This is a list of developers of indie games, which includes video game developers who are not owned by nor do they receive significant financial backing from a video game publisher. Independent developers, which can be single individuals, small groups, or large organizations, retain operational control over their organizations and processes. Some self-publish their own games while others work with publishers.
Indie Games Studio
There are thousands of independent game development studios which either self-publish their titles, or enter into licensing or co-development agreements with publishers. This list is not intended to be exhaustive with respect to developers or their games, and includes only notable developers and their most notable game examples.
Mobius Digital, founded by Heroes actor Masi Oka, broke through the indie sphere in 2019 after the release of sci-fi RPG Outer Wilds. Starting as a graduate thesis project by USC alumnus Alex Beachum, Outer Wilds was taken on by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game has since received a handful of awards and is what drove the indie game company to create a 2021 sequel, Outer Wilds - Echoes of the Eye.
Founded by two cousins, Night School Studio specializes in highly dialogue-driven and colorful narrative games. Its debut, the critical hit Oxenfree, combines a graphic-adventure mystery hunt with coming-of-age teen-movie aesthetics. The indie game company has since released Afterparty and Next Stop Nowhere, and is releasing an Oxenfree sequel, OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, in 2023.
Subset Games, comprised of former AAA game developers Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, has earned ample recognition in the indie world for games FTL: Faster Than Light and Into the Breach. Its latest turn-based strategy title, Into the Breach, has amassed various awards since its 2018 release, and is available to play on Netflix Games and as a physical release on Nintendo Switch as of 2022.
Created by former EA employees Amir Rao and Gavin Simon, indie game company Supergiant Games has developed critically acclaimed titles Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades. Its 2018 game, Hades, a roguelike dungeon crawler set in the Greek mythological Underworld, sold over one million copies by 2020. Since its release, Hades has earned 19 gaming awards and became the highest-rated game of all time on the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021.
With its work, Thatgamecompany has truly shown video games as an artform to be admired. This was the case for many with its 2012 release Journey, a visually immersive co-op game between anonymous players as they traverse a sweeping desert. Journey was produced by game designer Robin Hunicke, a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and co-founder of Funomena studio. Thatgamecompany has also developed the games Flow, Flower and Sky: Children of the Light.
Known for developing Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac series, Edmund McMillen is an indie game designer whose development was even chronicled in Indie Game: The Movie. After co-founding developer Team Meat, McMillen released his first console game, Super Meat Boy, in 2010. In collaboration with developer Nicalis, McMillen also published games The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The End is Nigh and The Legend of Bum-bo. McMillen is currently developing Mewgenics, set to release in 2024.
An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to lack of publisher support. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
Indie game development bore out from the same concepts of amateur and hobbyist programming that grew with the introduction of the personal computer and the simple BASIC computer language in the 1970s and 1980s. So-called bedroom coders, particularly in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, made their own games and used mail order to distribute their products, later shifting to other software distribution methods with the onset of the Internet in the 1990s such as shareware and other file sharing distribution methods, though by this time, interest in hobbyist programming had waned due to rising costs of development and competition from video game publishers and home consoles.
The modern take on the indie game scene resulted in a combination of numerous factors in the early 2000s, including technical, economic, and social concepts that made indie games less expensive to make and distribute, but more visible to larger audiences and offered non-traditional gameplay from the current mainstream games. A number of indie games at that time became success stories that drove more interest into the area. New industry opportunities arose since then, including new digital storefronts, crowdfunding and other indie funding mechanisms to help new teams get their games off the ground, low-cost and open-source development tools available for smaller teams across all gaming platforms, boutique indie game publishers that leave creative freedom to the developers, and industry recognition of indie games alongside mainstream ones at major game award events.
Around 2015, the increasing number of indie games being published led to fears of an "indiepocalypse", referring to an oversupply of games which would make the entire market unprofitable. Although the market did not collapse, discoverability remains an issue for most indie developers, with many games not being financially profitable. Examples of successful indie games include the Touhou Project series, Cave Story, Braid, Super Meat Boy, Minecraft, Fez, Shovel Knight, Undertale, and Cuphead.
The term "indie game" itself is based on similar terms like independent film and independent music, where the concept is often related to self-publishing and independence from major studios or distributors.[1] However, as with both indie films and music, there is no exact, widely accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game" besides falling well outside the bounds of triple-A video game development by large publishers and development studios.[2][3][4][5] One simple definition, described by Laura Parker for GameSpot, says "independent video game development is the business of making games without the support of publishers", but this does not cover all situations.[6] Dan Pearce of IGN stated that the only consensus for what constitutes an indie game is a "I know it when I see it"-type assessment, since no single definition can capture what games are broadly considered indie.[7]
Another means to evaluate a game as indie is to examine its development team, with indie games being developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies that are often specifically formed for the development of one specific game.[3][9][10] Typically, indie games are smaller than mainstream titles.[10] Indie game developers are generally not financially backed by video game publishers, who are risk-averse and prefer "big-budget games".[11] Instead, indie game developers usually have smaller budgets, usually sourcing from personal funds or via crowdfunding.[2][3][5][12][13] Being independent, developers do not have controlling interests[4] or creative limitations,[3][14][5] and do not require the approval of a publisher,[2] as mainstream game developers usually do.[15] Design decisions are thus also not limited by an allocated budget.[14] Furthermore, smaller team sizes increase individual involvement.[16]
However, this view is not all-encompassing, as there are numerous cases of games where development is not independent of a major publisher but still considered indie.[1] Some notable instances of games include:
Yet another angle to evaluate a game as indie is from its innovation, creativity, and artistic experimentation, factors enabled by small teams free of financial and creative oversight. This definition is reflective of an "indie spirit" that is diametrically opposite of the corporate culture of AAA development, and makes a game "indie", where the factors of financial and creative independence make a game "independent".[21][2][10][16][22][23][24][25] Developers with limited ability to create graphics can rely on gameplay innovation.[26] This often leads to indie games having a retro style of the 8-bit and 16-bit generations, with simpler graphics atop the more complex mechanics.[21] Indie games may fall into classic game genres, but new gameplay innovations have been seen.[23] However, being "indie" does not imply that the game focuses on innovation.[10][27] In fact, many games with the "indie" label can be of poor quality and may not be made for profit.[5]
Jesper Juul, an associate professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts that has studied the video game market, wrote in his book Handmade Pixels that the definition of an indie game is vague, and depends on different subjective considerations. Juul classified three ways games can be considered indie: those that are financially independent of large publishers, those that are aesthetically independent and significantly different of the mainstream art and visual styles used in AAA games, and those that present cultural ideas that are independent from mainstream games. Juul however wrote that ultimately the labeling of a game as "indie" still can be highly subjective and no single rule helps delineate indie games from non-indie ones.[28]
Games that are not as large as most triple-A games, but are developed by larger independent studios with or without publisher backing and that can apply triple-A design principles and polish due to the experience of the team, have sometimes been called "triple-I" games, reflecting the middle ground between these extremes. Ninja Theory's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is considered a prime example of a triple-I game.[29][30] A further distinction from indie games are those considered double-A ("AA"), tending to be from mid to large-size studios ranging from 50 to 100 team members and larger than typically associated with indie games, that often work under similar practices as triple-A studios but still retain creative control of their titles from a publisher.[7][31]
 38c6e68cf9