That’s pretty much where I’m at too. Though the “Indie Award” has always had similar problems before, such as the Dave the Diver debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like Blue Prince in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.
It’s roughly the same for BG3, technically an independent indie studio but also one of the most massive production teams on any game.
IMO indie studios aren’t studios without a publisher anymore, if anything a lot of studios with publishers are more indie than many studios without. Reminds me of decades ago and people calling Blizzard an indie studio before the Activision merger.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too. Though the “Indie Award” has always had similar problems before, such as the Dave the Diver debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like Blue Prince in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.
It’s roughly the same for BG3, technically an independent indie studio but also one of the most massive production teams on any game.
IMO indie studios aren’t studios without a publisher anymore, if anything a lot of studios with publishers are more indie than many studios without. Reminds me of decades ago and people calling Blizzard an indie studio before the Activision merger.