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[fenrif]

My point is that "indie" is a completely worthless distinction to make with regards to game development, because it tells you absolutely nothing at all about the game or who made it. Indie devs can be fairly large companies or just one guy in his basement. It can mean a game with a zero-dollar budget or a game with a $3,000,000 budget. It can mean any genre, any amount of quality. It can mean huge established decades old IP, or brand new unheard of before idea.

It's only real use is as a marketing buzzword.

[Enzo]

EA is jumping on the Indie bandwagon, thinking "Small group of devs = Indie!" I think they're missing the point, though I'm not sure if they care. All they see is the huge amount of cash Minecraft made, and they want a slice of that cheesecake.

Or perhaps trying to muscle in on the notion that indie groups are somehow better than big name developers, or just that the word "indie" means something good.

Or that the word "indie" holds any worthwhile meaning at all.

I think I read somewhere (Rock Paper Shotgun?) that EA's using the definition that independent developer = developer who holds full creative control over their games.

Which, fair enough, is a necessary condition of being 'Indie'.  Is it sufficient?  I dunno.  I don't think Indie developers need to be two guys in a garage.

The fact is, the easiest way to maintain creative control is to not have your game published by a megacorporation. I'm not saying it's impossible it happened, but I don't buy it for a second. EA is widely known for by-the-numbers game design and annual sequels to cashcow franchises, it's hard not to snicker when they attach the Indie tag to any of their products.

My point is that "indie" is a completely worthless distinction to make with regards to game development, because it tells you absolutely nothing at all about the game or who made it. Indie devs can be fairly large companies or just one guy in his basement. It can mean a game with a zero-dollar budget or a game with a $3,000,000 budget. It can mean any genre, any amount of quality. It can mean huge established decades old IP, or brand new unheard of before idea.

It's only real use is as a marketing buzzword.

I disagree that it's meaningless and grieve the fact that it has indeed become a buzzword. Didn't it used to mean that the creator had complete creative control and ownership of the work? By this definition, "EA Indie Bundle" is actually an oxymoron, since surely EA has ownership of all the titles in the bundle.

[fenrif]

I disagree that it's meaningless and grieve the fact that it has indeed become a buzzword. Didn't it used to mean that the creator had complete creative control and ownership of the work? By this definition, "EA Indie Bundle" is actually an oxymoron, since surely EA has ownership of all the titles in the bundle.

AFAIK all the games in the EA bundle are part of the EA partners program (or whatever it's called) where the devs can keep ownership of their IPs and work and have complete creative control. Didn't hothead make the third Deathspank game without EA?

RPS interview with one of the guys who worked on both the Deathspank and Shank games in the bundle.

Nels Anderson: First, all the games in this bundle were published via the EA Partners program. It’s the same group that Valve uses to release their games on consoles. It’s actually a very small group of people within EA and the people that run it are separate from EA’s internal studios.

And it really is a partnership. I never saw anything that could even be vaguely considered creative pressure. EAP got on board with the games because they liked the concepts and the developers! I think they understood that total creative freedom was very important to all the developers involved in these projects.

I’m not privy to the financials though. I’m a game designer very much on purpose and avoid the really business-y stuff if I can.

Indie used to (and still should) mean independant of the big publishers. But that basically means that anything on a console isn't indie, and depending on how you define "big publisher" anything on steam isn't indie. But who published the game still doesn't actually tell you anything about the game itself... Or arguably anything about who made it either depending on the publisher.

[nenjin]

At a bare minimum, it's ironic considering EA's long history of acquisitions.

To me "big publisher" generally means they pay a dev house to develop a game or they ultimately own a dev house. Zenimax, EA, Activision all come to mind. Steam is technically a publisher but their role is closer to distributor.

[Anvilfolk]

By the way, Anomaly: Warzone Earth is on sale today for super cheap. It's a very nice game! It's kind of like reverse tower-defense, where you choose the path your troops are going to take into enemy territory littered with turrets of different types. You choose the composition of your troops, upgrade them, make best use of terrain vs specific turrets, etc.

I've personally enjoyed it a bunch

[fenrif]

(toad-edit: removed response to an argument and some posts above)

By the way, Anomaly: Warzone Earth is on sale today for super cheap. It's a very nice game! It's kind of like reverse tower-defense, where you choose the path your troops are going to take into enemy territory littered with turrets of different types. You choose the composition of your troops, upgrade them, make best use of terrain vs specific turrets, etc.

I've personally enjoyed it a bunch

Definatly worth it for 3 quid. I'd recommend Alan Wake too provided the port is decent. Played it ages ago on the 360 and it's got some really good stuff in there. I think the PC version comes with the DLC episodes too?

[nenjin]

Company of Heroes weekend on Steam.

Main game is $1.99! If you've ever even toyed with the idea of trying it, you have no reason not to. It's 1 step away from being free.

You can get the main game, Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor for $10. Although the main game is plenty in my opinion.

[Tellemurius]

Company of Heroes weekend on Steam.

Main game is $1.99!. If you've ever even toyed with the idea of trying it, you have no reason not to. It's 1 step away from being free.

You can get the main game, Opposing Front and Tales of Valor for $10. Although the main game is plenty in my opinion.

ToV is good if you want to do some wave survival matches.

[Sirus]

Portal 2 is 66% off right now. They recently added a test chamber editor for free, which I'm pleased to say works rather well so far.

And what's Company of Heroes like?

[Tellemurius]

Portal 2 is 66% off right now. They recently added a test chamber editor for free, which I'm pleased to say works rather well so far.

And what's Company of Heroes like?

Warhammer 40k in WWII

[Sirus]

Portal 2 is 66% off right now. They recently added a test chamber editor for free, which I'm pleased to say works rather well so far.

And what's Company of Heroes like?

Warhammer 40k in WWII

The original Dawn of War or the sequel? The two were rather different...

[Sergius]

And what's Company of Heroes like?

RTS without the resource gathering and squads instead of individual infantry units.

[Sowelu]

And what's Company of Heroes like?

RTS without the resource gathering and squads instead of individual infantry units.

Wait, are we talking like "Close Combat" style?  How realistic is it?

[Tellemurius]

Portal 2 is 66% off right now. They recently added a test chamber editor for free, which I'm pleased to say works rather well so far.

And what's Company of Heroes like?

Warhammer 40k in WWII

The original Dawn of War or the sequel? The two were rather different...

Original, you had 3 resources to collect for unit construction: men, fuel, and ammo. biggest thing for Company of Heroes was the cover system, have your soldiers duck under a road wall from ongoing machine gun fire. Vehicle have a subsystem damage design so either you blow your gun or a breach on a armor section, alot more but busy at work right now.

[Strange guy]

The original Dawn of War or the sequel? The two were rather different...

Much more like the sequel. Despite caring much more for W40K than WW2 and all the interesting RPG elements I probably enjoyed CoH more than DoW2, though as I've nearly finished a DoW2 campaign and only done a few CoH missions it obviously is not by much. I can't speak for anything but the campaigns but DoW2 felt like a ARPG expect where you have to juggle too many things at once to reach near their potential (but it was easy despite that) while CoH felt like a proper tactical game.

EDIT: There was 2 new replies when I posted. Not super historically accurate from what I've seen. It isn't that ridiculous, fairly immersive until your engineers fail to do anything at point blank range with their SMGs...