oh wow yeah, this is all very silly

i kind of don't understand why anyone thinks the old "not part of a massive company" definition doesn't still apply? like, i get why massive companies would want to change that definition, but why gamers always seem to *listen* to massive companies when they say and do obviously ridiculous things is a mystery i might never solve

tbf, The Game Awards' categorisation is... pretty damn poor tbh.

Cyberpunk has as much right to "best ongoing" as Baldur's Gate 3 does (none). It's not an ongoing game, it's simply had updates & DLC, as is... the norm? lmao.

Plus, putting Destiny 2 in Best Community Support but *not* Best Ongoing, despite it being *literally an ongoing game*.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

for me company size isn’t the measure, it’s where the funding is coming from. If you’re self funded, you’re independent.

Edit: so I agree Dave the Diver isn’t an indie title if Nexon was involved in publishing because publishing costs money that the developers didn’t pay or do themselves “independently”.

i avoid strict definitions. Any too clear definition will result in games that are not indie being labeled as indie, and games that clearly are too be excluded.

Factors are, funding, independent control over the creative ideas, publishers, size of publishers, amount of money, team size, corporate involvement, and more. It's impossible to draw an exact line.

I feel strongly that indie is an underdog position to the ones with most power, such as AAA and corporate.

as a solo indie dev myself I believe this brings up a good point that we should start distinguishing solo developed games or games made by like two or three people from any sort of game developed by a team that has any sort of specific managerial position in it.

“Non corpo game”

simple:

A game made by one or multiple "independent developers" aka. neither access to resources nor funding by big publishers and/or developers.

Meaning <100 people (if we count in all bought-in assets and playtesters) may and usually <10 people (employed directly or indirectly) and a budget <€ 1M.

Anyhing above is #SmallStudio and not #IndieDev!