"Indie" Is A Stupid Word

[Music] hey let's get talking so the question I have for you Z is when does a studio get big enough to not be called an indie studio that's a that's a really loaded question so that would consider you guys in indie studio yeah yeah I mean I actually think it's not necessarily the size but I think a lot of times is like source of funding right yeah and also just culture you can have you can have like a three-person team and if this team is you know backed by venture capitalist and you know investors and and you know started by someone who's very renowned in industry and you know that that might be just like a like a legit company you're not necessarily a startup all right I'm Zak yeah I've seen I've seen like there are a couple games out there that it's really it's kind of tough to consider them as indie like like

opponents so killing floor um yeah yeah killing I don't know if you've heard about them it's by a company called tripwire interactive they were like you know less than ten people at one point before they made killing floor they were just 100 percent bootstrapped no investors but then you let you know let you look at their games and it's like holy like they they make some pretty crazy stuff same with Aven colony which is developed by Paul tozeur it was a good friend of mine his team is three people but they're making this game that looks like Sin City and he he was the AI director behind all the Metroid Prime games that you worked at rare you know it's just like a lot of times it's hard it's kind of like a thin line so I think god yeah I think it has to do with the team culture right if you're making a game that you really believe versus you're making a game to try to generate your annual margins I think that's probably what really defines what idea is okay yeah I I'm going through this phase where I'm getting kind of pissed off with the constant use of the term indie

game because it's becoming more like I just scrolled through the Nintendo switch store and it's just it's slowly becoming more and more loaded with the games which is amazing like that's awesome but there's like I don't know if I'm right here I could be completely way off base but it seems like there's way more indie games than regular games on the switch store and it just seems like gaint like indie games are like just normal games now like in the 90s you wouldn't call Super Mario an indie game but it it behaves as an indie game like if you play it now it feels like an indie game so I don't know like the whole idea of games being independent I just wish we had a different word maybe just small games but then again they're not all small games you know in my case my games are small but I think I think it's just become an overused term and I don't know if it's very descriptive you

know what I mean yeah I fully understand its I firmly believe I try to not use the word nd all together with industry I actually Snow I'm starting to do that yeah I stopped defining serenity for it as an indie studio about like two years ago and I think I'm really helped us in like just placing ourselves in the industry because then people see us more as more of a company as a startup you know I as someone who is here to create products and also you know find solutions for real world needs and all that so so I don't know if for us it definitely helped for me I helped with my personal identity you know I can okay I can still define myself as an indie game dev just because I have been like I was a freshman in college making my own you know solo games before so I can kind of like understand what that feels but unless if you're in that scenario unless if you're a college kid you know making games in your basement I really don't feel like indie is an appropriate term

for yeah anything well I mean it's like if you if you're not a regular consumer of indie games whenever you hear that term you're gonna think okay so this game is artsy it's silly it's short and like maybe it's something maybe pixel art the pixel art is like you constantly see that in indie games and that's just not the case with a lot of these these new indie games coming out yeah they're just games that are it's in scale and I think that's really really special with quote unquote indie games I think what makes them really special is because they're so low budget because there's such a small scale they got a the developers got to make sure that the gameplay mechanics and the hook of the game is perfect and really really special otherwise you've just got a mediocre game all together right so there's there's a focus on gameplay and making unique things like didn't the whole concept for portal start as an indie game or at least an indie idea y'all started with a really small team and then they took that really legit

like diamond in the rough concept and turned it into this triple-a title yeah yeah I mean I would almost argue that the difference between an indie studio versus a non indie studio is whether or not you care about your business outcome like if you're if you're releasing your game and you don't care whether or not it makes any money at all then I would say you're an indie developer otherwise you're that's hilarious yeah well you I think indie developers to remain sane need to have that posture yeah because otherwise like for me like when I when I want to pinch stripe last year it was like the hardest month of my life it was insane because I had I didn't have expectations like I didn't think I'm gonna make a million bucks but I had this some Koch subconscious feeling that please god I hope I make some money here you know and I think that any developers need to they're almost required mentally and emotionally to make games just

because they love them because like you said you just don't know how it's gonna do oh yeah I mean it kind of like the whole spirit of India is to create art right in a way create something I make people think or something like that so if you are yeah doing that but then when you're releasing the game you start thinking about oh what if I gave make money well the problem is you never intended to make money while you're making that game why are you like you know why are you slapping that crack new criteria for success awesome you didn't do during the past you know four or five years of making your game so I feel like there's an identity crisis for a lot of these indie develop I think so I think so and you know dude I'm just gonna say it I hate hanging out on Facebook and see all the all the stupid memes about I'm an indie developer and I made $10 a month that kind of stuff I think it's really damaging to the indie listen I just want to stop saying Andy but I don't know what else to say but it's damaging to the indie mentality because it starts turning it into what was me I'm a exhausted indie developer who's

not making any money when in reality we should be we should be posting celebratory posts about how fun it is and how lucky we are that we get to even make games like this this whole concept of sitting in your garage which I'm in my garage right now and making games that would have was never really a thing I mean maybe it was for like Rare where when they were making banjo kazooie but like that really wasn't a thing in the triple-a industry in like the 90s in the early 2000s like this is the coolest job in the world so I don't want to complain about how much money I'm making or or whatever and I'm certainly guilty of that but seeing these memes on Facebook it's just kind of frustrating you know what I mean yeah I I know exactly which I'm a part of and I want to be a part of them but I'd also want to encourage them to be more positive right yeah so like what I personally found I'm kind of split like I completely agree with you on but at the same time I want to just

take a quick step back and look at the I guess I the best way to say it is like the socio-economic situation right of these game developers and I think it's kind of crazy if you look at these people making these posts they're usually like you know non-american sometimes not even European right like they're in there Asian yeah South American African you know like a Middle Eastern like tons of different descents and it's awesome and yeah it's like it's really cool that these people are going on Facebook make you fun of their own careers and you know actually making a video games like imagine that it's about like 30 years ago or even 20 years ago it's like it would never happen for anyone from like China or something like that because they just don't have that resource so a part of me I would say that I'm really glad that our industry has also much in the barrier of entry is so low that anyone like literally anyone middle schoolers high schoolers can pick up unity and start making their own games and start you know like Jenni identifying themselves as a game developer and that to me like that's the positive side of