How to separate the Indie-RPGs ?
 

We have always given out Awards for the best and most promising Indie-RPGs. Now the border between Indie and non-Indie is fading. How can we in a fair way decide which game is Indie and which belong into the main category?

What is the Watch's (or accepted, common .. etc.) definition of indie and non-indie?

That's not clear in this quickly changing environment.

Are the Larian games indie? Larian has become a publisher.
Wasteland 2? Has a big budget.
Blackguards? Publisher backing but probably smallish budget.

Well indie should be anything that isn't funded by publisher or investors.

But most indie developers *are* publishers.

That's right, and isn't that the true definition of a Indie= independent RPG, one that does it all themselves.

I think it'll be easier to separate the actual games we have in our list into indie and non-indie than coming up with a boundary.
We could get a team-size or budget limit but even looking past the difficulty of getting and being confident in such info it'll be definitely be arbitrary.

By that definition, wouldn't Blizzard be considered "indie"? Well..before the activision-blizzard anyway.
It's a rather loose term these days..but personally what I would mostly accept as indie are those smaller teams who makes games having a low budget without any large scale backers.
Yes, indie stands for independent..but the term indie has also grown from low budgets and unknown names.

Perhaps you should use now the most promising "crowdfunding" RPG instead of "indie"? That'd include indiegogo, kickstarter or early access games that weren't funded by some big, evil and filthy (rich?) publisher. ;)

Do we really need to separate indie & non-indie? In the end, what matters is that the games are good and worth our time. It does not matter if it is a somewhat basic looking game like say Avernum or a massive game with a graphics budget that would be enough to sustain a small country, like Mass effect (slight exaggeration there, but I think you get my point), they both compete for the same pool of time, and in the end the better game should be the one you play.

No we don't the staff just wanted to see the readers opinion first. ^^

I would suggest

crowdfounded
mobile
low budget PC title

the last category could allow PC titles to have major publishers or even Steam. What "low budget" means can be subject to some interpretation. Its happy medium without the need to throw out anything that's not self-published.

I can't think of any indy console RPG's. There's a fad in 8bit style games but they I can't think of any that aren't just silly.

All games are in one pool.

Every game can win in all categories!

Categories could be:

Best crowdfunded game
Best normal funded game

Best small team/low budget game
Best big team/high budget game

Best turn based combat RPG
Best Action RPG
Best Adventure RPG
…

Best mobile game
Best PC game
…

Best game overall


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So no game have to be pre-selected, the voters vote games into a category.
Nice side effect: An Indie-game can be the overall winner.

You can't separate them and you shouldn't, in my opinion.

A game is a game - and if it's good, it doesn't matter how much money went behind it - and it doesn't matter how much you have to pay for it.

Obviously, a lower budget means lower production values - but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Good indie developers know their strengths and they can pull off a nice visual aesthetic with limited means, like the case is with Eschalon or Grimrock.

Path of Exile looks fantastic for such a small team as well.

Nah, I vote to not care about the budget. That's something that can be talked about in the review.

That goes for crowd-funding, "true" indies, middle-market and AAA games.

Actually I think we're rather leaning towards discussing it a bit more. ;)

The problem with getting rid of the categories is that the results become predictable. As on most major gaming sites, the "biggest" game will win GOTY, simply because it has the biggest community behind. Small games have no chance.

Maybe we should call it "alternative funding" instead of crowdfunding. This would allow Avadon 2 (self-funded) into that category too. ;)

Or what about about that:
We don't create categories beforehand but let you vote on the games you liked best ("Mark all games you have played and would recommend to your fellow gamers to spend their hard earned cash and rare gaming time on"). Then we interpret the results and give out a couple of awards based on them.
And everybody who donates 10$ or more unlocks a special tier which allows him to participate in the staff discussion about the awards. :gorath:

Take all the time you need though as I'm not getting any younger. I think some people love to over think, and worry about every little detail.:biggrin:

Sounds good to me as I want my 10% cut of the profits.:mwahaha:

Ok, I see your point, and you are right my definition is not fitting.

I think on watch it doesn't matter at least seeing what regular posters say games like avadon 2 could easily win.But than again there are lot of lurkers, and it's hard to predict what they will vote.

If you go for something like that maybe you should make thread for discussing results for donors and watchers with 2k+ posts and at least 3-4 years on watch.

The thing is that people do not know for sure what indie RPGs mean because indie is not a factual concept. It is all a matter of subjective definitions.
All we can do is to understand what the others mean by indie to relate to their subjective perception.

So the solution is simple: lets people decide. Put a reward for indie RPGs and let people cast their votes not from a pre established list but from the list of games they consider as being an indie game.

One example of organization.

-The vote period is set.
-In a thread, voters tell the game their subjectivity tells them to vote as the best indie game.
-Vote period is closed.
-Votes are counted.
-The game that collects the most votes is the indie game of the year, no matter what (published by Activision or stuff like that)

This way, once aggregated, you will get the subjectively voted indie RPG of the year.

Counting votes might require some work but nothing bad actually.

I see no reason why indies and non-indies should be seperated like this in context of awards.

As DArtagnan said,What we are doing here are awards given by gamers themselves. The only thing I can think of in context of money is how much the gamer had to pay for playing the game.
So you could have a categorie with e.g. 3 price levels, something like Full Price ($40+), Half Price ($20-40) and Low Price ($0-20). The prices being the ones from "final release" (whatever this means today).

As I think of awards, categories and stuff, we could go totally crazy with multiple categories, where each game can be in each categorie (e.g. Half-Price, Action, PC). We would have an exponentially growing number of awards.
Voting won't be too complex, but will work different. The voters wouldn't simply select a game from a list for each award, but instead rate every (nominated?) game one single time with a certain score (e.g. 0 to 5 stars). Then for each category-combination you just take the fitting games and the game with the best average score wins the award.
Would be a highly dynamical system as you can add and remove categories quite easily, even after the voting.

I'd like that! :)

I don't think the price you pay should be relevant either.

Think about it.

Let's say you got Skyrim at a bargain price of 10$.

Does that make the game inherently better because you didn't pay 50$?

Are you not going to have exactly the same game - just at a cheaper price?

Price is relevant for the consumer, sure, but not for the quality of the game. I don't see it, and I don't like this concept of dividing cheap games and expensive games.

Games = entertainment, and the only relevant factor is how FUN they are. Price can and probably should be talked about - but not as a measure of quality.

All imo, obviously.