Independently produced games, designed, created and published by a single company or even a single person. No committee meetings, no shareholders and no financial pressure, just the purest art of creating wonderful and fun video games. A lot of people have been going down the independent road recently after gaming has become just another victim to the mass engorgement of corporate control and developers find themselves having to meet deadlines rather than have fun.
Personally I find indie games to be where most of the greatest new concepts for games come about. Perhaps it is the extra freedom that the creators get, perhaps its due to being an industry that focuses on the ideas and minds of Auteurs, or maybe it’s just that the developers want to create a game that they like and not what a focus test group of 12-14 year olds want.
Of course this road doesn’t come without drawbacks. Financial concerns are always huge, especially when AAA publishers can throw money at any old garbage and end up with a profit, the other major drawback is publicity as many indie companies can’t afford to create massive celebrity endorsed advertisements playing at the Super Bowl. However despite all this I still prefer the indie crowd, they at least won’t try to get ME to buy them the drinks at the bar.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.