The term indie has gained a wide range of connotations that effectively
prevent it from carrying well-defined meaning in current discourse. It
is evident that the term only holds accuracy when used contextually
and lacks collective definition.
The work at hand provides a common basis for the understanding of
indie games in order to reinstate the term‟s meaning. We propose a
division of the concept into indie production, indie aesthetics and
indie culture. Based on this division we introduce the III model as a
tool for approaching a formalized discourse on indie games.
To support the analysis we establish and explore an indie game
database, carry out expert interviews and develop a game in adherence
to the III model‟s concept of indie.
In conclusion we conduct a series of case studies by applying the
model to a selection of games. This establishes the model as an
effective tool for categorization despite the gradient nature of indie
caused by its intrinsic subjectivity.
1.
Problem Statement .......................................................................... 1
2.
Method ............................................................................................. 3
3.
The Indie Game ................................................................................ 7
3.1.
Indie Aesthetics.......................................................................... 16
3.2.
Indie Production ........................................................................ 38
3.3.
Indie Culture .............................................................................. 51
3.4.
The III model ............................................................................. 63
4.
Empirical Analysis ..........................................................................71
4.1.
Game Database .......................................................................... 72
4.2.
Bearadise Hotel .......................................................................... 81
4.3.
Case Studies ............................................................................... 86
5.
Conclusion ...................................................................................... 92
6.
Bibliography ................................................................................... 94
7.
Appendix ...................................................................................... 100
“Indie is cool. Indie is hip. Indie is smart, chic, and sexy.
Indie isn‟t pretty, but it gets the job done. Indie is downto-earth, the work of tireless blue collar DIY
craftsmanship. Indie is pretentious, a haven for overinflated egos and introspection with all the depth of a
sun-dried puddle. Indie is big on head-in-the-clouds
dreaming, but it crashes and burns in terms of
execution. Indie is mechanically sublime – not a wasted
input or animation. Indie is the future. Indie is stuck in
the past.” (Grayson, 2012)
Indie is all the rage these days and is readily used as a description of a
type of game, an entire genre, a kind of developer, a game
development philosophy, an attitude or simply as a stamp of game
development virtue in an act of self-branding. More confusingly, the
range of games and developers that proclaim themselves and are
proclaimed indie even appears to include opposites. The above excerpt
from a May 3rd 2012 column by Nathan Grayson demonstrates that
the implied meanings of the word are now so vast that it has become
impossible to pinpoint the actual essence of this coveted independence
and its connotations. The game industry and its market have
developed in a direction that has led to the emergence of indie
development as a subculture – a video game and game development
culture that adheres to its own set of aesthetics and ideals in terms of
game design, motivation, commercialism and technical and artistic
innovation. Because the implications of this evolution in independent
development are so vast, the term indie has become loaded beyond its
capacity. This lack of a common ground has led to the misconception
that indie cannot be defined, or at least confined, and therefore cannot
become a meaningful or useful term in its own right. Despite its
widespread use as a descriptive term, there is an equally widespread
reluctance to define it, often referring to the misconception of
unimportance or impossibility. It is our belief that the community
would benefit greatly from a common consensus about the meaning of
the term indie.
“Again, we're stuck in this weird world of definitions it's kind of impossible to answer this without clarifying
which "idea" of indie we're talking about here.” (P. Barr,
personal communication, 2012)
1
So what can we learn from its use and how can we formalize it?
In this thesis we will answer this question. Existing academic writings
on this topic are very scarce and any systematic attempt at the
problem has yet to be made. We therefore feel it is desirable and
academically worthwhile to explore it in depth in order to further the
field of game studies and approach consensus on the indie
phenomenon. This research will provide an insight that allows us to
give our perspective on the future of indie development, a field that in
recent years has explored the potential of games as art as well as
entertainment and proved a massive contributor to innovation in the
game industry.
Despite the lack of consensus on the topic we hypothesize that the
term indie, when used to describe games and developers, connotes a
number of identifiable characteristics and values that set them apart
from the greater game industry. We intend to untangle the indie
phenomenon by identifying its structure, disassemble it and
investigate it in composites. We will use this knowledge to build a
comprehensive model with the intent to not conclusively define indie,
but rather address the inconsistencies in the discourse surrounding
indie games.
Rather than basing our hypothesis on existing literary material we
intend to take a pragmatic approach and involve ourselves in the indie
community through the development of an indie game. We thereby
distance ourselves from purely humanistic or sociological work,
grounding it in interaction with actual indie culture, adding a product
to the theoretical work that we strive to design in such a way that it
embodies the characteristics of independence that our analytical work
uncovers.
The results obtained using this methodology will be strongly
influenced by our personal views on game development and indie
games as well as our game design approach and preferences. We do
not consider this an issue in regards to validity. The hypothesis posted
in this thesis is intended to put ourselves at stake and be exactly that –
a subjective contribution to the discourse of the independent game
industry that will serve as a basis for discussion on its structure, its
relevance and its future perspectives.
2
This thesis consists of two epistemologically contrasting parts,
combining a theoretical and a pragmatic approach to research on the
concept of indie. The first part, the analysis, is investigating of indie
games and their presentation and perception as cultural artifacts by
the game industry, its customers and the communities surrounding
game development. This analytical part represents our perception of
the indie concept in a way that in our opinion approaches a
formalization of independent games in a meaningful way. It draws up
our notion of indie, presenting the views that are the hypothesis of this
thesis and thereby serve as a foundation for the thesis‟ second part.
The outcome of the analysis is a model that provides an understanding
of the indie adjective as seen through the lens of our opinions and
findings.
The second part, the empirical work, relates the views and
observations of the first part of the thesis to grounded data in order to
validate our hypothesis. Although the composition of properties that
we claim embodies the concept of indie is of a very subjective nature,
we will strive to substantiate all postulations to the greatest possible
extent via empirical research.
The analysis will present the indie phenomenon as consisting of three
high level branches; production, culture and aesthetics, each with its
own significance in terms of understanding the background and
overall nature of indie games and indie development. Moreover, each
branch pertains to a particular stage in the life cycle of an indie game,
the three branches thereby establishing how and why indie games are
made, what constitutes an indie game and, finally, how indies affect
and are affected by the digital culture in which they have their place.
The investigation of the indie production attempts to create an
understanding of the circumstances typically present during a game‟s
development phase. These circumstances, spanning from
conceptualization process to distribution and post-release interplay
between developers and consumers play a central role in defining the
developed game. Second, our research into aesthetics investigates
characteristics of indie games as objects. By establishing e.g. which
mechanics, visuals and gameplay experiences characterize indie
games, this part of the analysis draws a picture of the produce of indie
development. Third, we describe indie games from a cultural point of
view. This includes a study of the sociological functions that affect the
3
way indie games are introduced to their fanbase in indie communities
as well as markets of an evidently more commercial nature. Moreover,
it will describe the relationship between developers and audiences and
investigate the prominence of individualism on this market.
In all three aspects of the analysis the similarities and differences
between AAA and indie development will be described, thereby
attempting to untangle the complex relationship of both cause and
effect that characterize indie games and allow indie and AAA
developers to co-exist.
In conclusion of the analysis we suggest a model of the indie
phenomenon, the III model, to be used for a categorization of games
based on their production, aesthetics and culture. The model and the
preceding findings are substantiated empirically in four ways: through
case studies, with a series of interviews, by creating a database for an
observational approach to a categorization of indie games and, finally,
with the development and release of a game which adheres to our
notion of what constitutes an indie game.
In order to substantiate the claims and views put forward in the
analysis chapter we have conducted a series of interviews with
individuals who reflect different views on indie culture, indie
development and the game industry as a whole. As we have proposed a
threefold model for an understanding of the indie phenomenon, the
views of this empirical extension of the analysis are to reflect exactly
these three aspects. In order to do so we have gathered contributions
from individuals who in their professional field have a particular
connection with aesthetics, production and culture, respectively. Our
interviewees include:




Nicklas Nygren, developer of Knytt, Knytt Stories, Night
Sky and Saria.
Pippin Barr, game studies researcher, game critic and
developer of small indie titles, a.o. Epic Sax Game, Let‟s play:
Ancient Greek Punishment and The Artist Is Present.
Kellee Santiago, original Co-founder of thatgamecompany,
TEDFellow, game developer, Partner at Indie Fund.
Morten Svendsen, game designer of Copenhagen-based
game studio Tactile Entertainment.
Excerpts of these interviews will be used throughout the thesis in
order to verify that the findings resonate with the professionals who
are affiliated with indie game development on a daily basis.
4
The game database contains all games referenced in this thesis, each
with a set of parameters including e.g. price, distribution platform and
production characteristics. It thereby serves as an indicator of our
games horizon, comprehensively presenting the foundation on which
the analysis is based.
A statistical analysis has been carried out on a limited selection of
these games. This selection, defined by the game‟s availability as a
Windows download, was necessary in order to obtain the most valid
results possible. Although the reduced sample size in comparison to
the entire database impairs the generality of the results it greatly
increases their validity. We in other words allow ourselves to conclude
more accurately on fewer games rather than inaccurately on many
games. The implications and applicability of the results as well as the
possibility of biased results are discussed in detail in chapter 4.1.
In order to expand our knowledge on the generative parts of indie
development we have developed a game intended to exhibit the three
indie characteristics discussed in the analysis. In chapter 4.2 we will
describe the process of developing the game and its aesthetics, but
maintain a particular focus on the cultural aspect of development. In
this respect we have attempted to mimic the cultural involvement of
indie developers, thereby hoping to increase our understanding of the
significance of networking for the cultural aspect of independence.
This has been instrumental in our understanding of culture and
provided us with a firsthand insight into the benefits of as well as the
ways in which one as a game developer may be influenced by the
exposition to a community.
The game was showcased at a game jam along with 16 other
contributions from the game development community of Copenhagen
and fared rather well, landing a third place. Interestingly, the three top
finishes exhibited a strong focus on one different aesthetic
characteristic each: the first place finisher having highly stylized
graphics, the second place being very experimnetial and our game
having a strong focus on gameplay.
In extension of the presentation of the III model we will apply it to a
selection of games with different profiles in respect to the three
aspects of indie. We choose to apply it to games that have particular
sets of characteristics that we feel lead to the ambiguity of the concept
5
of indie and is done to demonstrate the model‟s applicability as a
categorization tool for indie games.
This application of theory to real data is to serve as validation of our
hypothesis that the concept of independence in game development
does not pertain to either one of games or developers, but rather both
as well as their culture.
Overall, the process of gathering, validating and presenting data can
be described as follows:
1) We start out with a purely subjective notion of indie based on
our personal backgrounds and past experiences.
2) Through a series of interviews, the creation of a games
database and the development of a game we expand our
horizon, iterate on our initial understanding and present a
refined view of indie in the form of the III model.
3) We validate that model through a comparison to said
empirical work, eventually demonstrating the model through
case studies.
4) Finally, we present the knowledge obtained.
Using this methodology we hope to be able to successfully identify the
workings of independence in game development and present it in a
way that untangles the implications and connotations that the term
indie has garnered in recent years.
6
As stated in the problem formulation there is no widely accepted
definition of the term indie. While the original meaning of the word
simply indicated that a studio had taken the task of publishing their
games into their own hands, i.e. gained independence of its publisher,
branding a game developer indie will today spark a wide range of
connotations. The term that once carried an unambiguous meaning
has today gained a wide and undefined perceived meaning that has left
games critics, developers, fans and academics with a vocabulary that is
collectively used, but individually defined. So what is its true meaning
– what has the indie adjective become?
This chapter will provide an overview of the current attempts at
reaching a definition of indie game development and, through a
discussion of the significance of the various factors that influence the
phenomenon, present our suggestion for a meaningful division of
indie into less ambiguous components.
The use of the term indie is widely debated throughout digital media.
We face a situation in which there is a lot of discourse over the subject,
a discourse, more often than not, based on differing angles of
understanding of the term. Frequently the complete meaning of the
term is not taken into consideration or the boundaries between
annotation and connotation are blurred (Stern, 2012). The difficulty in
defining indie lies in the fact that it carries meaning on different levels,
something that allows the term to be used for differing purposes.
Electronic Arts‟ release of what in the company‟s marketing was
deemed an indie bundle exemplifies this diverse use of the term
excellently as it caused great media uproar1.
Unfortunately only few attempts have been made to define the term
indie and even fewer attempts within academia. One definition is
proposed by Lindsay Grace in his article The Poetics of Game Design
in which he draws a connection between game design, indie games
Refer to:
http://www.indiegamemag.com/excuse-me-ea-indie-bundleregistered-on-steam/#.UIF7RkUr1cY,
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117071-Notch-Dumpson-EA-Indie-Bundle,
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/356494/ea-changes-indiegame-bundle-to-niche-gamer-bundle/
1
7
and poetic forms, based on the work from Bogost (2008),
understanding games as rhetoric. Grace tries to delimitate indie as
follows:
"It is then perhaps more accurate to define independent
games as play experiences designed and implemented
with a self-governed goal outside the status quo.
Independence is a declaration of deviation. It
acknowledges a standard, and attempts to ratify a space
of its own. For the discussion framed within this paper,
independent games are games that seek and achieve the
attributes of independence. They are developed free
from the restrictions of contracts and the unstated
obligations of profit seeking. While they may be
profitable, they do not seek profit through the
affirmation of standards. Independent games are
interesting in their insistence to be free from standards
and their effort to escape conventional play
experiences." (Grace, 2011)
Within the article this definition works well, but as Grace states
himself “defining what is meant by independent games can easily
consume an entire tome in itself” (Grace, 2011), hence it is unclear
with the proposed definition whether the adequate clarity is achieved.
His definition is of importance though, since he (rightly) layers the
term on different footings. Grace describes indie as both free from
monetary motivations, as well as stressing the importance of deviant,
creative expression of the creators.
Despite the lack of a sharp-cut definition for the concept of an “indie
game”, one will invariably have a great deal of associations with it. One
of the most predominant of these is very likely to be the production
circumstances – being told that a game is developed by an indie studio
will trigger various preconceptions about team size, budget and
project scope.
Simply taking the self-explanatory meaning of the word independent
itself, one would think a game developer is considered indie when he
is operating independent of game publishers. Even when disregarding
the effect a publisher can have on a development process, simply being
independent of publishers is not enough for acquiring the indie label,
as has been rightly pointed out by various game journalists (Dutton,
2012; Grayson, 2012; Stern, 2012). Quintessential, by this definition
some big game developers, such as Epic Games Inc., are
independently operating, but are hardly considered to be indie by
anyone. So, when the independence from a publisher is not necessarily
a deciding factor, what is?
8
Martin & Deuze propose an understanding of the term as one that is
used “in a number of ways to describe a type of development next to,
or juxtaposed with, the mainstream process of creating, marketing,
distributing, and playing digital games” (Martin & Deuze, 2009).
While it helps us understand the broad concept of indie, the framing
presented is too broad to analyze and delineate indie developers and
games from the greater games industry. Still, the notion of opposition
to or distinction from other games, especially from the AAA industry,
is at the core of understanding indie.
In journalistic media, the meaning of the term has been discussed,
though a specific, explanatory approach is rarely attempted.
Nonetheless, as one of the more recent examples, C. Stern (2012)
offers a thoughtful attempt of defining indie as:
“A game that is both (a) developed to completion without
any publisher or licensor interference, and (b) created
by a single developer or a small team.”(Stern, 2012)
At first glance, the definition appears very solid, especially when
taking Sterns flow of argumentation into consideration. Before
reaching his conclusion, he demonstrates what is often merely in
annotation to the term indie, rather than a feature of distinction. In
the process, he renounces the need for small budgets, the status of
being independently owned and operated, ownership of the IP,
innovation in game design and being made with love or the indie spirit
as “untenable definitions people have been bandying about” (Stern,
2012). Stern focuses his definition on the material conditions that
permit indie games to be created, consciously avoiding the developer‟s
intention and attitude towards making games.
In our view, we would like to sharpen Sterns definition in a few points.
We emphasize that the interference of a publisher or licensor as an
entity in itself is not necessarily seen as inhibitory to being indie, but it
is the (granted very likely) creative influence during the development
of a game that a publisher can exert, as Stern elaborates himself.
Assuredly, the term indie springs from being independent of a
publisher, but we see here that the terms publisher and licensor are
too confined, in fact suffer the same confusion between annotation
and connotation that Stern criticizes himself. Consecutively, in our
understanding, it is not the interference of a publisher or licensor, but
the interference of any entity on a game/game developer that alters
the original creators design and vision that is incompatible with the
idea of being indie. As discussed in chapter 3.3, this can even mean at
the hands of the developer himself, i.e. in the case of sacrificing his
own, personal ambitions to create a product that caters for larger and
more accessible audiences.
9
This leads us to the non-material conditions under which a game is
created. In our understanding, the notion of indie has emancipated
itself from a mere production oriented term. Assuredly, Stern‟s
definition, or any other focusing on production circumstances, is an
extremely helpful way to delimit indie games to AAA games or other
parts of the greater games industry. It provides a first focus, or lens, to
explore the object of study. Still, it is insufficient, as it does not give
enough justice to the ideology behind the indie game itself. The status
of being indie cannot be expressed through a series of Boolean criteria
or identifiers. In his
thought provoking blog entry Toward
Independence – IndieCade 2012 Paolo Pedercini (of Molleindustria)
uses the metaphor of a gradient to symbolize the “...degree of
compromise with the capital” (Pedercini, 2012). It is this tension
between artistic ambition and dependency, between pecuniary and
non-pecuniary, between artistic pretentiousness and humility that
makes indie games so interesting, desirable and hard to define.
Talking about indie game development, there‟s no getting around
talking about the greater games industry. In this thesis we will use the
term AAA as “a high-quality game that is expected to be among the
year‟s best-sellers” with larger budgets than most other games
(Thomas, Orland, & Steinberg, 2007). Working within the AAA
industry is to be compared to working with a publisher or other
investor. Working within this stakeholder-developer relationship is
often seen as the opposition to being an indie developer, as publishers
are frequently accused of stifling innovation in game design and the
evolution of new franchises (Anthropy, 2012).
The accusations that investors and publishers smother innovation and
creativity in order to secure a profit are nothing new. In the
Scratchware Manifesto (Costikyan, 2000), Greg Costikyan and other
developers raged against the state of the industry and warned of a
future which greatly resembles the AAA game industry of the present.
There is wide acceptance of the fact that being under the scheduling
and budgetary demands of publisher- or investor-controlled
development and being indie are mutually exclusive:
“Despite a wide-ranging discourse of what independent
actually means, a single unifying thread that is
recognized throughout the industry is that an indie
game cannot be created under the creative or financial
control of one of these external entities.”(Martin &
Deuze, 2009)
Simplifying, the reasoning for this publisher and investor behavior can
be outlined as follows. Primarily, publishers can be seen as business
10
entities whose main purpose it is to make money through the
distribution and sale of games. As the cost of creating AAA games
increase, approaching the hundreds of million USD (excluding
marketing costs), it is in the publisher‟s best interest to reduce the risk
of failing sales. Publishers do this by focusing on games with proven
concepts that cater for traditional audiences, often based on wellknown franchises. Subsequently, the hit-driven industry2 reaches out
to the established mass audience, and mostly abandons niche and/or
new and innovative game genres.
“Each executive knows that greenlighting something
offbeat that fails will lose him his job. So they greenlight
the same old crap, imitations of what‟s on the list this
month, simply to cover their own quivering asses. No
one will fire them for going with the tried and true.
An industry that was once the most innovative and
exciting artistic field on the planet has become a morass
of drudgery and imitation.”(Costikyan, 2000)
Due to the large budgets and teams of AAA game development,
publishers as gatekeepers and shareholders have the biggest creative
influence on the project, even though they are farthest away from its
development (Anthropy, 2012). The creative influence of the
individual diminishes, as does the share of the individuals wage in
relation to the total budget. Even when accepting lower wages in order
to push their personal vision, a given developers small share will
unlikely convince a publisher to focus on less popular genres or
unproven ideas. Games receiving financial backing from stakeholders
are thus prone to “…fit into money-making popular culture genres”
(Cowen & Tabarrok, 2000).
As proposed in An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular
Art, or High and Low Culture, the authors explain this behavior
through the effect that reproducibility has on a given artwork. For
artworks with a high reproducibility it is easier to increase profit by
increasing the number of consumers willing to pay for the art work,
rather than by searching out those consumers most willing to pay.
Consequently, art works with low reproduction costs have large
potential audiences, giving the artist an incentive to suppress their
own tastes and shift their products towards that type of art which
appeals to the greatest number of consumers (Cowen & Tabarrok,
2000).
2
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/168547/Has_video_game_retail_
become_an_entirely_hits_driven_industry.php#.UKY14EUUpcY
11
The game industry has seen numerous examples of developers
(re)turning to independent development for various reasons and in
various ways. While most amateurs or hobbyist game developers face
no or little choice, even industry veterans are willing to give up their
well-paid occupation within the games industry in exchange for a
precarious career in independent game development. Often
consciously forfeiting potential economic stability, the indie developer
gains a variety of non-pecuniary benefits. Indie developers are often
held in high regards buy other developers, journalists and gamers
alike. Working on their own terms does not only give the creative
satisfaction that arises from expressing oneself, but can also lead to
personal fame and critical acclaim within the industry. From a socioeconomic perspective, as described by Pedercini, we face a revolution
of creative workers that are not satisfied with the current working
conditions, as there is “…a creativity that exceeds the ability of the
capital to commodify it”(Pedercini, 2012).
Examples from the game industry are frequent. Cliff Harris left
Lionhead in 2006 in order to fund his own one-man company called
Positech3 as he “…lost faith in the way big retail companies did
things at that point” (GameProducer.net, 2006). Other well-known
AAA industry dropouts include Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti, founders
of Playdead, the company behind 2010 indie smash hit Limbo
(Playdead, 2010). In an IGN interview they confessed to having left
the greater game industry out of sheer frustration with the constraints
that naturally follow the AAA way of production:
"I got a good salary," Jensen told me. "I was really loved
at the beginning, everyone loved what I was doing.
Then, I don't know, it just became more and more
corporate. It became harder to get ideas through. (…)
I was sick and tired of working hard, crunching a lot,"
Patti said "I really didn't want to be in that business
because I didn't think you would be able to do what you
really wanted because of the constraints of the economy,
finding talent, bad management..." (Thomsen, 2010)
The reasons given by professionals such as Harris, Jensen and Patti
for turning their back on the industry draw a picture of a business
whose inner workings appear ruinous to a feeling of individual
creativity and significance. It is not hard to understand how this might
fail to give artistic individuals a feeling of gratification in their labor
and thus seek this elsewhere. This wish to be independent of outside
3
http://www.positech.co.uk/
12
influences even extends to whole corporations, as shown when
Bungie4 separated from Microsoft in October 2007. In an interview
with The New York Times Bungie studio head Harold Ryan explained
the split with a desire to regain independence and control of creativity:
““It‟s an emotionally creative point of view,” he said of the decision to
take the studio independent. “That‟s the state we wanted to be
in.””(Richtel, 2007).
The case of an entire company buying back their independence may
leave doubt as to whether or not there are motives apart from a
yearning for self-ownership and creative freedom, but it stands to
reason that individuals leaving steady jobs and stable incomes are not
motivated by financial gain or a need for security.
Conversely, indie development is easily accessible to amateurs with
little to no professional experience. One of these is American
developer Messhof, creator of the 2011 IGF Nuovo Award-winning
game Niddhog, who describes himself as “…a college student. I use
pretty much entirely Game Maker and MSPaint for most of my
games” (Indygamer, 2007).
The same year‟s IGF award for Technical Excellence went to Amnesia:
The Dark Descent was developed by Frictional Games, a company that
was founded by Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson as a hobby project:
“I would say that Frictional Games started out 5 years
ago (I think, feels like it was in another life), when Jens
started to help out with sound effects for hobby project I
was working on…”(Cook, 2010)
It is evident that the motivation for becoming an indie developer
varies, but is consistently rooted in a desire to develop games free of
creative control. We thus recognize a particular type of production as
being the core element in the understanding of indie.
We see that the ambiguity of the discourse over indie is derived from
the term‟s connotations within widely different aspects. In addition to
the production aspect of indie we therefore identify an additional two
implied meanings: aesthetics and culture. The first applies when indie
is used to describe games as objects whereas the latter refers to its use
as a description of indie as a community or subculture.
Morten Svendsen, game designer at Tactile Entertainment, confirms
that indie encompasses more than the independence of a publisher:
4
http://www.bungie.net/
13
“…Indie is also a bit more than that in most people‟s
world view. It has something to do with creative vision,
taking chances or doing something really different than
just making another Angry Birds. Of course it can look
like another game. Limbo is a good example. It is a
platformer, but it does so many things different and so
many things right.” (M. Svendsen, personal
communication, 2012)”
This demonstrates that on an individual basis, indie is used to describe
games and developers that diverge from the norms of gameplay,
visuals and audio employed by larger titles. We identify this as the
connotation of aesthetics.
On the concept of artistry as a characteristic of independent
development, Kellee Santiago, co-founder of Thatgamecompany and
developer of Flow, Flower and Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2006,
2009, 2012), remarks, “Absolutely, I think that is the value of the
indie scene” (K. Santiago, personal communication, 2012). In our
view, this quote demonstrates the relationship between production,
aesthetics and culture or, as Santiago calls it, scene. This view is
supported by Pippin Barr, game scholar, critic and developer of a.o.
The Artist Is Present (Barr, 2011), who states that it is to a large extent
the community that passes judgment on whether or not a developer is
to be called indie:
“For me it's Twitter more than anything that connects
me to the "scene" that is indie. So being considered
"indie" comes down to other people, really, and my
observations of how they might talk about my work and
what I'm doing, whether that's on Twitter, in blog posts,
magazine articles, and so on and so on.” (P. Barr,
personal communication, 2012)
He elaborates on the lack of a collective definition of the term,
underlining the implications of production, aesthetics and culture in
the use of the term:
“I think for some people it means a financial position, in
which you're not associated with the studio system, say,
even though you might be making highly conventional
games. For others, it seems to be more about a cultural
scene, people making personal games or experimental
games and so on.” (P. Barr, personal communication,
2012)
To fully understand the implications the term carries, we will take a
closer look at those three aspects in the following chapters. In the
chapter on indie production we will analyze how indie games are
14
created, detailing production circumstances of indie games and
profiling indie developers. Treating the game as object we will
subsequently scrutinize indie aesthetics, attempting to characterize
the way indie games look, sound and play. Finally, the chapter on
indie culture will describe the subculture that has emerged from the
composition of aforementioned production circumstances and game
aesthetics.
15
In the following chapter we will investigate the indie game aesthetics we will try to decipher how an indie game looks, sounds and plays.
First, we will establish what we mean by indie aesthetics and why
these factors are important. Then we will go through each of the
different aspects of these game aesthetics and relate them to the
phenomenon of indie games, seeking to uncover and identify
characteristics of the dominant aesthetic choices and values within
indie games.
Why is aesthetics important?
When game developer Craig Stern5 goes through his reasons for a
game to be indie, his focus is purely on the production conditions.
Stern has a stern “... focus on material conditions during the course of
development“ (Stern, 2012), which makes it clear that, to him, all
factors in defining indie is production factors. This focus stems from
the origin of the word “indie”, namely from independent, meaning
being independent of publisher and other outside and/or commercial
interests, as discussed elsewhere in this thesis. This underlines the
importance of the production aspect in the question of indie. This
chapter is seeking to expand the view of indie, to accommodate a
whole meaning of the term, which better suits the understanding and
use of indie.
In his follow-up to his Scratchware manifesto6 from 2000, Greg
Costikyan writes:
“… in gaming, we have no indie aesthetic, no group of
people (of any size at least) who prize independent
vision and creativity over production values.”
(Costikyan, 2005a)
According to Stern, the aesthetics of an indie game is not important,
and according to Costikyan, an indie game aesthetic does not even
exist.
Four years later, their fellow game developer Chris Delay7, in an
interview with Gamasutra, juxtaposes this:
Craig Stern made the RPG “Telepath” (Stern, 2012b).
“A call to arms against the AAA industry” (Costikyan, 2000).
7 Chris Delay was the Creative Director on “Darwinia”(Intervision, 2005).
5
6
16
"I think there is an indie style, I mean, you can smell an
indie game a mile off, can't you? The visual style is a
very strong indie theme.“ (Denby, 2009)
This highlights and matches our view of indie game aesthetics. The
term indie might originate from a certain production practice, but for
the final result, the game itself, it means so much more than merely
independence of external control. Over time, the freedom of indie has
rubbed off on the art direction of indie games and the phenomenon
indie games has come to develop a certain style, as Delay talks about.
Even though there is no defining factor in the aesthetics of a game to
make it indie there exists an aesthetic style. This is also acknowledged
by Lindsay Grace in his comparison between literature and indie
games, which is focused on:
“… the aesthetic structures of independent games that tie
them together and distinguish them from nonindependent games and other forms of media.”(Grace,
2011)
In the indie games out there, there is a definite visual and aural trend
that makes these games instantly recognizable as indie and
distinguishable from other games.
It is these aesthetic trends that we seek to investigate further in this
part of the thesis.
The reason we find this important is the fact that when discussing and
debating indie games, the missing common understanding of indie
aesthetics limits the discussion to subjective observations of indie
games. Indeed, just like a painting can look like anything from blank
canvasses to colourful naturalistic depictions, games have an equal
extreme range, from experimental aesthetic asceticism, like in 4‟338 by
Petri Purho, to photorealistic AAA games. However, just like the
different aesthetics within painting has been explored and identified
in order to use discuss and challenge these, the different aesthetics of
indie games must be explored.
Objective
The purpose of this chapter is to identify and discuss the aesthetic
characteristics of indie games and through the collective
understanding of these, shape an understanding of the indie style or
styles. By characteristics we mean a certain aesthetic aspect that is
overrepresented in indie games. This could potentially be everything
http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/4mins33secs (acc.
01.12.2012) see chapter 4.3.
8
17
within the aforementioned definition of game aesthetics, so everything
from graphics and sound to gameplay and controls.
This will be concluded upon in the final part of this chapter.
What are aesthetics?
Visuals and sound are most commonly mentioned as aesthetics, but
this is not the whole story to computer game aesthetics. One of the
meanings or uses of the term computer game aesthetics uncovered by
Simon Niedenthal is to:
“ … refer to the sensory phenomenon that the player
encounters in the game (visual, aural, haptic,
embodied)” (Niedenthal, 2009).
In this thesis we consider computer game aesthetics to sum up to a
simple and very broad inclusion:
“… all aspects of video games which are experienced by
the player …” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2008).
Aesthetics of the object
We have established what we identify as indie game aesthetics and we
will now move into a more thorough analysis of the factual aesthetic
choices made by indie game developers.



First, we will investigate the indie game graphics to find out
what visual indie style Chris Delay was talking about in the
earlier cited quote.
Second, we will look at the sounds of the indie game with the
hope of finding an equally unifying style, or at least
meaningful trends within the indie scene.
Lastly, we will investigate the mechanics of indie game. We
will not go into a lengthy discussion about what is to be
considered mechanics, as opposed to rules for instance, but
instead assume a very inclusive approach to this question.
The visual aesthetics of indie games are, like almost every other aspect
of indie games, constrained by the production conditions. This means
that with a smaller budget, graphics will generally be made in a way to
accommodate asset production with low cost.
“If a creator has limited resources and wants to create something of
quality, then the quantity or capacity of the featured aspects must be
adjusted to compensate.” (Nealen, Saltsman, & Boxerman, 2011)
18
This is fairly self-evident, but it underlines the situation indie
developers find themselves in. Almost all computer games rely heavily
on the visuals for communication between the player and the game,
and the production of very high quality, nearing photorealistic visuals,
is costly. Still, the indie developer of course wants to produce
“something of quality”. The above quote is from a design manual in
minimalistic game design, and the visually oriented part of the
minimalistic dogma is a way to produce a strong, visually coherent,
graphical style in a game by choosing a very narrow palate and
sticking to it. This, in our opinion, has influenced indie game visuals to
a very large extend.
Take the game Canabalt (Semi Secret Software, 2009) as an example
of the minimalistic visuals (see Figure 1). In its extremely minimalistic
gameplay, the player runs on top of and through large buildings, while
they‟re collapsing. The buildings are simply grey squares, with black
windows a few other details. These visuals depict the game simplistic
and stylized - the essences of minimalism. The art direction of this
game is straightforward, very consistent and a good example of
minimalistic visuals.
Hand-made
An interesting parallel that highlights the aspect of the cost efficient
minimalistic approach is the production of the corresponding indie
scenes in the world of music and in the world of films. In music, the
cheapest way to record a song is simply to record the whole track - all
instruments including vocals - directly on one track. This gives a
certain sound, with a certain rough quality, that could be described as
handmade, and by extension real or honest.
Figure 1 – Canabalt.
This is of course a gross simplification, but serves to make a point. In
the movie industry, the cheapest way to produce a scene or a whole
film is to get a hand held camera and record the actors directly, with
no expensive extra equipment or after-effects. The qualities of films
recorded in this way are again followed by connotations of directness
or honesty.
In these cases, taken from other indie media, this certain quality of the
products both connotes and, is our belief, is actually fostered by a
focus on creativity over production values. This focus leads in these
examples to a more rugged look or feel of the final product. As a
prelude to the earlier quote, Greg Costikyan writes:
“Indie rock fans may prefer somewhat muddy sound over some
lushly-orchestrated, producer-massaged score; indie film fans may
prefer quirky, low-budget titles over big-budget special FX
extravaganzas”. (Costikyan, 2005a)
19
These aspects of production all leads back to notions of authenticity
and authorship. In short, the works of art that assume this visual
mantle is interpreted as being more directly from creator to receiver.
This is simply because the perceived layer of production between the
two is thinner, the works seems hand-made and more direct.
Contrary, more streamlined and mathematically precise products with
no visible flaws or signs of the human touch are naturally perceived as
being more processed and fabricated - and the link between human
creator and consumer seems a great deal longer.
In game production this perceived visual causality is, in a way, directly
opposite. In computer game production, it takes much more time and
effort to move away from mathematic precision and towards an
immediate hand-made art style. This is because in a digital media, the
notion of straightforwardness in the production of computer games
should be considered as hand-coded, which leads to a completely
different aesthetic assumptions as hand-made does in other physical
media forms.
This aesthetic style is very opposite the expensive and time consuming
photorealism, which AAA games have moved closer and closer
towards. Indie games have traditionally been made in 2D, with highly
minimalistic and stylized visuals. This is because these styles are
reachable on a low budget, without an exclusively dedicated and wellstaffed art department. Firstly, because 3D engines have only recently
been made available to smaller developers economical reach, and
secondly, because asset production in a minimalistic visual
environment is cheaper than asset production in a photorealistic
visual environment. A minimalistic direction does however require a
strong vision from the art director about the visual universe sought to
be displayed in the game.
When a hand-made aesthetic does feature in a game, it is often with a
deliberate reason. Games like Machinarium (Amanita Design, 2009)
have a distinct and deliberate hand-drawn, almost sketchy style,
which is a part of the game‟s unique selling points (see Figure 2).
Sometimes the style is even beyond mimicking photorealism, but is
actual real video or photos, like the Claymation game The Dream
Machine (Cockroach Inc, 2010). This is again a major point of the
game itself and certainly an exception to the norm.
Figure 2 – Machinarium.
Nostalgia
The technological advancements and the following accessibility of
relatively cheap, easy-to-use 3D game development tools, like Unity
3D9 or the Unreal Development Kit 10, has made it much more
9
http://unity3d.com/
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/
10
20
affordably for small developers to adopt 3D graphics and even
approach photorealism. Take Hard Reset (Flying Wild Hog, 2011) (see
Figure 3) or Dear Esther (Thechineseroom, 2012) as examples. Both
are games made on a relatively small budget, but who embraces an art
style of almost complete photorealism.
Figure 3 – Hard Reset.
However, as the indie game scene has grown older, and with these
technological advances, the before mentioned initially cost-efficient
consideration of stylized graphics has remained and been maintained
in indie games, despite photorealism and 3D being more accessible.
Many iOS games, for instance, are very often extremely stylized, like
Tiny Tower (Nimblebit, 2011) and Sword and Sworcery
(Superbrothers, 2011) (see Figure 4). This is despite them being
launched on a device that can easily handle impressive graphics, as
shown in games like Infinity Blade II (Chair Entertainment & Epic
Games, 2011).
This persistence of stylization is for several reasons:
Firstly, nostalgia is an important reason for indie games maintaining
their stylized graphics. As blogger Becky Lang phrases it:
“Nostalgia is at the core of indieness, because indie kids
are postmodern, and postmodernism recognizes that
everything artistic comes from a network of references
to other things.”11
This is a remark made towards indie musicians cover artwork, but
indeed the links between indieness and nostalgia, postmodernism and
the attempt to be (or be considered) artistic exists in the indie gaming
scene as well. However in games nostalgia is often more than just an
attempt to be artistic, it is also a genuine longing back to the days,
where all games were awesome. This is true on both sides of the fence,
for both developers and audience.
“…people (and especially gamers) are inherently
nostalgic creatures, and we love to relive enjoyable past
experiences whenever we have a chance.”12
Figure 4 – Sword and Sworcery.
Whether these games were actually awesome, or the human condition
of glorifying the past is making us think so, is for this point irrelevant.
As the above quoted article, by Yaseen Dadabhay, goes on to point out,
the nostalgia of gamers is also an effective marketing string to play.
Some developers, like AckkStudios, when classifying their game Two
Brothers, are even explicitly using this. They market their game as:
http://beckylang.tumblr.com/post/534900508/image-report-indieaesthetics (acc. 09.10.2012)
12 http://www.yaseendadabhay.com/indie-games-marketing/indiegames-marketing-power-nostalgia/ (acc. 09.10.2012)
11
21
“… an Action/Adventure/Role playing/Nostalgia game.
… Really, what we‟re trying to create is a game that we
would have LOVED to have played as a kid.” 13 [Our
underlining]
The marketing aspect of nostalgia is even further highlighted by the
way certain kick-starters promote themselves. Take Project Eternity14
as an example. Obsidian Entertainment is making the RPG Project
Eternity and has this introduction to the game itself:
“Project Eternity … pays homage to the great Infinity
Engine games of years past: Baldur‟s Gate, Icewind
Dale, and Planescape: Torment. Project Eternity aims to
recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia
of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing.
At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of
those classic games and we want to bring those games
back… and that‟s why we‟re here - we need your help to
make it a reality!”15 [Our underlining]
So nostalgia works on at least three levels in the development of
games.
1) On a visually referential level, seeking to raise the artistic
value of the game.
2) On a very real level, meaning that both the developer and the
consumer actually longs for the past and its games.
3) On a marketing level, seeking to tie the game to gamers past
enjoyable experiences, and by extension make them buy the
game.
Secondly, because stylized graphics, as discussed before, has now
come to mean, or at least insinuate, hand-made in the computer game
community. Like in other media forms, the audience can now
recognize the absence of a large art department in the development of
a game. So like the rugged edges of a hand-made bowl or the brush
markings on a painting, developers now have no desire to move away
from that particular graphic style, because it shows or connotes the
human touch on the product, which emphasizes the connection
between the creator of the game and the gamer.
Thirdly, the stylized graphics of indie games might be upheld because
of a desired minimalistic approach to games.
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27256.0 (acc.
09.10.2012)
14 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity
(acc. 14.10.2012)
15 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity
(acc. 14.10.2012)
13
22
“A minimalist game is visually abstract … it provides the
advantages of increased artistic and systemic freedom,
and reduces the complexity of the required art.” (Nealen
et al., 2011)
The iPhone game Neon Zone (House On Fire, 2011) is a good example
of this (see Figure 5). The game has a deliberate abstract and
minimalistic art style. The developers account for this choice in the
development log:
“It‟s an abstract game, and instead of trying to hide that
fact, we decided to try to emphasize it through the
graphics.”16
Figure 5 – Neon Zone.
The game is even marketed as having “minimalistic gameplay”17. It is
clear here that the developers are deliberately trying to include the
game in a minimalistic approach to games. This ties together well with
the first level of nostalgic influence mentioned above, since
minimalistic game design in itself in a way can be seen as precisely a
historical longing for a time where games were simpler, because “…
early videogame minimalism was a technological necessity” (Nealen
et al., 2011).
However, the nostalgic aspect is not the only truth about minimalistic
game design. It can be considered an end in itself, as Nealen, Saltsman
& Boxerman puts it: “… we would argue that the holistically minimal
aesthetic of early videogames, induced by very real hardware
constraints, was abandoned too soon in favor of modern day technofetishism” (Nealen et al., 2011). The minimalistic game design
approach can be considered a movement or phenomenon, which game
developers would want to join or approach by adopting a certain art
style.
From this, it seems that a formalized graphical indie trend would have
to include stylized graphics. This is not to say that all indie games have
stylized graphics, as we have seen with Hard Reset for example, but
that for multiple reasons, it is the prevailing graphical style.
Pixelation
A certain way of having stylized graphics is by having pixelated
graphics. Pixelated graphics has an iconic status among indie games,
where it is often used deliberately for effect, so any investigation into
the visuals of indie games would be incomplete without mentioning
this. Pixelation originates from low resolution hardware constraints of
16
17
http://houseonfire.dk/neonzone/?page=Dev (acc. 09.10.2012)
http://houseonfire.dk/neonzone/?page=Game (acc. 09.10.2012)
23
early computer games, the enemies in Space Invaders (Taito
Corporation, 1978) is a good example (see Figure 6).
The role of pixelated graphics in the indie games of today is one of
choice though:
“… blocky, pixelated graphics are back in vogue,
sometimes as a deliberate nostalgic tip of the hat to the
8-bit games of yesteryear, and sometimes because it's
just a lot less work to keep things simple.”18
In short, the pixelated graphics style is the epitome of minimalism,
stylization and even production considerations discussed in the
graphic section of this chapter.
Graphical Conclusion
Figure 6 – Space Invaders.
As we have seen, there exist several reasons and influencing factors in
the shaping of a graphical indie game style, as Chris Delay sought in
the earlier quote. The vast majority of indie games follows a certain
style with stylized, often even pixelated, graphics.
However, in the recent years some games have been released, or are in
production, that are quite contrary to this. Hard Reset and Dear
Esther is previously mentioned examples, but also games as Reset
(Theory Interactive, n.d.), which is still in production, have ventured
new ways in indie graphics, namely towards the photorealistic. These
games are few, though, and when they make their appearance, they
spawn articles with headers such as: “Reset: a new standard for indie
game graphics?”19. In the article, the creators of Reset, Alpo
Oksaharju and Mikko Kallinen, cite their objective and inspiration:
“Movies such as Moon and Cube, which cost next to
nothing, still look like they have incredible production
values. We thought that there has to be a way to do the
same in games”20
Their aim is deliberately to create production values normally reserved
for larger budgets and larger teams, even though they are a very small
team on a very small budget.
With reception such as Reset‟s, it is clear that this graphical style is
something extraordinary, which breaks with expectations about what
http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/2012/10/19/best-retro-indiegames (acc. 01.12.2012)
19 http://www.edge-online.com/features/reset-new-standard-indiegame-graphics/ (acc. 01.12.2012)
20 http://www.edge-online.com/features/reset-new-standard-indiegame-graphics/ (acc. 01.12.2012)
18
24
indie game graphics looks like. Furthermore, the staff of Theory
Interactive has a professional background in creating 3D movies, and
this kind of expertise is not likely to be found on a “normal” indie
team. Games like these break with the indie style, which is reflected in
the reception and articles about the games and the marketing behind
the games. Khang Le, the art director of the game Hawken (Adhesive
games, n.d.), another near photorealistic indie game, says that his
focus was on creating the “…graphically intense vision he had for the
game on a tight schedule and with triple-A quality”21. This illustrates
that this kind of graphical style needs introduction when found in an
indie game. We will not go as far as to say that these games are not
indie, but we will say that these games do not adhere to the dominant
aesthetic within indie games.
In this section we will investigate sound in indie games. We will very
briefly go through a small discussion about game sound and try to
identify the key aspects to sound in indie games, as opposed to sound
in non-indie games. Then we will delve further into the findings and
try to find the characteristics of indie game sound.
Game Sound
There is distinct difference from the world of visuals to the world of
sound. Even though the visuals are arguably one of the most
important aspects of video games, it is exactly the communication
between the game and the player that makes it so vitally important not necessarily the actual construction of the graphics, the actual
colours and shapes. Thereby not saying that the actual composition of
the graphics is without importance, but it is a different and less
fundamental importance. The player needs to know what is going on
in the game, what the player needs to react to, and how the game is
responding to the player‟s inputs. This is, in the large majority of
games, all communicated through graphics, and as we have seen, this
is often done with a stylized art direction. The importance of the
visuals is of course related to our very nature of understanding the
world through our eyes, which devaluates our other senses. This could
provide food for further investigation, but for this thesis we are
satisfied with accepting this as a fact.
Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al note the following in their take on game audio
and identifies this problem in other media types as well:
http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/udk/hawken/ (acc.
09.10.2012)
21
25
One [problem] is a broad and embarrassing tradition of ignoring the
audio side of audio-visual media. (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2008)
Grant Tavinor puts it bluntly:
“One could potentially play most videogames without
their auditory or haptic elements, but playing almost
any game without its visual elements would seem
impossible.” (Tavinor, 2009)
This is not to say that game audio is unimportant, far from it.
“Whether we notice it or not, music and sound play a truly important
role in game design.” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2008). So if almost
any game could theoretically be played perfectly without the audio,
how can precisely the audio be so important? This is because it is
important to another part of the game than the strict and functional
playing of the game.
“Sound and music is essential to enhancing the gaming
experience. They do so mainly by informing the player
about the state of the game world and by cuing emotions
that enhance the immersiveness of the game.”
(Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2008)
Indie sound
Sounds and music is important in the creation of a game world. They
are important in making the player connected to the game world, by
providing a sense of causality. This illusion of causality and the
creation of the game world is made through diegetic sounds that act as
feedback on player actions and NPC actions in the game world, and by
providing the emotional background of the game. It is important to
the immersion of the player in the game world and important to the
story-telling – emotional communication, if you will – between the
player and the creator of the game. So the declared mission of the
audio is to enforce whatever world the game is trying to create. This
mission fulfils a role that fits very well with the core ambition of many
indie game developers - to make games like they would make art and
to tie games in with the art sphere. We will not go into whether games
can, or even should, be considered art, but for this topic it is very
interesting that indie developers at least try to do so. Sound, and
especially music, can be seen as a relatively inexpensive way to
connect a game to a context or tradition, for instance to connect a
graphically stylized and simplistic game to an art-centred, visually
minimalistic tradition. Sounds can also tie the game into a film
tradition, where especially music is very widely used as a story-telling
tool to communicate emotion.
26
It is our understanding that indie game developers are using sound
and music:
1) Functionally, to create a sense of causality in the game
through diegetic sounds or music.
2) Functionally, to communicate emotions by creating an
emotional aural veil, through which the player can experience
the game.
3) Referentially, to tie the game into a culture or tradition
outside the world of the game itself.
The first two uses of sound and music is almost the textbook definition
of functional sounds in almost every other audio-visual medium,
including non-indie games. In games there is an added functional
layer, where for instance music can act quasi-diegetically as a feedback
of a change in gameplay state, an example being when Mario picks up
the star in the classic Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985), the game
music changes from the normal soundtrack to a much more upbeat
melody, signalling the new game state that Mario is invulnerable. The
third use is interesting and it has developed through the life of indie
games and on a myriad of levels, we will expand on this in the
following.
Music
A great number of indie games have released their soundtracks as a
product in itself, sometimes after the game has become popular,
sometimes along with the game. In short, we can mention: Super
Meat Boy (Team Meat, 2010)22, Bastion (Super Giant Games, 2011)23,
Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games, 2011)24, Limbo (Playdead, 2010)25 or
Braid (Blow, 2008)26, just to name a few. This highlights a tendency to
make game music that can stand alone and apart from the game. AAA
titles, of course, also have soundtracks released along with game
releases, for instance Assassin‟s Creed (Ubisoft, 2007)27, but the fact
that indie game developers, who are pressed on budget issues,
prioritize accompanying their games with releasable music is
interesting because of the added expenses connected to producing
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Meat-Boy-OfficialSoundtrack/dp/B007A9IDYY (acc. 15.11.2012)
23 http://www.amazon.com/Music-from-Braid/dp/B003K5CJ2E/
(acc. 15.11.2012)
24 http://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Synapse-OriginalSoundtrack/dp/B009B50B6I (acc. 15.11.2012)
25 http://limbogame.org/2011/07/limbo-soundtrack-jubii/ (acc.
15.11.2012)
26 http://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/ (acc. 15.11.2012)
27 http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Creed-Original-GameSoundtrack/dp/B001YAFXA2 (acc. 15.11.2012)
22
27
music. Perhaps the most important reason for this is the fact that good
music makes people relate to and remember the game.
However, indie developers are finding ways of producing music for
their games without it being a budgetary issue. For instance, in the
case of Braid, the music was simply a licensing of existing tracks,
which Jonathan Blow found at Magnatune.com, a record label who
specializes in licensing music through the internet. Blow browsed their
backlog and selected tracks, he deemed fitting to the game. The
musicians themselves had never played the game, or even been in
contact with Blow. In an interview with GameSpot.com, he is cited as
saying that using licensed music, instead of in-house development, or
at least commission, had two reasons:
“… partly for budgetary concerns, and partly because he
wanted it to have meant something to the composer.” 28
From the first part of this quote we can see that the production costs
were definitely on his mind when choosing this method of asset
acquiring for his game. Indie developers, like Blow, do normally not
have the resources to hire musicians to compose directly to the game.
Instead they have to incidentally have a gifted musician on the team,
know them personally, or acquire it in some other way. The second
part of the Jonathan Blow quote above illustrates an interesting point.
Blow gives a description about what kind of musician he wanted to be
the creator of the music of his game:
“By real musician, I mean people who made the song
because they cared absolutely about that song. They
weren't making it for anything. They just made what
they most wanted to make at that time…”29
This description almost seems like someone trying to describe an indie
game developer - if you replace every instance of the word song with
the word game. He even characterizes them as “real” developers of
music, presumably opposed to more market-oriented musicians. It is,
however, doubtful, in our opinion, that the second reason in this case
outweighs the first.
As another example, in the case of Bastion, Amir Rao, the game
director of Bastion, knew the music director Darren Korb from
childhood and college30. Since the studio itself funded the entire
production of Bastion and Korb became a member of the studio, it is
http://www.gamespot.com/news/spot-on-the-music-of-braid6197644 (acc. 19.11.2012)
29 http://www.gamespot.com/news/spot-on-the-music-of-braid6197644 (acc. 19.11.2012)
30 http://gamasutra.com/view/news/38160/#.UIFRCsUxrng (acc.
19.11.2012)
28
28
unlikely that he has received much until after its release. Nevertheless,
the music of Bastion has been extremely well received and has been
central to the games success.
The larger indie developers are finding ways of including music in
their games. They often prioritize music and a structure that can be
released as a stand-alone product, for instance by orientating the
soundtracks of the games around identifiable songs, pieces of roughly
2 minutes in length, that has a clear structure with chorus and verse,
and often even lyrics. This is characteristic of indie games. The
soundtracks of AAA titles often take a shape resembling film scores or
grandiose classical works. Indie soundtracks that resemble more
popular music works juxtapose this. We see this in the light of the
third use of sound and music, highlighted earlier in this chapter, the
referential use, to position the game in an existing culture or tradition
outside the game itself, for instance the indie music culture or movie
scene.
A few AAA titles do have songs in them, like the Grand Theft Auto
(Rockstar North, 1997) franchise radio feature or Battlefield: Vietnam
(Electronic Arts, 2004) for precisely the same reasons, but these are
used in a slightly different way. Instead of tying the game to a broad
culture or overarching tradition in culture, these songs are used to
position the game in exact historical situations - in these examples a
gangster influenced metropolis and the Vietnam War - to increase the
immersion in the game. The context sought to connect with is not
external to the game itself, but precisely what the game is trying to
simulate.
8-bit sound and nostalgia
An aspect in the issue of tying a game to a context is 8-bit sound and
music. Like the pixelated graphics, any investigation into the
aesthetics of indie games would be incomplete without mention of
this. 8-bit sound was the sound of the oldest computer games and was
a consequence of hardware constraints, like the pixelated graphics
was. Nostalgia therefore again has a huge role to play in the use of 8bit sounds in indie games. The nostalgia of 8-bit music has even
spread to the popular culture to create a “new” art form, called
chiptune music.
Like the graphical counterpart, creating higher quality sound has
become increasingly easier due to technological advances, but 8-bit
sounds are being used for other purposes than mere functional issues,
like feedback and the notion of causality. Because sound is so
important to the perception of a game, 8-bit sound is ideally suited to
tie a game into the indie contexts.
29
8 bit sounds and music is a way to accommodate two familiar
considerations:


Production concerns
Nostalgic referentiality
Explicitly exemplified in Cave Story (Studio Pixel, 2004), where the
sole creator Daisuke Amaya talked about this in an interview with
1up31:
“He arrived at the game's simple, retro style in part
because of his love of classic games, but also because the
minimalist look allowed him to develop a large volume
of unique art on his own. […] Amaya feels that music,
story, and atmosphere come together in games in a way
that is at once memorable and unique from any other
medium. "In good experiences, people tend to fall in love
with music they hear repeatedly," he says. Thus
effectively written game music can evoke memories and
fondness from players in a way that other mediums
can't duplicate.”32
It is very important to note that even though the use of 8-bit sound is a
definite trait of indie aesthetic, many successful indie titles do not
utilize this, for instance the games Limbo and Botanicula (Amanita
Design, 2012). Limbo uses an extremely minimalistic approach to the
soundtrack of the game, with very arythmical, acousmatic, somber and
sometimes almost unnoticeable music. The music and sounds of
Botanicula is perhaps as far from 8-bit as possible – almost every
sound and musical sample is made by the human voice. The music of
Fez (Polytron Corporation, 2012), however, does use 8-bit sounds and
music, even using an 8-bit version of Chopin's Opus 28, number 4 as
ending music, perhaps to tie the game into the sphere of classical
music, thereby increasing the perceived artistic value of the game.
Aural Conclusion
The first identified characteristic of the aural indie aesthetics is the use
of distinguishable songs as reference to a culture outside the game
itself. It is, however, a somewhat doubtful member of the indie
aesthetic, namely because music is also being used by AAA titles, even
though it is in a slightly different way. However, we find that the tie
between popular culture, most importantly “other” indie cultures, and
indie games is important enough to justify that the use of music to
www.1up.com – A gaming news and interview site owned by IGN
Entertainment (acc. 19.11.2012)
32 http://www.1up.com/news/gdc-cave-story-triumph-pragmaticdesign (acc. 19.11.2012)
31
30
draw a game into these cultures is considered as a characteristics of
the indie aesthetics.
The use of 8-bit sounds and music is, like pixelated graphics, without
doubt a characteristic of indie aesthetics. Especially when used
together with pixelated graphics.
We will now look into the heart and soul of any game, the mechanics.
By mechanics we rely on a definition by Miguel Sicart:
"Game mechanics are methods invoked by agents for
interacting with the game world" (Sicart, 2008)
The most important thing to notice here is the involvement of the
player. The most interesting aspect of mechanics in this thesis is the
gameplay, formed by the combined mechanics together with the rules
of the game.
The player interaction of an indie game can lie anywhere between the
two extremes, the complicated or the minimalistic. The earlier
mentioned game Canabalt is an example of the minimalistic control
approach, as it is a game with only one button, which only has one
function - Dig N‟ Rig (DigiPen, 2011) (see Figure 7) being an example
of the complicated approach. Even though indie games are made with
limited resources, this is often not reflected in the actual gameplay
complexity.
Figure 7 – Dig N‟ Rig.
There is a tendency in the more successful indie games away from
complexity and towards the minimalistic focus on one or a few core
mechanics, as we will discuss later in this section, but this is far from
the case in all indie games.
As we argue in 3.1 the influences of investors and publishers orientate
AAA game production towards the explicit objective of making money
for the funders of the production. As indie games do not have the
involvement of producers and investors, they are seemingly freer to
experiment with gameplay, mechanics and controls. This generally
leads to the notion that indie games contain more innovative features
than AAA games.
However, there are several problems in regarding innovation as a core
feature of indie games as such. Stern raises one of those problems:
“Every game ever created that wasn‟t just a
straightforward clone of something else did something
different. Whether or not that difference was
“innovation” is entirely subjective, and not a firm
31
foundation for defining a category of games.” (Stern,
2012)
The threshold between just doing something differently and true
innovation is indeed vague and very subjective, as Stern points out.
Another point also hinted in this quote is that many games, including
both indie and AAA games, have features that could be described as
innovative – it is far from exclusive to indie games.
Indie games, however, do have a certain characteristic that seems to
set them apart from other games. They have a certain attitude towards
mechanics and gameplay. First of all, indie games are often born out
of an interesting idea for player interaction.
Consider the games Fez and VVVVVV (Distractionware, 2010).
Fez is a basic 2D platformer33, with one exception:
“The [player has the] ability to rotate the perceived 2D
world in 90 degree increments, around the vertical (Y)
axis of the screen. This reveals that the environment is
fully 3D in nature”34.
VVVVVV is a basic 2D platformer, with one exception:
“There are no jump buttons (standard in most
platformers) present. In order for the player to progress
through the game, he must complete puzzles by moving
around and using the flip button at the right time while
avoiding obstacles (primarily spikes)”35.
Both of these titles offer a seemingly unique mechanic, which is
actually not innovative. The mechanics have been developed and used
in non-indie games a long time before Fez or VVVVVV was developed.
The exact mechanic from VVVVVV is also used in much older platform
games, like Metal Storm (Irem Corporation, 1991).The mechanic from
Fez is inspired by Crush (Kuju Entertainment, 2007) and Super Paper
Mario (Nintendo, 2007). Phil Fish, the creator of Fez, talks about
drawing inspiration from these games and compares them to Fez,
while it was under development, in an interview 36 with 1up for IGF
2008. What are different about these indie games, compared to the
games with the same mechanics that came before them, are the way
they use the mechanics, and the way they shape the game around it.
These games have taken the mechanics and centred the game on it,
See the following section ”Platformers and Nostalgia” for
elaboration on this genre.
34 http://www.giantbomb.com/fez/61-24768/ (acc. 01.12.2012)
35 http://www.giantbomb.com/vvvvvv/61-29745/ (acc. 01.12.2012)
36 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te3H6KkYLJo (acc. 01.12.2012)
33
32
cutting out everything that isn‟t relevant to that mechanic, a very
minimalistic approach to game design, which is, as we have seen, often
mirrored in the graphical and aural style. The core of minimalistic
game design is very much the same as in minimalistic graphical
design:
“… the idea is to strip away all unnecessary components,
leaving only the parts one really needs” (Nealen et al.,
2011)
In game design, this mean focusing on one core mechanic and making
sure that everything in the game supports that mechanic. In the
VVVVVV gameplay you can only move left or right and invoke the
gravity mechanic, nothing else. Terry Cavanagh, the creator of
VVVVVV, says in an interview to the indiegames.com:
“I'd seen it in games it was never really the core
mechanic; I basically just wanted to try doing
something where it was.”37
This exemplifies perfectly this aspect of indie games, the mechanic
itself was not new, but to focus the game itself completely around this
mechanic - and the way the game explores every meaningful way this
mechanic can be used - is new. This is a consequence of the limited
scope of the production. As mentioned, indie games are often based on
one core idea - we could call it the game‟s unique selling point. When
scope is limited, the production is forced to be centred on that core
idea alone, with only as many additional features as allowed by the
budget, which is very restricted.
This focus could theoretically be on any kind of mechanic, but there is
more to indie games than that. Even though the mechanics of Fez and
VVVVVV were used before, they were not commonly utilized in the
genre or had been thoroughly explored in other games. The same is
true of the time manipulating mechanic in the game Braid. This
mechanic had been used before, for instance in the game Prince of
Persia: The Sands of Time (Ubisoft, 2003), but in no way to the same
extent or with the same focus. We hypothesize that the mechanics
chosen as the games thought to be truly indie in its gameplay, are not
mechanics used commonly in the games in the respective genre. They
must be unused or unexplored to at least some degree. Lindsay Grace
offers an interesting aspect:
37
http://www.indiegames.com/2010/01/intervvvvvview_terry_cavanag
h.html (acc. 01.12.2012)
33
“Independent games are interesting in their insistence to
be free from standards and their effort to escape
conventional play experiences.” (Grace, 2011)
As we have seen indie games as a collective concept does not offer
innovation as such, but it does offer something new – a minimalistic
and exclusive focus on one or a few mechanics, which does not enforce
a conventional play experience.
This assumption has an interesting effect, which we will explore with
the game Hard Reset as an example.
Hard Reset is a first person shooter game with clear indie signs in
production and culture - it is made by a team of ex-industry veterans,
on a limited budget without outside interference in development, the
team itself even states “We are a small indie studio…”38. The game is
made in the spirit of nostalgia, with the explicit goal of re-creating the
experiences of older shooter games. Michal Szustak, the CEO of the
studio:
“I believe many players around world miss those old
days and old games. Players are growing up, so there‟s
a big potential market in all those older gamers (and I‟m
one of those too).”39
Naturally, the gameplay reflects this. There is none of the earlier
mentioned focus on a particular mechanic - rather the focus has been
put on the genre itself, enforcing existing gameplay traditions. The
explicit goal of mimicking older games is the focus of this indie game,
with no change of gameplay through uncommonly used mechanics or
otherwise. This is exactly an affirmation of the established and
conventional play experiences of older first person shooters, even a
celebrated one. We do not seek to disproving Hard Reset as an indie
game in general, but there is a point in differentiating between indie
games. We wish to hereby be able to distinguish between the common
understanding of indie games aesthetics and games that lack a certain
aspect of that.
Platformers, nostalgia and referentiality
Like pixelated graphics and 8-bit sound, no investigation of indie
game aesthetics would be complete without mention of the platformer.
A platformer is a game genre that in its basic form revolves around
http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/hardreset/interviews.html
(acc. 01.12.2012)
39 http://www.gamefront.com/hard-reset-focused-on-singleplayersuitably-old-school-interview/ (acc. 01.12.2012)
38
34
jumping between platforms, which includes one of the most famous
games of all times, namely Super Mario Bros.
Unlike pixelation and 8 bit sounds, the platformer was not born out of
a technological constraint. The very first games were in fact not
platformers. The interesting part about platformers is that it has
become the incarnation of the indie game genre. Not thereby said that
every indie game is a platformer in genre, but rather that if someone
would imagine in most essentially indie game, they would probably
imagine a platformer. The popularity of platformers persists to this
day with titles such as the mentioned Limbo, Cave Story, Braid, Fez,
Super Meat Boy, Canabalt, VVVVVV etc., and unlike 8-bit sound or
pixelation, the genre of platformers cannot be said to have been
surpassed by technological development, since it is not based on
limited technology.
Despite the differences between these specific aesthetic, it is at least
partly the same reason, why they persists - nostalgia. Like all parts of
indie games, the mechanics or gameplay is also influenced by the
community‟s sense of nostalgia. An example of this is the former
mentioned AckkStudios in their developers log about making the
game Two Brothers:
“As for the Gameplay, I wanted to stay true to a game
that felt as if it could have existed on the system [the
gameboy]”40
Here the developers are actively trying to design a gameplay
experience that mimics similar games on the original platform and,
like Hard Reset, trying to invoke and associate nostalgic feelings to
their game. Nostalgia is indeed being used in the gameplay in the
same way it is being used in graphics and sound.
Like 8-bit and pixelation, there is also a consideration for the
production budget behind the choice of platformers. Platformers are a
very accessible format to code for indie developers, and therefore
choosing the platformer genre lowers production cost and time.
Furthermore, the platformer is easily recognized as a game and is very
accessible for the players. Meaning that because the genre of
platformers have been dominant in the history of computer games,
players are often more than familiar with the run/jump mechanics of
this genre, making tutorials less needed and peculiar mechanics easier
introduced by the creator – and likewise identified and explored by
the player.
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27256.0 (acc.
01.12.2012)
40
35
The notion that the platformer should have any kind of special
position in indie games stems can be more generally attributed to
referentiality in gameplay. What we mean by this is specific mechanics
in an indie game being included as a specific reference to a certain
game or genre. It is essentially this characteristic that makes the
platformer seem like anything special in the indie genre, since the
platformer is essentially a reference in controls (and other aesthetics
factors) to games idolized by the community.
Mechanics Conclusion
As we touched upon early in this section, pure complexity, or rather a
lack thereof, cannot meaningfully be said to be included in the indie
aesthetic. However, our further examination of focus towards singular
mechanics is in our eyes predominant within indie games.
We believe that this exclusive focus on, or refinement of an
uncommon mechanic, is in fact at the core of the indie aesthetic.
We could also try to classify the genre of platformers as belonging to
the dominant indie aesthetic, but this would be missing the point.
Even though the platformer is seen as a very dominant genre within
indie games, a platformer game has no real ties to the indie aesthetic
based on that choice of gameplay alone. Note that this is different
from the visual and aural parallels, 8-bit sound and pixelation, the use
of which is actually specifically included in the dominant indie
aesthetic. More so, a more general aspect of referentiality in the
gameplay
It is a problematic endeavour to define the indie aesthetic that Chris
Delay believe we all can smell in the beginning of this chapter. We
have set out to investigate a set of aesthetic choices, called indie
aesthetics, primarily based on a predetermined set of production
constraints, called indie production. We then matched the two very
disparate aspects, on the defining side is production and on the
investigated side is aesthetics, in the hope of finding meaningful
answers to the question of exactly and factually what it is that Delay
can smell. We did not have the ambition to prove or disprove a game‟s
core indieness through aesthetics, rather we wanted to be able to
determine whether or not a game followed the dominating indie
aesthetic tradition, thereby being more central to the phenomenon of
indie.
For each aesthetic area, we found general aspects and specific
characteristics. Above these, one concept continuously returned to our
attention, namely nostalgia. A nostalgic longing is affecting all aspects
36
of the indie aesthetic and even spreads into the general discourse and
marketing of the indie games.
An overview of our findings concerning the overall aspects of the
dominant indie aesthetic is as follows:
Overall:

Generally: nostalgia through referentiality.
Graphics:


Generally: stylization.
Specifically: pixelation.
Sound:


Generally: cultural referentiality41.
Specifically: 8-bit sounds and music.
Mechanics:


Generally: a thorough focus on an uncommon and interesting
mechanic.
Specifically: referentiality in gameplay.
We will conclude that a game needs to contain at least one of these to
be a part of the dominant indie aesthetics. However, we are not blind
to the fact that this chapter on indie aesthetics tries to tackle a subject
that is far larger than possibly analyzed in the available space, so we
do not presume this to be an exhaustive list. Additionally, we are
aware of the subjectivity in the connotations of specific aesthetics,
which should be noted in the further use of the III model 42. However,
this is an analysis and formalization of the current and dominant indie
aesthetics within the indie culture.
The indie games are generally aurally referential towards the
popular music culture, specifically the indie music culture.
42 See the conclusion to the 3. chapter.
41
37
This chapter will attempt to identify the production characteristics of
indie game development and describe the causes and effects thereof.
Furthermore, it will investigate the factors that have caused the
emergence of the state that indie development finds itself in with its
structure of labor in opposition to that of corporate game
development.
This outline of the state of the indie production is intended to lay the
foundation for an understanding of what the future holds for
independent development. Doing so will help shape an informed,
subjective opinion on which development of the industry is beneficial
to not only indie games, but the game industry as a whole.
A glance at indie productions reveals approaches to game
development ranging from hobbyism to high degrees of
professionalism, but consistently distinguished by a deep enthusiasm
for game development as a creative field. To describe the details of this
type of production as well as to identify how it can be coupled with an
increasing market share in relation to the greater game industry it is
crucial to understand the speedy development in production methods
within the game industry in the past decade.
In recent years, independent development has witnessed an explosive
growth in popularity, both developer and customer wise. There are a
number of reasons that have come together to create this interest in
indie games as an opposition to the established corporate game
industry. In order to understand what characterizes the production of
indie games and to discern it from what one might call conventional
production methods and circumstances, it is necessary to line up the
background of the indie boom.
In 2003 Hector Postigo noted that game development as a hobby,
exemplified mainly by modding, was on the rise and that there was a
tendency to alter existing games in increasingly diverse ways.
“The predominance of „high-tech‟ production, the rise of
the Internet, and the cultural capital associated with
computerization all have contributed to the rise of
hobbyist software developers that currently tinker with
commercial video games and freely add to them
increasing levels of sophistication.” (Postigo, 2003)
38
Pinpointing the origins of indie is not the purpose here, but one of the
apparent characteristics of the indie production is its similarities with
hobby development – and Postigo‟s note on hobby developers
demonstrating increasing levels of sophistication is a clear precursor
to that which we today understand as “indie”.
Since then, conditions have come about that have spawned a new
generation of game developers to whom turning their hobby into their
profession is substantially more realistic than it would have been in
2003.
AAA developers have had their share in the cultivation of amateur
development by making their titles increasingly modifiable. Needless
to say this has been motivated by a desire to boost the lifespan and
thus also the profitability of their own games, but doing so also has
also supported and directly encouraged modding.
“With an increasing prevalence of digital distribution of
free SDKs, the design of games with built-in level editors
and other customization tools, and social networks
becoming incorporated into games and game
production itself, it is difficult to draw effective lines
between what is production or consumption in
gamework.”(Martin & Deuze, 2009)
Since 2003, the IGF has awarded prizes for best student entries and in
2006 and 2007 modding was granted a separate award. This may
seem counterintuitive as there are things about modding that perhaps
do not resonate well with the concept of an independent game festival,
but it is a clear indication that Postigo‟s observation on innovation in
amateur and hobby development in 2003 was to become a trend.
That the game industry has grown to meet the expanding market in
the past decade or so is also reflected in the availability of gamerelated study programmes worldwide. Industry growth will cause an
increase in the demand for qualified labor and the establishment of
educational institutions that specialize in various disciplines of game
development is only a natural response to this. Since 2000, game
development strongholds such as the US, the UK, Germany and even
Denmark have witnessed an explosive increase in the number of study
programmes, courses and workshops43.
The single biggest factor in the rise of independent development,
however, is the change in the platforms and distribution channels that
A few examples of educational institutions with game development
programmes include the HAW (Hamburg, Germany), DigiPen
(Redmond, USA as well as Singapore and Bilbao, Spain) and the ITU
(Copenhagen, Denmark).
43
39
the global game industry operates on. The use, availability and
prevalence of these have changed and are continuously changing to
the advantage of smaller developers:
“Platforms such as mobile phones, browser-based
Internet sites, digital distribution networks on the major
game consoles, and the market for handheld games all
provide new opportunities for low-risk entry into game
development. At the same time, the multiplication of
avenues for (digital) game distribution lend themselves
toward much smaller scale (or even individual), artistdriven type of authorship that resonates with the
beginnings of game development, where production was
dominated by hobbyist, fan, artist, and amateur
mentalities.” (Martin & Deuze, 2009)
In short, numerous developments have come together and created the
increasingly accessible and attractive profession that we know as indie
game development. Today, anyone can produce a game in his single
room apartment and make it available through the same channels that
multi-million dollar projects are distributed. Digital distribution and a
plethora of effective, cheap (sometimes even free) and easy-to-use
development tools have made game development and publishing an
entirely different ballgame than it was, say, 10 years ago:
“We can view the rise of indie development in part as the
very product of an increasingly globally differentiated
market, fueled by the rise and availability of cheap and
easy-to-use development and distribution technologies.
As indie games have moved to take advantage of these
spaces, they are in turn proving the financial viability of
these markets.” (Martin & Deuze, 2009)
This combination of factors has created the financial viability that is
the reason why hobbyism becomes more and more likely to evolve into
a viable profession. The key to understanding the indie production,
however, is that before it reaches the professional level and the money
that comes with it, it always starts out with hobbyism and the lack of
money that is inevitably associated with it.
Martin & Deuze deduct that indie developers can be divided into two
groups; those who leave the greater game industry and thereby the
aforementioned publisher-controlled environment to pursue a type of
development with a higher degree of creative freedom and the pure
amateurs who decide to grasp one of the many new ways of entering
game development.
“There are two predominant ways of coming into
professional indie game development. One method is as
40
an amateur. Having no experience in the games
industry, someone will start a game or a game company
if they have the idea and inspiration and will create and
produce their game individually or among a small team
of varying degrees of professionalism. The second is
through experience working in some degree in the
greater games industry and then choosing to form an
independent studio out of dissatisfaction with the
current company culture or industry content. “(Martin &
Deuze, 2009)
Whether a developer has a professional background or not, it is
evident from the examples mentioned in chapter 3 that creative
aspirations and, in the professional‟s case, a willingness to accept a
less attractive position in respect to finance and stability are
prerequisites for entering independent development.
Regardless of their background, indie developers have a passion for
making games as a channel for creativity. In their view, the benefits of
being devoted to this passion outweigh the stability and financial
benefits of the established industry which is funded by publishers and
investors. Working in the greater game industry likely means working
on a game in a well-established genre and probably within a franchise.
Although franchises in indie development do exist (e.g. Nicklas
Nygren‟s series of Knytt games (Nygren, 2006)) and the occasional
indie FPS sees the light of day, independent game productions are
characterized by a much higher level of diversity than the uniform
mass of AAA titles.
“…the game industry is dominated by just a few globally
operating publishers (a.o. EA, Sony, Vivendi Universal,
Microsoft) who, despite the range of seemingly
recurring genre, franchise, and license titles, supply
commercial retailers so successfully that independent
game developers and publishers can hardly participate
in this profitable market.” (Jahn-Sudmann, 2008)
The money injected into the greater game industry by said publishers
and investors is what makes the production of the major retail titles
possible, but it is also the one paramount factor that puts the business
and production models of the industry on a collision course with
experimental development and creative freedom. Investments often
place executive power with investors rather than with the developers
themselves and it is to avoid this situation that developers involve
themselves in indie productions running on much more diminutive
budgets.
41
The notion that investors and publishers smother innovation and
creativity in order to secure a profit is nothing new. In the 2000
Scratchware Manifesto, Greg Costikyan and other developers raged
against the state of the industry and warned of a future which greatly
resembles the game industry of the present.
“Each executive knows that greenlighting something
offbeat that fails will lose him his job. So they greenlight
the same old crap, imitations of what‟s on the list this
month, simply to cover their own quivering asses. No
one will fire them for going with the tried and true.
An industry that was once the most innovative and
exciting artistic field on the planet has become a morass
of drudgery and imitation.”(Costikyan, 2000)
Looking at the major titles coming out of today‟s greater game
industry we get a very clear picture of a risk-averse industry controlled
by a handful of large-scale corporate publishers – the exact thing that
Costikyan called to arms against 12 years ago. What has changed,
however, is that his call has been heard and that the AAA industry
does not hold a monopoly. Indeed, scratchware now does exist as a
counterweight to what Costikyan plainly calls the same old crap. Only
now we don‟t call it scratchware, we call it indie.
Five years after his manifesto, in 2005, Costikyan published a followup in which he re-evaluated the state of the industry. Gone was the
term scratchware – at this point independent development was on the
rise and it was clear that indie had become the answer to his appeal.
Unable to circumvent the publishing pipeline, he noted that indie
development was at this point still hindered by the lack of feasible
distribution options.
“What do we want? What would be ideal?
A market that serves creative vision instead of
suppressing it. An audience that prizes gameplay over
glitz. A business that allows niche product to be
commercially successful - not necessarily or even ideally
on the same scale as the conventional market, but on a
much more modest one: profitability with sales of a few
tens of thousands of units, not millions.”(Costikyan,
2005a)
With the dawn of efficient digital distribution, we see that the
predictions made on the viability of indie games were accurate. When
comparing the form of the production and the distribution pipeline
employed in indie development today to those described in
Costikyan‟s writings of both 2000 and 2005 it becomes evident that
42
indie games are the embodiment of the wish for an opposition to the
AAA industry.
The existence of digital distribution channels and a wish on the
developers‟ side to produce non-mainstream games for publishing
through these channels is not enough to make these games profitable.
It all comes down to whether or not the distribution chain‟s final link,
the consumer, shows interest in and is willing to pay for the products
available. Developers cannot sustain themselves within an industry
that does not have a customer base that generates a sufficient flow of
money into it.
That the customer base of indie games only recently was still too small
to be viably commercialized was excellently demonstrated in mid2009 when Manifesto Games, a company serving as an online retailer
and publisher with an exclusive focus on indie games, shut down. The
company, founded by Costikyan in September 2005, cited a lack of
support by independent developers, failure to raise sufficient venture
money, marketing problems and general recession as closure grounds
(Costikyan, 2009). When putting this company‟s decline in the
perspective of indie games vs. the greater game industry it becomes
clear that, effectively, Manifesto Games targeted their services at an
immature market. At the time of Manifesto Games‟ founding, indie
games had not yet gained a commercial breakthrough and were
therefore in many ways competing directly against major titles for a
customer base that had not embraced the alternative to AAA titles in
the same way it has today.
Generally, 2008 is considered the year that saw the first major
commercial successes of indie games. In Indie Game – The Movie
(Pajot & Swirsky, 2012), Ron Carmel, developer of i.a. World of Goo
(Gabler & Carmel, 2008), describes the indie breakthrough:
“2008 was the first year that indie games started to do
really well. Audiosurf came out on Steam, then Castle
Crashers and Braid and World of Goo. Osmos did really
well in 2009, 2010. Then Limbo came out and broke
records. And Minecraft came out as well - Actually, it
came out much earlier, but then it really built up and
blew those records away.”
It took the massive sales of early successes, Braid (Blow, 2008) being
the perhaps most notable of these, to open the eyes of the consumer
for indie games, thereby demonstrating the viability of indie games.
These games paved the road for more recent indie hits such as
43
MineCraft (Mojang, 2011), Fez (Polytron Corporation, 2012) and
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games, 2012).
Today, production circumstances have changed in a way that allows a
highly commercial and professional approach to the production of
games in aesthetical and gameplay-wise opposition to AAA titles to
succeed. Distributors and publishers are in the process of adjusting to
this fairly young market where it is entirely legitimate for very small
teams, one-man studios included, to undertake commercially oriented
productions.
One often hears the (un)romantic terms basement programmer or
garage studio used about indie developers. While they are arguably
most often used for the purpose of supporting their grassroot image
rather than to factually describe their working conditions they most
definitely do have an element of truth to them. They hint at auterism
and a rebellious attitude toward the established industry, but most of
all they indicate that very often indie development is synonymous with
a small budget that neither allows for, nor requires pompous offices
or, perhaps more frequently, any offices at all.
This resonates well with the observation that indie developers take a
hobbyistic approach to game development. By setting out to make a
game to satisfy one‟s own creative drive they voluntarily remove
themselves from the competition with the blockbuster titles on their
home ground. This is not to say that indie games are never developed
with the intention of securing a profit or garnering a purchase from a
customer who would have otherwise bought a AAA title, but the
constraints of indie development inhibit direct competition between
indie and AAA games.
From choosing to not cater to the market it logically follows that these
games have a much smaller audience. Often, indie developers
knowingly and intentionally create niche products. Such a game can of
course not expect to reach 6-figure sales and must therefore be
profitable with much lower sales figures. These prerequisites have a
series of implications for the development process, all of which
function as cause as well as effect within the indie production.
Independent development is often characterized by modest team sizes.
Developer counts span from one-man projects to studios with
somewhat larger team sizes, but the vast majority of indie games are
developed by no more than a handful of people. While this can be
traced back to the lack of money for hiring additional team members it
also fits the indie development template very well. One can only talk of
staff shortage if the lack of manpower to complete development tasks
44
becomes a bottleneck. By adjusting their games‟ scopes, developers
effectively avoid this problem. The demand and scope of the
production adjusts to meet the supply of developers, i.e. the number of
team members that the budget allows.
The team size aspect of development does a good job of exhibiting the
contrasts between indie productions and publisher-funded games as
the causality of latter tends to be the inverse of indie productions.
Having a game concept greenlighted by a publisher or investor implies
that the budget set aside for paying the development team has been
accepted. In that sense, it is largely the scope of the game that defines
the team size required for it to be completed. It is in the developer‟s
interest to get as big a budget as possible approved for development in
order to assign maximum manpower to the production.
From the argument that an individual‟s impact on production and
budget is inversely dependent on team size it follows that smaller
teams are more likely to steer clear of the tendency to adhere to the
mechanisms of popular culture (Cowen & Tabarrok, 2000). As
previously outlined, the artistic fulfillment made possible by this is
one of the main reasons for getting into indie development. This
makes team size not only an effect, but also a cause for working on a
low budget.
The limited resources also mean that indie games cannot focus on
massive amounts of content, but have to rely on their form by
pinpointing and stressing the exact thing about them that most
accurately conveys the game‟s concept – be it a game mechanic, an art
style, an experimental form of interaction or something else entirely.
The manpower limitations springing from the rejection of creative
control through funding thus ultimately become the root of the indie
aesthetic.
To create a game under these constraints that successfully stands out
from the crowd requires innovation, creativity, ambition and a clear
vision. Costikyan‟s Scratchware Manifesto rages against the AAA
production‟s inability to embrace innovation by saying that “…it must
involve so many talents, and so much labor, that no single creative
vision can survive” (Costikyan, 2000). Contrarily, because it always
starts with the creative vision of one man or a very small team, the
indie game is able to do exactly that. In any indie production there will
be someone who refers to it as my game. One of many examples of
this is found in one of the promotional trailers of Sportsfriends
(Wilson, n.d.), a compilation of four sports-themes indie titles. The
developers, all of them individuals, introduce themselves with words
along the lines of “I am the creator of…”, demonstrating the close
creative tie between developer and game that is characteristic of indie
productions. Moreover, when describing his relationship to Fez, 2012
45
IGF grand prize winner Phil Fish expresses the very core of the indie
spirit:
“It‟s not just a game. I‟m so closely attached to it. This is
my identity, it‟s Fez. I‟m the guy making Fez.”(Pajot &
Swirsky, 2012)
Fish‟s statement exemplifies another characteristic of indie
production; that developers accept being on the line. Not being
employed means putting oneself at stake not only in an artistic or
creative sense, but financially as well. Indie developers invest their
own time and money in the game and there is therefore no one else to
take the fall should it turn out a flop. The financial loss incurred by
low sales is of course subject to the amount of (always noncontrolling) money raised for development, but the investment of the
developer‟s creative identity stands in clear opposition to that of the
worker employed in the greater game industry.
Obviously, the more people working on a game, the harder it will be to
maintain control of the vision and the more likely the end product is to
deviate from the initial idea that the game arose from. Underlining the
general perception that indie games are strongly vision-driven, Chris
Dahlen of Kill Screen sums up the relationship between creator and
creation very well by stating that:
“Independent games are any game that a small team or
an individual creator worked on to their own vision,
something that they just felt like making and coding and
finishing.” (Pajot & Swirsky, 2012)
Because of the highly creative nature of game development, team size
is an important factor in shaping the game from conceptualization
phase to final product. Indie teams are inherently small as the lack of
economic backing from publishers or investors will keep team sizes to
a minimum. While this obviously limits the scope of the games that
indie developers can hope to undertake, it can also be highly beneficial
to the production. Working in small, socially situated teams
potentially strengthens productivity, facilitates a particular kind of
self-reinforcing creativity and creates an involvement of the individual
that large-scale productions cannot hope to achieve.
Expenses and complications grow in accordance with a company‟s size
while smaller developers can enjoy the benefits of increased sparring,
better sociability, flexible office hours, higher ease of communication
and less organizational overhead. These are all things that allow more
space and time for what it‟s all about: designing and developing
games. Manpower constraints can therefore be of great advantage as
long as the developers succeed in creating a game that fits this size of
production.
46
Today there is an abundance of development tools that make it
possible for small studies to get a head start on development by not
having to start out from scratch. As described in chapter 3, the
existence of these tools is one of the contributors to the viability of
indie game development. It is not uncommon for top range indie
productions such as Limbo (Playdead, 2010) to partially or in whole
write their own engines, but the vast majority of indie productions rely
on the use of cheap or free third party software such as Unity (e.g.
used for the development of Castle Story (Sauropod Studio, n.d.) and
MaK (Verge Game Studio, n.d.)), RPG Maker (used for To The Moon
(Freebird Games, 2011)), XNA (the engine originally behind Fez) or
Messhof‟s tool of choice, GameMaker. Moreover, our interviews
revealed Nicklas Nygren to be a first hand example of a developer who
relies on third party tools as a central element in development:
“I use very high level middleware. I don't build the
engine up from C++ or anything, I use Multimedia
Fusion. It's like a visual scripting kind of thing.” (N.
Nygren, personal communication, 20.11.2012)
In addition to a reduction of the workload on experienced developers,
middleware lowers the computer skill barrier of entry needed for
picking up game development, adding to the accessibility of the
hobbyist end of the indie developer spectrum.
The need to cut corners in production has repercussions throughout
all aspects of our understanding of indie. Using the same third party
tools as other developers makes internet communities the natural
choice for self-education, something that undoubtedly lays some
foundation for the forming of an indie scene, thereby adding to the
identity of the indie culture. Moreover, technical production
constraints have a crucial impact on a game‟s look and feel and
challenge developers on their creativity as it demands optimal
interplay between game design and the technology at hand. The game
design must therefore adhere to constraints, much like the
production‟s scope must adjust to available manpower, thereby
defining the game‟s aesthetics.
It seems fair to say that the audience of indie titles generally have a
higher affinity for games and perhaps a greater openness toward
gameplay novelty than AAA titles and therefore live up to Costikyan‟s
description of “…an audience that prizes gameplay over glitz”.
Furthermore, the presence of digital distribution has brought about
“…a market where games would be profitable with modest sales”
(Costikyan, 2005b) and these two things in combination, an audience
and a means of reaching it, have proven indie games viable.
47
Retail distribution of indie games is irrelevant for various reasons.
Indie developers have come to find an audience that does not require a
marketing offensive to be made aware of the existence of new titles,
but instead actively engage themselves in the community surrounding
the games. The costs of manufacturing and shipping games would
often exceed the price of the game itself. And, of course, the last nail in
the coffin is the lack of publisher funding that makes retail publishing
virtually unthinkable and underline digital distribution as the only
feasible channel for marketing indie games.
However, digital distribution as it stands today carries with it a rough
correlation between a game‟s accessibility and exposure to the market
and the need for the developer to compromise, share revenue and
adhere to the rules of the owner of the channel‟s owner. Console
manufacturers reside in the strictest end of the scale with their
platforms dictating distribution channel, developer licenses and
software while at the same time making approval a requirement for
publishing. Mobile games are also generally only available through a
single channel, but can be developed in a range of environments. The
real freedom of choice in distribution and development, however, and
therefore also the highest abundance of indie titles, lies in
development for desktop computers. The possibility of free
distribution and a development that does not require pricy licenses
makes this the only real choice for the vast majority of indie titles.
Indie titles range from tiny, browser-based games with a playtime of
only a few minutes to massive projects that have obvious commercial
intentions and involve several people and years of development. While
games of are frequently put up for direct sale from a website, larger
indie titles such as Limbo, Braid or Super Meat Boy would not be
developed without the certainty that a viable means of distribution
were available.
The owners of the distribution channels and the terms and conditions
they provide for the developers are therefore of great importance for
the games that rely on them. Smaller games with effectively no market
potential are arguably only affected by this to a limited degree, but
larger indie productions are forced to relinquish a substantial share of
the game‟s profits in order to access the customer base that digital
distribution channels offer.
Online distribution services such as Steam, Desura or the App Store
generally charge 30% of a game‟s revenue in exchange for making it
available to the service‟s users. While the importance of digital
distribution for the viability of indie games in indisputable, one might
argue that there are certain problematic similarities in the impact on
production between a publisher and an entity holding the right to
refuse distribution while at the same time claiming close to one third
48
of a game‟s revenue. Although digital distributors exercise no direct
creative control during production they do make the sales needed for
profitability considerably less modest in reference to Costikyan‟s
observation. The distribution platform is therefore highly
determinative for the production in terms of e.g. development
platform, game genre and intended target group vs. target group
available through that particular channel.
Consequently, certain games that might have been lucrative had they
had cheaper distribution options of the same quality may not even be
profitable through these channels. Moreover, before allowing
distribution, channel owners set an undefined, subjective quality
barrier that is essentially an assessment on their part of the game‟s
quality and marketability.
Interestingly, distributors have adjusted to the popularity of indie
games by catering for indie audiences through e.g. indie game
bundles, compilations of usually no more than a handful indie games
sold at a reduced price.
“The point of Indie Royale is to put the spotlight on those
indie titles which provide fantastic experiences, but may
well have been passed over by a good portion of the
mainstream gaming public.” (IndieRoyale, 2012)
This concept constitutes an example of the industry‟s attempt at
compensating for the lack of marketing usually provided by
publishers. Without promotion, a stand-alone indie title may have
difficulties in garnering the traction needed for profitability. Multiple
titles in combination, however, can benefit from their mutual ability to
sell at a very low price, thus creating a game bundle that, without a
dramatic increase in cost, appears much more attractive to the
customer than a single game.
With the breakthrough of indie games to the consumer base of the
greater game industry independent developers found a whole new,
vastly increased commercial potential. While the easy access to a large
amount of purchasers means that indie developers can perform
commercially with increasingly obscure titles it also means that it is
becomes entirely realistic for indie studios to undertake increasingly
ambitious projects. This has diversified indie productions greatly as
their potential target audience has expanded from only few years ago
being connoisseurs on home computers to today easily reaching casual
and hardcore gamers alike through digital distribution channels across
multiple platforms.
49
The absence of publishers and investors is still the characteristic that
in the broadest sense determines whether or not a developer is
considered independent. However, the establishment of titles that do
not look and play similar to already proven genres as financially viable
appears to have brought about a willingness on investors‟ side to back
independent productions. Indie titles are therefore produced with
financial support of publishers as well as investors, but the
distinguishing factor in these cases is the placement of creative
control. Only when the presence of stakeholders does not bring
limitations and directions on decisions regarding creative content,
genre, means of expression and target audience can a game
production be said to be independent. The independence in
production must therefore be not in ownership, but in creativity.
Overall, indie productions work under very tight budget constraints
regardless of whether the developer is supported by a publisher or not.
This is most significantly reflected in the small team sizes that in turn
create a very close tie between game and developer due to the
immediacy of the game in relation to the individual developer.
Furthermore, the revenue received by independent developers often
depends directly on the game‟s sales figures, a mechanism that further
strengthens the sense of authorship. In perspective, the reliance on
digital distribution channels for a direct link between developers and
customers can be seen as problematic. New ways of approaching the
issue of dependency on funding and distribution constantly surface,
but any costly link between developer and consumer will inherently be
limiting for complete independence of game developers.
In summary, the image of the indie developer as a creative venture
working on a shoestring holds true to a wide extent. The growing
market potential, however, creates ever more favorable commercial
prospects and, should the developer have the required dedication,
makes a highly professional approach to independent development
possible. This may blur the lines of what types of production can be
considered truly independent. In order to more effectively distinguish
indie developers and titles it is therefore necessary to widen the
outlook to include the games themselves, the market they feed and the
digital culture in which they are to be understood.
50
As outlined above, indie games do not only set itself apart from the
game as object, but the indie game phenomenon has to be seen from a
wider angle. In this chapter, we outline why and how especially indie
games benefit and grow out of the culture that surrounds them. We
highlight how the games are inserted into the world and how indie
developers are perceived by each other and their audience.
In his article The Pleasure of the Playable Text: Towards an
Aesthetics Theory of Computer Games, Lauteren states that games
research should not only happen within their poetics (and thus focus
on the material level), but should also focus on the aesthetics, as such
investigate “the use of games as a cultural commodity”. In line with
the argumentation presented by Martin and Deuze in “The
Independent Production of Culture: A Digital Games Case Study”, in
this chapter we enlarge our focus from the games and their production
circumstances to the ways in which indie developers shape and give
meaning to their own works, as part of the games industry and in
relation to their audience. The (indie-) game developers and the
people which consume and engage with their products are
interconnected to an extent in which they mutually define “…what it
means to be independent, corporate, alternative or mainstream”
(Martin & Deuze, 2009). Subsequently, the ways in which indie
developers define the term indie, and how this is perceived by their
audience, influences the content of the games. We will investigate why
indie developers choose to work as indie developers, how they interact
amongst each other within their communities, and how they present
themselves and interact with the outside world.
As described in the Chapter 3, the indie community gained a lot of
momentum and formed due to various circumstances. From a socioeconomic perspective, as described by Pedercini, we face a softrevolution of creative workers that are not satisfied with the current
working conditions, as there is “…a creativity that exceeds the ability
of the capital to commodify it”(Pedercini, 2012). The indie scene
developed as (mostly skilled) workers intentionally left corporate
structures, to directly or indirectly compete against those. As
demonstrated in Chapter 3.0., this scene mainly formed for rewards
not exclusively monetary such as fame, creative satisfaction,
reputation, friendship, personal empowerment and critical praise
(Cowen & Tabarrok, 2000; Pedercini, 2012). As reasoned by
Pedercini, the capital (i.e. the AAA games industry) reacts to this
51
development and restructures itself in order to benefit from the newly
created cultural products (see Figure 8). Distribution channels such as
XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade), WiiWare, Playstation Network, Steam or
the Apple AppStore are testament to this evolution, resulting in a
situation where the old dependency from publishers is exchanged with
a new form of dependency from corporate entities (Pedercini, 2012).
Nonetheless, at the core of the indie concept is the ability to work on a
game with total and all-encompassing creative freedom at the hand of
the developer himself. Akin to auteur theory, game developers can
distinguish themselves, as individuals or indie studios, with their
works (Ashcraft, 2010). Games by Edmund McMillen, creator of Super
Meat Boy (Team Meat, 2010) or Messhoff44 feature a distinctive style
throughout the range of their creations. While to some extent
observed in the greater games industry with personalities such as Sid
Meier or Shigeru Miyamoto, the liberated working conditions and
smaller team sizes, as described in the previous chapter, greatly
leverage the ability of indie games to express their creator‟s unique
style and vision. During our interviews, Morten Svendsen from Tactile
Entertainment gave testament to this by stating:
“So for example with Thirst, our wolf game, it was very
much like we creatively, we have one person kind of in
charge of the project (…) he had a clear artistic vision for
the game, so you can say that the production in itself is
perhaps more oriented in making his piece of art, than
actually making something that‟s all about earning a lot
of money.” (M. Svendsen, personal communication,
2012)
Figure 8 - Evolution of
indie and capital
(Pedercini, 2012)
Thus indie developers, in opposition to large parts of the games
industry, are not willing to compromise their own vision in order to
reach a larger audience with their games. Indie developers do not to
let the target audience of a game influence the aesthetics of their
game, but will instead seek to create the game they envision and let
the game define its audience itself. As soon as a developer
accommodates conventions or practices that will make his game
appeal to a larger audience or enable it to employ certain business
strategies at the expense of the intended vision and aesthetics, he
ceases being indie. As expressed by Tommey Refenes in Indie Game
the Movie (Pajot & Swirsky, 2012): “In Super Meat Boy we sort of get
to do whatever we want. We don‟t have a publisher, we don‟t have an
investor and we don‟t answer to anybody.”
As the overall market size of the game industry grows, indie
developers are faced with a situation in which they are one among
44
www.messhof.com
52
many to develop games, worldwide distribution is only a click away
and more and more distinguishing gamers emerge. Under these
circumstances, it is easier than ever to find an audience with an
interest in the experiences that indie developers outside the AAA
games industry devise.
Indie game development has surfaced as an extensive notion, and thus
gave birth to a certain way of thinking and behavior among indie
developers and games; activities and practices specifically revolving
around indie games.
Being a part of a community, especially the indie community, gives
great advantages to indie developers. As part of an indie scene or
community, they belong to a social movement which shared interest in
the work they are doing. In the paper „Cultures of independent game
production: Examining the relationship between community and
labor. “ by Orlando Guevara-Villalobos (Guevara-Villalobos, 2011),
the author investigates the close connection between indie game
developers and the community they move in. Being an active part of a
community by participating in various activities helps indie developers
to leverage their games production in different ways. An important
benefit for indie developers is to share their networks and contacts
with each other. As indie developers follow the same ideals, exercising
activities within the community helps building a bond within their
networks that enables indie developers to attain knowledge that would
be otherwise difficult to obtain. This knowledge exchange can be of a
technological nature, through direct advice or by sharing code, but
also information pertaining business opportunities, marketing
strategies and other experiences. These practices can be seen as part of
the „indie ethos‟ that shapes the community and gives the developers a
sense of identity and moral support. Being indie is, on this cultural
level, affiliated with a distinct non-competitive approach to each
other‟s work. (Guevara-Villalobos, 2011)
As expressed by Nicklas Nygren, creator of indie games such as Knytt
(Nygren, 2006) or NightSky (Nifflas, 2011):
“The really cool thing is I have this really awesome
community. Lots of people there who want to help me
out with stuff too. So in Knytt Underground I got loads
of help from people submitting extra graphics and cool
stuff like that.” (N. Nygren, personal communication,
2012)
Ideally, this playful attitude distinguishes the indie community, in
which the creation of games is primarily attributed to the sake of the
53
game making process itself and only secondary for monetary reasons,
as shown above. As outlined in the previous Chapter, the skill
requirements to game development have been lowered in the past few
years, while at the same time the total amount of people playing
videogames has risen. Naturally, the indie game community has
grown alongside the industry to a global movement. To help grow and
foster the community, there are a lot of practices and activities that
indie developers share and take part in.
As the most prominent example, the idea and form of a game jam
embodies and reflects on this indie mindset in the best possible way.
Taken from Wikipedia, “a game jam is a gathering of developers,
artists, and other creatives over a short time during which a collective
effort is made to make one or more games.”(Wikipedia, 2012). Game
jams can be organized by different networks or communities and can
take on various shapes and sizes. Hold yearly and with more than
10,000 participants across the whole world, the Global Game Jam45
grew to one of the most well-known events of its kind. Within
48hours, often arbitrary, teams create a game from scratch based on a
given theme. As defined by the Global Game Jam, the format
encourages the participants to rapidly prototype game designs,
whereas the brief time span is meant to stimulate creative thinking to
result in small but innovative and experimental games (Global Game
Jam, 2012). “Designed to encourage experimentation and innovation
in the game industry”(“Indie Game Jam,” 2012), this prototyping
focus and mindset to explore video game ideas strongly reverberates
with the ideal and ethos of the indie developer community on a whole.
Most vocal to audiences outside those of the development community,
various indie game festivals build a stage for indie game developers
and their games within the game industry and the public on a nationand worldwide level. Among the most noticeable, the Independent
Game Festival46 or IndieCade47 established themselves to create
exposure for independent games and game developers in the vein of
festivals seen within the movie industry, such as the Sundance Film
Festival48. The mission statements of the aforementioned festivals
highlight very similar intentions (Independent Games Festival, 2012;
IndieCade, 2012; Sundance Institute, 2012). As the IndieCade website
states, “It encourages, publicizes, and cultivates innovation and
artistry in interactive media, helping to create a public perception of
games as rich, diverse, artistic, and culturally significant.”(IndieCade,
2012). Often in the form of competitions, most indie game festivals
select and showcase the best games that were submitted to them. In
http://globalgamejam.org/
IGF, www.igf.com
47 www.indiecade.com
48 http://www.sundance.org/festival/
45
46
54
the case of the IGF, a total price-money of 61,000 US$ will be awarded
in 2013. As the indie festivals have different criteria for taking the
contestants into consideration, not everyone is eligible to participate
by submitting their game. The IGF is shying away from giving their
own definition of an indie developer, and requires each entrant to
answer the question of being an indie developer by and for themselves
while holding “the right to refuse any game at its sole
discretion.”(Independent Games Festival, 2012). IndieCade excludes
entrants which are funded by a big publisher based on the list of
members of the ESA49(IndieCade, 2012). Winning and participating in
such a festival can mean a lot to the developers. As independent
developers have limited opportunities to show their wares and build a
community with other innovators in the field, it helps marketing their
game and possibly enables the developers to release their game to big
online distribution platforms.
Apart from honoring the best indie games, festivals widen their focus
to host other activities for the indie game community. As the IGF takes
place as part of the Game Developers Conference50, the Independent
Games Summit is a series of lectures that “…represents the voice of
the independent game developer at GDC” (“Game Developers
Conference,” 2012).
Not only do indie developers stay in contact with their peers, a lot of
indie developers seek to directly interact with their audience for
various reasons. Firstly, it helps the developers to build a relationship
with their customers, even during the development of a game.
Customarily without a marketing budget, building a community is
vital around a product that, to a great extent, relies on coverage
through word of mouth. Through direct distribution, the distance
between developers and consumers decreases, to the point where
consumers can take an active role in the game developing process by
providing feedback and ideas for further development. This positions
indie games as part of the citizen‟s media model by Rodriguez (2001),
“where the empowerment of audience‟s voices as codevelopers is seen
as central“(Martin & Deuze, 2009). The openness of the development
levels hierarchical differences and makes the difference between
developer and gamer less relevant (Martin & Deuze, 2009).
In most cases, indie developers do not have a marketing budget. There
are various tips and guidelines available throughout the internet,
helping developers creating attention for their games. Interestingly
enough, there is a high emphasis on the importance of being part of a
community and presenting oneself to the audience (Joubert, 2009;
Entertainment Software Association,
http://www.theesa.com/about/members.asp
50 www.gdconf.com
49
55
Rose, 2009; Rosen, 2009). As an indie developer, it is good practice to
show an outspoken behavior. One of the most endorsed methods to do
this is by keeping a development blog, trying to create interest not only
in the game itself, but providing interesting content for returning
visitors. There are other often commended ways to create interest
(Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites), which we will not go
into detail here. The bottom line is that for indie developers, apart
from developing their games, it is of high importance to be involved
with the community in order to leverage their production.
Furthermore, the audience won can become direct financiers of games
through paid early access or crowd funding schemes. Still, indie
developers keep their artistic integrity, since they cater for a niche
audience they can create their own games without compromising, and
do not adjust to the customer‟s ( i.e. the community‟s) taste.
These reasons reinforce the indie spirit, as the indie developer makes
the game he sets out to, in the process seeking the niche audience that
is interested in the project at hand.
We argue that a social approach to games, rooted within their
aesthetics, yields interesting results if brought in connection with
indie games. We hypothesize that, similar to the artistic movements of
avant-garde or art-house, being involved in the indie culture as both
contributor or consumer, gives participants a feeling of shared identity
and social status among other gamers.
As pointed out by Lauteren and Niedenthal, an aesthetic approach to
game research and design is not commonly employed by game design
scholars (Lauteren, 2002; Niedenthal, 2009). Framing games through
the term playable text, Lauteren tries to answer the question as to why
we enjoy playing games. He analyses three different aspects of
pleasure: the psychoanalytical, the social and the physical. In regards
to our research on indie games, his ideas of pleasure and social
identity are of particular interest in this context: the form of pleasure
rooted within the social domain.
Building on the work from Fiske and other culture studies theorists,
he argues that we can draw pleasure from rejecting the “dominant
reading” of a text, in other words bringing ourselves in opposition to
the understanding of a text as seen by the ideal viewer. We can
develop an affinity towards certain games or game genres, not unlike
the development of a certain taste for particular movies and moviegenres. In line with Barthes concept of plaisir (1974), “games facilitate
the affirmation of one‟s social identity”. We derive pleasure from
positioning ourselves to the devices of social control, in such as we
56
produce meaning from a cultural text in accordance with our social
disposition, or habitus. (Lauteren, 2002)
In this context, it highlights the reprehensible position of some gamers
and game developers towards AAA titles. Games such as Battlefield
3(EA DICE, 2011) or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Infinity Ward,
2011) are seen to be mundane experiences, frowned upon for their
simple and repetitive game design. Social games playable on
Facebook, such as developed by Zynga (http://zynga.com/), are
shunned by cultivated gamers for their simplicity and their blatant
monetization methods. The pleasure derived from this process
confirms our identity, not necessarily in line with the paramount
ideology, and creates a powerful cohesion among peers and the
community they move in.
Citing Fiske (1992), Lauteren further differentiates the pleasure of
popular culture and that of critical and aesthetics distance. He goes on
to state that the socially and culturally disempowered draw pleasure
from the materiality of everyday life, the pleasure of popular culture.
As such, we enjoy games for being a spectacular pastime alone, for
providing light entertainment. The mass audience & popular culture
does not question how the experience came to be. The focus is in the
act of playing and the experience it creates. In opposition, the socially
and culturally empowered “tend to emphasize the difference of a
cultural text from the historic and material conditions of its
production”(Lauteren, 2002). It is here where we can see a connection
to the notion of indie. Throughout the discourse in regards to indie
games and their materiality, we are often presented with a position of
individuals dismissing the importance of visual representation for the
overall game experience. It is thus hypothesized that indie gamers and
developers have developed the aesthetic distance needed to scrutinize
the substance of a given game to enter in social discourse, i.e. by
distinguishing between production values rooted in materiality and
the quality of game design and design intentions. There is a pleasure
for the self-proclaimed indie game connoisseurs forfeiting to play AAA
games, or in a form of emergent play, mocking them for their stringent
and cinematic aesthetics. The well-versed gamer or game maker sees
behind the veil of smoke and mirrors put forward by photorealistic
graphics and enormous marketing budget. As suggested by the
arguments above, some gamers are seen to gain social pleasure out of
playing indie games due to affirmation of their social habitus, putting
themselves in the group of the culturally empowered, and opposite of
that of the disempowered, main-stream consumers.
This social practice of aesthetic distancing is easier achieved on the
semiotic and narrative level of a given game rather than on a (game-)
mechanical level, which has to be experienced through the act of
playing the game itself (Lauteren, 2002). However, as indie games are
57
often minimalistic in their design and easy accessible through digital
distribution, they can more easily be judged on their utilization of
game mechanics.
Indie game developers are in the position to scrutinize the inner
workings of AAA games, analyzing it on the layer of aesthetics on
which they are directly competing themselves: game mechanics (as
shown in Chapter 3.2.). The focus of a lot of indie games and
developers is thus shifted from this materiality towards the
craftsmanship and intention with which a given game was created.
Indie gamers and developers take pride in exploring aesthetics apart
from that of the mainstream, as being part of the educated few who
are open-minded and in a position to acknowledge the innovative
gameplay, emotional experiences and stylized graphics that indie
games can offer in contrast with the rest of the gaming industry.
Not only are indie games constantly assessed in relation to the greater
industry (Martin & Deuze, 2009), but also within the social and
intertextual context of art and art consumption. As such, games as
cultural products are “subject to the same processes of judgment,
classification, and categorization as other artistic products”(Kirkland,
2010).
As indie games explore new themes, and evoke a variety of emotions
within their players, an artistic ambition of indie developers becomes
apparent. In the article “Discursively Constructing the Art of Silent
Hill” Kirkland considers the way in which art and artistic ambition is
found through the craftsmanship of making games. To him, artistry
arises as the game “reproduces certain styles of production, evokes
particular consumption practices, and encourages specific critical
responses traditionally regarded in this manner“(Kirkland, 2010). As
is shown by the example of the Silent Hill game series (Konami; Team
Silent, 1999, 2001), the developers took established practices from fine
art or art-house and applied them to the series, raising its
acknowledgment as a product of cultural artistry in the process.
Kirkland outlines the same rejection of conventionalism and
commercialism in his paper which we observe within the indie scene.
The intertextual discourse about games, as exemplified by Kirkland in
the case of the Silent Hill series, shares a bulk of values with that of
other, established, art cultures. Akin to those art cultures, indie games
focus on individual authorship, experimentalism, emotional affect and
deeper moral and philosophical meaning. This reverberates with the
intentions that indie developers have for creating games , and with
Graces indie game definition, as she claims that “indie games are
58
interesting in their insistence to be free from standards and their
effort to escape conventional play experiences”(Grace, 2011).
Indie games mimic this artistic mindset, through employing their own
styles of production they are catering for a distinct (indie-) audience,
possibly abiding by consumption practices characteristic to them
(refer to Chapter 3.2.). Artistic expression and strive is one of the
driving forces that push indie games outside the boundaries of pop
culture and the associated mainstream games that are targeted at
mass audiences (Grace, 2011). This is beneficiary for the developer,
not only for intrinsic and non-pecuniary reasons (see above), but also
to augment the significance and value of a given game as it is
perceived by its audience, and thus the developer itself. The
association of art to any object is a value driver in itself, or as Kirkland
states: “the mantel of „„art‟‟ inflates the importance of both the culture
labeled as such and the individuals who consume it”(Kirkland, 2010).
It thus comes naturally that indie developers seek to use the
ideological freedom in their productions to add artistic value to the
game, raising its general worth.
Coming back to Kirkland, he shows that the documentary
accompanying Silent Hill 2 exemplifies the way in which intertextual
references made by the creators themselves can foster the game series
claim to be considered video game art, and how it gives rise to notions
of artistry in continuation of the game. More significantly, he validates
the importance of authorship in works of higher artistic ambition by
drawing on the work of Penley and Bergstrom (1972), Pam Cook
(1981) and Bordwell (1979). According to Kirkland, this emphasis on
authorship is likewise found in avant-garde filmmaking, focusing on
the expression of the individual artist, outside that of familiar industry
& commercial practices. Again, this is highly pursuant to the indie
scene, as a counterpart to a AAA industry in which individual persons
(or studios) are not able to put their distinct mark on their games. As
is shown by Nifflas,
“To me, what indie is, is where every person involved in
a project has the chance to express him or herself within
that barrier. It is a lot about it not being an
industry.”(N.Nygren, personal communication, 2012)
As well as picked up by Kellee Santiago when talking about
thatgamecompany51:
“I think we were considered and are considered an
independent studio because the games that we made
were motivated by our own personal desires around
what we wanted to communicate in the game and
51
http://thatgamecompany.com/
59
nothing else.” (K. Santiago, personal communication,
2012)
The importance of the individual game creator emerges for multiple
reasons. Artistic authorship allows receiving of critical praise and fame
which individuals seek, aside monetary benefits, as creators of
culturally noteworthy products. Furthermore, as has been argued
above, indie developers rely on an audience and community to market
their games, presenting themselves as creators and artists of their
products and as participants within the indie scene. In presenting
their original and distinctive approach, shaped through selfexpressionism and their own creative voices, indie developers,
consciously or not, establish authenticity for themselves (Jones,
Anand, & Alvarez, 2005). This authenticity augments the feeling of
social identity within the indie community, and helps to attract the
attention of customers, critics and other developers. As the nature of
independence is contingent on an audience‟s perception of indie
authenticity (Martin & Deuze, 2009), in an indie scene that grows
bigger and more influential, authenticity might become one of the
differentiating factor as to what is considered indie or not (Plante,
2012).
As is shown in the previous chapter on indie game production, the
production circumstances of indie games are intertwined with the
abovementioned artistic intention of game developers. As has been
shown, talking about indie games and indie game developers while
disregarding the communities and cultural backgrounds would not do
the term justice.
The mindset of the individual developer, born from his will for
creative freedom, has a big impact on the content of game production
and the cultural meaning of indie game development. Within this
cultural domain the border between which game might be considered
indie, and which game is not considered indie, becomes blurred and
subject to interpretation. As part of the audience, there is no little way
of knowing the cause behind a developer‟s actions and intentions, it is
up to everyone to judge the integrity of a developer, and this his status
as being indie on a cultural level. In the end, it falls to the audience
and game journalists to judge an indie developers authenticity.
In addition to the individual‟s intention and self-expressionism, indie
developers rely greatly on their communities and audience to help
market their games. There is an ample importance of networking
among peers and the greater indie community. In order to be
recognized be the wider indie community, indie games have to pique
the interest of the community. This is best achieved by creating
60
something perceived as new or innovative, by trying out new design
paradigms and visual styles. Uncompromising visions, evident artistic
ambition and strive for experimentalism are cherished by the
culturally empowered indie community, and it is these attributes that
are often necessary to gather peers and successfully enter festivals and
competitions. The Indie Fund52, a funding source for independent
developers, underpins this by the fact that indie developers can not
directly apply for support, but in order to receive funding are advised
to capture the attention of the fund by partaking in festivals, talking to
press and attending other community events such as conferences or
game jams. Apart from building an interesting game, the developer‟s
personal stories can be of interest as well, and the persons
involvement within his indie community. In the end there has to be
something worth spreading news about in order to be recognized
within the indie community.
The indie game movement grew and has become part of the greater
games industry. Interesting are Pedercini‟s thoughts on this revolution
and the reaction of capital (i.e. AAA game industry) to the revolution:
by installing themselves as gatekeepers, controlling not the workers
but the distribution systems through which the games are sold,
publishers create a new form of dependency for the indie developer.
Claiming indie status has been successfully utilized by countless
developers, and even bigger corporations tried to (miss-) use the term
for marketing purposes53. The growth of the overall indie industry and
market lead to publishers accommodating to the situation, developers
relying on new distribution channels, the feasibility of becoming an
indie developer as a means of sustaining oneself, the possibility of
becoming exceptionally rich in the case of landing the new indie hit:
These aspects can be seen as incentives for developers to exploit the
concept of indie culture, deliberately taking advantage of the benefits
an indie status brings along. In this light, guides to indie marketing,
deliberately mimicking trends and riding the wave of nostalgia in
order to maximize sales are inherently contradictory to the idea of
indie culture. In analogy to the indie music scene, indie developers are
able to “sell-out” by aligning their creative and artistic aspirations with
those of the market wishes and needs. Noteworthy is the fact that this
does not automatically lead to a development which is diametrically
opposite to the understanding of indie games. The wishes of the indie
audience often align or overlap those of marketability, as the market is
to a great deal made up of the direct audience itself. What is lost is the
pure ideal of the indie spirit, the wish to develop games for the sake of
http://indie-fund.com/apply/
See:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/169719/EA_Indie_Bundle_r
uffles_feathers.php
52
53
61
making games and expressing oneself. Ultimately, it is this
authenticity of a developer‟s intentions that has the power to
differentiate indie developers among each other, distinguishing
between true indie developers and tag-along indie developers in
regards to the cultural scene they are set in.
On the other hand, even culturally indie developers that develop
games without compromising for monetary reason are not necessarily
independent in all of their actions. As is shown, active involvement the
indie “scene” is imperative as a means to garner recognition or critical
appraise for ones games outside of commercial interests.
We do not believe that indie developers can be regarded as avantgarde. Disregarding that the term avant-garde is highly debatable due
to its ambiguous definition in itself, it is a fact that the indie scene
does not “include an oppositional logic that is explicitly recognizable
as negation or challenge of mainstream game forms” (Jahn-sudmann,
2008).
Figure 9 - Modified from Pedercini
(2012): Nirvana cover art next to Phil
Fish, creator of Fez
62
The term indie, derived from independence, has long since outgrown
its original meaning and today carries connotations and associations
more plentiful than ever, reaching far beyond the initial defining
independence of a publisher. The analysis chapter has therefore
investigated not only indie developers‟ relations to publishers and
investors, but instead divided indie into three branches: the aesthetics
of indie games, their production and, finally, the culture surrounding
indie games and indie developers. Rather than considering indie as a
label that is binarily applicable to potentially any game, an analytical
and relativistic view on the notion of indie permits to expose the
defining properties of each aspect. In our opinion, this disassembly of
the high level concept broadens our understanding of it in a way that a
more general approach would not allow, enabling us to approach
formalization.
We define the three aspects of indie as being:



Indie aesthetics
Indie production
Indie culture
Each aspect has been examined in separation from the others.
Aesthetics: In our focus on indie aesthetics we have considered only
the game itself, understanding the game as object, without making
references to its creation and only referentially include the cultural
perspective. This has provided an understanding of how to distinguish
indie games amongst each other and how to distinguish them from
other games, investigating what they look, sound and play like.
Production: Not only looking at games themselves as isolated
objects, but looking at the way they are created, we expand our view to
indie production. We investigated their methods and characteristics,
the differences between indie developers and the greater game
industry in terms of production.
Culture: In yet another addition to our focus we included the culture
surrounding indie games and indie developers. It is shown how indie
games are inserted into the world, and how indie games and their
developers presently find their place in the greater video game culture.
We outline how indie games are perceived in relation to culture at
63
large and how indies draw meaning and identity from their work. This
cultural approach is the top level aspect of our view on indie that
displays the significance to games and developers alike in the eyes of
themselves and the communities in which they partake.
However, to describe how aesthetics, production and culture come
together to create a higher understanding of indie, one must
acknowledge that these aspects are interwoven and influence each
other to a great extent. Chapter 3.2 is a prominent example of this in
its description of the production circumstances‟ effect on an indie
game‟s visuals. Many recurring visual styles present in indie games
can be traced back to e.g. the minimum of budget and manpower
available for its completion. This and other cases of mutual
dependencies are recognizable throughout all aspects of the indie
development.
In order to approach a formalization to understand the indie concept
at large, we propose the introduction of the iii-model as a tool for
categorizational thinking.
The aim of the iii-Model is not to develop a distinct taxonomy between
indie games and not-indie games, as it is not in our intention or
capability to accurately delimit the two. Instead, we consider the
model a tool for reflection on the implied meanings of indie, and for
describing the classification process that, consciously or not,
invariably takes place when exposed to a game.
In accordance with the original understanding of the term indie, a
small team and the absence of a publisher are still some of the most
important indicators of indie. However, we are proposing to include
indie aesthetics and indie culture which, through the consistent
connotation with the term indie, have become parts of defining indie.
Through the inclusion and differentiation between indie production as
well as indie aesthetics and indie culture, the model allows formalizing
the various characteristics of indie, and is able to provide an answer to
the question of why some games, though all independently produced,
may resonate more clearly with the perceived notion of indie than
others. In our understanding, indie is not a label that can be binarily
applied to any given game, but it operates on a gradient based on the
three indie aspects. In line with the concept of independence
expressed by Pedercini, the question answered is not only “Is it
indie?”, but rather “How indie is it” (Pedercini, 2012)?
Looking at the three aspects of indie, some are agreeably easier to
categorize than others. Whether or not a game is indie within these
64
aspects is ultimately a subjective decision, as they rely on information
not objectively accessible and appraisable. Moreover, when talking
about concepts such as influence or motivation it becomes apparent
that judgment is in the eye of the beholder. This is the reason why
authenticity and the culture surrounding indie games play such an
important role in grasping the concept of indie. It is also the reason
why the border between indie and not-indie should not be considered
a question of true or false, but rather a gradient, as Pedercini rightly
assessed. The iii-Model has to be seen in this light: it does not analyze
a given game to compute an indie score, but allows its users to judge
and value a game and their developers in a formalized and grounded
way. In the following, we offer arguments and considerations to be
made when assessing a game on its status as being indie within the
three aspects.
Figure 10 – The III model
Trying to tighten our understanding of indie games, it becomes
apparent that the production circumstances and influence from
parties outside the developer play a huge role in defining indie. In
many ways, indie production is what facilitated the formation of indie
aesthetics and culture.
In order to investigate whether a given game is recognizable as indie,
the first look should thus be at the circumstances under which the
developer has produced the game. The most crucial point to make
65
here is the realization that in order to classify a game as an indie game,
no external interference is exerted on the development process, The
developer is the only instance that has creative control over the
product. This is why working with a publisher is often seen in
opposition to being indie.
In our view, a publisher, investor or any other stakeholder may well be
involved in the development process of a game to be considered indie,
as long as the developer does not relinquish creative control over his
game in any way. This is exemplified by Nicklas Nygren during our
interview, developer of Night Sky and Knytt(Nygren, 2006): Talking
about the design of his upcoming game Knytt Underground, he states
he does “…not design the game differently” since he started
collaborating with his publisher, and that the publisher in no way
influenced the final game (N.Nygren, personal communication, 2012).
He goes on to state:
“Personally I am for a very not strict definition of the
word [sic]. If indie becomes this very anal thing about
"You cannot be signed to a publisher then you cannot be
part of our indie club", then I do not actually want to be
indie, if it becomes a rule that limits what you can and
cannot do.” (N.Nygren, personal communication, 2012)
Furthermore, in line with Stern‟s definition of indie games we follow
the thought that an indie game is “…created by a single developer or a
small team” (Stern, 2012). As stated in Chapter 3.4., we believe that
an indie game is a work displaying individual authorship. In order to
be able to do this, the team size has to be small enough to allow every
individual to have the possibility to influence the creative vision of the
game. As the influence of the individual on the game diminishes with
an increasing team size, so does the claim to be indie. The personal
attachment of the individual developer to a game, along with the
possibility for all other individuals‟ part of the development team to
have a personal impact on the game, is a defining characteristic of
indie production. The developer‟s indie affiliation will inevitably fade
if his or her games are no longer able to reflect a sense of authorship.
In an attempt to create a formalized definition, and within the context
of the iii-Model, the first step to categorize a game as indie is therefore
to determine that the game under observation is:
(i)
A game that is developed to completion without any
external control, and created by a single developer or a
small team.
66
In our view, a game that fulfills the abovementioned criteria can be
considered indie. The above rightly delimits large productions and big
independent studios such as Epic Games from the indie field, but
would also include most casual browser-based flash games or smaller
commercial titles for mobile devices. However, as explained above,
there are additional implied layers of meaning to the term indie. They
are not to be seen essential for a game‟s status as indie, but to sharpen
our view on the ideal of indie, we propose two additional parameters
in order to classify a game as iii (speak: triple-i).
Looking at indie culture, the motivation of the individual or team for
creating a game is of importance. As outlined in Chapter 3.4., indie
developers are not willing to compromise their own vision of a game in
order to reach a larger audience or reap monetary rewards. The
developer has an (artistic) ambition to realize a goal that is of import
to him. It is this creative drive and unwillingness to compromise that
has created the gaming culture that surrounds indie games, pushing
the boundaries of indie games and games in general.
Whether this goal is culturally relevant to the indie community or
culture at large by realizing (perceived) innovative game designs or
artistic styles is irrelevant to the ideal of indie culture itself. Evidently,
creating something of interest to the community increases the
likelihood of being recognized.
Similar to indie production, a developer ceases being indie in a
cultural sense if he adheres to conventions or practices that will
purposefully make his game appeal to larger audiences or enable it to
employ certain business strategies at the expense of the author‟s
intended vision and aesthetics. This is the fundamental insight that
allows indie developers to freely create the games and experiences
they envision outside the monetary obligations and target audiences of
the AAA industry. Consequently, the audience tends to choose an indie
game rather than the developer targeting an audience with the
purpose of appealing to a particular, commercial group.
We feel this best describes the often cited, but seldom understood
indie spirit without which the open, experimental and progressive
indie scene would not exist. Thus a game is part of indie culture, if it
was
(ii)
Created to completion to reach a self-governed, nonpecuniary goal without compromising it
67
The role of aesthetics in the definition of indie is not a straight forward
one - even establishing that there is indeed an indie aesthetic has its
problems. Never the less we find that different factors have worked to
create and shape a large amount of common aesthetic ground between
indie games. It is our belief that the most important among these
factors were:



Production considerations
Nostalgia
Referentiality
Production considerations are of course important because the large
majority of indie games are on a very tight budget. This forces indie
game developers to take aesthetic choices, which has low asset
production cost - and the fact that these choices were predominant
within indie games, created a style or, if you will, an indie aesthetic.
The most important contribution of this first factor in the creation of
the indie aesthetic is graphical stylization and the innovative focus on
gameplay mechanics, but the aspect of production considerations is
visible in almost any part the indie aesthetic. There exists a deep and
outspoken longing in gamers, thereby both developers and consumers
of games, towards the games yesteryear, which in the eyes of them had
a certain higher quality. This fact makes nostalgia both an important
motivational factor in creating indie games, an effective marketing
parameter and - important here - very influential on the design of the
aesthetics of the games themselves. Everything from sounds, to
graphics, to gameplay challenges are being shaped by nostalgic
notions. An example of gameplay being shaped by nostalgia, the final
boss of Super Meat Boy can be mentioned. The way of defeating the
final boss, after navigating a nigh impossible obstacle course, is by
luring him onto a bridge, and then pulling a lever to remove the
bridge, making the boss fall to his death. This example leads us on to
the final factor in the shaping of the indie aesthetic, referentiality.
When this boss is shaped this way, it is a clear and outspoken
reference to Super Mario Bros., where the final boss was defeated in
an almost identical fashion.
68
Figure 11 – Super Meat Boy final boss.
The difference between nostalgia and referentiality, is analogized in
the difference between inspiration and a quote. For instance Braid is
nostalgic in the platforming gameplay, but is referential in its use of
the sentence “the princess is in another castle” after each level. Like
nostalgia, referentiality isn‟t restricted to gameplay either, sound and
graphics are also affected as described in chapter 3.2.
Because of the nature of this subject, précising what is needed to be
included in indie aesthetics is very difficult and the end result will
inevitable be very inclusive. Aesthetics can be said to contain three
main areas, as discussed in the aesthetics chapter, a game could be
said to share any or all of those parts. It is thus concluded that a games
lies within the Indie Aesthetics, if it
(ii)
shares dominant indie characteristics in its aesthetics.
Conclusively, we recognize that there are varying degrees of indie. In
accordance with our observation that indie can be broken down into
three different aspects we propose the following categorization as a
means of approaching a new definition of indie:
(i)
(ii)
A game that is developed to completion without any
external control created by a single developer or a small
team.
A game that is developed to completion without any
external control created by a single developer or a small
team AND either A) to reach a self-governed, non-
69
(iii)
pecuniary goal without compromising it or B) sharing
dominant indie aesthetics.
A game that is developed to completion without any
external control, created by a single developer or a small
team to reach a self-governed, non-pecuniary goal
without compromising it and sharing dominant indie
aesthetics.
In the following chapter we will conduct case studies by applying this
model to a selection of games that challenge a definition of indie.
70
In the following chapter we will describe the empirical work carried
out in relation to this thesis. This consists of (1) the assembly of a
database containing a subjective, yet diverse selection of indie games,
(2) the development of Bearadise Hotel, a game intended to fit the III
model‟s concept of a III game and (3) a series of case studies
employing the III model.
The database and the development of Bearadise Hotel served
primarily as a preparation for the analysis leading up to the proposal
of the III model. This chapter will discuss their influence on this
analysis.
The case studies will apply the III model to a selection of games that
exemplify the categorization of indie games in accordance with the
model. In seeing the III model as our hypothesis, this part of our
empirical analysis will serve as the validation of our thesis and
demonstrate its applicability. With this we will eventually proceed to
conclude on the overall findings of our work and discuss their
perspective.
71
At the beginning of our research we set out to create a database of
indie games to analyze formal aspects, trends and customary concepts
of indie games. Building a database enables us to identify common
characteristics and helps understanding how indie games could be
different from other games, and how they share common values on a
mostly formal level.
Not only does the database serve as a source of data for analysis, but
as part of a continuous thought process of formalization which helps
to grasp what the term indie entails.
To validly make assumptions about indie games (our population under
analysis) through a sample group, we would ideally need to able to
employ probability sampling. Statistically speaking, in the case of
indie games this poses a number of problems. As there is no clear
definition on how an indie game is different from other games, our
population itself is not clearly defined. We limited our population to
indie games available for Windows as a download, neglecting indie
games that have solely been developed for other platforms or are only
available as browser based games. This allows us to sharpen our
assertion of the population as defined above, as we are able to gather a
more representative sample within the given resources and timeframe.
Nonetheless, there is no viable way to determine an accurate sample
frame – the vast amount and dispensed distribution of indie games
does not allow the construction of a reasonable sample list of indie
games out of the population at hand.
Due to these reasons we have to establish our sample through means
of non-probability sampling, specifically judgmental sampling, in
which we selected the sample based on our knowledge and
professional assessment. As such, we gathered the sample units from
our own knowledge of games, preliminary research, indie festival
nominees and indie hit lists.
Strictly speaking, as is the case with non-probability sampling, any
results stemming from the analysis of our sample (i.e. the database)
cannot be applied to our population, as an unknown proportion of the
entire population was not sampled.
In differentiation to an ideal sample, it is very likely that in our sample
more prominent and commercial indie games are overrepresented.
72
There are myriads of self-distributed indie games available throughout
the internet, for example accessible through collections such as these
of the global game jam54. It is unclear in which way the results of an
ideal sample would differ from the results gathered through our
research.
The games were categorized in the following categories.
54

Release Date:
This was included to identify trends in indie games based on
release date.

Developer:
Name of the Developer

Publisher:
Name of the Publisher

Publisher/Self Published:
The distinction between having a publisher and being selfpublished. Note that whether a game is digitally distributed by
a third party or not does in no way infer the connection to a
publisher.

Price/Free:
Is there a difference between games that are freeware and
games that cost money? And how much money does a
commercial indie game most likely cost? If applicable, we took
the non-discounted price on Steam into consideration. If not,
we looked at the individual‟s game direct sale price, and then
other distribution platforms.
0 = Free, 1 = 1-5 €, 2 = 6-10€, 3 = 11-15€, 4 = 16-20€, 5 = >
21€

Based on IP:
How many indie games are based on (any) external IP? 0 = no
IP; 1 = other IP; 2 = game franchise

Platforms:
We surveyed which platforms a game is available for besides
Windows. In a multi-response design, we gathered
information on the following platforms: Browser, Consoles
(Xbox 360, PS3, Wii), Mobile (iOS, Android), Tablet (iPad,
http://archive.globalgamejam.org/
73
Blackberry Playbook, other Android tablet),
Handheld (PSP/ PSVita, Nintendo 3D/3DS).
55
Gaming

Genre:
Is there a correlation between certain genres and indie games?
And are certain kinds of indie games overrepresented in
certain genres? As only one genre was coded for each entry,
we decided on the most prominent focus in design. For
instance, Blocks that matter55is a two-dimensional indie
puzzle platformer. As it contains strong puzzle elements, it
was coded as a puzzle game for their defining influence on the
game.
0 = Platformer, 1 = FPS, 3 = Other Action, 4 = Adventure, 5 =
RPG, 6 = Sport/Simulation, 7 = Strategy, 8 = Puzzle

Gameplay Dimensions:
Describes spatial movement of the player avatar within the
game space. 0 was coded for games having no game space at
all, such as text adventures or management games. 1 is coded
in games where the player interacts with the gameworld in
only one dimension (e.g. Pong, or simple arcade racing
games). 2 dimensional is for two dimensional movement (e.g.
left/right/up/down, e.g. traditional platformer), and 3 for 3
dimensional movement (e.g. first person shooters such as
Quake).
0 = no spatial gamespace , 1 = one dimensional, 2 = two
dimensional3 = three dimensional

Game Perspective:
Describes how a games camera is looking at the player‟s
avatar, or in general from which perspective the game is
perceived by the player. In case a game has multiple
perspectives, the most prominent one was coded.
0 = other, 1 = side view, 2 = top down, 3 = third person, 4 =
first person

Predominant Visual Aesthetic Style:
Created to determine how many indie games are pixelated,
and how many employ a distinctive hand-drawn style often
associated with indie games.
0 = other, 1 = pixelated, 2 = hand-drawn

Visual level of abstraction:
http://www.swingswingsubmarine.com/games/blocks-that-matter/
74
Created to investigate the visual level of abstraction indie
games employ, regardless of the visual aesthetic it employs.
For instance, Gemini Rue56 employs a pixelated style, but tries
to recreate photorealistic imagery using proportional shapes,
shadows and gradients. Stylized games still carry meaning
within their representations, while abstract games do not
reference actual objects.
0 = realistic, 1 = stylized, 2 = abstract

Distribution Channels:
How are indie games digitally distributed? Direct Sale refers
to games solely sold through a/ the developers own own
Website. Digital distribution platform refers to the various
third party platforms such as Steam, Desura XBLA and the
like. Combined indicates that a game is sold both through a
developers website and digital distribution platforms.
1 = Digital Distribution Platform, 2 = Direct Sale, 3 =
Combined
In our research, we examined 77 individual indie games. We can
divide the chosen games based on their production in order to
examine how they are distributed and sold and on their aesthetical
characteristics in order to examine the games themselves.
Indie game production characteristics
Figure 12 – Distribution channels.
Figure 13 – Franchise.
In order to learn something about the way indie games are created and
distributed, we coded the categories distribution channel, price,
publisher, platforms and franchise. These characteristics do not tell us
anything about the game itself, but allow us to view how and in which
way it reaches its audience
In regards to the analysis of the games under question, we evaluated
how games are distributed and whether they have been distributed
with publisher support or without. Of the games in our database, 67%
(N=52) were published without a publisher affiliated in any way. Even
though this number might be around what was expected, the number
of games sold solely from a developer‟s website is extremely small.
Only two games did not rely on a digital distribution platform:
Minecraft and Telepath RPG. The majority (85, 72%) of indie games
employ third party digital distribution channels such as Steam, Desura
or XBLA to reach their audience. These numbers might confirm the
thoughts as presented by Pedercini: the indie developer gained
independence from traditional publishers in exchange for another
56
http://wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html
75
form of dependency, one in which the developers is dependent on
established distribution channels (Pedercini, 2012). Obviously, this
number is very likely to change when the sample size and frame
change. It can be hypothesized that a large number of non-commercial
indie games are very unlikely to rely on third party publishing as a
distribution channel.
Figure 14 – Price.
Talking about release platforms, 55,84% (N=43) of games are only
available for PC incl. Mac and/or Linux, whereas 37,66% (N = 29) are
exclusively available for Windows PC. This might indicate the
predominance of the PC platform in regards to indie games, but a
definite call is not justifiable looking at the selection of our sample.
Still it hints towards the PCs significance, while in other words we can
deduct that 44,15% of games under observation are also released for
other platforms.
From looking at the different platforms, it can be seen that a fair
amount of games are ported to platforms other than PC (see Table 1).
The main platform which games are ported from or ported to are
consoles, with 32,5% of all games under consideration are also
released for consoles. Both tablet and mobile on which we can find
9,1% of the considered games. Looking at the technological advances
of mobile and tablet devices and the interoperability on different
platforms of major games engines such as Unity or Unreal in between
Apple iOS, Windows, Adobe Flash, Google Android, Microsoft Xbox
360, Mac OS, Sony PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii U, the availability
of indie games through different channels is likely to increase.
As demonstrated by Figure 14, the indie games in consideration are to
a large extend commercial (89,61 %). Noticeable is that over half of the
games are within the price range from 6-10€, in total 72,73 % are sold
for more than five €. From this we can hypothesize that as soon as the
quality of an indie game is high enough to warrant a commercial
exploitation, game developers do not settle for the lowest price range.
Nonetheless, this finding has to be seen within the context of sales and
bundles, in which indie games make reportedly the most of their
earnings. As Nifflas explained in the interview with us:
“But the thing that changed it was several bundles, not
really big ones, but a bunch of steam sales together with
some other indie games. That worked out really well. I
made so much more money from sales and stuff like that
than I made from the game release itself.”(N. Nygren,
personal communication, 20.11.2012)
In regards to franchises, a total of 18,19 % are associated with an
existing intellectual property or other kind of franchises. Only three
games in our sample employ external references: The Cat and the
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Coup is a documentary videogame describing the CIA engineered coup
leading to the fall of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first
democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Cthulhu Saves the
World is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft whereas I wanna be the
Guy heavily references various other games. The remaining 14,29 % of
games are coded as indie gam franchises, in the sense that successful
indie games bring about sequels and related projects.
Responses
Figure 17 - Level of abstraction.
Additional
Platform
N
Percent
Percent of
Cases
PC download
77
63,1%
100,0%
Browser
2
1,6%
2,6%
Console
25
20,5%
32,5%
Mobile
7
5,7%
9,1%
Tablet
7
5,7%
9,1%
Handheld
4
3,3%
5,2%
122
100,0%
158,4%
Total
Table 1 – Game platforms.
Indie game aesthetic characteristics
Figure 16 – Genre.
In order to gain information about indie game characteristics, we
coded the categories genre, perspective, spatial movement, level of
abstraction and predominant visual style.
Table 2 shows that indie games are represented through a variety of
genres, and that there is not necessarily a predominant genre.
However, it stands out that First-person-shooters (FPS), Strategy and
Role-Playing-Games (RPG) hold a relatively share, while
Sport/Simulation games are not present at all within the sample. It is
hypothesized that this is based on the higher production costs those
genres entail. FPS and most Sport/Simulation games have the need
for a three dimensional environment, which is generally more time
consuming than the creation of two dimensional assets, and indie
productions are unlikely to be able to match the graphical fidelity of
AAA produced games those genres are most known for. Likewise, both
Figure 15 – Predominant
aesthetics style.
visual
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Strategy and RPG games are usually rather complex and extensive in
content, again making them difficult to be developed by smaller indie
studios.
As might be expected, the largest group within the genre dimension is
Other Action, followed by Adventure and Platformer. These results
are somewhat expected, as platformers and other action games, such
as side-scrolling action games, automatically spring to mind when
thinking about indie games.
Predominant visual style
Genre Distribution
Figure 18 – Perspective.
The image of the typical indie game is mirrored when looking at the
spatial movement within the gamespace and the predominant
perspective. Over 80 % of indie games feature two-dimensional
movement within the game. In terms of the predominant perspectives
in indie games, 49 % employ a side view, whereas 25% display the
events from a top down perspective. Again, we hypothesize that these
characteristics can be traced back to the limited production
capabilities of indie game studios. Side view and top down
perspectives often utilize a fixed camera, which circumvents the need
for comparable costly to create three dimensional assets.
Other
Pixelated
Handdrawn
Platformer
6
8
1
15
FPS
3
0
0
3
Other
Action
12
5
6
23
Adventure
7
6
4
17
RPG
1
3
1
5
Strategy
3
1
1
5
Puzzle
6
0
3
9
Total
38
23
16
77
Total
Table 2 – Predominant visual style * Genre Distribution cross
tabulation
Looking at the level of abstraction of indie games yields interesting
results in regards to the visual style most indie games are set in. In
total 60,53 % of indie games are highly stylized or abstract games, it
goes on to show how a lot of indie game developers make a virtue out
of necessity in order to create something visually attractive within
78
limited production circumstances. Interestingly enough 30,26 % of
indie games have a pixelated visual style, while 19,74 % use a decisive
hand-drawn style. From cross tabulating the categories predominant
visual aesthetics and genre distribution (see Table 2) we can infer that
there is no strong correlation between genre and visual aesthetic style.
However, 10,3% of the games under study are pixelated platformers,
second largest group within our sample.
Figure 19 – Dimensions.
In conclusion, we can infer that the indie games of our sample are
stronger represented in the aesthetic categories that are prone to
lower production costs. A generally high level of abstraction, and
relatively easy to create two dimensional gameplay and visuals are
aesthetic characteristics of indie games that go hand-in hand with the
limited production circumstances. Furthermore, it is hypothesized
that these characteristics are most likely contrasting the predominant
aesthetics of AAA productions.
The creation of the database and determination of the different
categories provided very valuable to serve as an entry point into the
indie topic. In doing so, we were able to question what could be
considered to be identifiers and characteristics of indie games, as has
been later worked out in the chapter on indie aesthetics as well as
indie production. In such, it is methodologically relevant for the
process of this thesis. Moreover, it becomes apparent that the focus on
the formal aspects of games does not allow to encapsulate the entire
meaning of indie games.
In general, on a solely empirical level, the value of the results in the
database is questionable due to the abovementioned statistical
weaknesses. However, the analysis of the data at hand provided some
interesting insights. Looking at the aesthetically relevant categories,
we can hypothesize that indie games do have a focus on technically
and artistically easier to realize aspects. Furthermore, it might be
concluded that indie games are a very varied group of games.
The breadth and width of this thesis did not allow further expanding
and on the empirical research to give the database more statistical
validity. For example, the necessary limitation of one genre per title
does often preclude games that play to a combination of genres,
likewise as the coding of just two visual styles. The small sample size
does not allow to validly recognize trends in cross tabulations.
Even with more resources spend on developing the database, as a case
in point, the problem of an undefined and nearly limitless population
remains, disregarding how many indie games would be coded.
However, there are a few things to consider in the case of a
79
continuation of the work as presented here. Tnext logical step would
be to code a variety of AAA games in order to put the findings on indie
games into perspective. This would allow us to compare the
differences between the two groups of games, and contrast differences
across all categories.
80
In accordance with our method and in order to comprehend the
significance of culture for a game‟s production process, we joined a
game jam with the intention of letting the outcome, experience and
game alike, serve as part of the empirical basis of this thesis. With this
game as our access pass we have involved ourselves in the local indie
community and thereby first hand experienced its structure of
perpetual PR efforts, networking and exchange of experience and
contributions.
Figure 20 – Concept art for Bearadise
Hotel.
The game was developed with a style of gameplay and visuals (see
Figure 20) that deliberately mimics that which we know as indie. We
have thereby attempted to the best of our ability to create a game that
adheres to the iii model‟s characterization of a III game.
This chapter will describe the experience of developing the game and,
primarily on a cultural level, how the development process has
contributed to our understanding of the indie game industry.
Bearadise Hotel is a 2-4 player competitive, yet humoristic top-down
2D game with a strong focus on social interaction between its players.
It uses Xbox controllers connected to a pc and is a local multiplayer
game, i.e. all players play at the same pc at the same time.
Its setting is a teddy bear beach resort inhabited by identical teddy
bears, bustling with activity at the peak of the season. Unfortunately,
one of the resort guests is a vampire.
Figure 21 – End of round, vampire
wins.
In the game, players each control one shotgun-wielding teddy bear. At
the start of a round, one player‟s Xbox controller will rumble,
indicating that this player will be the vampire for that round. It is the
vampire‟s mission to kill as many teddy bears as possible, either by
using the shotgun or the stealthier eating feature before he is
identified and shot by the remaining players (see Figure 22). When the
vampire is killed the round is over and a new round will start with
another playing assuming the role of vampire. The round will also end
if the vampire succeeds in killing all other teddies (see Figure 21).
After a set amount of rounds the scores are calculated and a winner is
found.
In addition to moving, shooting and (in the vampire‟s case) eating,
players have one last mechanic available: Revealing. As all moving
characters on screen are identical, one cannot easily identify one‟s own
81
character, let alone the characters of others. By tapping the A button
on the controller, players can therefore choose to temporarily
highlight their player on screen. This, however, reveals that teddy as a
human player and makes him an easier target for the vampire.
We entered development with the goal of creating a game that would
adhere to the guidelines identified in chapter 3.1 while involving
ourselves in, and thereby hopefully creating a game of relevance to,
indie culture. Of the dominant characteristics established in our
investigation of indie aesthetics we chose to focus strongly on only one
of them: Game mechanics. With all three team members – ourselves –
having a main focus on game design and no core skills in either
graphics or sound design, this was a choice made out of desire as well
as need.
Figure 22 – In-game screenshot of
Bearadise Hotel.
The gameplay of Bearadise Hotel, despite it being a very humorous
game, revolves around secrecy and uncertainty. Without going into
specifics, this, in combination with the scoring system, proved to be an
obstacle in optimizing the game‟s usability and accessibility. Several
core elements of the game rely on the absence of information,
something which inherently reduces accessibility.
The first obstacle is the identification of the player‟s character on
screen. As no player will want to reveal himself to the other players,
either in order to secretly eat teddies or to avoid being spotted by the
vampire, players will learn that blending in with the crowd is a
favorable strategy in the first phase of the game. This lasts until
suspicions have been formed and one or more teddies come under
suspicion of being player-controlled, after which shooting is likely to
set in.
Another usability problem manifested itself in the communication of
the game‟s scoring system. Generally, the death of a teddy scores
points for the vampire and negative points for the remaining players.
However, this cannot be reflected on screen in a way that would allow
new players to make a mental connection between his action, his
character and the change in score. Indicating any of these would give
away the identity, the position, or both, of the vampire and thereby
disrupt the balance of secrecy of the vampire and protection of the AIcontrolled teddies.
These, among other issues, exemplify why its game design causes
Bearadise Hotel to have a rather high barrier of entry that makes it
inaccessible to new players. However, this is an issue in regard to new
players only. Once players have grasped the rules and the game‟s
emergent mechanics, our playtests show that play flows easily. There
82
is room for improvement in several aspects of the game‟s interface, but
visual feedback creating a link between player actions and the game‟s
rules has proven a necessity for novice players.
Much in accordance with the idea that indie aesthetics are defined by
production circumstances, the need to focus thoroughly on game
mechanics rather than visuals or audio was defined by our team‟s lack
of an artist and an audio designer. Furthermore, we chose to develop
in Unity as this was the tool with which we had the most experience
and thereby were most likely to obtain better results faster. Being a 3D
engine, obtaining a pure 2D look in order to adhere to indie trends to a
higher degree (as quantified in chapter 4.1) would involve more work
than simply sticking to Unity‟s default 3D look.
Figure 23 – Bearadise Hotel in
development during Exile Game Jam
2012.
Game defines team
Team defines game
AAA
Indie Gamejam
Figure 24 – Teams are assembled for
AAA prodcutions whereas games are
assembled by indie or, to an even
higher degree, by gamejam teams.
As described in chapter 3.1, the developer‟s authenticity and integrity
is paramount for a game‟s chances to compete in indie culture. Beyond
this initial delimitation, its relevance is in turn reflected in the game‟s
overall quality, its level of innovation or its value as a remark on
gaming culture. Maintaining an uncompromising attitude toward
one‟s creative vision is one thing, but creating a game that is picked up
on by the indie community as being of relevance is no easy feat.
We do not pretend to have been able to develop a game with the
potential to do this. However, the development of Bearadise Hotel and
the participation in a game jam (see Figure 23) has given us valuable
insights into the interplay between production, aesthetics and culture.
Production-wise, game development during a game jam can be
regarded as the antithesis of AAA development. While AAA
productions are distinctly defined by the intended game, jam games
are distinctly defined by the skills of the team. Impromptu teams are
forced to make do with that which the often randomly composed team
can provide. There is no time to make additions or alterations to the
team in order to accommodate a particular game concept within 48
hours, the most common duration of a game jam.
As Figure 24 seeks to explain, AAA productions invert this model,
tending to hire talent as needed on a project basis in order to adjust to
the type of development needed for a game. In that sense, the team is
adjusted to meet the demands of the game while the game jam‟s
hobbyist-like development approach operates reciprocally. Indie
developers at large can be situated anywhere in the range between
game and team as determinant, but often lean toward team-definesgame for monetary reasons as explained in chapter 3.2. The
participation in a game jam, in essence an example of highly
condensed indie development, in this manner underlines the
83
differences in development between indie and AAA. This connection
between team and game is strongly manifested in jam games‟
aesthetics, proving them to be the direct output of the available
production input. It is essentially a rapid prototyping development
technique in a very short time span.
On a cultural level, the hands-on development demonstrated the
importance for developers of continuous participation in the indie
community.
First, developers benefit from participation in form of awareness.
Costly marketing is out of scope for unpublished games and
developers thus resort to self-marketing in the form of continuous
public relations work in order to spread the word about their games.
The absence of commercial marketing is a very prominent
characteristic of the indie games and developers that have not reached
a certain level of notoriety.
Second, the shared passion for game development makes
contributions to the community in the form of mutual favors highly
beneficial for all parts. Intensive networking allows indie developers to
recruit help, thereby shifting their determinant from team toward
game (see Figure 24) at low cost or, ideally, for free:
“I would say I am a sole game developer who gets lots of
guest help. Lots and lots of guest help.” (N. Nygren,
personal communication, 2012)
This exchange of talent in turn creates greater freedom for indie
developers working with limited resources as they can increase
production value without adding to their own workload or being
limited by their own skillset.
The benefits of social networking are very particularly prominent
within indie development as there is a pronounced convergence
between userbase, developers and community. This strong
dependence on free press coverage and word of mouth naturally leads
to the formation of hierarchies within indie culture, even on a very
local scale. A game that is endorsed by an individual or a website with
a large community outreach, e.g. a large Twitter following or a large
amount of users, is very likely to be directly benefited in terms of
awareness and, accordingly, sales. MineCraft developer Markus
Persson‟s endorsement of the CastleStory KickStarter campaign that
lead to it reaching its $80,000 goal in less than five hours
(KickStarter, 2012) is an example of endorsement by a high profile
indie developer that garnered attention which translated directly into
a monetary reward. This example, albeit far from the workings of local
indie communities, demonstrates how the mechanisms of
84
contribution, endorsement and notoriety work both ways and how it
therefore pays off as a developer to engage oneself in the community.
The development of Bearadise Hotel equipped us with insights
pertaining to all aspects of indie game development on a very local
basis. This served as a useful contrast to the high notoriety usually
characteristic of the games that achieve exposure in prominent digital
media.
The hands-on experience increases the appreciation of the type of
dedication and skill that goes into the development and selfpublishing of an indie game. It has furthermore underlined the selfreinforcing chain of cause and effect that connects the indie
production, aesthetics and culture and added to the understanding
needed to develop the III model.
85
In this chapter we will attempt to formally categorize a selection of
indie games through the III model. Through the analysis preceding
this chapter we have shaped the model in a merge between our
personal observations, interviews and theoretic analysis. This
application of the model to a series of real cases will serve to validate
our hypothesis by grounding it in empirical data.
The games chosen demonstrate characteristics that exemplify why
unclarity may arise around a term such as indie whose definition is in
a constant process of change. It is also an important point here to
emphasize that even though we‟re using a model and placing games
within this, this model in itself is not an attempt at actually placing
games with certain coordinates of that model to specify exactly how
much indie production, indie aesthetics or indie culture a game has. It
is here merely the point whether or not a game meaningfully could be
said to belong, in a socially constructive way, to the term indie and
placed within the III model.
Figure 25 – The III model applied to
Interstellar Marines.
Aesthetics: Interstellar marines57 (Zero Point Software, n.d.) is an
atypical indie game, which is emphasized by the creators when stating
that their “goal is to deliver a polished AAA game experience”, hereby
actively trying to differentiate the game from the expected indie game
experience. If we look at the aesthetic detail, the unreleased
Interstellar Marines employs photorealistic graphics, a classical filmic
score, naturalistic sound and traditional first person shooter
gameplay. In no part of the shown gameplay, or other marketing, are
there any references made, neither is there any play on nostalgia nor
can we see a focus on any uncommon or innovative mechanics. It is
safe to say that Interstellar Marines shares very little with the
dominant indie aesthetics; neither does the developer seem to aim to
do so.
Production: Interstellar Marines is developed by Zero Point
Software, a small two-man team from Denmark, which has
“assembled a core roster of extremely talented people who have all
worked on the project at some point”. They have no publisher, but are
currently trying to raise money through kickstarter.com. They fulfill
All citations are from
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zeropointsoftware/interstellarmarines-prologue.
57
86
our definition of indie production, as to our knowledge they are in no
way influenced by anyone on the decisions they take.
Culture: Zero Point Software is developing their game with a method
they call Open Door Development. Open Door Development is
centered on the developers and they are actively trying to include the
community in the development process. For instance, their prototypes
are made available to play and give feedback upon. This approach is
common within the indie community at large, and creates the
authenticity on the creator‟s side to build an audience around the
game. It could be interpreted as compromising to the creator‟s creative
control, especially since the method is being presented as “building
the best game humanly possible, in collaboration with you!”
However, we rather regard it as form of playtesting in which the users
are being involved in the perfection of already planned out mechanics
and/or the inclusion of consumers to create a higher degree of
commitment to the game, without the game itself actually being
radically affected. There is really no way for us to know this, as is often
the case. However, the fact is that regardless of the reason behind the
Open Door Development, Zero Point Software does not seem to
compromise their vision of the game, even if the community is
involved to some extent. It is still the creator who makes any and all
decisions on his own terms; this fact makes the indie culture
applicable in this case.
Figure 26 – The III model applied to
Kingdom Rush.
Aesthetics: Kingdom Rush (Ironhide Games, 2011) is a tower
defense game, with very sparse focus on uncommon mechanics. The
typical tower defense game contains a path and allows the player to
build attacking towers, either on that path or besides it, to kill
approaching enemies. Kingdom Rush expands this by having mouseactivated spells and personified heroes. These mechanics aren‟t
revolutionizing in the genre, but are very scarcely used. However, the
game is not built around these mechanics, rather they are a small
expansion to the gameplay, which still revolves around the building
and upgrading of towers to stop enemies. Regarding graphics and
sound, Kingdom Rush has cartoony, stylized graphics and nonreferential or 8-bit sound - clear consideration seems to have been
paid to asset production cost. Kingdom Rush does have some very
weak ties to indie aesthetics through the stylized graphics and the
general low cost asset production, but for our purpose it is not enough
to consider it as having indie aesthetics.
Production: Kingdom Rush is developed by Ironhide Game studios,
which is “an independent game studio based in Uruguay”58. Ironhide
58
http://www.ironhidegames.com/
87
Games studio is comprised of three people. They do have a publisher
for Kingdom Rush, namely Armor Games, a website “that hosts free
Flash-based browser games”59. It is very likely that Ironhide Game
studios developed Kingdom Rush first, and was only later joined by
the publisher. The publisher can in that case not have exercised any
influence on the development of the game itself, and therefore it is our
estimate Kingdom Rush has had an indie production.
Culture: Kingdom Rush is a flash game, designed to be released
precisely on websites like armorgames.com or kongregate.com. These
websites are predominately frequented by casual gamers, which is also
the perceived target audience for this game genre. The game does not
show any distinctive authorship in its design or approach to the genre.
It presents itself as an extremely streamlined and well executed game,
but in our opinion it does clearly not try to achieve feats of deviation
from the status quo of other games within the same genre. Put plainly,
while it may be a pleasing experience to play the game, it is not an
interesting case that contributes to indie culture in any way. Based on
these observations, we assume that the developers purposefully
developed the game to cater for casual audiences. Due to this, we
conclude that it does not fit well on an Indie Cultural level.
Figure 27 – The III model applied to
4‟33”.
Aesthetics: When you run 4‟33” (Kloonigames, 2009), a black screen
appears that is slowly and gradually being colored white by a line
moving from left to right. It will take the screen 4 minutes and 33
seconds to turn completely white. During this time period the game
will immediately shut down if anyone else anywhere in the world (the
game requires internet access to run) starts the game. Therefore only
one game can be running at any given moment. It is only if your game
runs for 4 minutes and 33 seconds without anyone opening the game
somewhere else, that you win the game. Beside the black and white
transition and the naïvely drawn win screen there are no conventional
aesthetics to speak of - Neither graphics, sound or mechanics. The
game is a deliberate attempt to challenge the definitions of a game by
not having any controls or other aesthetics in the game itself. We do
not have the time or space to justify a thorough analysis of 4‟33”, it is
sufficient to say that it cannot meaningfully be said to contain
characteristics of the dominant indie aesthetics, neither does it
attempt to. It is trying to challenge assumptions about game aesthetics
in itself and that should not be misinterpreted as uninteresting to the
aesthetical field, even though we situate it outside the aesthetical
circle.
59
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_Games
88
Production: 4‟33” is a very small game made for the Nordic Game
Jam in 2009. It is safe to say that the production of this game was
indie.
Culture: 4‟33” is outspokenly a reference to John Cages „musical‟ art
piece of similar name, in which the sounds of the concert hall, the
audience etc., are the music during the musicians not-playing.
Without going into this extremely interesting game, it is clear that it
was made with an intended purpose in mind, thus expressing and
questioning what a game is and what it constitutes. It is thus culturally
interesting, as it challenges the perception of digital games as such. As
it might not be even be a game in itself, this cultural relevance towards
the game places it within the indie cultural circle.
Figure 28 – The III model applied to
Journey.
Aesthetics: In Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012) you must travel
from your starting location to a tall mountain far in the distance,
running, sliding and flying/hovering. The game has a multiplayer part
where the game connects you with other players, and you can then
follow and help each other through the game, with use of a very
limited communication system of only two different abstract signs.
Journey is a very stylized game - In visuals, but also in gameplay and
multiplayer communication. It has a very distinct focus on
atmosphere, movement and using the multiplayer aspect in an
innovative way. Journey is also explicitly trying to expand the notion
of games as art, through the aesthetics, incl. mechanics, and the
experience of playing it. Journey is definitely in our eyes within the
indie aesthetics, because of its stylized visuals, it experimental
gameplay and, more dubious and interesting, the way to challenges
the status quo of games and art through aesthetics.
Production: Journey is the third game made by Thatgamecompany:
“"Journey" is our third project in a 3-game deal with
PlayStation, ... . When we were poor kids out of college,
Sony offered to fund three games from us, which was a
dream come true. There's no way we could have made
"flOw" or "Flower" or "Journey". The catch is - they are
all exclusive to the PS3”60
Thatgamecompany was founded on the basis of its creators signing a
partnership with Sony, one of the biggest actors in the game industry.
There is no question that Sony influenced the game - but in a way that
is very different to what anyone would expect from collaboration
between a very small game developer and such a big company like
60
http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/
89
Sony. As seen above, one of Sonys demands was platform, Journey
had to be exclusively released on Playstation.
“Our relationship with Sony influenced the development
of the company in many ways, first of all we knew our
game would be on PS3, so that was a technical
consideration on our games that have already been
solved, we didn‟t have to question it. We didn‟t have to
think, “Oh, is this game going to be better on the iPad or
the Xbox”. We know it‟s gonna be on PS3, so we got to
make a game that will work there.” (K. Santiago,
Personal communication, 2012)
As Santiago also points out in the same interview, it is hard to
determine how Journey was actually influenced by the collaboration
with Sony. It is certain though, that for the choice of platform, control
was given to Sony, which may or may not have influenced the game.
As quoted, the developers were not able to question whether Journey
would have been “better” on a different platform. Another demand
Sony made was a certain degree of polish.
“They pushed us to deliver games that were at a very
high level of polish and quality, I don‟t know if we would
have done this on our own, there would also have been a
very real factor of money and time.” (K. Santiago,
Personal Communication, 2012)
In our opinion this is aspect differs from the choice of platform in a
key area – Sony might simply be enabling the team to do what they
want to do, through their funding, even if it is a demand, there might
not be a difference between what the team wants and what Sony
wants. Given the choice of words, “polish and quality” and the stated
hypothetical delimiting factor of money and time, we assume that this
is the case. Differently, with the choice of platform, this was made
before the concept of the game was even thought of, because the deal
with Sony came with the development of flOw (thatgamecompany,
2007), so the game was built upon this premise, which constitutes
external creative control. Therefore, it cannot be said that Journey had
an indie production.
Culture: This is where the case of Journey becomes very interesting.
While simultaneously assuming that the production was under
external creative control from demands from Sony, we assume that
Journey indeed was developed under indie culture. The process of
conceptualizing Journey may have been based on the premise of a
certain platform, but the process itself: …
“… started with: “what do we want to communicate to
our players?” and every decision we made about the
90
game was around that.”
communication, 2012)
(K.
Santiago,
personal
So in forming the vision and concept of the game, the team was in fact
creatively free, if you disregard the choice of platform. This freedom
was far from trivial, as Santiago explains when asked if the
relationship with Sony made them to be more free:
“I think so … as much I would have liked to say that
Jenova and I would have been very courageous
developers regardless … certainly the fact that we were
in a relationship where we had a development deal,
which meant that our royalties where mainly going go
to Sony … on the flipside, it‟s a loan that you never have
to pay back, in another way, so it encouraged everyone
working on our games to put everything on the line… it
was like, let‟s take the biggest risk that we possibly can let‟s do the thing that we couldn‟t do otherwise …” (K.
Santiago, personal communication, 2012)
So because of the financial security Thatgamecompany received from
Sony, Journey was in fact developed with creative freedom. On the
premise demanded by Sony, they built a vision and a design of a game
that they did not compromise. They realized the vision to an extent
that would not have been possible without the deal with Sony,
according to Santiago. This leads us to believe that Journey can in fact
meaningfully be said to have indie culture.
Figure 29 – A selection of games as
they fit in the III model.
These examples are included to show the III model in effect. This is
our best assumptions about these games. It is not an attempt to pass
judgment on these games objectively, because the assumptions about
the individual parameters might differ. However, it is our claim that
the judgment itself should be based on these parameters, for the term
indie to be used meaningfully. We have placed a few other games in
the model, for inspirational purposes (see Figure 29).
91
In this thesis we have investigated, analyzed and formulated the
meaning and the use of the term indie. Based on the division of the
concept into production, aesthetics and culture we have proposed the
III model (see Figure 30) as a tool for approaching a formalized
discourse on indie games.
The III model helps in understanding the significance of context in the
classification process that, consciously or not, takes place when
engaging in discourse on indie. It enables a formalized opinion
forming process by offering descriptive arguments and considerations
in regards to the categorization of indie games.
Figure 30 – The III model.
It is not the intention of the III model to pass objective judgment on
any game beyond the minimal definition of indie production.
Independence in game development is a concept in continuous
aesthetical and cultural evolution and the model‟s categorization of
indie relies on a subjective assessment of all its aspects.
As explained in chapter 3.4, the production aspect is at the core of
indie. We therefore argue that a game that does not exhibit an indie
production cannot be classified as an indie game. Accordingly, we use
the distinct characteristics of the indie production to define an indie
game as:
(i)
A game that is developed to completion without any external
control, and created by a single developer or small team.
In order to categorize games that fall within the indie spectrum based
on the above definition we define their aesthetical and cultural
aspects. As assessment of these, often based on the subjectively
identifiable features of the game, allow us to define a game belonging
to the II tier of the III model as:
(ii)
A game that is developed to completion without any external
control by a single developer or a small team AND either A)
to reach a self-governed, uncompromised non-pecuniary
goal or B) sharing dominant indie aesthetics.
We accordingly place games that exhibit all of the abovementioned
features at the center of the model, defining a III indie game as:
(iii)
A game that shares dominant indie aesthetics and is
developed to completion without any external control by a
single developer or a small team to reach a self-governed,
uncompromised, non-pecuniary goal.
92
Discussing the model, games like Fez (Polytron Corporation, 2012)
and You Have To Burn The Rope (Bashiri, 2008) lie within the same
(III) category. However, it is clear that both games draw their
significance from different parts of the model. Fez is intended to be an
enjoyable game in itself, a game that is firmly rooted in dominant
characteristic indie aesthetics and to be played and understood as a
game, played for the sake of its aesthetics. In opposition, You Have To
Burn The Rope, while drawing on indie aesthetics as well, is
interesting because of its commenting value to the state of game
culture, and the games industry at large, the subtext of the game is
what signifies its existence.
If a game is described as III, it fulfills all of the following criteria. In
this way, despite the individual and continuously changing perception
of the term indie, we have attempted to identify current, meaningful
and important characteristics in both aesthetics and culture, which we
have substantiated throughout the thesis to give a complete and
useable picture of the phenomenon of indie
93
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The appendix is in another medium, i.e. the attached cd.
Bearadise Hotel\*.*
Database\*.*
Interviews\Interview.docx
Interviews\*.m4a
The Indie Game.pdf
100
Bearadise Hotel game.
Indie game database.
Transcribed interview quotes.
Interview audio files.
Digital version of this thesis.
1