{"id":4486,"date":"2023-07-07T16:35:10","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T14:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/?p=4486"},"modified":"2023-07-07T16:35:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T14:35:10","slug":"are-there-any-real-indies-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/2023\/07\/are-there-any-real-indies-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Are there any “real indies” left?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before getting into this blog post topic, I want to thank everyone who supported my Kickstarter campaign for ToA: An Elven Marriage. If you haven’t and are just waiting for the game to come out on Steam, please wishlist it now!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know this is a provoking title, but listen to my reasoning first! The term indie means independent. When first started doing this, was also called “Shareware games” back in 2003-04.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
TV Station Manager, a game I made back in 2007. I was still using 800×600 resolution!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back then, you\u2019d make your own game for a few months, release it on some websites, and see if people liked it or not. You had full control over your creative vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But things have changed a lot in the last 20 years, from 2003 to 2023. I have many friends in this industry and I know some insider stories. Nowadays, most indie teams create prototypes or \u201cvertical slices\u201d of their games, showing different gameplay elements and stages, and then pitch them to publishers. If a publisher is interested, they fund the development, and there are different types of deals, from upfront payments to milestones and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The details of the deals vary, but that\u2019s not my main point. My main point is that without a publisher\u2019s support, many of those indie teams wouldn\u2019t make their games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is this different from being a hired developer? Sure, there is still some degree of independence, but not much. And it\u2019s not just your idea anymore, but also the publisher\u2019s money and influence. Sometimes, publishers even ask for changes in gameplay, characters, art-style, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is this \u201cartistic\u201d? It seems more like working for someone else to me, someone who can also stop funding you, cancel your project or interfere with your vision (I\u2019ve heard many horror stories about that).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you consider that, on average, 9 out of 10 indie games on Steam top10 ranking are published by a publisher, you realize how little \u201cindependence\u201d is left. Not much, in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not saying this business model is bad, obviously it works. Many of those teams are making much more money than I do doing this. And in a way, I do something similar with my crowdfunding campaigns, where I present my idea for a new game to an audience and see if they think it\u2019s worth making. But it\u2019s mostly my fans who support me, and I still have a lot of freedom in making it (how else could I come up with a game like \u201cAt Your Feet<\/a>\u201d??? LOL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
despite what you might think, this game has some nice romantic scenes and varied love interests<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, I\u2019m just wondering if you can still call yourself indie in this scenario, and if this was a real progress or a regression. In 2003-04 we got rid of the middle-men. Now, 20 years later, they are back. For now I\u2019m still indie, and I hope to stay that way until I retire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before getting into this blog post topic, I want to thank everyone who supported my Kickstarter campaign for ToA: An Elven Marriage. If you haven’t and are just waiting for the game to come out on Steam, please wishlist it now! I know this is a provoking title, but listen to my reasoning first! The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4490,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions\/4490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.winterwolves.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}