26 Facts About Indie games

Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to lack of publisher support.

So-called bedroom coders, particularly in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, made their own Indie games and used mail order to distribute their products, later shifting to other software distribution methods with the onset of the Internet in the 1990s such as shareware and other file sharing distribution methods, though by this time, interest in hobbyist programming had waned due to rising costs of development and competition from video game publishers and home consoles.

Around 2015, the increasing number of indie games being published led to fears of an "indiepocalypse", referring to an oversupply of games which would make the entire market unprofitable.

Examples of successful indie games include the Touhou Project series, Cave Story, Braid, Super Meat Boy, Minecraft, Fez, Shovel Knight, Undertale, and Cuphead.

Games that are not as large as most triple-A Indie games, but are developed by larger independent studios with or without publisher backing and that can apply triple-A design principles and polish due to the experience of the team, have sometimes been called "triple-I" Indie games, reflecting the middle ground between these extremes.

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The latter are Indie games which are developed with the intent to release the source code and other assets under an open source license.

However, commercial sales are not a requirement for an indie game and such games can be offered as freeware, most notably with Spelunky on its original release and Dwarf Fortress with exception of a planned enhanced visual front-end version while its base version will remain free.

However, one of the earliest known examples of games developed on contract for these systems was that of Joyce Weisbecker, who considers herself the first indie designer, as she had created several games for the RCA Studio II console in 1976 as an independent contractor for RCA.

The industry had started to coalesce around video game publishers that could pay larger developers to make Indie games and handle all the marketing and publication costs as well as opportunities to franchise game series.

Shareware Indie games became a popular means to distribute demos or partially complete Indie games in the 1980s and into the 1990s, where players could purchase the full game from the vendor after trying it.

The new interest in indie games led to middleware and game engine developers to offer their products at low or no cost for indie development, in addition to open source libraries and engines.

Many of the games to be indie games of this period were considered to be the antithesis of mainstream games and which highlighted the independence of how these games were made compared to the collective of mainstream titles.

Indie games saw a large boost in visibility within the video game industry and the rest of the world starting around 2005.

Mobile games became popular with indie developers, with inexpensive development tools and low-barrier storefronts with the App Store and Google Play which opened in the late 2000s.

Mike Wilson, Graeme Struthers and Harry Miller, the co-founders of indie publisher Devolver Digital, stated in April 2016 that the market in indie games is more competitive than ever but continues to appear healthy with no signs of faltering.

Indie games are generally associated with Western regions, specifically with North American, European, and Oceanic areas.

From a conceptual view, indie games generally promote independence and novelty in thought, while doujin games tend to be ideas shared by a common group of people and tend to not veer from established concepts .

Examples of such Indie games include And Yet It Moves, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Risk of Rain, and Outer Wilds.

Examples of such amateur Indie games include Braid, Super Meat Boy, Dwarf Fortress, and Undertale.

When indie games became more popular by 2010, the console manufacturers as well as mobile device operating system providers released special software-based SDKs to build and test games first on personal computers and then on these consoles or mobile devices.

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

The structure of such jams can influence whether the end Indie games are more experimental or serious, and whether they are to be more playful or more expressive.

Indie games are recognized for helping to generate or revitalize video game genres, bringing new ideas to either stagnant gameplay concepts or creating whole new experiences.

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Art games have gained attention through indie developers with early indie titles such as Samorost and The Endless Forest .