My first session of the day was the State of Independent Games roundtable run by the IGF director Simon Carless. As with all roundtables (well, almost all) the discussion was sparse in the beginning and rather heated by the end. Simon started us off with the question "What is an indie game?". This is a very good question because the definition of "indie" is indeed a term that is defined differently by many people. Personally, I see indie games as anyone not affiliated or driven by a publisher. By this I mean that they are making games solely for themselves, there is no one telling them "oh, well... feature A really isn't something we see benefiting the game, it should be cut". They make all the decisions and control the game from start to finish. There were also some other broader definitions like just not being funded by a publisher or any venture capital, or using alternate distribution channels. Yet another definition focused on indie games as experimental concepts, or in other words games that don't follow mainstream ideas. Still everyone agreed that an independent game is a game that you want to make, not something a publisher hands down for creation.

Simon Carless (standing) addresses the rather packed room (more people arrived as the session went on)

The real heated discussion began when the topic of finances and independant development came up. Namely the fact that at some point indies are faced with the question of whether to stay indie or go mainstream, and where do you draw this line? Indie developers have to make a living yes, but the question is where do you start becoming more concerned with making money than you do making games that are actually good? This sparked a lot of debate amongst the attendees and even called into question the IGF's selection of games. The point raised was that the IGF should really focus on games that haven't become widespread and well-known in order to become a vessel for the true indies, the guys who don't have the resources to get their game out to the widespread market. However the flip side of this is that it assumes that games that have made it big marketing-wise are backed by large budgets or something, whereas it could actually be one of those small games that is just really good and viral marketing, word-of-mouth, got that game well known. So if the game isn't well-known why should the IGF focus on it if there's a better chance it could just be crap? Then this raised the question of the IGF judges and how they should be able to weed out any crap games anyways so why should there be an issue? By the end of the session opinions were flying all around the room.

Raigan Burns of Metanet (N) on the left was the lead driver of heated debate

Another topic that came up was consoles. Xbox Live is starting to sweep up some indie titles - GarageGames already has some titles on Xbox Live, and Reflexive has their game Wik on Live as well. This begged the question of whether the IGF will someday have a console competition as well. It also brought up whether console games can really ever be considered indie games since you have to go through the console publisher in order to get your game on it.

A final topic was put forth by Russell Carroll from Game Tunnel where the IGF should only accept completed games as submissions to the competition. He defined completed as a game that you would be able to release for public consumption. Despite this definition debate once again was sparked over "completed titles". Raigan Burns from Metanet posited that indie developers sometimes can't get the publishing resources and that those who do would have an advantage over those who don't, sort of losing sight of Russell's definition. The game doesn't have to be published, it just has to be in a state that would be considered releasble.

All in all it was a good session. Simon in fact had to end it in the middle of debate, and the room dispersed into groups of developers talking over the topics presented during the session. It's too bad roundtables are not recorded, I would have recommended this one to any indie developer.