Coco's Sub

The term "indie" (independent) has a very specific structural definition. It isn't a genre or an art style. It's not a buzzword, in spite of how people use it. It’s a business and creative architecture defined by two non-negotiable pillars. 1: A true indie is self-funded, crowdfunded, or operates without equity ties to a major publisher. The developer and/or the team bears 100% of the financial risk. If the game fails, they fail. The insidious part of "Triple-i" Indie games is the masquerade they portray. They may appear at first glance to be a passion project made by one or a handful of people. In truth, they're being handled by "hands-off" corporate backing or venture capital. While they look indie, they are financially insulated by the same institutional systems they claim to be independent of. They are essentially mid-market (AA) games wearing an indie skin to capture community goodwill. They may fail, and if they do, then the parent company simply cannibalizes them, fires the developers or re-hires them as mid-level staff, then tries to find another way into the consumer market. 2: A genuine indie has no outside board of directors, parent company, or publisher-side producer who can mandate changes to mechanics, tone, or monetization to meet a corporate KPI. It's them, their ideas, their thoughts, and their attempts at maximizing revenue upon release, if that's even their priority, which for a number, is not. They simply want to make a game. 'Triple-i' manifestations essentially turn the facade of indie studios into small-scale professional products. They can make incredible games that forces actual indies into an artificial arms race where "polish" is used as a gatekeeping metric to drown out mechanical innovation or simply the monopolization of time. From where I'm standing, this is turning into a means of disempowering individuals to keep the big industry alive. It can kill them, though, by increasing the amounts of losses they sustain by losing the goodwill of the consumers, these big conglomerates can die by a thousand cuts if they continue on their trajectory. But so long as people buy their bullshit, they'll continue to play the great pretender. So long as it snuffs out genuine indies, and puts money in their pockets instead. They don't care that the ship could be sinking, as long as they're in the lifeboats first.