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What does it mean to be “indie”

It popped up in a few places in the #xna community on twitter the past couple days with different opinions on what one might consider "indie" to be. I had my idea of what it meant to be indie but it's slightly changed after reading other people's perceptions of the idea.

-Gerald Terveen, via indienerds, says:

You are indie …

… if your game design decisions are not based on exterior influences (like money, a boss …)

… if the motivation to create a game comes from yourself and not an exterior influence (like like the need for money, or a boss…)

… if you´d rather give away your game for free then see it getting lost

… if you know everyone involved in the creation process by name

… if you are free in the choice of your distribution channel (no that does not mean you need to be able to publish via XBLA!)

… if nobody else has a sayso in any decisions in your “company” (if you want a yellow bath duck in your company logo, then you can have it!)

-Philippe Da Silva, via indiefreaks, says:

“Indie” is simply a translation of “Startup” or if you prefer, “Indie” is synonym of “Underground” or “Garage company”.

Basically, he says that funding, or having a publisher, is just fine and you can still be considered an indie. Developers creating games and targeting the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace might be considered hobby or garage developers because of XBLIGs track record. Much time and effort has been made by many small companies but with little return because it's just the wrong target audience. He suggests putting more effort into finding a publisher "that will bring the visibility they need" to reach a more mainstream audience which will likely result in more exposure, more downloads and, in return, more sales.

-George Clingerman posted via Google+:

"This is easy. Indie games have less than 100 people in the credits."

It was actually one of his kids who came up with the response above but it's relating to the fact that indie companies are usually comprised of a small number of developers. 100 people might be quite a bit high but the premise of "indie = small" is still true. I would guess that 99% of "indie" companies are less than 15 or so people.

Before reading all these different opinions I think my perspective of what it meant to be indie was the following: a small team of less then a dozen people, self funded and a 'do what you want when you want' attitude.

Size. I think it's safe to say that the size of a company has a correlation to the indie meaning. Sure, there's professional companies, with a publisher, made of only a handful of people and there's probably companies out there consisting of 20+ people that are self-funded but I think those examples are few and far between.

Funding. When a publisher comes into the picture your ideas will likely be influenced, for better or worse, but the game will turn out differently than how you first envisioned it. A publisher will most likely push your game to be more polished, along with other things, in the long run but you might lose some of your 'initial vision' along the way. My initial stance on this changed because of Philippe's argument that if you want to reach a more mainstream audience, a publisher is a very good way of going about that. Trying to reach a huge audience of people is made much much easier through Steam or XBLA. Thinking you're going to reach the masses Minecraft-style is silly because that's a very rare situation.

Do what you want. Most indie companies start this way. You come up with a great idea, make a prototype (or possibly the whole game) and then decide what to do with it. If you want complete control with what you can do with your game then it's probably in your best interest to keep the IP close to your heart. Taking this route though is a path less traveled: you'll release it yourself, do the marketing yourself, do the support yourself, etc. Going the route of finding a publisher has its benefits in taking some of the load off of your shoulders but anyone that knows about the Super Meat Boy story also knows how terribly wrong it can go.