Defining "Indie" in 2026 | Extra Credits Gaming

Hypothetical time. If I'm telling you about a game that I've been playing and I describe it to you as indie, you probably instinctively thought of an example of what that game might be like. Maybe something like Journey or Slay the Spire or Balatro. However, you probably didn't think of games like Baldur's Gate 3, Claire Obscure, or Fortnite. Even though by some definitions, these games are indie and these games are not. So, if that is the case, what the heck does indie game even mean anymore? Both gamers and industry professionals seem to use the label indie on multiple and often times contradictory projects. Well, not to worry, friendos. This isn't going to be some unanswerable question we say up top. Rather, we're going to tell you exactly what we think the term indie game really means in the year of someone's lord 2026 because man oh man has it jumped around a bunch. Ooh, and you know what? Big claim. We are going to do it under a budget of 10 million. GET THE LAWYERS!
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TODAY'S DISCUSSION on indie games is brought to you by our independent streaming service Nebula. But more on that after the episode. Real quick up top, once again, please welcome back video essayist, streamer, and Blip O'Clock evangelist that made me a believer in the bend, Jenna Steever, for guest writing this episode. See you around the Fem to Facts, Jenna. So, from an origin standpoint, the term indie in video games did get co-opted from other mediums, namely independent movies, albums, and books. But many things that get absorbed into our gaming space, those monikers can get murky very fast and really don't capture the full implications. Yeah, turns out the video game business is complicated. So, to better understand those nuances, we really do have to travel back in time to look at the circumstances that led us to labeling a game as indie. Okay, so in the early '80s, most games were independent because they were made and sold by hobbyists working out of their homes. Early hit computer games like Mystery House were programmed in just a

few months and sold through mail order catalogs. Developers like Roberta Williams copied the files onto floppy disks and sent them to customers in Ziploc bags. Take that, Steam. This was a wild experimental era of games driven by creators one could easily label as independent. Then by the late '80s, video games were popular enough to become a proper industry, meaning that publishers emerged to handle things like upfront funding for studios, marketing, and distribution in stores. If you weren't with a big publisher, there was little chance that a store would give some of their limited shelf space over to you. So, self-publishing at a scale to compete wasn't really an option. It's also around this time that the term AAA game gained prominence with distributors. Now, this term's full origins are still unknown, though Jenna and I do like to think it sprang from the eye of a pixie when a pure-hearted publishing CEO made a wish for a powerful new marketing term. Regardless, it was part of a ranking system used to

encourage big orders on certain games labeled AAA games at the expense of other games labeled A or B games. In a literal sense, AAA meant a game we've invested a lot in, so we want you to buy a lot of. Then by the early 2000s, the term gained prominence in the gaming community, but it didn't really have a firm definition. Honestly, for lots of gamers, it just meant a well-funded game of high quality, meaning it was also a pretty effective marketing term. That is until the term increasingly started to add the implication of a well-funded soulless regurgitation of the latest trend. Yeah, see publishers weren't always interested in games as an expression of creativity or technical achievement. They were interested in games as investments. And because they controlled the money, publishers had a lot of power over what games were made and they were mostly interested in safe bets. For instance, when something proved successful like the id Software self-published Doom, a lot of money went

into copying and iterating on that. And this set the stage for the second coming of independent games. By the mid-2000s, the accessibility of digital distribution meant solo devs or small studios could once again release a game without the money, support, and influence of a publisher. All you really needed was a website, the digital equivalent of a Ziploc bag of code, if you will. These games often filled in the cracks that the AAA's left behind. For instance, a review of the original indie darling Cave Story pointed out that there weren't many commercial side-scrolling RPGs anymore and quote, "Independent games of the kind are practically unheard of." So, the idea of releasing a game without a publisher was starting to get out there, but the term indie wasn't really popularized until the late 2000s when a string of mega-successful games were self-funded and self-published. And they didn't look like anything else on the market at the time. Players needed a term to differentiate these games from the big

budget, sometimes repetitive, AAA games of the mainstream. And then by the 2010s, we had reached the golden age of indies. It was now possible for small studios to launch a game whose popularity rivaled that of the big boys. You know, just little titles like Stardew Valley or Minecraft or Undertale. This right here was an exciting time because these smaller projects were still the underdogs and an easy and marketable way to label a game that was independently funded and published like these was to simply group them all as indies. But that was never the only thing it meant. Indie was sort of like the second sex of video games. AAA had been the default for so long that indie game started to mean anything that AAA wasn't in the mainstream eye. AAA games were overwhelmingly 3D, chasing the trend of being hyperrealistic and using the highest quality graphics. Indie games had unique and cool art styles. AAA games were retreads of genres like first-person

shooters. Indie games had refreshing, unique mechanics. AAA studios were corporate. Indie studios? Yeah, they're punk rock. And indie studios also seemed to avoid one of the biggest issues affecting AAA studios at the time, the big C-word, crunch. Devs would often work 70, 80, up to 100 hours a week for extended periods without additional compensation. And that was sometimes with a healthy dollop of sexist and racist cultures of harassment. Some large studios still demand, explicitly or implicitly, that devs work 14 hours a day, every day of the week, for an undetermined period of time. Only now they have the privilege of maybe getting laid off immediately after the game ships and is a huge hit or not. This will likely continue until game devs unionize, but that is a story for another video. In comparison, solo devs or small teams seemed to promise a production cycle without crunch, abuse, or controlling oversight. Because you know, these games were made by auteurs, right? Who had an unadulterated vision.

They were creative and innovative. Heck, they were art. And they were made by free-range, pasture-raised, sustainable devs. Of course, we know now that this also wasn't the case. When people make games exposed the abuses at Mountains, Fullbright, and Phenomena, the surprising part was that these were indie studios, supposedly a bastion of good working conditions. While they didn't have the broad, systematic abuses of a larger studio, they still weren't great places to work and I guess now had more in common with the AAA space, but I digress. Now, as the 2010s crawled on, indie still kind of meant a self-published game, but also carried all these implications about the game's content and the studio's labor behind it. AKA, gamers were starting to struggle with what indie really meant. And 20 years later, seems like we still haven't come to a consensus. Because today, those handful of things people mean when they say indie come with examples and counterexamples. Let's kick it off with one. Take indie as

independently published. Well, a lot of games we'd instinctively call indie could be excluded from that. Journey was published by Sony and Balatro was published by Playstack. Slay the Spire was initially self-published, but then later published by Humble Bundle. Minecraft was indie for years and then Microsoft scooped it up and now we have a blockbuster movie that delivers a trauma response to theater workers anytime the words chicken jockey is whispered. So, do those games count as indie or no? Did they at one time? When exactly did that change? On the other hand, Baldur's Gate 3 and yeah, Fortnite technically are self-published. The company that would become known as Epic Games was founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991 in his parents' house. By 2012, the vice president of Epic described the hitmakers of the Unreal Engine as a big indie because they controlled their games with no oversight. Of course, these days Chinese mega-corporation Tencent owns 40% of Epic and Sweeney had to issue statements insisting they don't

control Fortnite or any of Epic's content. Epic started as a small studio, was successful, and expanded. Since it was already self-publishing, it made sense to continue to do just that. So, is Fortnite an indie game? That does not feel right, does it? Or how about like Remedy Entertainment? They've had a lot of publishers in their decades of operation, but moved to self-publishing just last year. So, is Control 2 an indie game now? As you can see, this gets very complicated. To further confuse this issue, Devolver Digital, one of my absolute faves, brands themselves as being independent video game publishers, which does kind of seem a little like an oxymoron. I mean, presumably, they mean that the studios are independent of their oversight. Or maybe it means they kind of look like what an indie game should look like, but then I don't know exactly what that means. But then that opens another can of worms, right? Because if you look at 10 indie games, most likely you're going to see 10 different art styles. Some are so unique that you can tell from a single screenshot what game it came

from. So, it doesn't really seem like there ever was or really ever will be a single defining aspect of indie game aesthetics outside of doesn't look like a AAA game. Because 20 years ago, most AAA games were obsessed with hyperrealistic 3D art that set your graphics card on fire while also somehow being wall-to-wall brown for some reason. So, that meant that by contrast, indie games should be colorful and vibrant. And they could use outdated pixel graphics or low-detailed cartoony styles. Now, largely because of the success of these kind of games, AAA can also now have colors and abstract styles, you know, sprinkled through their highly detailed 3D graphics. But then those also kind of like age out, you know? For instance, the low-poly graphics of the PlayStation 1 were once cutting edge, but as they've aged and become more retro, they too have been adopted by indie games just like pixel art was. But then aesthetics are also deceiving. Like Borderlands has a cartoony cell-shaded style, considered a bold swing for the 2000 era FPSs, but

that was definitely a AAA game. Dave the Diver had pixel graphics, which almost exclusively were used by small studios or solo devs, so it looked like an indie game, but it was made by Mint Rocket, which is a division of Nexon, which is a huge publishing company. But then Dave the Diver was also nominated by the Game Awards in the best independent game category in 2023, causing a bit of an uproar. So much so that the Dave devs had to clarify that they didn't submit their game for the award and do not consider it indie. Similar dust was kicked up by the Game Awards in 2025 when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year, Best Independent Game, and Best Debut Independent Game. There actually wasn't much that Clair Obscur didn't win, and in a lot of cases rightfully so. But since it had been published by Kepler Interactive and had a $10 million budget, it did beg the question, who are the Best Independent Game categories really meant to serve? I mean, hypothetically and historically, I would posit that an independent game

award should highlight a studio that doesn't have as much reach as one backed by a publisher. But listen, different folks, different strokes, right? Some people, including the members of the Game Awards committee, seems like they just believe that indie is kind of like a vibe, man. Please remember that take for later. On the flip side of the flip side of the flip side, indie can also imply a smaller dev team. These days it generally means a team of 10 or less. But then what's the math on extensive use of contract workers? Like Team Cherry is a small studio, but only because much of the work was also outsourced. Or indie can imply a smaller game. And that's moved with the times, too, right? Because in the 2000s, AAA meant an FPS, but now it often means an open world or live service game with three currencies and a hundred systems to fuss with. You're expected to play them for like 500 hours or something. So, indie can mean a smaller world, more focused gameplay, few mechanics, and a shorter runtime. But then it's also expected to be priced accordingly, which then brings up the question, how

important is monetization on a game's indie status? Can an indie game cost $60? Can it have a battle pass? Loot boxes? Microtransactions? Heck, can it have an e-sports league? Ooh boy, this rabbit hole went deep. So, where does all this leave us? Well, first and foremost, in 2026, the indie versus AAA divide isn't really as useful a way of sorting games anymore. Like most binaries, it's ambiguous, burdensome to police, and pretty inaccurate. What started as a helpful label for a counterculture that was differentiating itself away from games in the AAA space has become today in a lot of places basically a marketing term. And look, there's nothing wrong with that. But also, the thing that's important to us, I feel, is the spirit that made indie games awesome in the first place. And most importantly, that has not disappeared. There are now, more than ever, so many incredible studios out there making weird, beautiful, unique games we all love talking about and

celebrating. But as we've discussed here, that vibe can't really quantify the specific things in a game that make it special. So, I think where we land with this is that when we're describing the elements of a game that excite us, for instance, if those things are its accessible runtime or use of pixel art or that it feels cozy or that it was made by a small team or that it was self-published, we can and probably should just be saying those things. Because we're lucky enough to live in a diverse world of video games where just describing something as indie doesn't really cut it anymore. Which, if you think about it, kind of means the indies won. Or maybe it was never really a fight. And it's really that kind of nuance that's always excited me when talking about stuff like this. I mean, I'm a fan of trying to look at video games beyond the various labels we all give them for convenience, which is why it's actually been really delightful finding King K's series Masterful Mimicry over on Nebula. It's an examination of the artistic and cultural

influences in video games, the history of those influences, and how it all comes together. They've got episodes on the canvas that is Okami, Cuphead's painfulness being the point, and the need for faith in Silksong. I actually can't wait to watch that last one, but I am holding off until I 100% that beautiful beast. But you, dear viewer, can check out all of those things right now exclusively on Nebula, an independent streaming service a bunch of my creator friends and I helped build. But if you don't yet have a Nebula account, not to worry. You can use our link below to see Masterful Mimicry plus so much more gaming content you can't see anywhere else for less than the price of a cup of coffee. And while you're there, why not check out a few other Nebula exclusives I love like Legends of Zelda, which showcases the stories of the incredible individuals who contributed to the Zelda games, Abolish Everything, which I am back on, and thousands of other thoughtful, human-made, I will say that again, human-made shows from us and over 200 of your favorite creators early and ad-free. Folks like TierZoo, Abigail Thorn, People Make Games, Lindsay Ellis,

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