[tcaudilllg]

Well if there are different categories of indie, they absolutely shouldn't be expected to compete. There is a temptation to try to abstract away from sensible categorizations... but the only fruit of the same is always unreasonable expectation and unfairness.

[RampantCoyote]

[tcaudilllg]

It's like asking a light weight boxer to take on Mike Tyson -- it's not something you do.

The more expensive projects are going to have better graphics, and as such will compete in larger markets. A lot of people, for example, will not play a game that doesn't have cutting edge 3D graphics, or at least graphics drawn by a skilled, realistically styled artist. Of course IntiCreates is developing Megaman games with 8 bit graphics, but that's not even comparable -- they aren't even indie.

It's just totally unreasonable to expect games made by teenagers or hobbyists to compete with professional effort. They shouldn't even try. And no they aren't really competing on the same playing field: you play a QB RPG, you aren't expecting the latest, greatest, most thorough game experience in the world. And no one who does play those games expects that. It's like comparing apples to oranges: they are both fruit, but the similarities end there.

[Rainer Deyke]

When I write a game, I'm not really trying to compete at all. I'm trying to write a game to meet some need that isn't being met by any other game. If I find some niche that's big enough to support me and empty enough that I don't need to deal with direct competition, that's success, even if everybody outside that niche hates the game. If I write the kind of game that wins the IGF, that's failure, because all of a sudden I'm directly competing with all of the other IGF games in the same style, and many of those games have bigger budgets and bigger teams.

[RampantCoyote]

That's pretty much a given. I understand that's kind of a basic marketing principle as well. If you aren't #1 in your category, you redefine your category until you are #1. :) Doesn't mean you aren't competing, though. Just means you aren't trying to pick a fight in your competitor's home turf.

But that's exactly the indie approach you should be taking. And you get to follow your passion instead of what some lamer in a suit says ought to sell well in fourth quarter next year.

I kinda wrestled with the same issues in my head a few years ago, and still revisit it from time to time. The fundamental problem I kept running into was that the player (generally) doesn't care HOW a game was made, how much money was sunk into it, what tools were used, or even how many people were involved in the making of the game. Only a handful of people WOULD care, and they are mostly developers.

So it really comes down to providing players with the best experience for THEM that you can, regardless of your limitations. If you can't compete in terms of scope and production values, you have to find some other ways to do that. Like making the kind of game nobody else will, and catering exactly to a very small niche.

One of the coolest RPGs I've played in the last two years was Knights of the Chalice. This indie game was written for 320 x 240 resolution (scaled up), with blocky graphics and simple animations. I think the demo clocked in at something like a 6 meg download. It was a turn-based, tactical RPG using the Open Gaming License and hearkening back to a VERY old-school flavor, reminiscent of 70's era tabletop D&D (which actually predates my own experience, surprisingly enough).

Note I didn't say, "coolest indie RPG." It was one of the coolest RPGs - and coolest GAMES, period. I was delighted. I wasn't expecting much, and it blew me away by providing a kind of experience I hadn't realized I'd wanted. They nailed it for their audience - me and I guess a few hundred or thousand others. I bought it almost immediately after playing the demo. I STILL haven't played another RPG I was interested in, Bioware's big-budget Dragon Age: Origins. I was too busy playing Knights of the Chalice (among other things).

In my mind, Knights of the Chalice competed successfully with Dragon Age: Origins. Some little lightweight in France successfully KO'ed Bioware's Mike Tyson in my brain. No, in the grand scheme, its sales aren't a speck compared to DA:O's, but does it really matter?
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I've been thinking a bit about the whole "indie" thing for the last few days (there's been a discussion about it on another forum I hang out on as well). I still don't have a clear stand on the whole thing - I'm with jay on the whole "big tent" thing - but there's one thing that have crossed my mind:

I think that sometimes, at least outside of games, the term "indie" can be used as meaning "alternative" or outside the mainstream. Used that way, I could see it working well for what I think of in regards to these type of games, in that it is a way of saying "this is different from mainstream games, so if you'd like something different, this might be for you". Maybe "alternative games" would be a better term than "indie games"?

Because for me, I think that is what it's all about - a widening of the choice of games for all kinds of gamers, and under-served niche markets getting some long lost attention...
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