Indie Developers: The Forgotten Link in Gaming

Developers for Indie games don’t have a place in PC gamers’ hearts and thoughts anymore. Indie developers are only noticed by real PC gamers and some regular PC gamers who seek games that are really made for the people and their gaming dreams.

Indie game developing began around the 60s and 70s

At that time there were no big gaming companies that dominated and competed for the best company title. After nearly 30 years, Indie developers started looking for big companies to publish and distribute their games, or even share the games with their family members and friends to decide whether the games were going to be recognized.

Other Indie game developers during that time period shared their completed projects on shareware that was dedicated to games, like BBS. These places distributed games to many companies that were, back then, small and thriving, like Apogee Software (now 3D Realms) , Epic Megagames (now Epic Games), Ambrosia Software and id Software.

This gave consumers the chance to play the game before investing money in it, and it also gave them exposure that some products would be unable to get in the retail space.

Now (the year 2013), Indie developers are rarely talked about or encouraged–they’re rarely supplied with staff experts, funding for their project or even advertising. There are some websites who are still trying to keep this small branch in the gaming industry alive and nearly growing like Indie DB and IndiePub.

These websites try to revive the Indie developers by making their games known to the public.

Almost every Indie game is free to download from sites like the ones listed above.

I have enjoyed several new Indie games, and one I have really enjoyed is Game Dev Tycoon by GreenHeart Games. The game is brilliant and takes you into the role of a gaming company where you have to face every challenge a real gaming company faces. I don’t want to ruin it for those who are going to think about playing it after reading this article, so if you would like to see more on the title, go here.

There are many other games like this out there that are really great, but they are unknown due to lack of publicity and advertising. The Indie gaming industry is really a wonderful part of the gaming business, and I wish people would try to play these games which are sometimes much more fun than huge AAA games.