In A Year Like 2023, Don’t Forget About Indie Games

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2023 has been a great year for video games. Less so for the industry as a whole, where it has been frequently terrible for workers. That’s a topic for several other articles though. As far as releases go, in 2023 we’ve had a veritable well, to call it a buffet feels wrong. We associate buffets with quantity, not quality. We’ve had a feast, a banquet, a Michelin-starred tasting menu of designer cuisine. That last one is especially relevant, because 2023 has been a year for experimentation – Baldur’s Gate 3, Tears of the Kingdom, and Alan Wake 2 are considered the three front runners for Game of the Year, and all of them do things other games haven’t done before, either through trying and failing or not even having the confidence or imagination (or tech) to attempt it.

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While it’s the triple-A scene that naturally advances the technology in the gaming space, it’s often indie games that push forward the experimentation. Thanks to 2023’s monster of a year (mathematically our best in two decades), indie games are being a little crowded out – so much so that there’s controversy that one of The Game Awards’ Best Indie nominees wasn’t even an indie game. With so many major games out there hitting their marks and pushing the envelope, it can be hard for them to get a look in. But we can’t forget the value these games offer the industry.

It’s not just a case of recommending specific indies. I could do that if you wanted me to: Cocoon. See? Here’s another: The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. I’ve got more: Goodbye Volcano High, Slay the Princess, A Space for the Unbound. And that’s just the ones on my Game of the Year list. It’s more about the value we place on these smaller titles that keep the fires of the industry alive, even as bigger titles get the headlines. A year like 2023 is rare, but the flow of great indies is consistent.

Note: Before writing our
Game of the Year list
, we pooled our overlooked and indie recs together and got close to 50. Even in a blockbuster year, hidden gems are out there, and worth seeking out.

2023 is not just rare, you might even say it’s a fluke. The bottleneck caused by the pandemic and move to a new console generation, and the various sized delays inflicted upon different studios and their long-term plans, has meant that 2023 has seen the bottle burst forth with fantastic games. But 2023 is less the start of a trend and more the last of the real ones. Gaming’s triple-A slate for 2024 looks very empty, populated mainly by rumoured release dates and the faint visage of the Nintendo Switch 2 (or whatever it may be). Games take longer than ever to make and cost more than ever, for both developers and players. Drink 2023 in while you can, because we may be wandering the desert for a while after this.

The Only Way To End The Indie Game Debate Is To Demystify Budgets

If we want the indie category to mean something, we need to nail down what an indie is.

Indie games will continue to be the oasis we need in those deserts. As the calendar suddenly looks bare, we should remember that great new games are always out there. Indie games are, and will continue to be, the lifeblood of the industry. Games made by creators, not executives, with a design philosophy to provoke, to entertain, to perplex, not to suit preconceived algorithmically generated player desires to aid player retention and battle pass consumption.

2023 has seen the big games get it right, but whether it be Sony’s full-tilt switch to live-service, Suicide Squad’s reliance on injecting live-service trappings into its single-player campaign, or the unease around Xbox’s Activision-Blizzard acquisition, there are a lot of reasons to be wary about the future of the triple-A scene. But while indie games are being left out of the conversation of 2023’s bumper year for games, they might be leading the charge next year.