Indie Game Development
According to the dictionary, ‘indie’ is a casual version of the word independent. The name ‘indie’ is frequently used for a person who contemplates, and cares about matters one wouldn’t find in the mind of adolescents. An indie is a business, developer or even designer that does not have the support of a large corporation, especially a global one.
In the early 1990’s PC gaming was growing rapidly and creating video games became cost-effective for the PC. During this time, Indie game developers started to make games but it was quite difficult to search free information on the internet as it had not yet completely developed. By the time the 1990’s came around, the independent scene began to thrive in an unusual way. Independent games were repeatedly used as proof of concept, occasionally leading to an individual developer’s capability to become hired by a major company.
During the 2000’s, everything for indie games changed. The obvious reason for this is the internet. Platforms started forming such as Flash or XNA game studio began to put the power of development in more hands. Indie game developer’s community (or indie game scene) centred on the internet, organised web pages, portals, blogs, Twitter, forums and IRC channels. Indie Game Developer’s community is generally closely linked to “Demo scene” and Open-Source communities. For Indie developers it is highly useful to keep intimate relationships with the local community and to create a firm fan base for their company.
A few years ago the gaming industry made roughly $90 billion in sales worldwide. Large gaming studios have been making mistakes constantly like micro transactions on a full retail game, to massive bugs to the games to on disc-DLC. Gamers are starting to get annoyed by this so they are starting to turn into indies because they will less likely face these problems. Big companies like Nintendo, Sony, and (in some extent) Microsoft are slowly going to the direction of indie development.
The International Game Developers Association (IDGA) surveyed 963 people working in the games industry earlier this year and data from respondents found that when it comes to diversity, 74% of workers are cis males, 61% are White/Caucasian/European, and 81% are heterosexual, despite the popularity of respondents declaring diversity in game development to be “very important” or “somewhat important” to them. “The DSS (Developer Satisfaction survey) should be concerning for every person who loves the construction, business, or play experience of games”, wrote IDGA in the introduction to the study. “While the submerging mass of game developers recognise the significance of diversity, game development as an occupation can still be unhospitable, with half of the survey respondents endorsing inequity”.
Bibliography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_game
https://www.quora.com/Are-indie-games-slowly-becoming-mainstream