Opinion: Indie games have died as a Counterculture
Independent games have become an integral part of the global gaming industry and have ceased to be its antipode, says Rami Ismail, indie developer and co-founder of Vlambeer Studio. He stated this at The Big Indie Fest @ReVersed gaming conference, held in Austria on July 5-8.
Ismail said that at the dawn of the era of indie games in 2010, their creators cared less about the commercial success of their works. Game development was regarded as creativity and was even opposed to high-budget projects of large companies. But the success of games like Fez and Super Meat Boy proved that indie titles can make good money.
Along with this, over the past decade, more and more tools have appeared to facilitate the process of creating video games. As a result, the main task for most independent authors was the promotion and sale of their products, while development faded into the background.
Rami Ismail believes that the failures of individual indie studios do not affect the continued growth of the independent games market in any way. He compared it to the music industry, which has had a full-fledged indie scene along with major publishing labels for quite some time. He noted that today the definition of “independent” in relation to gaming teams is losing its significance.
“Do you want to be called an indie studio? For God’s sake! Don’t you want to? Well, don’t. The real goal of any video game creators is to bring happiness to people. So we’re just proud to make games. Hurrah!”, Ismail summed up in his speech.
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