Chris Charla discussed the distinction between the two.
There are more and more outstanding indies every year, and sometimes it feels like the popularity of AAA games from grand studios is decreasing, giving way to small developers and their fresh ideas (no wonder, with all those endless sequels).
Those same corporations also notice the change, apparently. Chris Charla, the director of ID@Xbox, Microsoft's self-publishing program for indie developers, talked about the distinction between indie and AAA games, saying there is less need to separate the two now.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, during the Develop:Brighton conference, he said that players nowadays don't care as much about these labels and can have both indies and AAA titles in their libraries. However, it matters when it comes to the business side of development and publishing.
"For consumers, we actually need to separate it less and less. ... So on a creative side, I don't think we have to separate them, but there is still value in separating them on the business side. Typically, indie developers are much smaller, they have a totally different relationship in terms of capitalisation and how often games come out and things like that. On the business side, there's still a huge difference between AAA and indie, although on the creative side, the output might be different but from a consumer perspective, they're all just video games."
The number of indie games is growing, and there is no need to group them up at showcases anymore, according to Charla.
"We don't need to do an ID@Xbox montage, we can just have these games stand on their own. ... The number of minutes now dedicated to indie games in that presentation is huge. Even when you look at some of Microsoft's biggest initiatives like Game Pass, we've had something like 600 ID@Xbox games released through Game Pass. It's foundational."
But if the distinction is diminishing, how do we even know what an indie is? Charla decided not to dig too deep into this because back in the day he used to spend "an enormous amount of time fighting about what was and wasn't punk … all those muscles are burned out."
But he still offered a glimpse of his view on the matter, saying that it all comes down to creative freedom – the term that means different things for different people.
"If you've got complete creative freedom, and you're just making the game you want to make, you're independent – whether you're being funded by yourself, or a big company, or whatever."
Charla is optimistic about the future of indie games. While there is a lot to worry about, especially business-wise, more people play games every day, so there is no need to fear the industry might flop.
"Now it's weird if someone doesn't play video games. For a 12-year-old kid today, regardless of gender or anything else, video games are as normal as reading a book, and that just gives me so much hope for the future."
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