A Guide to Discovering Indie Games
By Timothy Tibbettson 06/19/2023 |
Over the years you may have spotted hundreds of game titles on MajorGeeks that you never heard of. These games are called indie, short for independent games, and it's one of our favorite genres of games. Here's some info on what indie games are all about.
The word indie is used pretty loosely, and there's some wiggle room as to what constitutes an indie game, but here's my definition. As little as one person creates an indie game up to a small team. They have little to no budget and no publisher. They tend to lack the polish of a professional game, but most of them are free. Many games are clones or tributes to other genres of video games. Indie games gained popularity in the 2000's with the internet giving small developers a way to reach a large audience and making the distribution free. You can find indie games on most consoles, but the PC is the heart of indie games. You might also play many games built into a web page thanks to Adobe Flash. The downside of indie games is that there are millions of them available. If you're new to indie games, you want to search for the best games by refining your results to categories including "hot" or "best." This way, you will narrow your search to dozens or hundreds of really great games. The cream often does rise to the top here.
You will also find websites, including IndieGames, which hold game developing competitions. These competitions often give limited time to throw a game together, sometimes as little as 24 hours. These games are usually very short in gameplay, and occasionally they are developed further.
If a game gains traction, many indie developers will crowdfund to find a developer or head to Steam to get "greenlighted" and have their game sold there, often for just a few bucks.
No article about the history of indie games would be complete without mentioning Minecraft. It shows you how an indie developer can put a bunch of blocks into a video game and have it become into one of the most popular video games of all time.
Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to meet someone who hasn't heard of Minecraft. It was created by Markus Persson and first released in 2009 on the TIGSource Forums. As previously mentioned, Persson cited three classic video games as his inspiration. He was also a developer for King.com and Jalbum.
Minecraft went out of beta in December 2010 and Persson created a video game company, Mojang. In December 2011 Minecraft came out of beta and had already passed the one million download mark, in just two years. Fast forward to September 2014 and Microsoft purchased Mojang, and Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. As of June 2016, Minecraft has sold over 106 million copies making it the second most popular video game of all time, behind Tetris.
Persson's estimated net worth is $1.5 billion.
Ironically, this sort of success is also about 1 in 1.5 billion (math, lol) because no other indie game compares in popularity and sales. But, the next Minecraft could already be out there. Who knows?
The popularity of Minecraft and indie games have even led to a documentary titled Indie Game: The Movie. It covers everything we have discussed here if you're curious about this genre.
You can find thousands of free and indie games in MajorGeeks Games category. Hundreds of websites host millions of indie games as well. Some tend to lean towards selling them. Frankly, it should be all about (mostly) the free games that are out there as that's the lifeblood of this genre. Once your game goes past 5 or 10 bucks, it's not indie anymore. That's not a fact, but as stated early on some people define indie games differently, but there should be a general rule, for example, ten bucks maximum to be considered indie. When you're on Amazon in the indie game category for example, and there's a 30 dollar game, we call BS. Minecraft is a great example. While it's an indie game at heart, a game is no longer an indie game once a large corporation acquires it.
So, in closing, here are my three favorite websites for browsing indie games:
GameJolt
Itch.io
IndieDB
Again, if you're new to this, remember to browse games in categories called hot, popular, or featured. Otherwise you'll get lost in there. And finally; have fun!
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The word indie is used pretty loosely, and there's some wiggle room as to what constitutes an indie game, but here's my definition. As little as one person creates an indie game up to a small team. They have little to no budget and no publisher. They tend to lack the polish of a professional game, but most of them are free. Many games are clones or tributes to other genres of video games. Indie games gained popularity in the 2000's with the internet giving small developers a way to reach a large audience and making the distribution free. You can find indie games on most consoles, but the PC is the heart of indie games. You might also play many games built into a web page thanks to Adobe Flash. The downside of indie games is that there are millions of them available. If you're new to indie games, you want to search for the best games by refining your results to categories including "hot" or "best." This way, you will narrow your search to dozens or hundreds of really great games. The cream often does rise to the top here.
You will also find websites, including IndieGames, which hold game developing competitions. These competitions often give limited time to throw a game together, sometimes as little as 24 hours. These games are usually very short in gameplay, and occasionally they are developed further.
If a game gains traction, many indie developers will crowdfund to find a developer or head to Steam to get "greenlighted" and have their game sold there, often for just a few bucks.
No article about the history of indie games would be complete without mentioning Minecraft. It shows you how an indie developer can put a bunch of blocks into a video game and have it become into one of the most popular video games of all time.
Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to meet someone who hasn't heard of Minecraft. It was created by Markus Persson and first released in 2009 on the TIGSource Forums. As previously mentioned, Persson cited three classic video games as his inspiration. He was also a developer for King.com and Jalbum.
Minecraft went out of beta in December 2010 and Persson created a video game company, Mojang. In December 2011 Minecraft came out of beta and had already passed the one million download mark, in just two years. Fast forward to September 2014 and Microsoft purchased Mojang, and Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. As of June 2016, Minecraft has sold over 106 million copies making it the second most popular video game of all time, behind Tetris.
Persson's estimated net worth is $1.5 billion.
Ironically, this sort of success is also about 1 in 1.5 billion (math, lol) because no other indie game compares in popularity and sales. But, the next Minecraft could already be out there. Who knows?
The popularity of Minecraft and indie games have even led to a documentary titled Indie Game: The Movie. It covers everything we have discussed here if you're curious about this genre.
You can find thousands of free and indie games in MajorGeeks Games category. Hundreds of websites host millions of indie games as well. Some tend to lean towards selling them. Frankly, it should be all about (mostly) the free games that are out there as that's the lifeblood of this genre. Once your game goes past 5 or 10 bucks, it's not indie anymore. That's not a fact, but as stated early on some people define indie games differently, but there should be a general rule, for example, ten bucks maximum to be considered indie. When you're on Amazon in the indie game category for example, and there's a 30 dollar game, we call BS. Minecraft is a great example. While it's an indie game at heart, a game is no longer an indie game once a large corporation acquires it.
So, in closing, here are my three favorite websites for browsing indie games:
GameJolt
Itch.io
IndieDB
Again, if you're new to this, remember to browse games in categories called hot, popular, or featured. Otherwise you'll get lost in there. And finally; have fun!
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