What Is an Indie Game? | Unpacked

I think trying to associate a game's indie status based on publishers or budget is a logical folly. When I think about independent movies, and I'm going to be paraphrasing here. There have been times like with Star Wars where they work out a deal with a publisher/producer to bankroll the production of the film, but the indie team retains all the creative freedom's they would have like when they're in their own studio. I think as long as they're a separate company from the publisher, and they retain their creative freedom they could claim the independent developer title. There's still more to it, but I think at least this is the heart of what would define an independent production.

I've defined indie as "has no publisher" but I've met people who basically describe indie as being vibes based, on whether or not developers have full creative control over the game's development, retain X amount of whatever, stuff that's not really quantifiable. I also know people define indie as not being beholden to shareholders, which also doesn't really mean anything because most indie devs have investors or third parties who are otherwise funding the studio. It's a meaningless term now and we are due for a new way to describe smaller budget titles. I've also never been a fan of the term AAA because that's a banking term, a phrase to describe a "safe investment" in finances. And given the amount of layoffs and flops in the past few years, AAA games are no longer safe investments. But we do still need a way to describe games of different financial calibers, if only to describe them in conversation. Otherwise we're equating stuff like Crow Country to Call of Duty