What’s A Real Indie?
I guess I better define what I mean by a “Real” Indie.
A “Real” indie, by my definition, is someone who makes their own games, and get’s the vast majority of their income for their products directly from the buyer, and not as a royalty from a publishing house or portal or other entity. Someone who isn’t limited in what they create by the editorial limits of the channel they’re publishing through.
You could argue that everyone is limited by their customers, but that is really only a personal limitation, and a problem successful developers have. If you are trying to get your games on a portal, the genres and styles of games they will take are limited to what they think they can sell, which is an external limitation, and is something “Real” indies try to avoid.
It may sound like I have something against independant development studios that publish through major channels, but I don’t, really. I just am not that interested in what they have to say as, at least the business portion of it doesn’t pertain to my business (such as it is). I’m not interested in creating a big team, or making casual games, or fitting a perception.
I, and others like me, want to make the games we want to make and sell them directly to customers and build relationships with those customers if we can. We’re not interested in growing teams or making hits for the sake of making hits or any of the other crap.
And with that said, a list of my heroes.