Talk:Independent video game development

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This article is within the scope of the Wikiproject Indie Game Developers a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Indie Game Developers and their games. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

I made the 'list of independent game developers' but the article got voted for deletion, so maybe this link should be removed? -Fixed. Changed to List_of_indie_game_developers which is an already existing page that seems to have been deemed ok to keep.


REED: Added Well-known indie games section, because many of the most influential indie games have been one shots, it makes more sense to have a section about individual games, rather than just companies.

Contents

[edit] April 2006

User:Knoland recreated List of independent game developers in March 2006. When I found it, it mentioned PopCap Games and Flying Lab Software. I've added Flying Lab to List_of_indie_game_developers (PopCap was already there) and changed List of independent game developers into a redirect to List_of_indie_game_developers. —Chris Chittleborough 10:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

The first paragraph states that indie developers originated as a reaction to the established industry, even making it a requirement for the term "indie", whereas the second paragraph claims both originated at around the same time. This contradicts strongly. Wouter Lievens 08:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Its not necessarily a contradiction, in that they do not refer to the same thing. The term and community of "Indie" developers would have defined itself as a result of the industry, but Indie games themselves are only referred to in the first paragraph. The second paragraph relates to a pool of un-hired/unorganized talent. - Guy who doesn't really get how to sign this thing (user 151.203.125.99 (talk · contribs))
I think I've resolved this as part of a general cleanup, so I removed the contradiction tag. -FunnyMan 06:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Great work! Well done. Thanks, FunnyMan! CWC(talk) 10:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] October 2006 edits

I've just reorganised the "See also" section to use 3 columns. I noticed that we have articles about Game Tunnel and Independent Games Festival but only mentioned them in External Links, so I added "See also" links to those articles and dropped GT and IGF from external links. I also added a link to Manifesto Games.

In addition, I changed the descriptions of all 4 remaining links. Note that my descriptions of GameTrove and madmonkey are rather uninformative. (I just grabbed the first halfway decent quote I found on their websites.) Someone please put better descriptions into the article.

Cheers, CWC(talk) 09:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cheapass games

while Cheapass Games is a great company, "independent tabletop game development" is the rule, not the exception, and pretty much every single tabletop game developer (with the possible exception of Wizards of the Coast and other developers owned by Hasbro) falls well within the definition of what would be considered "indie" in the video game industry.

Therefore I removed the section about them (and "indie tabletop gaming" in general) from the intro. Luvcraft 00:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spam?

Are some of the links questionable or is it just me? They're all about Indie games, for sure, but some of them seem a bit too much like free advertising. Also, some of the sites may not be notable. Anyone have an opinion? Should I remove the tag? -- Solberg 09:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Solberg

[edit] Categorize

I recommend we develop a category for Indie Games, the list on the page is only going to grow and become unwieldy. Instead the list can be used to summarize the most notable Indie Games, and the category will contain all of them. If nobody minds, when I get around to this, I'll try to do exactly that. -- Solberg 04:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)Solberg

Where are the forums? It is so hard to find an indie game forum nowadays.

This article is of quite poor quality not even to have decent forum links. How can someone get a sense of the indie experience without knowing where its players are?

I did some categorization work with the links, and linked to three of the biggest forums for independent game developers. Hope this helps.

[edit] Source Citing, Quality etc.

The article very clearly needs to cite more sources, and makes many bizarre assertions - why 'up to 10' developers? Why are 'RPGs, roguelikes or Flash games' easier than other genres/mediums? And, knock me down with a feather, more complexity takes more time - who'd have thought? Dan MacDonald's articles at Gametunnel[1] may be a help with regard to the dearth of sources, and it would be helpful if similar commentary on the industry was added to the talk page to provide further - and more diverse - material. - AlKing464 (talk) 21:26, 22 November 2007 (UTC)