Any artistic medium has a subset of ‘indie’ producers or developers and videogames are no different. Film has indie student flicks; music has garage produced albums; books have Amazon self-published novels; and the gaming industry has indie titles that come in so many different shapes, sizes, and forms and are currently shaking up the industry like an earthquake. Back in the retro days of gaming, Nintendo had a Darth Vader chokehold on game production, which didn’t allow for indie developers to publish their titles on Nintendo gaming systems. This all changed with the PlayStation and later with the Xbox, as people could now develop their own titles and sell them for use on these mega-behemoth consoles. In the past few years, indie titles have become some of the hottest and most discussed titles in the industry … and here’s why.

Difficulty
Even with the release of games like Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodbourne ramping up the difficulty and tear inducing madness of videogames to 11, many gamers still believe that modern videogames are simply too easy with campaigns that you can blast through in less than 10 hours. For me this isn’t a problem, as I hate difficulty and enjoy games more for the gameplay, story, voice acting, writing, level design, artwork … and basically all other aspects; plus you can just increase or decrease the difficulty of most games. There is a growing trend amongst indie gamers, however, to have one difficulty which should be listed as ‘finger crushingly difficult’. Recent smash hits Spelunky and Super Meat Boy are a throwback to the difficult platformers that were around at the start of gaming’s life. People love the sense of the achievement when defeating these games … if they don’t throw their controller and console out of the window first through sheer frustration.

Artistic Merit
Personally, this is the best thing about indie games: the ability to actually become artistically viable. There is a great push in videogames to be taken seriously as an art form and be heralded alongside the Oscar winners and Booker prizes shortlist. There are some mainstream titles that do manage to achieve this, for example, Bioshock and the The Last of Us spring to mind, however, when I first played Journey and Limbo I had the same sensation the first time I read Midnight’s Children or saw The Godfather; this was art in its purest form: an expression of the human experience that touched me deeper than any Halo or Call of Duty game could ever do.

Individuality
The reason many of these indie developed games can be taken so seriously, is because they have more freedom to be innovative and to broadcast their own individuality. Big budget games usually have to stick to formulaic designs because they are made for massive budgets and have to sell millions of copies to turn a profit (Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, etc). Indie games are usually made for little money and even the smallest sales figures are considered a success. These games, like Limbo, Journey and Ori and the Blind Forest, have the freedom of a smaller budget and a hell of a lot of creativity, which leads to them being the complete antithesis of the mundanely repetitive FPS genre.

Innovation and Retro Paradox
This is an interesting point about indie games as they seem to contain within them a paradox, as they can be massively innovative like Journey or Minecraft whilst at the same time having a retro feel with the likes of Spelunky and then you get some that are both at the same time, as with Limbo. I believe this paradox has bled into the world of mobile and browser gaming with the various King games and gambling games on Sun Bingo having the same duality. These are games that hardly change the core structures of games from 30 years ago, but they are innovative enough that they create the paradox. All of these games exist as a bridge between the future and the past and I think it’s this connection that endears them to so many as they are both nostalgic and an exciting showcase for the possibilities of the industry.

Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an interesting phenomenon of recent years as it allows for people to pitch an idea of a product, business idea, film, or game and have ordinary people donate money to help fund its creation. The big gaming companies like Microsoft and Nintendo will never need to do this, but indie developers can struggle to get the funds together and so need to find funds elsewhere, as is the case with the recent Norwegian led developers Snowcastle Games who recently released the excellent – yet challenging – turn based RPG Earthlock: Festival of Magic, which is currently free to download for Xbox Gold subscribers. This means that fans have a greater degree of engagement with their favourite games and it allows for a market where the most exciting and interesting games are the ones that get produced because it’s up to the gamers and not the suits in the offices to decide what makes it to production.