Why Indie Games Matter To The Gaming Industry

In recent years, indie games have taken a lot of traction and, in some cases, even thrived off of being perceived as an indie game. While today’s world may see indie games as another market of games, the gaming industry as a whole owes a lot to indie games being developed.

What Is An Indie Developer?

Indie in this sense is shortened for independent. A single person or a smaller studio acting independently of a publisher, sometimes a publisher may be involved as a financial backer, but the developer will retain freedom of development and make the game that they set out to make.

On the contrary, triple-A studios will take large input from the game publishers and will need to abide by the publishers wishes for the game. This isn’t always the exact case but is a good guideline for the difference between a triple-A and indie developer.

Taking Risks

If there is anything that gives a good example of taking risks, you need to look no further than the current first-person shooter line up of games. PUBG released in mid 2016 to relative success and provided the initial phases of the explosion of battle royale games we have seen over the last 5 years. Most new FPS games that come out seem to have a main focus on the battle royale mode or simply just a battle royale game with nothing else.

The triple-A market for shooting games can feel somewhat stale if you aren’t a fan of battle royale games. Queue Escape From Tarkov. Escape From Tarkov was the first game released by Battlestate games, while not the first game they have worked on, Escape from Tarkov was the first game under the new development studio. The COO of this Russian developer, Nikita Buyanov decided to take the risk and go for the most hardcore FPS game that the gaming world has seen.

The initial beta opened to the public during 2017 to moderate interest, but nothing like that of current triple-A studio titles. At the end of 2019 it happened, Escape from Tarkov exploded and gathered a player base that Battlestate Games never thought possible.

This punishing first-person shooter, often touted as the Dark Souls of FPS gaming, turned battlestate games from a small indie developer to almost the size of some triple-A companies. This nature of risk is what drives our industry forward, a triple-A developer would have only seen too much to lose, an indie developer saw the chance for something new which turned out to be amazing.

Innovation

With the ability to take risks comes a thirst for innovation. Indie games have made far more use of augmented and virtual reality games than triple-A studios have. From a cost perspective, it makes sense that a triple-A studio may shy away from making a game that not everybody has the equipment to play.

From a technological drive perspective, the only way to ensure the adoption of this technology is to make games that support it and visit Black Lotus website too. Indie development studios have given us a reason to upgrade.