FEATURES,INFLUENCE AND POSSIBLE FUTURE OF INDIE GAMES ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Varun Sriram Zongming Han ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ M.S. Game Science and Design M.S. Game Science and Design ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Northeastern University Northeastern University ​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ [email protected] [email protected] ​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​

ABSTRACT

The term “Indie” is short for “Independent” which describes the independently funded ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ game companies/organizations. Starting from 2009, there has been a huge rise in the number ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ of companies and surprisingly, they succeeded in attracting a huge multitude of ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ players. This study analyzed the influence that indie games had on both the player and ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ developer’s perspective. By conducting one-to-one interviews, we gleaned information about the ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ possible reasons for such an influence of indie games, as well as the possible future of indie ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ games. Keywords: Influence, Indie games, game, emotions, experience, interviews, qualitative ​ ​ analysis

1.INTRODUCTION

The main objective of this research is to identify the reasons for the recent growth and success of the Indie game industry in the recent past, and the possibility of the future of indie games. Before around 2012, games were often published by large companies usually with a significant amount of investment. was a platform for 394 games during 2012. A whooping 1479% increase was recorded in the year 2016 where steam held 5037 games that year, as pointed out by Galyonkin(2016). While after that time, more and more games different from this business pattern came into being. Hereby questions arises: Why did this happen? What qualities do these so-called indie games have so as to share a significant market in game industry? And what will their future be? There are already researchers who started answering the similar questions, but they didn’t exactly examine these particular aspects mentioned above. We conducted 5 private interviews with the objective to explore questions previously mentioned, to have a deeper understanding of the features, influence, and the possible futures of indie games.

2.BACKGROUND

Nowadays, with the development of video game industry, the sale mode of video games are going through a change. Traditionally, there was a selling style of “developer plus publisher”, which meant that the game developer usually can’t put their products onto the market “independently” -- they need a publisher (For example, Half-life 2, developed by Valve, published by Sierra). Usually a publisher was a retailer, before the thriving of e-commerce. So now, more and more independent video games, in short, indie games come into being, simply because thanks to the digital game sales, developers with lower budgets no longer need to cooperate with a publisher -- they can be “independent” and directly publish their games, without a publisher’s support, according to Lipkin (2012), who proposed the basic literal meaning of Indie games to be the independence of a publisher (usually a large one). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ But based on their influence, there are discords among researchers about the definition of Indie. De Jong (2013) argued “Indie does not simply mean independence, it is a complex and ambiguous term, comprised of a confusing mix of economic, technological, and cultural factors.” and Parker (2013) posted that “part of the label of 'indie' is that you make games for the sake of making good games rather than just to make money”. But regardless of how indie games are defined, there is one thing that is almost for sure: indie games are taking territories of the game industry. Stuart(2012) even stated that “small studios and even lone developers create offbeat subjective titles rather than noisy mega-bucks shoot-'em-ups.”, which indicates some indie games are even doing better than some traditional AAA games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Greuter(2014) pointed out that many AAA games “are repetitive, which created a feeling of dissatisfaction among the developers.” That’s one of the potential reasons why many developers started their own company making their own games. Another potential reason is that at the beginning of the second decade in 21st century, many designers parted ways with the big companies to work on games that were close to their hearts. Designers funded their own projects or asked for donations through social media to materialize their dreams. Websites like kickstarter are a source for crowd funding that has led to the success of several independent games. To help prove the above statement, 2014 report infers that from 2009-2012, the annual rate of direct employment in USA only increased 9% every year for gaming industries. This accounted to 0.724% percent of employment which clearly states that the masses which were being recruited were young talents who were new to this industry. That being said, in this research, we are going to discover other possible reasons contributing to the emergence of indie games. ​ ​ Those are for the reasons of the emergence of indie games. But then how much popular are indie games going to be and how indie game developers and players think about them come into questions. According to Parker (2013), mainstream views for indie games were “non-commercial, not-for-profit, activist, and amateur games”. In Vogel’s (2017) study of Japanese Indie games he also noticed the indie games in Japanese society are not isolated from mainstream nor of less commercial impact, instead they are to some degrees a social need based on the culture context. But so far the works done are not complete enough. researchers are still exploring the impact and functionality indie games have brought about. Hence this is what this research for. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Then what qualities do those popular indie games have? McGee (2011) wrote in the review of “The Binding of Isaac”: “It masterfully brings together the randomization and difficulty of a , such as Dungeons of Dredmor ... to create an enthralling experience that will keep you hooked.”, which highlighted the quality of randomization and difficulty. In another review of a sequel of this game, “The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth”, Stapleton (2014) stressed the quality of randomness: ”a rare balance is struck where its brutal bullet-hell difficulty isn’t a punishment, but an opportunity to see something totally new. Because of excellent randomization and seemingly endless content, I’m still seeing items, bosses, and entirely new types of dungeons even after 30 hours of intense twin-stick shooter-style battle.” But those reviews mainly focus on traits of a specific game, which are insufficient to answer the question of what qualities of indie games made them arise in the market. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

3.METHOD

Data for this research were collected by interviews, which is a qualitative approach. The medium for conducting the interviews was a mix of face-to-face and video calls. All of the interviewees were people with a good amount of knowledge regarding indie games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ For this research, we conducted semi-structured interviews, which had a set of pretty vague introductory questions as well as some compulsory questions, so that the key aspects of the interview data were collected for analysis. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Semi-structured interviews will be an apt medium for this research because through open ended questions, we can gather high quality data from the participants. Well thought questions will help gather data that will contain emotions, experiences and opinions, after which follow up questions can help bolster the data already provided by the interviewee. In addition, asking interviewees questions based on the answers they give to the compulsory questions will make the interviewee feel more personalized hence more inclined to produce effective data. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

3.1.CONTEXT The people we interviewed have a very good background or connection with indie games. Three of the interviewees are indie game developers and the remaining two are ardent indie game players, who have at least 4 years of experience. Additionally, all the five participants have their fair share of experiences with other games too. Their experience made us choose them to be our interviewees. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

3.2.DATA COLLECTION ​ ​ Data collection was done by interviews. It was a semi-structured interview where certain questions were compulsorily asked to cover key point and important aspects of the data which was necessary for our analysis. We conducted interviews either by personal(one-on-one) or by online skype interviews. The speeches were recorded by a microphone or softwares that record voice on video calls. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

The questions revolved around these 3 categories: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 1. Player’s experience playing indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 2. View about the qualities of good indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 3. Current and future impact of indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Which is worth notice is that these questions are “common questions”. Certain questions were asked to specific people. We transcripted the answers of the interviewees for respective questions, and then coded them. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

3.3.DATA ANALYSIS ​ ​ We made one cycle of coding and then compared each other’s codes. We coded all five interviews at once and after comparison we found that about 80-90% of our codes were of similar meaning but were interpreted in different ways. Some portions of text had vivo coding and the other portions were just specializing and generalizing text into categories according to their uniqueness. ​ ​

3.4.VERIFICATION Inter-coder agreement refers to the percentage value of the magnitude of agreement between the researchers who are coding the interviews/data. After coding and comparing the interviews using Cohen’s Kappa method, the reliability came out to be 83.5%. Almost all the subjective compulsory questions were analyzed independently by the coders and then compared to arrive the result mentioned above. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

4.RESULTS

Analysing the interviews brought up two distinct sets of information. First, the characteristics that the participants experienced while playing the indie games; and the second, the expected future estimated by participants. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

There are three aspects to measure the common characteristics our participants enjoy: experience for the first indie game played; impact or transition happened after playing; and the qualities you appreciate in indie games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

As for the first aspect, the results were discrete from one another. Two participants (one developer and one player) said the first experience was just fun, or other similar words which are vague and subjective, such as “happy” by Participant 4 and “amazing” by Participant 5. But Participant 3, an expert in game industry, did point out something more than fun: feeling artistic and innovation of the game. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

As for the second part, Participants talked a variety range of games such as Binding of Isaac, Oxenfree, Limbo. When asked about the reasons, Participant 1 said “Sometimes I like a game because it makes me feel hung … Like when I was playing the Binding of Isaac … . I just relax, because you kind of get into the zone.”. Participant 4 noted “And in Oxen Free, I also enjoy the uniqueness of dialogs. The design of the dialogs is somewhat similar to other mainstream games such as RPGs which have a dialog system, but quite different in a way hard to tell.”. And Participant 5 expressed his surprise about the graphic of indie game: “The first indie game that I've played, has to be the game called "Limbo". I was amazed ... back when I was playing graphic intense games such as Battlefield/Assassin's Creed/GTA series, I could never imagine that I'd enjoy a game that has 2D style to it!”. Participant 5 also talked about the production of indie game: “The game that had the most impact on me, personally, would be To The Moon, it's more about the writer Kan R. Gao that really inspired me when I finished the game because he managed to not only write an exceptional story but also compose music for it!”.

As for the last aspect, the qualities which participants appreciate, sitting in the apogee of the list of "quality enjoyed the most” is visuals, a quality almost all the participants enjoyed the most in the games they played (4 out of 5). Following visuals in the list are innovation, experience, story and gameplay (3 out of 5). They also mentioned some other attributes that attracted them, which are not commonly shared by the majority of our participants, such as immersion (2 out of 5) and soundtrack (1 out of 5). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Limbo

Chart for qualities in gameplay: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

When talking about the future of indie games, 80% of our participants post a positive view for future. All of the 4 participants expected a growth; Participant 1 (developer) and 3 (expert) expected both good and bad games being released (“I think there is gonna become … a divide between good indie games and bad indie games.” by Participant 1 and “There is an oversaturation at the moment. Better and better games come in and also same amount of crap is also released.” by Participant 3); and both Participant 2 (developer) and 3 mentioned a possible diversion between indie game industries. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

On the other hand, Participant 4 (experienced player) held a negative option that “Indie bubble ... It has already happened in my opinion.” He thought future indie games will have worse qualities and pointed out Gresham’s law: “You know the Gresham’s law right? “The bad money drives out good”. Suppose there are 10 games and 9 of them are bad games … Then it’s quite likely for you to lose all of your interest after trying first 3 bad games and get grossed at these kind of ones, missing that actually great one.” Valve discontinued greenlight in 2017, Siwek(2017). Greenlight was process where steam users vote for the indie games that will be allowed in the steam market for purchase. Since it is had been removed, the influx of new games will increase and thus allowing completely supporting and proving Gresham’s Law. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Response chart for Future of Indie Games: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Reasons for the the above chart: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

5.DISCUSSION

In this section, we will be further analyzing the reasons for the spread and influence of the indie game industry and the possible future of this industry, depending on the results we got. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

When the topic of the most enjoyed quality in a game came up, visuals topped the chart. Visuals have a hint of subjectivity to it as they could be realistic or visuals that would match the theme of the game. But in terms of indie games, “artistic” visuals is the factor and the reason for congruency in this scenario. This was bolstered by analysing the games played by the participants: “There have been many indie games that take you by surprise with their visuals, there's just something so different about them, and this tells you that you don't need games to look too realistic to stand out.” (Participant 5) ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Innovation is a characteristic that 60% of the participant mentioned during their interviews. It is evident that every game they played were discrete from each other and had innovative ideas in them. This is true because participant 3 showed us a game named “Bloop”. “It is a multitouch game played on the ipad where players have to touch their respective assigned colors when it pops up on the screen. Though this game must not have taken much time to develop but when it comes to gameplay, people enjoy it fully and are immersed into it.”. Participant 4 also talked an innovational game he enjoyed: “And you see, I’m bread. Being a bread flipping yourself into a toaster is really a novel one! I appreciate it.” ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Two participants stressed on two factors namely “Experience” and “reflection in real life”. At first we thought that both are similar qualities. On the contrary, they actually are disjunct to a quite a level. One player wanted to experience situations that he has never faced in life so that the game becomes a medium for decision making in real life. He said : “The game that had the most impact on me, personally, would be To The Moon, it's more about the writer Kan R. Gao that really inspired me when I finished the game because he managed to not only write an exceptional story but also compose music for it! And he was also the designer of the game with another fella named "Justin Johnson" The story was really moving and even though the game was a 16-bit 2D designed one, it was still wonderful to look at and experiencing the game was emotionally powerful as well. With all the music design as a very big plus to the game, it was one of the most amazing gaming experiences I've ever had!”. The second player wanted to incorporate ethical dilemmas and real life decision making in the game to create a sense of reality. According to him this attribute will create tension in the player. So to counter-balance this tension, he implemented a unique idea of adding humour to the game. Not many serious games have humor in it, but it is one of its kind. He said,”The games are so tense all the time. There is constant tension, constant tension. It is exhausting. so, we try to put comic relief into the game just as you would in a novel or in a movie. Yes, the elements of, funny, into it.” ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Participant 4 mentioned replayability as a major factor for the indie game influence. The Binding of Isaac are randomized at every iteration of gameplay,as per McGee(2011). This way you don’t memorise the levels but always find something new while replaying it. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

The Binding of Isaac Gameplay ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Participant 3 and 5 (player) mentioned that the whole artwork matters, instead of only the visuals. Examples are music (“I can name a lot of the games with great OST, a lots of these developers choose music as a way to keep you interested in the story and keep it in sync with the already amazing environment design.” by Participant 5) and others (“Bounden is a dance game which was co-designed with a dutch ballet instructor … where you play as a mermaid and your main objective is to restore the balance of the underwater ecosystem. The introduction/opening of the game is an artwork.comic book.” by Participant 3). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

When coming to the question about the future of the industry, a consistency was observed among the interviewees. Only Participant 4, a player, disagreed that indie games will have a bright future. The rest of the participants including all the player, developer and expert. In terms of expertise, we incline to suppose that indie game will thrive. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Participant 2 had a very good thought about the future of indie games. He said there will be three types of indie game companies. First group will have the objective to create games so that they get taken up or hired by AAA industry companies. Second group of organizations will be independent themselves but they will try to get their games published by larger companies having accreditation of III(Triple I) or AAA. Finally, the third set of companies which will be independent forever which will create and release games by funding themselves so that they do not get instigated by bigger organizations to change their game style. Their manpower will be low but they will release games at a lower frequency but with increase focus and dedication on the game mechanics and aesthetics. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Participant 1 supposed that some bad games will recover and change into good ones (“The problems we are having out are just there are indie bubbles … But I don't really believe that. Because right now I see lot of bad games that are getting well.”). Participant 3 thinks the situation will go on (“There will be studios which will survive but at the same time some will come and go. Some the studios survive and stay because they’re good at what they do.”). And Participant 5 is completely optimistic (“... called Hellblade : Senua's Sacrifice and no one thinks of the game as an indie game because it looks so much like a full AAA Title … So that is what I hope to see …”). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

There are still some limitations of our researches which awaits further verification. First, our participants base can be larger so that the results will be more accurate. Also, more participants give result in new unique data. Every person has their own perspective and ideology which he might connect with in a game. So an exploratory research will yield more unique results and a larger basis to generalize responses. There might be other qualities which also might contribute to the large influence of indie games which we didn’t note down due to a limited pool of participants. Second, we examined the possible future of the indie game industry, but this research didn’t cover how long these kinds of future influence would last. Further queries are waiting to be carried out. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

6. CONCLUSION ​ ​

According to this qualitative research, we can see that some qualities such as being innovative and unique in both gameplay and game experience are core reasons for people to enjoy the independent games. Besides, truth-telling stories, engaging sound tracks and relatively low cost compared to AAA games are also supportive reasons of the rising of indie games. We hence have reasons to believe that the influence of indie games are to some degree supported by these qualities which are welcomed by the populace as well. So will this big influence to the market caused by indie games continue to exist? We drove the conclusion from our research results and found that the possibility is large to say, yes, Indie games are still going to thrive in future. But the limitations of our research: other possible qualities to make indie games successful; how long they are going to keep sharing a big market, are waiting for further exploration.

REFERENCES

De Jong, J. (2013). Indie issues: The meaning of ‘Indie’ games and their ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ incorporation into the ‘Mainstream’ game industry. Unpublished master's thesis). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Universiteit Van Amsterdam. Retrieved December, 9, 2016. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide views from other researchers about the influence of Indie Games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Galyonkin, S (2015-2017) Stats about number of games on Steam, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ https://steamspy.com/year/2012 (years from 2012-2016) ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide the information regarding the number of games that steam as a platform had from 2012-2016. ​ ​

Greuter, S. (2014). AAA ratings: when do video games become too realistic?. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ In The Conversation. ​ ​ ​ ​ (http://theconversation.com/aaa-ratings-when-do-videogames-become-too-realistic-2406 ​ 0) ​ To provide a potential reason proposed by other researchers for the emergence of indie ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ games.

Lipkin, N. (2012). Examining Indie's Independence: The meaning of" Indie" ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Games, the politics of production, and mainstream cooptation. Loading..., 7(11). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide a basic definition for indie games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Mcgee, M (2011). The Binding of Isaac Review. In GameSpot. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-binding-of-isaac-review/1900-6346463/ To provide the possible qualities of successful indie games suggested by others. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To read the review of The Binding of Isaac for information about the gameplay, graphics, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ level design and developers. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Parker, F. (2013). Indie Game Studies Year Eleven. In DiGRA Conference. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide views from other researchers about the influence of Indie Games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Siwek, S. (2017). Information about greenlight. In Video games of the 21st ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ century. https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/6/15749692/steam-direct-launch-date-valve-greenlight/ To provide information about greenlight and how it was used. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Stapleton, D. (2014). The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Review. In IGN. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​​ http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/26/the-binding-of-isaac-rebirth-review/ To provide the possible qualities of successful indie games suggested by others. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Stuart, K. (2012) Us and the Game Industry – how indie games are the new ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ counter-culture. The Guardian US edition. ​ ​​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide views from other researchers about the influence of Indie Games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Vogel, M. W. (2017). Japanese Independent Game Development (Doctoral ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology). ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ To provide views from other researchers about the influence of Indie Games. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

APPENDIX We focus on these 3 categories of questions: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 1. Player’s experience playing indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 2. View about the qualities of good indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 3. Current and future impact of indie games ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ As per that we developed our compulsory open-ended questions: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Table 1 Compulsory questions for our interviews. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ I Which game introduces you into this indie game world? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ How was your first experience of playing an indie game? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ What are other indie games you like? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ What did you feel after playing these games? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Will you recommend the indie games we talked about to your friends? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ II Which indie game has a particular impact on you? Why and how? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Which quality do you enjoy the most among the indie games you have played? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ III How do you think of the future of indie games? ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​