at that time to distinguish from independent works. Joyce Weisbecker , who considers herself

2943-400: Is suitable for open-source software development because of the distributed development principle it adopts. Internet-Speed Development uses geographically distributed teams to ‘work around the clock’. This method, mostly adopted by large closed-source firms, (because they're the only ones which afford development centers in different time zones), works equally well in open source projects because

3052-645: Is the garden variety of software programs and libraries, which consist of standalone pieces of code. Some might even be dependent on other open-source projects. These projects serve a specified purpose and fill a definite need. Examples of this type of project include the Linux kernel , the Firefox web browser and the LibreOffice office suite of tools. Distributions are another type of open-source project. Distributions are collections of software that are published from

3161-419: Is the process by which open-source software , or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project . These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox , Google Chromium , Android , LibreOffice and

3270-411: Is the progressive open-source development, which is more like "a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles." The latter analogy points to the discussion involved in an open-source development process. Differences between the two styles of development, according to Bar and Fogel, are in general

3379-513: The Five Nights at Freddy's series, Undertale , Cuphead , and Among Us . The term "indie game" itself is based on similar terms like independent film and independent music , where the concept is often related to self-publishing and independence from major studios or distributors. However, as with both indie films and music, there is no exact, widely accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game" besides falling well outside

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3488-615: The Atari Program Exchange in 1981 to publish user-written software, including games, for Atari 8-bit computers . Print magazines such as SoftSide , Compute! , and Antic solicited games from hobbyists, written in BASIC or assembly language , to publish as type-in listings . In the United Kingdom, early microcomputers such as the ZX Spectrum were popular, launching a range of "bedroom coders" which initiated

3597-615: The BSD derivatives, maintain the source code of an entire operating system, the kernel and all of its core components, in one revision control system; developing the entire system together as a single team. These operating system development projects closely integrate their tools, more so than in the other distribution-based systems. Finally, there is the book or standalone document project. These items usually do not ship as part of an open-source software package. The Linux Documentation Project hosts many such projects that document various aspects of

3706-882: The ID@Xbox program or the iOS SDK . While most indie games lack a publisher with the developer serving in that role, a number of publishers geared towards indie games have been established since 2010, also known as boutique game publishers; these include Raw Fury , Devolver Digital , Annapurna Interactive , Finji, and Adult Swim Games . There also have been a number of indie developers that have grown large enough on their own to also support publishing for smaller developers, such as Chucklefish , Coffee Stain Studios , and Team17 . These boutique publishers, having experience in making indie games themselves, typically will provide necessary financial support and marketing but have little to no creative control on developers' product as to maintain

3815-783: The Internet , allowing game developers to sell directly to players and bypassing limitations of retail distribution and the need for a publisher. Software technologies used to drive the growth of the World Wide Web , like Adobe Flash , were available at low cost to developers, and provided another means for indie games to grow. The new interest in indie games led to middleware and game engine developers to offer their products at low or no cost for indie development, in addition to open source libraries and engines. Dedicated software like GameMaker Studio and tools for unified game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine removed much of

3924-538: The Linux kernel , and Mercurial , used by the Python programming language. Most large-scale projects require a bug tracking system to keep track of the status of various issues in the development of the project. Since OSS projects undergo frequent integration, tools that help automate testing during system integration are used. An example of such tool is Tinderbox. Tinderbox enables participants in an OSS project to detect errors during system integration. Tinderbox runs

4033-514: The VLC media player . In 1997, Eric S. Raymond wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar . In this book, Raymond makes the distinction between two kinds of software development. The first is the conventional closed-source development. This kind of development method is, according to Raymond, like the building of a cathedral; central planning, tight organization and one process from start to finish. The second

4142-454: The meta-modeling and meta-process modeling techniques. There are several ways in which work on an open-source project can start: Eric Raymond observed in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar that announcing the intent for a project is usually inferior to releasing a working project to the public. It's a common mistake to start a project when contributing to an existing similar project would be more effective ( NIH syndrome ) . To start

4251-413: The seventh generation of consoles in 2005, each platform provided online services for players–namely Xbox Live , PlayStation Network , and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection –which included digital game distribution. Following the increased popularity of indie games on computers, these services started publishing them alongside larger releases. The Xbox 360 had launched in 2005 with Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA),

4360-514: The "Convergence Award" until 2016 Awarded to a Texas-based studio or game Formerly "Esports Game of the Year" until 2019. Formerly "Most Fulfilling Crowdfunded Game" until 2018. Award to an indie game voted by the public; split into Single and Multi-player categories in 2016. Indie game An indie video game or indie game , short for independent video game , is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without

4469-674: The "indie" nature of the game. In some cases, the publisher may be more selective of the type of games it supports; Annapurna Interactive sought games that were "personal, emotional and original". The lack of a publisher requires an indie developer to find means to fund the game themselves. Existing studios may be able to rely on past funds and incoming revenue, but new studios may need to use their own personal funds ("bootstrapping"), personal or bank loans, or investments to cover development costs, or building community support while in development. More recently, crowd-funding campaigns, both reward-based and equity-based, have been used to obtain

SXSW Gaming Awards - Misplaced Pages Continue

4578-430: The 1978 rerelease of the book BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl that included the source code for over one hundred games, eventually surpassed over one million copies. The availability of BASIC inspired a number of people to start writing their own games. Many personal computer games written by individuals or two person teams were self-distributed in stores or sold through mail order . Atari, Inc. launched

4687-489: The 2014 festival. However, Crump died from a heart attack just before the festival. The event organizers opted to rename the "Cultural Innovation in Gaming" to the "Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award" to honor Crump's contributions to the festival. The Gaming Awards were discontinued by SXSW in 2023 due to a desire to "streamline our festival a bit more." Developers and publishers must submit their games for consideration to

4796-451: The Linux operating system. There are many other examples of this type of open-source project. It is hard to run an open-source project following a more traditional software development method like the waterfall model , because in these traditional methods it is not allowed to go back to a previous phase. In open-source software development, requirements are rarely gathered before the start of

4905-619: The Mobile and Tabletop awards were added. Formally "VR Game of the Year" prior 2020 Awarded for a game that challenges the normal idea of video gaming, offering a culturally innovative view of the world Combined the three former awards. Formerly "Excellence in Design and Direction" Formerly "Excellence in Musical Score" Formally "Best Multiplayer Game" until 2016 Awarded for a game that exemplifies crossover medium appeal. Formally

5014-467: The SXSW festival to allow attendees to try them before they vote for their favorite. The awards ceremony is held near the end of the SXSW event, with celebrity and gaming hosts presenting the awards. The 2020 SXSW event was cancelled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic , but the award winners were still named online on March 24, 2020. This award was named "Game of the Year" in 2014, but was renamed when

5123-612: The UK's video game industry. During this period, the idea that indie games could provide experimental gameplay concepts or demonstrate niche arthouse appeal had been established. Many games from the bedroom coders of the United Kingdom, such as Manic Miner (1983), incorporated the quirkiness of British humour and made them highly experimental games. Other games like Alien Garden (1982) showed highly-experimental gameplay. Infocom itself advertised its text-based interactive fiction games by emphasizing their lack of graphics in lieu of

5232-399: The Western regions, bringing more interest to doujin games as legitimate titles. The Tokyo Game Show first offered a special area for doujin games in 2013 with support from Sony Interactive Entertainment who had been a promoter of Western indie games in prior years, and has expanded that since. The distinction between Japanese-developed doujin games and indie games is ambiguous - the use of

5341-422: The Year . Several other indie games were released during this period to critical and/or commercial success. Minecraft (2011), the best-selling video game of all time as of 2024, was originally released as an indie game before its developer Mojang Studios was acquired by Microsoft in 2014 and brought into Xbox Game Studios . Another indie game, Terraria , was released that same year and has become

5450-433: The antithesis of mainstream games and which highlighted the independence of how these games were made compared to the collective of mainstream titles. Many of them took a retro-style approach to their design, art, or other factors in development, such as Cave Story in 2004, which proved popular with players. Social and political changes also led to the use of indie games not only for entertainment purposes but to also tell

5559-449: The approval of a publisher, as mainstream game developers usually do. Design decisions are thus also not limited by an allocated budget. Furthermore, smaller team sizes increase individual involvement. However, this view is not all-encompassing, as there are numerous cases of games where development is not independent of a major publisher but still considered indie. Some notable instances of games include: Yet another angle to evaluate

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5668-401: The bounds of triple-A video game development by large publishers and development studios. One simple definition, described by Laura Parker for GameSpot , says "independent video game development is the business of making games without the support of publishers", but this does not cover all situations. Dan Pearce of IGN stated that the only consensus for what constitutes an indie game

5777-820: The community is very harsh, much like the business world of closed-source software: “if you find the customers you survive, but without customers you die”. Fuggetta argues that “rapid prototyping, incremental and evolutionary development, spiral lifecycle, rapid application development, and, recently, extreme programming and the agile software process can be equally applied to proprietary and open source software”. He also pinpoints Extreme Programming as an extremely useful method for open source software development. More generally, all Agile programming methods are applicable to open-source software development, because of their iterative and incremental character. Other Agile methods are equally useful for both open and closed source software development: Internet-Speed Development , for example

5886-443: The console manufacturers as well as mobile device operating system providers released special software-based SDKs to build and test games first on personal computers and then on these consoles or mobile devices. These SDKs were still offered at commercial rates to larger developers, but reduced pricing was provided to those who would generally self-publish via digital distribution on the console or mobile device's storefront, such as with

5995-482: The console's respective storefronts following approval processes. A number of "boutique" indie game publishers were founded in this period to support funding, technical support, and publishing of indie games across various digital and retail platforms. In 2012, Journey became the first Indie game to win the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year and D.I.C.E. Award for Game of

6104-484: The cost risk associated with indie game development, and created more opportunities for indie developers to take chances on new titles. With more indie titles emerging during this period, larger publishers and the industry as a whole started taking notice of indie games as a significant movement within the field. One of the first examples of this was World of Goo (2008), whose developers 2D Boy had tried but failed to gain any publisher support prior to release. On release,

6213-491: The current mainstream games. A number of indie games at that time became success stories that drove more interest in the area. New industry opportunities have arisen since then, including new digital storefronts, crowdfunding, and other indie funding mechanisms to help new teams get their games off the ground. There are also low-cost and open-source development tools available for smaller teams across all gaming platforms, boutique indie game publishers that leave creative freedom to

6322-612: The developers, and industry recognition of indie games alongside mainstream ones at major game award events. Around 2015, the increasing number of indie games being published led to fears of an "indiepocalypse", referring to an oversupply of games that would make the entire market unprofitable. Although the market did not collapse, discoverability remains an issue for most indie developers, with many games not being financially profitable. Examples of successful indie games include Cave Story , Braid , Super Meat Boy , Terraria , Minecraft , Fez , Hotline Miami , Shovel Knight ,

6431-479: The development of one specific game. Typically, indie games are smaller than mainstream titles. Indie game developers are generally not financially backed by video game publishers , who are risk-averse and prefer "big-budget games". Instead, indie game developers usually have smaller budgets, usually sourcing from personal funds or via crowdfunding . Being independent, developers do not have controlling interests or creative limitations, and do not require

6540-523: The doujin soft community has generally been treated as a hobbyist activity up through the 2010s. Computers and bedroom coding had taken off similarly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the computer market was quickly overwhelmed by consoles. Still, hobbyist programmers continued to develop games. One area that Japan had focused on were game development kits , specialized software that would allow users to create their own games. A key line of these were produced by ASCII Corporation , which published ASCII ,

6649-451: The early 1990s, notably with the releases of Wolfenstein 3D and ZZT , "indie" games from fledgling developers id Software and Tim Sweeney (later founder of Epic Games ), respectively. Game magazines started to include shareware games on pack-in demo discs with each issue, and as with mail-order, companies arose that provided shareware sampler discs and served to help with shareware payment and redemption processing. Shareware remained

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6758-479: The early 2000s, aligning with the popularity of indie games in the West. Like other Japanese fan-created works in other media, doujin games were often built from existing assets and did not receive much respect or interest from consumers, and instead were generally made to be played and shared with other interested players and at conventions. Around 2013, market forces began to shift with the popularity of indie games in

6867-469: The early 2000s. Until the 2000s, other terms like amateur, enthusiast, and hobbyist software or games were used to describe such software. Today, terms like amateur and hobbyist development are more reflective of those that create mods for existing games, or work with specific technologies or game parts rather than the development of full games. Such hobbyists usually produce non-commercial products and may range from novices to industry veterans. There

6976-487: The eighth best selling video game of all time, as well the highest rated game on Steam as of 2022. Other successful indie games released during this time include Hotline Miami (2012), Shovel Knight (2014), and Five Nights at Freddy's (2014). Hotline Miami inspired many to begin developing games and contributed to the rise in indie game released during this time period, while Shovel Knight and Five Nights at Freddy's spawned successful media franchises, with

7085-410: The festival organizers prior to a deadline; these games generally must have had public release in the preceding calendar year to the festival (for example, for the inaugural 2014 awards, games had to be released in 2013). The festival's organizers along with a panel of industry experts review all submissions and select the top five for each of the game categories. These are then opened to public voting for

7194-411: The final game. This can provide funding midway though development, but like with crowd-funding, consumers expect a game that is near completion, so significant development and costs will likely need to have been invested already. Minecraft was considered an indie game during its original development, and was one of the first titles to successfully demonstrate this approach to funding. More recently,

7303-418: The final winner for each award to be chosen. The Gamer's Voice awards are exceptional to these: they are limited only to indie games released in the previous calendar year or the current year, and which any member of the public may nominate. The festival organizers select multiple games (typically more than five) after playing through each as nominees for the award. These games are featured in playable form at

7412-464: The financial and technical support of a large game publisher , in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games . Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation , experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to a lack of publisher support. The term

7521-559: The first indie designer, created several games for the RCA Studio II home console in 1976 as an independent contractor for RCA . When the first personal computers were released in 1977, they each included a pre-installed version of the BASIC computer language along with example programs, including games, to show what users could do with these systems. The availability of BASIC led to people trying to make their own programs. Sales of

7630-493: The first such doujin to be published on Steam in 2010. Mikhail Fiadotau, a lecturer in video game studies at Tallinn University , identified three primary distinctions between the established doujin culture and the Western idea of indie games. From a conceptual view, indie games generally promote independence and novelty in thought, while doujin games tend to be ideas shared by a common group of people and tend to not veer from established concepts (such as strong favoritism towards

7739-452: The full game from the vendor after trying it. As such demos were generally free to distribute, shareware demo compilations would frequently be included in gaming magazines at that time, providing an easy means for amateur and hobbyist developers to be recognized. The ability to produce numerous copies of games, even if just shareware/demo versions, at a low cost helped to propel the idea as the PC as

7848-432: The funds from interested consumers before development begins in earnest. While using crowd-funding for video games took off in 2012, its practice has significantly waned as consumers became wary of campaigns that failed to deliver on promised goods. A successful crowd-funded campaign now typically requires significant development work and costs associated with this before the campaign is launched, in order to demonstrate that

7957-516: The game was recognized at various award events including the Independent Games Festival , leading to publishers that had previously rejected World of Goo to offer to publish it. The success of indie video games on crowdfunding platforms also inspired a wave of indie tabletop role-playing game developers to follow the same business model. Console manufacturers also helped increase recognition of indie games in this period. By

8066-400: The game will likely be completed in a timely manner and draw in funds. Another mechanism offered through digital distribution is the early access model, in which interested players can buy playable beta versions of the game to provide software testing and gameplay feedback. Those consumers become entitled to the full game for free on release, while others may have to pay a higher price for

8175-520: The games anywhere, with the storefront otherwise handling the distribution and sales factors. While Steam itself initially began heavy curation, it eventually allowed for indie publishing with its Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct programs, vastly increasing the number of games available. Further indie game growth in this period came from the departure of large publishers like Electronic Arts and Activision from their smaller, one-off titles to focus on their larger, more successful properties, leaving

8284-418: The handling (and creation) of bug reports and feature requests, and the constraints under which the programmers are working. In closed-source software development, the programmers are often spending a lot of time dealing with and creating bug reports, as well as handling feature requests. This time is spent on creating and prioritizing further development plans. This leads to part of the development team spending

8393-504: The indie game field since 2015, there are concerns that the market is far too large for many developers to get noticed. Very few selected indie titles get wide coverage in the media, and are typically referred to as "indie darlings". In some cases, indie darlings are identified through consumer reactions that praise the game rather than direct industry influence, leading to further coverage; examples of such games include Celeste and Untitled Goose Game . However, there are also times where

8502-599: The indie game space to provide shorter and more experimental titles as alternatives. Costs of developing AAA games had risen greatly, to an average cost of tens of millions of dollars in 2007–2008 per title, and there was little room for risks in gameplay experimentation. Another driver came from discussions related to whether video games could be seen as an art form ; movie critic Roger Ebert postulated in open debates that video games could not be art in 2005 and 2006, leading to developers creating indie games to specifically challenge that notion. Indie video game development saw

8611-664: The industry, relying on game development toolkits rather than programming languages, and they may associate such titles as amateur or hobbyist. Some such amateur-developed games have found great success. Examples of these include Braid , Super Meat Boy , Dwarf Fortress , and Undertale . Typically, a starting indie-game studio will be primarily programmers and developers. Art assets including artwork and music may be outsourced to work-for-hire artists and composers. For development of personal computer games, indie games typically rely on existing game engines , middleware and game development kits to build their titles, lacking

8720-417: The labeling of a game as "indie" still can be highly subjective and no single rule helps delineate indie games from non-indie ones. Games that are not as large as most triple-A games, but are developed by larger independent studios with or without publisher backing and that can apply triple-A design principles and polish due to the experience of the team, have sometimes been called "triple-I" games, reflecting

8829-422: The largest fan convention in the world, have allowed independent developers to sell and promote their physical products since its inauguration in 1975, allowing game series like Touhou Project and Fate to spread in popularity and dominate the convention for years. As the media shifted to higher-capacity formats and with the ability for users to make their own copies of programs, the simple mail order method

8938-447: The late 2010s. Several indie developers have found it critical to have a good public relations campaign across social media and to interact with the press to make sure a game is noticed early on in its development cycle to get interest and maintain that interest through release, which adds to costs of development. Several games during this time have still seen success, including games that were referred to as "indie darlings." Some of

9047-568: The latter becoming a cultural phenomenon. Mobile games also became popular with indie developers, with inexpensive development tools and low-barrier storefronts with the App Store and Google Play opening in the late 2000s. In 2012, a documentary, Indie Game: The Movie , was created that covers several successful games from this period. Leading into 2015, there was concern that the rise of easy-to-use tools to create and distribute video games could lead to an oversupply of video games, which

9156-502: The market in indie games is more competitive than ever but continues to appear healthy with no signs of faltering. Gamasutra said that by the end of 2016, while there had not be any type of catastrophic collapse of the indie game market, there were signs that the growth of the market had significantly slowed and that it has entered a "post-indiepocalypse" phase as business models related to indie games adjust to these new market conditions. While there has not been any type of collapse of

9265-468: The members can reply to it. In order to communicate in real time, many projects use an instant messaging method such as IRC . Web forums have recently become a common way for users to get help with problems they encounter when using an open-source product. Wikis have become common as a communication medium for developers and users. In OSS development the participants, who are mostly volunteers, are distributed amongst different geographic regions so there

9374-471: The middle ground between these extremes. Ninja Theory 's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is considered a prime example of a triple-I game. A further distinction from indie games are those considered double-A ("AA"), tending to be from mid to large-size studios ranging from 50 to 100 team members and larger than typically associated with indie games, that often work under similar practices as triple-A studios but still retain creative control of their titles from

9483-400: The most played games of 2023. More commercially successful games from this time include Stardew Valley , Hollow Knight , and Cuphead . Indie games are generally associated with Western regions, specifically with North American, European, and Oceanic areas. However, other countries have had similar expansions of indie games that have intersected with the global industry. In Japan,

9592-431: The most popular indie games from this time were primarily popularized over social media and spawned cultural phenomena, such as Undertale (2015) and Among Us (2018), with the later being one of the most popular games during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 with half a billion players. A similar example is Lethal Company , which released in 2023 and was popularized through internet culture, becoming one of

9701-569: The onset of the Internet in the 1990s, such as shareware and other file sharing distribution methods. However, by this time, interest in hobbyist programming had waned due to rising costs of development and competition from video game publishers and home consoles. The modern take on the indie game scene resulted from a combination of numerous factors in the early 2000s, including technical, economic, and social concepts that made indie games less expensive to make and distribute but more visible to larger audiences and offered non-traditional gameplay from

9810-470: The players' imagination, at a time that graphics-heavy action games were commonplace. By the mid-1990s, the recognition of the personal computer as a viable gaming option, and advances in technology that led to 3D gaming created many commercial opportunities for video games. During the last part of the 1990s, visibility of games from these single or small team studios scene waned, since a small team could not readily compete in costs, speed and distribution as

9919-435: The prevalence of video game consoles, which required expensive or difficult-to-acquire game development kits typically reserved for larger developers and publishers. There were still significant developments from smaller teams that laid the basis of indie games going forward. Shareware games became a popular means to distribute demos or partially complete games in the 1980s and into the 1990s, where players could purchase

10028-409: The programming barriers needed for a prospective indie developer to create these games. The commercial possibilities for indie games at this point helped to distinguish these games from any prior amateur game. There were other shifts in the commercial environment that were seen as drivers for the rise of indie games in the 2000s. Many of the games to be indie games of this period were considered to be

10137-474: The project; instead they are based on early releases of the software product, as Robbins describes. Besides requirements, often volunteer staff is attracted to help develop the software product based on the early releases of the software. This networking effect is essential according to Abrahamsson et al.: “if the introduced prototype gathers enough attention, it will gradually start to attract more and more developers”. However, Abrahamsson et al. also point out that

10246-701: The resources to build custom engines. Common game engines include Unreal Engine and Unity , but there are numerous others as well. Small studios that do not anticipate large sales are generally afforded reduced prices for mainstream game engines and middleware. These products may be offered free, or be offered at a substantial royalty discount that only increases if their sales exceed certain numbers. Indie developers may also use open source software (such as Godot ) or by taking advantage of homebrew libraries, which are freely available but may lack technically-advanced features compared to equivalent commercial engines. Prior to 2010, development of indie games on consoles

10355-579: The same basic concepts behind video game development for mainstream titles also apply to indie game development, particularly around the software development aspects. Key differences lie in how the development of the game ties in with the publisher or lack thereof. There is no definitive size for how big an independent game development studio might be. Several successful indie games, such as the Touhou Project series, Axiom Verge , Cave Story , Papers, Please , and Spelunky , were developed by

10464-560: The same source with a common purpose. The most prominent example of a "distribution" is an operating system. There are many Linux distributions (such as Debian , Fedora Core , Mandriva , Slackware , Ubuntu etc.) which ship the Linux kernel along with many user-land components. There are other distributions, like ActivePerl , the Perl programming language for various operating systems, and Cygwin distributions of open-source programs for Microsoft Windows . Other open-source projects, like

10573-548: The same time. This is done by moving the file into the users’ directories and then merging the files when the users are done. CVS also enables one to easily retrieve a previous version of a file. During mid 2000s, The Subversion revision control system (SVN) was created to replace CVS. It is quickly gaining ground as an OSS project version control system. Many open-source projects are now using distributed revision control systems, which scale better than centralized repositories such as SVN and CVS. Popular examples are git , used by

10682-454: The school demanded rights to the game. Another route for indie development teams comes from experienced developers in the industry who either voluntarily leave to pursue indie projects, typically due to creative burnout from the corporate process, or resulting from termination from the company. Examples of games from such groups include FTL: Faster Than Light , Papers, Please , Darkest Dungeon , and Gone Home . Yet another route

10791-429: The students then take into a commercial opportunity after graduating from school. Examples of such games are And Yet It Moves , Octodad: Dadliest Catch , Risk of Rain , and Outer Wilds . In some cases, students may drop out of school to pursue the commercial opportunity or for other reasons; Vlambeer 's founders, for example, had started to develop a commercial game while still in school and dropped out when

10900-411: The system themselves. Open-source software development can be divided into several phases. The phases specified here are derived from Sharma et al . A diagram displaying the process-data structure of open-source software development is shown on the right. In this picture, the phases of open-source software development are displayed, along with the corresponding data elements. This diagram is made using

11009-422: The term usually refers to if their popularity formed in Western or Eastern markets before the mid-2010s, and if they are made with the aim of selling large copies or just as a passion project; the long-running bullet hell Touhou Project series , developed entirely by one-man independent developer ZUN since 1995, has been called both indie and doujinshi. Meanwhile, despite being Japanese-developed, Cave Story

11118-469: The video game industry and the rest of the world starting around 2005. A key driver was the transition into new digital distribution methods with storefronts like Steam that offered indie games alongside traditional AAA titles, as well as specialized storefronts for indie games. While direct online distribution helped indie games to reach players, these storefronts allowed developers to publish, update, and advertise their games directly, and players to download

11227-525: The video game market, wrote in his book Handmade Pixels that the definition of an indie game is vague, and depends on different subjective considerations. Juul classified three ways games can be considered indie: those that are financially independent of large publishers, those that are aesthetically independent of and significantly different from the mainstream art and visual styles used in AAA games, and those that present cultural ideas that are independent from mainstream games. Juul however wrote that ultimately

11336-904: The video game media may see a future title as a success and position it as an indie darling before its release, only to have the game fail to make a strong impression on players, such as in the case of No Man's Sky and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine . Discoverability has become an issue for indie developers as well. With the Steam distribution service allowing any developer to offer their game with minimal cost to them, there are thousands of games being added each year, and developers have come to rely heavily on Steam's discovery tools – methods to tailor catalog pages to customers based on past purchases – to help sell their titles. Mobile app stores have had similar problems with large volumes of offers but poor means for discovery by consumers in

11445-436: The well-established RPG genre). From a genealogical standpoint, the nature of doujin dates back as far as the 19th century, while the indie phenomena is relatively new. Finally, only until recently, doujin games tended to only be talked about in the same circles as other doujin culture (fan artwork and writing) and rarely mixed with commercial productions, whereas indie games have shared the same stage with AAA games. Many of

11554-528: Was highly restrictive due to costly access to software development kits (SDKs), typically a version of the console with added debugging features that would cost several thousands of dollars and come with numerous restrictions on its use to prevent trade secrets related to the console from being leaked. Console manufacturers may have also restricted sales of SDKs to only certain developers that met specific criteria, leaving potential indie developers unable to acquire them. When indie games became more popular by 2010,

11663-465: Was received, fulfill orders by hand, making copies of their game to cassette tape, floppy disc, or CD-ROM along with documentation. Others would provide copies to their local computer store to sell. In the United Kingdom, where personal computer game development took off in the early 1980s, a market developed for game distributors that handled the copying and distribution of games for these hobbyist programmers. In Japan, doujinshi conventions like Comiket ,

11772-580: Was termed the "indiepocalypse". This perception of an indiepocalypse is not unanimous; Jeff Vogel stated in a talk at GDC 2016 that any downturn was just part of the standard business cycle . The size of the indie game market was estimated in March 2016 to be at least $ 1 billion per year for just those games offered through Steam . Mike Wilson, Graeme Struthers and Harry Miller, the co-founders of indie publisher Devolver Digital , stated in April 2016 that

11881-405: Was threatened since one person could buy the game and then make copies for their friends. The shareware model of distribution emerged in the 1980s accepting that users would likely make copies freely and share these around. The shareware version of the software would be limited, and require payment to the developer to unlock the remaining features. This approach became popular with hobbyist games in

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