why indies cant charge.

[cronjob00]

I was just thinking about this after reading some forums and talking with some people. It seems that if you are an indie developer and you decide to sell you're game instead of giving it for free that you are a sell out or are no longer indie it seems looked down upon to sell a game. Which sometimes gets me a bit upset I always see it as if you are an indie developer and you want to release free games then that is great and I look highly upon that, but at the same time I do not see why someone who designs and makes a unique, fun quality game should be looked down upon because they want to charge. If you look at indie music scene they make money and people don't care, indie movies make money and people don't care it seems to only be games. maybe it just annoys me sometimes when people assume it should be free if it is something I enjoy I do not mind paying for specially knowing what it takes to make a game and how much hard work went into it maybe its just me.

[Falco Girgis]

Hey, I completely agree. If you create something, you have every right to sell it. I completely disagree with any "indie elitist" that says otherwise.

[cronjob00]

yeah I was reading through an indie game studios forums and they had released that there next game wouldn't be free and there was all this backlash from there community of gamers and developers saying that they lost there support for selling out. I was like how does making money off of something you work hard on and enjoy and other people enjoy how is that selling out.

[amcadam26]

yeah, I completely agree with this post.

I think it's still good to have a free lite version. But make it worth while upgrading to the full version.

Kind of like the shareware model.

[ChrissyJ91]

I see no reason why indies can't charge, at the end of the day its up to them. you can still make money by selling your wares and not be commercial which is what they obviously didn't understand.

[cypher1554R]

If you sell your game you're not indie anymore, but you're not a sellout either.. You're just someone who would like to make a career out of it, and proceed in that direction.

You can't sell the game and call yourself indie.. forget it.
It beats the meaning out of the word.

[amcadam26]

If you sell your games, you're not indie

????

No, we're losing track of what being an indie is here.

An Indie Games developer is one that develops games without having a publisher pay for the development, so they are totally self funded. That AFAIK is the definition of being indie.

Not sellign the software you write is being a freeware developer, not the same thing as indie.

Being Indie is seen as being cool though, cause it means you're not part of a large umbrella organisation like EA.

[Chaos Clown]

Well, to me at least, Indie means that you don't have a publisher breathing down your neck all of the time, constricting your creative freedom and forcing you to meet deadlines and forcing you to release an unfinished, sub-par game. If you choose to charge people to download your game, or sell it via mail order, you're still indie, because you're independent from a publisher.

Besides if one guy's toiled for years to make something truly unique and brilliant, shouldn't he be able to make money from it?

Look at Jonathan Blow and his game, Braid. He put $100,000 of his own cash into his project, and didn't have a publisher the whole time he was making it. It took him more than 3 years to create. Now, he's selling it on Xbox Live Arcade. Does that make him "un-indie"? I don't think so

By the way, if you haven't downloaded and completed Braid yet, you should. It's probably the only game I've ever played that I can truly call art.

[cypher1554R]

If you sell your games, you're not indie

????

No, we're losing track of what being an indie is here.

An Indie Games developer is one that develops games without having a publisher pay for the development, so they are totally self funded. That AFAIK is the definition of being indie.

Not sellign the software you write is being a freeware developer, not the same thing as indie.

Being Indie is seen as being cool though, cause it means you're not part of a large umbrella organisation like EA.

Okay.. That was news for me.. :s

Didn't know that.. Guess you're right.. :P

[cronjob00]

If you sell your games, you're not indie

????

No, we're losing track of what being an indie is here.

An Indie Games developer is one that develops games without having a publisher pay for the development, so they are totally self funded. That AFAIK is the definition of being indie.

Not sellign the software you write is being a freeware developer, not the same thing as indie.

Being Indie is seen as being cool though, cause it means you're not part of a large umbrella organisation like EA.

yeah I think its more or less that people just have the wrong idea of what indie means think most of them are thinking of freeware developers.

[cypher1554R]

yeah I think its more or less that people just have the wrong idea of what indie means think most of them are thinking of freeware developers.

heh.. true

[Trask]

Maybe it's people thinking that they can't sell the game because they believe it won't sell because they don't have the big name to sell it, which isn't a good reason not too sell at all.