The World of Indie Games

Indie-ana Jones!

How is it that indie games are so important to the games industry as a whole then, I hear you ask. Oh, you weren’t asking that? Nevermind, you can shut up and listen anyway. I’ll tell you where the toilet is in a moment.

Indie games are creative, that much has been established. The inventive take on staid and static gameplay is what distinguishes a real indie game from a breakout clone made without a big publisher. It’s what defines the genre; this much I’ve already covered.

So, how is the future of the of the games industry being controlled by the subculture of indie games?

Well to understand how indie games are affecting the larger market, perhaps it’s good if we have a close look at an indie game which made it big. Let’s take, say The Bone Series from TellTale games. Bone is an episodic adventure game based on the popular, independently published comic book series of the same time.

Released to good, but not overwhelming reviews, the game was formed by a group of ex-Lucasarts employees who left the House of Star Wars to form their own company with a focus on adventure games. I imagine telling George Lucas that you’re quitting, and that you are taking one of the best of Lucasarts’ licenses with you, is something which takes a real enthusiasm and passion for adventure games.


Released at a time when the adventure game was considered to be well and truly dead, the game was barely a blip on the radar of most reviewers and was eclipsed by other September releases. However, the game proved successful enough to gain a core following and to prove that the adventure game still had some life in it if it could be placed in a new and updated model.

Gathering momentum and experience, TellTale games was able to use Bone as a starting point for their business and used the funds to relaunch the Sam and Max franchise into a new, 3D era thanks mainly to the adoption of an episodic format which allowed funds to be bought in much more quickly. What Sam and Max and Bone lacked in revolutionary gameplay, they compensated for with a revolutionary way to rejuvenate the adventure game genre.

Bone isn’t a lone example either and one needs only look at games like Uplink, the low-tech hacking simulation which spring-boarded Introversion Software into the limelight with Darwinia and DefCon.


The same is also true of Penumbra, the gorgeous technical demo of which pushed Frictional Games into the eyes of gamers everywhere when the fantastically detailed demo, which uses an exciting and freeware physics engine, got over a million downloads. The success of the demo galvanised the team at Frictional Games to make their own episodic series of shooters, starting with Penumbra: Overture.

The effect of indie games can be seen in other areas as well, such as the previously mentioned Narbacular Drop, which reportedly so impressed Gabe Newell and Doug Lombardi that they hired the developers on the spot and tasked them with making the first non-Gordon Freeman escapade in the Half-Life universe since Blue Shift.

Facade on the other hand has proven so successful and innovative for the realistic conversations generated by the A.I. on-the-fly that it has launched its creators to Internet stardom as experts of gaming writing.