Game Awards host and producer Geoff Keighley has shared his thoughts on the debate surrounding Dave the Diver’s nomination for Best Indie Game.
The game’s nomination sparked a debate over what constitutes an indie game, because despite its conventional “low-fi” appearance that some indie games have, its developer Mint Rocket is a small team within Nexon, a South Korean company who earned $1.8 billion in 2017. revenue in 2021 alone.
During a recent Q&A session on Twitch, Keighley was asked for his thoughts on Dave the Diver’s Game Awards nomination.
Keighley responded that the definition of an indie game is difficult to define and that ultimately it’s up to the Game Awards jury to choose the nominees.
“Look, that’s a great question,” he replied. “Freelance can mean different things to different people, and it’s a pretty broad term.
“You can argue: does independent mean the budget of the game, does independent mean where the funding source was, does it mean the size of the team? Is this a sort of independent spirit game, meaning a smaller, different game?
“I think everyone has their own opinion on this, and we really rely on our jury of 120 global media who vote for these awards, to determine whether ‘this is something independent’ or not.
“You know, in other industries sometimes there are things – I think in the film industry the budget can’t go over that amount or it’s not independent, so I don’t know.
“Some people have said that Larian and Baldur’s Gate 3 are an independent game. Kojima Productions with Death Stranding, some say it’s an indie game. And even though it is an independent studio, it is of course funded by PlayStation.
Keighley also pointed out that some of the other indie games nominated for this year’s Game Awards have publishers, asking, “If you have a publisher, is it still indie or not?”
Speaking specifically to Dave the Diver, he said: “This game is made by a group called Mint Rocket, it’s a smaller game from a smaller group but it’s part of Nexon, they’re employees from Nexon which is a very large publisher. So I think it’s a fair debate and discussion: is this game truly independent or is it not?
“And you can kind of argue both ways. It’s indie in spirit, and it’s a small game, I don’t know what the budget is but it’s probably a relatively low budget game, but it’s coming from a larger entity, whereas There are other games on this list that come from many smaller studios.
“But even something like Dredge is published by Team17, so is it independent or not, because you have a publisher?
“It’s a really complicated thing to understand and come up with strict rules, so we let people use their best judgment, and you can agree or disagree with the choices.
“But the fact that Dave the Diver was on that list meant that out of all the indie games the jury looked at, or what they thought were indie games, this was one of the top five they looked at This year.”
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