The Indie Video Game Movement

Over the last few years, the video game industry has seen a huge rise in the popularity of indie video games. There have been a number of independent video games that have been commercially released to unexpected financial and critical success. Super Meat Boy (2010, 1 million sales, 90% Metacritic), Braid (2008, 93% Metacritic), World of Goo (2008, 94%), Minecraft (2011, 4 million sales, 93%), Amnesia (2011, 86%), Bastion (2011, 90%), Limbo (2012, 92%), are a just few examples of the many commercial titles developed by tiny teams with huge success.

Some of these hits, such as Minecraft, were completely developed by only two people! This contrasts the other end of video game development, where the estimated development costs exceed 50 million dollars with hundreds of employees working on different aspects of the game. The end credits of Splinter Cell Conviction ran for a whopping total of 22 minutes- these teams are enormous!

Limbo offered a unique art style and narrative, and won awards! (source)

I believe that independent video games represent an important emerging sub-market of the gaming industry. Unlike major publishers and developers that continue to pump out sequels after sequels, indie developers are able to take the risk trying something different. In an industry known for repetition and cloning, innovation is becoming increasingly important for success. If the arrival of the Wii is any indication, people are attracted to new and interesting products.

Independent games have always been developed alongside commercial games as hobbyist projects, so, why have they only recently come to the forefront of the industry? Cave Story was developed and released for free in 2004 and garnered much community and praise. However, it was not until 2010 that the game was packaged and sold commercially; and not until then did I hear of it.

(Cave Story) Wait, I know this game is free- so why did I pay for it? (source)

Just as we discussed in class, evolving technologies are distributing more power to the individual. In the gaming industry, indie video games are the result of this shift. They define a new niche of game design that pushes the creative bounds of the industry. There are a number of reasons why this market may have just emerged, here are some of my thoughts:

1. Digital Distribution:
In the last few years digital distribution has become an easy, manageable, and secure method for sharing and selling games. A game developer no longer needs a publisher or producer to publish their games into the market. Furthermore, modern online communities share and spread games, reducing the importance of commercial advertising. These developments have made it easier for developers to directly reach their consumers.

2. Accessible Development Tools:
Simply put, video games are just easier to make now than they have ever been before. Tutorials and packaged video game libraries are easily available to make game programming much more accessible. Powerful engines like Unity are freely available for use. Even novice programmers can design full games using software like Game Maker. There are tons of free and extensive resources on the internet to make both programming and game design easier.

Game Maker taught me programming practices without me knowing it!

3. Mobile Video Games
Nearly everyone has a smart phone nowadays. Indie game development is highly suited to the mobile market, because the games are generally smaller and the market is easy to distribute on. Mobile games reach a wide range of people and are often inexpensive, helping indie game developers profit from a accessible market.

The industry has evolved a lot from the development of these technologies, but removing the publisher has also created new and exciting opportunities. The Humble Indie Bundle and the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter are two interesting examples. Although not directly crowd sourcing, the Humble Indie Bundle allowed customers (for a limited time) to buy a set of quality games for any price they wanted, provided they gave at least a cent. This project proved to be immensely successful, generating income for developers but supporting charity as well. They have already raised a raw 10 million dollars from selling games in this format, with more bundles to come. This method echos the crowd-sourcing concept, since it relies on many people contributing small amounts. The bundle also carries a positive community feeling similar to crowd-sourcing, since the money directly supports developers and charity.

The Double Fine Adventure is another curious example, which draws financial support from a dedicated adventure game community to fund a new adventure game. Again, this carries the positive community feeling associated with crowd-sourcing since people feel they are collectively contributing to revive a lost but treasured game genre. This project has too been very successful. The developers asked for 0.4 million to make the game, but have already received 2.6 million in kickstarter donations.

To summarize, I think independent video games are AWESOME!