hedwards: No, you're refraining from tearing through it because you have nothing.
PenutBrittle: Oh fine. I was tired, but whatever.
Minecraft not only competed, but trounced many AAA games in terms of sales and popularity. It did so on a shoestring budget. Why? Because there was clearly a desire for the gameplay it offered, and AAA developers were not capitalizing on it. Super Meat Boy is one of the best selling games on the XBLA, far and above many non-indie XBLA games because it catered to a difficultly level that AAA games did not. Braid was the fastest selling XBLA game when it came out. Amnesia made more than enough money to continue developing new content without a publisher.
Minecraft benefited heavily from the well publicized PayPal fiasco. Of course it trounced the AAA games in terms of sales and popularity, it's a casual game and it's budget was a small fraction of what it takes to bring an AAA game to market. What's more, many of those copies were sold for a small fraction of what a mainstream developer could afford to sell for.
SMB and Braid I'm not personally familiar enough with to comment on. But, SMB had the option of going harder because of the lower overhead. That had nothing to do with the funding source and everything to do with the amount of funding necessary to release the game.
PenutBrittle: There's dozens more examples and it all came down to filling a niche, whether it be genre, difficulty level or maturity, that was not being delivered. All were largely self funded, which meant publisher interference to make sure the game appealed to the masses didn't interfere. That doesn't mean that AAA games can't deliver on these same kinds of niches, but many don't get the chance due to external pressure.
Dozens out of how many hundreds of small studios? You can be self funded as long as you're willing to eat rice and have a small budget to work with. You're unlikely to ever see a AAA indie game come out, and even if one does, you're not going to see that become routine anytime soon.
PenutBrittle: MS, Sony, Nintendo? Yeah, not indie because they aren't self funded, because that's how the stock market works. They answer to investors, so they have a vested interest in minimizing risks and sticking to what works. They also have intense bureaucratic corporate structures to keep everything running. They get money, and they answer for that money whether it disappears or multiplies. Valve? Valve is a major anomaly due to their lack of corporate structure and bizarre success with Steam. I don't think you can give them any other label than "Valve" honestly, but you could make an argument that they are indie in a way.
Oh, I see, so now it isn't having a 3rd party loaning money. Way to change your argument.
And I'm not aware of those companies selling new shares any time recently, the companies being jointly owned by a large number of people doesn't mean that they're any less independent of publisher meddling.
PenutBrittle: Maybe most indie games are crap. Most games in existence are crap no matter the budget. Yes, nobody with large amounts of external corporate funding contributing to the development of the game can be indie, because then they must answer for that money and therefore aren't independent. That's pretty much the only solid definition there is. It's the
exact meaning of the word independent. It really doesn't amount to any more than that
The only reason it becomes a bullshit marketing label is because people treat it like one. Sometimes it gets challenged by people like the AssCreed 3 producer who considered his team of 600 to be indie because it "had an indie feel", but that AssCreed 3 producer is an idiot.
I see, so now you're changing the definition again and simply stating what I said earlier in a way that doesn't make it look like you're ripping off my definition. And then twisting it even further by adding sneakily hidden weasel words to justify bashing the producer of AssCreed 3 even though you yourself said that it's about control.
PenutBrittle: So no, I don't have nothing. It's such a ridiculous statement I shouldn't even have to refute it, but there you go. Consider yourself refuted.
No, you had nothing, and I'm surprised that you aren't dizzy from all the times you've changed your argument.
