Indie gaming is pretty exciting right now. A lot of interesting and fun stuff is coming out, and I hope that indie developers band together to create a distribution model to make their games more noticeable. Perhaps the Greenhouse that PA is launching?

I agree. I've been following flash games for a long time (i am a newgrounds user from waaay back when) and the level of creativity and functionality that flash games have gained over the past 4 or 5 years has been absolutely astounding.

You know, come to think of it, why has Kotaku never written about Mount & Blade? It's an indie game with fairly unimpressive graphics and an underdeveloped storyline, but the gameplay (swordplay, to be specific) is heads and shoulders above any game in its genre.

I would like Indie gaming, if those game's had more depth then just click click click and expect me to remember the game. Although I must say, my fav game of 08 so far is You Have to Burn the Rope

Creative freedom is by far the strongest trait that indie games have. In the end, it's about open expression and relaying either a message or emotional response to the end-user that might not have been achieved by a "professional" or "commercial" dev team/studio. That doesn't mean there aren't any good examples of these types of games released by non-indie studios, but like the original author mentioned above, the PC is also a huge factor in the growing popularity and strength of indie games. These days, we're also seeing more quality indie releases for different platforms, and quantity has increased too. Companies are picking up indie groups more often. Flash games have become more than just the quick, stupid micro-games that flooded the internet in the past decade. Indie games are definately on the way to the top as organizations like IGF and Indiecade (to name just a couple) are recognized by the mainstream game industry. Even juggernaut Microsoft has started their own market aimed towards indie developers, XNACC.

There are quite a few websites dedicated to indie blogs cropping up lately. With all the high budget games being developed nowadays for consoles and PCs, I'm surprised to find that I actually enjoy some of the better-made free indie games more than any game I've paid for. Such indie freeware platformers as Cave Story, An Untitled Story, and Knytt are at the caliber of such classic console games such as Super Metroid and Super Mario Bros. (and in my opinion, actually better!), and nowadays it's not unusual for me to opt to skip playing console games simply to sit down to a good indie game.

I'm a longtime reader of Kotaku but never saw fit to make an account and comment until I saw this topic on the development of indie games, which happens to be a strong interest of mine. I'm interested in developing my own games simply as a hobby and have taught myself to use Flash and Multimedia Fusion 2 to do so. Indie games are just an amazing medium to express yourself, as it allows the player to interact first-hand with your own world (similar to a good book, but with more interactivity and graphics).

I'm actually looking to becoming an indie game maker. The technology definitely has improved for the web-based side. JAVA and Flash both are improving, and it makes me wish there were more portals for JAVA.

I have to agree, just look at the Eyemaze game a few stories up.

But they still can't make a half decent hentai game...

"For every innovative Wii game in the market, there are dozens of innovative Flash games."

Which is blessing and curse. Remember the article about the N++ creators bitching about the uselessness of XBOX Live, because it was so hard to get your game noticed above all of the terrible titles that get constantly submitted? When I look up a site on good flash games, I don't just get a few good ideas - I get a constantly updated LIST with every innovative idea under the sun.

Granted, you can still just get a nice 1000-man niche audience for a game and enjoy playing it on that scope, and every now and then a free online game gets so much good word of mouth that it breaks through (read: Dwarf Fortress). But if your game doesn't have the word "PopCap" in its credits somewhere, then you've got to do a lot of work to get your game noticed above the bajillion other games out there. Frankly, if I was going to develop an indie title and had the small amount of cash to do it, I'd much rather try and get it on WiiWare - or yes, even XBOX Live - where the title could get at least some exposure, rather than just been listed on the IndieGameBlog site of the day where a few people will play it and then forget about it as soon as a new game is posted ten minutes later.