14 Facts About Indie game

Indie game development bore out from the same concepts of amateur and hobbyist programming that grew with the introduction of the personal computer and the simple BASIC computer language in the 1970s and 1980s.

Dan Pearce of IGN stated that the only consensus for what constitutes an indie game is a "I know it when I see it"-type assessment, since no single definition can capture what games are broadly considered indie.

Indie game developers are generally not financially backed by video game publishers, who are risk-averse and prefer "big-budget games".

Jesper Juul, an associate professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts that has studied the video game market, wrote in his book Handmade Pixels that the definition of an indie game is vague, and depends on different subjective considerations.

Onset of indie game development is difficult to track due to the broadness of what defines an indie game, and the term was not really in use until the early 2000s.

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Indie video game development saw a further boost by the use of crowdfunding as a means for indie developers to raise funds to produce a game and to determine the desire for a game, rather than risk time and investment into a game that does not sell well.

On release, the Indie game was recognized at various award events including the Independent Games Festival, leading to publishers that had previously rejected 2D Boy to offer to publish it.

Several indie developers have found it critical to have a good public relations campaign across social media and to interact with the press to make sure a game is noticed early on in its development cycle to get interest and maintain that interest through release, which adds to costs of development.

Common Indie game engines include Unreal Engine and Unity, but there are numerous others as well.

On consoles, the distribution of an indie game is handled by the console's game store, once the developer has been approved by the console manufacturer.

Similarly for mobile, the distribution of the Indie game is handled by the app store provider once the developer has been approved to release apps on that type of device.

Indie game developers are generally considered a highly collaborative community with development teams sharing knowledge between each other, providing testing, technical support, and feedback, as generally indie developers are not in any direct competition with each other once they have achieved funding for their project.

Indie game developers tend to open with their target player community, using beta testing and early access to get feedback, and engaging users regularly through storefront pages and communication channels such as Discord.

The Indie game Megabooth was established in 2012 as a large showcase at various trade shows to allow indie developers to show off their titles.