Indie Game

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The term "independent game", or "indie game", generally refers to a video game developed without the backing of a major publisher.

The traditional way that new video games get developed is that a publisher finances a development team to create the game, and the publisher also handles things like publishing the work, promoting/publicizing it, and any intellectual property issues that might come up. However, indie games are not produced this way, being created by developers on their own time and/or cost, and typically published by the developers themselves.

Indie games are often simpler and/or of smaller scale than typical commercial games, and have less in the way of graphical and sound assets (as there's less money available in development to make highly detailed environments, textures, and such). Of course, this doesn't reflect on quality; the actual quality of indie games ranges from embarrassingly bad to embarrassing the big houses.

The "indie" label also doesn't necessarily imply anything about who developed the game or how it was developed; Cave Story is a labor of love created by only a single amateur developer over the course of five years, and its success has been largely due to fans' word-of-mouth promoting, while Bastion was created by a team of several experienced developers who split off from the prominent video game company Electronic Arts and then published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Some indie games, most notably Spelunky, Doki Doki Literature Club!, and the aforementioned Cave Story, were released as freeware games. In earlier years, these games were often published on a web page with a download link. This is because the process of charging people money for the software can be a hassle and rather costly (due to transaction fees for credit cards or PayPal), and furthermore, it's easy to get people interested in your work if you offer it to them for free (and there's no shortage of people looking for free games on the internet), which is especially a good thing if you're an up-and-coming talent wanting to get recognition. Additionally, the rise of digital distribution services in the late 2000s (namely Steam, GOG.com, and Itch.io) has made it easier for indie developers to receive financial compensation from fans and interested players.

In the early days, indie games were almost always PC games, because console development was less accessible in earlier years and digital distribution was not widespread on consoles. However, as of the seventh generation and especially the eighth generation, more indie games have released on consoles due to the barrier of entry to console development decreasing over time, as well as the rise of digital distribution on consoles during that period.

Indie games are typically lower-priced than higher-budget "AAA" (pronounced "triple-A") titles. In theory, the lower budget and lower risk for indie games also permits more creative risk taking that Executive Meddling would try and change to broaden appeal, whereas failure or even mediocrity of a game can doom a studio tasked with making a multi-million dollar game (even in good economies, statistics of underperforming AAA studios being shuttered or undergoing large layoffs are common, though this varies depending on the region and circumstances)^note It's more common in studios from Western, Eastern European, and West Asian countries). East Asian studios has more tolerance towards stinkers partly due of how the economic (the keiretsu system in Japan and the chaebol one from South Korea allows them to stand a failed project more easier than their Western equivalents) and cultural systems of those countries works, albeit this doesn't help always, especially with smaller studios.

Since the 2010s, independent game development has been on the rise, in part due to the success of various notable indie games, most notably (once again) Cave Story and especially Minecraft, as well as the greater availability of digital distribution. This is aided by the rise of laptops, and later the rise of portable devices such as tablets, smartphones, and especially handheld gaming consoles like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, and Steam Deck. The smaller games indie studios are capable of producing often run well on these lower-powered devices, whereas AAA studios typically release either down-scaled ports or simply ports of older games for the same devices. In the ninth generation, indie games have received a further boost in popularity as a result of several factors regarding modern AAA games, such as increasingly ambitious scopes, a decline in reception, a widespread consensus that AAA games are becoming increasingly stagnant, requiring increasingly powerful and expensive hardware, and new AAA releases rising in price (with new releases jumping from $59.99 to $69.99 in the early 2020s). This came to a head when Hollow Knight: Silksong proved to be just as anticipated and successful as many major AAA games.

While mature titles are far from unheard of, many indie games are notable for defying the "kiddie" stigma attached to family-friendly video games and being the most popular and critically-acclaimed aversions to Rated M for Money outside of Nintendo's first-party titles. Some, such as the aforementioned Minecraft, have become Cash-Cow Franchises in their own right because of their Multiple Demographic Appeal with kids and adults.

See also Doujin Soft - in Japan the term "indie" refers only to games sold commercially, while "doujin" is used to describe hobby projects that are available for free or sold only at conventions.

There are also Tabletop RPGs known as "indie games", but precisely what that means is up to debate. Almost any definition includes many games not commonly identified as "indie".

If you were looking for Indie Game: The Movie — a film about the creation and promotion of indie titles Super Meat Boy, Fez, and Braid — that has its own page.