Indie game facts for kids

An independent video game is a game made without money from a publisher. They often rely on digital distribution, some indie games have become very successful like Minecraft.

Overview

Indie game has no true definition, but has certain features, they are often made by one person or a small team, often smaller than mainstream titles, often not getting money from a publisher. But being without a publisher means that they have no-one telling them what they can and can't do, giving them much more freedom to make a game they want to make. But making a Indie game does not mean they have no publisher. Indie game developers often go to crowd-funding sites to help fund the game, but often make very little profit.

History

Indie games started on PCs where it currently remains. Indie games become popular as shareware. But as better technologies came out people began to expect more from these small teams, indie games have seen a huge rise in the later half of the 2000s.

Images for kids

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  Nidhogg is an example of an indie game that relies on a retro pixel-based 1980s style for its presentation

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  The ZX Spectrum was popular among most hobbyist programmers and helped to kick off its video game industry in the 1980s.

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  N is a 2004 browser game that later was developed into a commercial indie game, N++ in 2015.

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  Fez was one of several indie games highlighted in Indie Game: The Movie as indie games entered mainstream coverage.

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  And Yet It Moves is an example of a student-developed game expanded to a commercial title following the team's graduation.

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  The Independent Games Festival exposition during the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, where indie developers can showcase their games to attendees

See also

In Spanish: Videojuego independiente para niños