She's right, you know.
>>726006636define indie
doesn't matter, it's winning the actual goty award regardless of what it's nominated for. and best ost
>>726006692>the actual goty awardKEK
>Hollywood voice cast>multimillion budgetIt's... clearly at least a AA game.
>>726006781Cope all you'd like, faggot
Lobby for Bastion's and Hades' indie awards to be rescinded first and then we can talk.
best part of the story was when Maelle clairobscured all over verso 33 times in a row, very expeditionely
>>726006636Sandfall is an independent studio, therefore the game is an indie game. It's really that simple.
>>726006636Have other indie studios just tried not being poor?
>>726007378i loved when gustave said "its expeditioning time" and got murdered
>>726006636OUR BOY JOHN WALKER! TELL THOSE PUSSIES WHAT'S GOOD!
riddle me this batman, where did E33's multimillion dollar budget come from?
This, indie awards should be for indie games like Dave the diver
>>726007810when did they publish the budget
>>726007131It IS AA, but it's also an independent studio published through a collective of indie studios.
>>726007131"Indie" has precisely fuck all to do with budget, you fucking retard.
>>726006636She's right
>>726007452Is Elden Ring an indie game
>>726007981then a question should be asked on where exactly indie starts and ends.>we hired a bunch of pros to work for us, have a ton of big name VAs, and got a ton of other indies to help shill us>but we are definitely an indie studio!there's a definite line where it stops really being independent, otherwise you could call just about every game an indie game.
>>726006636No, because it's not an indie game. It's a chinese astroturf.
>>726006636It’s AAA but people treat it like an indie just to get an easy win. It's like trannies who participate in female sport and pretending it’s fair.
you people are retarded
>2025>people STILL care about awards showsWhy?
>>726006636You'd have to define "indie" in the video game spherethe Lucas produced Star Wars films are technically indie movies
>>726006636Why should a game made by a group of multimillionares like Silk Song be elligible over grass roots no named devs making games for the love of videogames?
I just love that people glossed over that the studio outsourced to hundreds of devs>but muh 33 people...
>>726006636I'm willing to bet they said nothing when Dave the Diver was nominated as an indie game.
>>726010104they indeed did nothing, but mainly cause all the digging behind that came out when they already won
>>726006636>suffers>image the suffers image here until images can be posted again but not the regular suffers the one where he is crying because silksong has more players
>>726006656Doesn't have a publisher, that's it.Clair Obscur was published by Kepler Entertainment, it's not indie.
>>726006636>Indie game nowadays means a game with over $50M budget
>>726006636Dave the diver winning indie game awards demonstrated that the term is literally meaningless.
>>726010147/thread
>>726006656A game that has a budget under $1mil and was developed by fewer than five people
>>726010147That didn’t stop Dave the diver
>>726010147>Doesn't have a publisher, that's it.Indie is about development, not publishing. The same way indie in film is about production, not distribution.
>>726009979the original Star Wars films were funded and distributed by 20th Century Fox so it'd take an awful lot of mental gymnastics to say they were indie
>>726008086No Fromsoft is owned by Kadokawa.
>>726010138What fucking "digging?" The game was developed by a subsidiary of Nexon, a fact they at no point obfuscated and that was pointed out the moment the nominees were announced.
>>726006636I agree. It's genuinely too high profile to be fair for those. I'll throw my hat into its ring in the game awards because it'll be more equal footing, but if I see this come up at an indie focused game awards thing, I'm going to go out of my way to dodge it. The point of those is to showcase shit that maybe flew under the radar a bit. Shit like Expedition 33 and even Silksong do not belong.
>>726006636isnt the game backed by ubisoft and tencent and multiple companies or something and have their own publisherhow is it indie
>>726010302No, it has nothing to do with development. There are countless low budget titles published by large and well known developers. Hi-Fi Rush was very low budget for Tango Gameworks compared to Tokyo Ghostwire, is that indie?>>726010297Dave The Diver is also not indie.
>>726010302I find it baffling that videogames is the only medium where the concept of an indie label/publisher/distributor is in dispute, in film it is widely understood that independent films have distributors, in music it is widely understood that indie musicians release their music through indie labels, it's only in games that you see people saying something isn't indie because it has a publisher behind it
>>726010383it isn't listed as a nexon anything on its product page dude
>>726010368Starting from Empire Strikes Back up to the prequels weren't funded by Fox, they were funded entirely by George Lucas himself.
>>726010405>>726010427Kepler doesn't own Sandfall. There is no one above Sandfall telling them what to do.
>>726010401>The point of those is to showcase shit that maybe flew under the radar a bit.This.The point of an indie game is to let people know that there is a low-budget game that many missed, which is an absolute gem.
>>726006656small budget games."indie" (no publisher) has lost its meaning because small publishers are now HUNTING for even the most niche indie. there's no more true indies nowadays.
>>72601036820th Century Fox only distributed. Only the first film was studio funded. Every other movie in Lucas's two trilogies he funded himself
>>726006636its like saying kojima's studio is indie, shit is stupid and just a popularity poll if it gets into the indie game awards
>>726010427Because budget is irrelevant, it's about who is developing the fucking game. This isn't a hard concept to grasp, fucknuts. Dave the Diver is a low budget game, it is still not indie. Star Citizen has a frankly appalling fucking budget, it still is.
>>726010606>Dave the Diver is a low budget game>10million is a low budget.Are you guys sane?
>>726010373is Guilty Gear an indie game>>726010449Because if you used the definition the movie industry does then everything that isn't made by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent, Netease, or EA is an indie game.
>>726010469>>726010554by that point Lucasfilm's was pulling in enough revenue from the merch to be considered a major studio on it's own
>>726010551Baldur's Gate 3.
>>726007810Its publisher, and possibly its director. Wherre else would it come from?
>>726008159You guys always say "we need to ask the question" instead of ever giving an answer. How many times has this thread been made and nobody even tries to think, you just claim it's impossible and tell other people to figure it out.
>>726009910Because games are being astroturfed, and this one in particular. When a game needs to be shilled, Steam charts and Metacritic ratings matter. When it doesn't, they don't.
Why are libtards upset at this game? It was literally made by redditors and hugely successful and they're still not happy?
>>726006636game was made by a nepobaby with a gorillionaire father. it's not indie, nigger, regardless of whether or not some gay journo agrees with the sentiment. kill yourself at your earliest convenience would you
>>726011660Being filthy rich is one way to not be dependent yes.
>>726011660Show me the birth certificate.
>>726010147Some indies do have publishers though, because there are indie publishers. What's Devolver Digital? It's what the publisher is doing that matters and how big the team is. Advertising a game, making a website, covering the production costs, etc. obviously doesn't make a game not indie. There's a difference between a publisher like Sony and one like Atlus, one like Annapurna Interactive. Stop being retards guys.
Look when I got in to indie games it meant "published via forum link" or maybe, maybe, purchased direct from the dev's website. I'm not changing my mind, I don't care if I die the last person to remember emailing a dev to ask for his game because the rapidshare link was broken, I'm not calling some million dollar funded industry standard tool using steam store purchasable shit indie.
>>726011731>Being dependent is one way to be not dependent yes.you are a parody of a person
>>726011528oh i'll tell you the line exactly, i just wanted these retards to think about it:when your game would simply not exist without help from outside of the core dev group (asset makers included in the dev group for simplicity) or the people involved are too far removed from the actual vision for the game>game inherently bound to a big companynot an indie game, obviously>game hires a bunch of coders that do not share the game's visionnot an indie game>game is funded by a companynot an indie game>game's mechanics and decisions go through a thousand layers of corporate bullshitnot an indie game>creative control is not entirely contained within the dev group/project leadnot an indie game.minecraft for example stopped being indie the literal second microsoft bought it.
>>726010821When Lucas made Empire and Return, LucasFilm had five employees. They are both, by every metric and definition, indie films.
>>726010147>Kepler Entertainment>LITERALLY a conglomerate of indie developers that help each other out for publishing>LITERALLY every game they published is unanimously considered indie>BuT nOt ThIs OnE cAuSe It WaS mAsSiVeLy SuCcEsSfUlLunironically neck yourself
the conversation surrounding this game has been so shit it managed to make me like it less
>>726010147COD and GTA indie games now according to /v/
>>726012058All of them aren't indie yes. They're literally depending on each other.
>>726011587Posting on a "looking for free voice actors" subreddit once doesn't really make you into a Redditor.
>>726012523This posting template is always gay as hell. You're not going to manipulate people into posting the way you want them to post by threatening to change an unrelated opinion.
>>726007810The director sold his house.
>>726012058>Kepler Entertainment>LITERALLY a conglomerate of indie developers that help each other out for publishing>LITERALLY every game they published is unanimously considered indie>BuT nOt ThIs OnE cAuSe It WaS mAsSiVeLy SuCcEsSfUlLand here I am thinking it was all the indians...
>>726007996What does it have to do with then? Not having an external publisher? In that case like 90% of actual indie games aren't indie and instead Sony and Nintendos first party games are. E33 wouldn't be indie either in that case.
>>726010289>developed by fewer than five peopleDoes that include outsourcing or are you talking about a 100% inhouse production?
>>726013316Did he have a $100mil mansion in malibu or something?
>>726007460I loved how Lune says "It's me. I am the Claire Obscure" whenever consuming a light and dark stain.
>>726013846The game had a fairly tiny budget for what it is.Using the UE asset store to the max helps.
>>726007810Does that really matter? They made a good game with that money, so I couldn't care less where it came from.
>>726010147Then like 90% of indie games aren't actually indie, while a good chunk of AAA games are indie.
>>726006636>entered itselfA Clair Obscur just flew over my house, holy shit.
>>726013846He got like 1 million euros from his apartment in Paris.
>>726006636>AA budget >Publisher>Movie in production before the game comes out>Indie The word has lost all meaning.
>>726013934and then she met this guy and when he said "I am Clair Obscur, and your Expedition 33 ends here" I cried
>>726012665if you co-pay rent with your room mate, you both as a unit are indipendent, yes
>>726006636>John WalkerReminder he's a fat pasty English wh*te boi who called Mike Pondsmith racist due to the Voodoo Boys without knowing he was black, then doubled down when he found out and people called him a retarded fag.
>>726012648GTA was developed by rockstar games and published by Take 2. COD was developed by infinity ward and Treyarch and is published by Activision.
>>726010551Of course there are, games without a publisher. There's literally several dozens of them released each day on steam.
>>726014806Rockstar is owned by Take 2. Infinity Ward and Treyarch are owned by Activision Blizzard.They are not independant because their publishers are their parent companies who have full control and ownership over them.This is not hard to understand.
>>726014921Doesn't matter if the publisher owns the dev studio or not, having a publisher at all disqualifies from the indie labelling.
>>726014972>having a publisher at all disqualifies from the indie labellingFar too narrow a definition, but that's up to you.Just bear in mind that in that case Balatro, Stardew Valley and other single-person developed games would not be considered indie when all a publisher did was distribute it.
>>726015195Its only narrow to a fraud or phony.
>>726014972i hope you realize that ALL self published developers NEED to register themselves as publishers to be able to self publish, and technically speaking that's considered 2 separate entities(developer and publisher), meaning that ALL indie games, including self published ones, have a publisherso by your own definition, ALL indie games that fit your critieria of self publishing aren't indie games
>>726007810>riddle me this batman, where did E33's multimillion dollar budget come from?The director worked very hard doing his chores and tidying his room so Dad gave him it as pocket money.
>>726015436Don't even try, anon. He's straight up retarded.
>>726015436>inb4 that's bullshit or technicalitiesit might be, but it's the same difference between owning a business and being a self-employed owner, it's the technicalities that puts you into or out of a category
>>726015436No, you don't have to.
>>726015521So Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 should've been nominated for Best Indie, right?
>>726006656Any game that doesn't make back its budget.
>>726015436This is simply not true btw
>>726015436Nice lie
>>726010401This is the dumbest post in this thread.>The point of an awards show is to praise something nobody playedThis is how you get a film like Moonlight winning the Oscar's Best Picture and get people to say "this award show is rigged."
>>726015521Best indie game this year was Donkey Kong Bananza.
>>726010147Stardew Valley was published by Chucklefuck so i guess that's not indie either. Stupid fucking retard. Where do you mongoloids come from?
>>726006656passion projects without suits' money and deadline
>>726011573>astroturfedDiscord raider self-reporting himself.
>>726015762You are correct. Chucklefish is a publisher.It's hilarious that vidyagames don't know what indie actually means.
>>726012523i'll change the themeIm currently playing through the game right now. Im in act 3, clearing some "super bosses" before i start what i believe is the end of the game. i havent watched any reviews or media about the game at all. its just on gamepass so im playing it. I would recommend that people just watch a Letsplay of the game and avoid playing or buying the game entirely. The story is interesting, but the gameplay sucks.I will hit the limit if i explain how poorly crafted the combat is in the game. but to keep it short there is almost no connection between animations and their sound cues and when you are suppose to parry. And once you learn the timing, you dont even need to look at the screen, just remember the timings of the beat and counter attack til its over. There is pretty much no tactics other than stacking equipment buffs and ap gains for huge counter attacks and big numbers from skills. the game goes out of its way to not be engaging. its a shame since the world theyve built is nice, but the gameplay ranges from boring to intentionally frustrating, because someone played elden ring and thought it would b great to do animations even worse.
>>726010401>And the award for best racing game goes too.. you guessed it! Clair Obscure Expedition 33!
>>726015523>>726015639>>726015682you LITERALLY need to if you want to actually publish your game properly, and it has to do with how taxes and distrubution works for the videogame industry, where you need specific requirements(which are part of being a publisher) to be able to compound your earnings from your game as legit incomeand no, being able to sell your game on steam doesn't mean publishing it>>726015579>Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 no cause CDProjecrt Red(as a publisher) is a PUBLICLY traded company>BG3literally yes, cause Larian(as a publisher) is a PRIVATE owned company which self-published their game
>>726006636It's way, way more indie than Dave the Diver ever was.
>PLEASE LET SILKSONG/HADES HAVE SOMETHING AT LEASTlmao
>>726016007>no cause CDProjecrt Red(as a publisher) is a PUBLICLY traded companySo Half Life Alyx was indie, right?
>>726006636Well it literally isn't an indie game since they had publisher backing, but even by the new definitions of "indie" it's really borderline because it's a new, small team with multiple complete newbies to game dev, but it's also got a lot of experience and the team size (not including outsourcing, but that's a factor too) is above what you could reasonably call "indie". So yes, I would say it's a small developer rather than an indie developer.
>>726016183Industry experience has jack shit to do with how independant you are.
>>726016007>You need to publish your game if you want to actually publish your game properly.Firstly, you said you "NEED to register themselves as publishers", which is horseshit straight up. You're claiming that every self published game went through the months long arduous paperwork of registering as a publisher. Secondly, and more importantly, you don't actually have to do that - especially if you're not selling anything. You simply don't understand what indie means. Indie means broke ass niggers.
>>726013956>>726014226I really wish we had more details on that whole project. A core team of approximately 40 designers/producers +X outsourcing +assets off the store +X QA outsourcing. Even with government grants and shit, that can't have been cheap.
>>726016227That's not true and you know it, industry old hands are NEVER indie, they always form new studios every single time
>>726016285And why can't that new studio be an indie studio if it's formed and operating with no outside ownership?
>>726016151and now you discovered the difference between Valve and Valve Corporation, congratulations on your first step into economics>>726016235>which is horseshit straight up.it's literally not, and what i claimed can be verified>You're claiming that every self published game went through the months long arduous paperwork of registering as a publisher.LITERALLY YESif you don't believe me, go ask ANY self published(and again, simply being able to put your game on steam does NOT count as publishing) inde game dev.You are all confusing publishing vs distributing.If i make a game, register as a developer on steam and release my game there, i am DISTRIBUTING my game, i am not publishing it, cause i am not a publisher.If do all of the above AND register as a publisher, then my game is self published and i can benefit from all the perks of being a publisher.
>is it AA or indiehow about just A game
>>726016267According to them, it wasn't particularly expensive, the FINAL staff was 33 people+7 koreans and QA was done for dirt in eastern europe.
>>726016371"Indie" doesn't mean what it should literally mean considering Dave the Diver won an indie award despite being owned by Nexon and as the other anons are talking about Half Life Alyx was an indie game by literal definition, yet it isn't. Being established in the industry absolutely precludes "indie" status, even if the literal meaning of the term contradicts that
>>726015746Mentall illness or bait.
>>726016285>industry old hands are NEVER indie>work for 5 years in a gaming company>never do anything relevant>you are an industry oldhand now
>>726015762No Stardew Valley is not indie
>>726016617I can believe it given then didn't do much, if any, under the hood tinkering with UE5.Kinda like an RPGmaker game but on UE5.
>>726016617>the FINAL staff was 33 peopleStrange because the credits has hundreds of people, its almost like they're lying.
>>726016641Dave The Diver wasn't indie by ANY definition other than "pixel art game".Basically everything else being argued here here has justifications that can be disagreed on, but Dave The Diver 100% didn't belong by anyone's metrics and The Game Awards proved itself to be a complete joke with its inclusion.
>>726016617Yeah but that's an insanely deceptive statement. It's like those team pictures of Team Silent with 10 people or Bethesda with like 50 people but those are only the core producers and lead designers. Neither their sub-teams nor the third party companies are included.
>>726016794>pianists and singers are devs nowBharat moment
>>726010147Publishers can be hired for distribution anonIf the publisher funded development, then you have an argument
>>726016882"Gay" used to mean "happy"
>>726017017Still does, Mr Gay Anon.
>>726016901>but what about the chief finance officer at the outsourced Portuguese localisation office!!!
>>726011587Reddit loves this trash game retard
>>726016943They didn’t contribute to the game? Seems like the ost one of the things being praised the most
>>726017230Tell it to The Grammys.
>baguette game is an indie game even though it hadd 200 million funding from 3rd party studio>dave the diver is not and indie game because it found a big name publisher????????????
>>726016901Because if you make a functional game with 40 people, and everyone else is QA and translators, then they are still 40 people.
>>726017416>>dave the diver is not and indie game because it found a big name publisherDave The Diver was an internal Nexon project. Nexon didn't just publish it, they developed it. In-house. Using Nexon company resources and staff on Nexon's office time and Nexon's dime. There was no point in the game's existence where it was anything other than a Nexon game. From inception to release.
>>726017230The composer and main singer ARE listed as part of the staff, as they made the music.
>>726017528But it's, at best, misleading. Those people are only involved in the design and overseeing final stage of assembly. They neither manufacture the parts nor assemble the product. They are the architects and foremen on a jobsite. They don't pour the concrete or cut the planks, they make sure it's done right. BY OTHER PEOPLE.
the truth is they threw it in that category, because they already promised the big win to one of the big boys (probably Sony and Kojima).They know it's the best game of the year, but they sure aren't going to award it best game of the year. So they gave it the indie category, so now it's only cucking Silk Song, and not a "real video game".
e33 is AA, even the devs themselves say so
>>726013689in cases where there is an external publisher, it can be further refined to whether it was developed in cooperation with a publisher or if a publisher came in near the end
>>726006636>NOT MY INDIE GAME AWARD!!!Let's be honest.Maelle is the only reason we're talking about this "no one cares" award
the term indie should just mean game made by people who are relative outsiders to the industry.And yeah, that doesn't really work with E33, because they all worked at Ubi and quit. They're a new modestly sized studio. They're not "indie developers".Hollow Knight was an indie game because it was made by like three guys, who previously only did stuff on Newgrounds.
Beyond a certain budget and amount of developers working on a game it shouldn't be considered indie anymore. That doesn't seem very controversial.
>>726016794Credits are deceptive.They include middle-management that books sound stages, moves computer equipment, etc.You'd know this if you weren't retarded.
>>726011873>There's a difference between a publisher like Sony and one like AtlusThere wouldn't be if Sega still sold hardware, Atlus is just a label.
>>726007810Daddy
>>726014651No? You can't have the room without the arrangement after all.
>>726018774Nobody cares about Maelle, pdeo.
>>726007810>multimillion dollar budgetWe've still yet to see any evidence this is true. Garavayan gave $10M to Sandfall after two years of development, and we don't know how much they actually spent in the following year before release
>>726016794The amount of people who worked on E33 is tiny compared to the amount that worked on Obsidian's recent games......... I bet you TOW2 is at least 3 times more expensive to make than E33. Heck Metaphor Refantazio is probably 2 times more expensive too.
>>726016943you think all the hundreds of "devs" in AAA games which you complain about all day aren't also random janitors and shit you fucking retard?
>>726010147this. only the slop jrpg you made in gamemaker is truly indie. and if it gets more than 20 reviews on steam it's not anymore
>>726016794Look at who's in there. They included everyone at the publisher, all the QA, dogs. They had to pad the credits to be long enough for the song. The team at Sandfall has a group photo. I counted 32 people including the dog.
>>726018210How is it misleading for E33 then? Their core team (people actually working directly under Sandfall in Montpellier) was around 30-40 people (including interns and shit) + the 10 Korean dudes working part-time on animation.
>>726006656Self-published.
>>726021292>How is it misleading for E33 then?Because people are stupid. If you walk up to anyone working in corporate vidya development and show them a picture of a "dev team," the size of a football team, of a bigger game they will instantly know what they are looking at. But if you write a headline of "-BIG GAME- was made by 30 people" and attach a group image of the dev team that shows those 30 people the reader will buy that at face value because he doesn't know jack shit. He doesn't know about the asset store, he doesn't know about outsourcing, he doesn't know about third party contractors. And if that article isn't elaborating on exactly those details then you end up with that gigantic nothing burger that was the flood of "E33 was made by 33 people" headlines we've had a couple months ago that everybody just ran with.
>>726020634is that why every area is generic?
>>726006636Truth is most journos hate actual indie games because they view them as low budget trash for lacking graphics, voice acting, bribes, and popularity. Anytime you see an award for "Best Indie" they are saying that they think the game is only good because of how far apart it is from being actually indie
>>726019989actually, i think youll find plenty of people care maelle, fgagot
>>726010082>they didn't make the engine themselves? outsourced!ok buddy
>>726006636>Always uses Lune for article headlinesThey know what the people want.
>>726006636It should be up for both the regular GOTY and indie GOTY. That's how good it is. Also it's soundtrack should be up for best music.But obviously this entire shit is rigged from the start so fuck the game awards.
>muh snoy awardspfffthahaha I sure am looking forward to what dogshit snoy game gets snoy of the year (not)
>>726025261>a single game should be up for everything>otherwise its riggedlmao , everything is rigged retard. always. and you are a fucking retarded shill
>>726010147this
