The Independent Games Festival has published their list of entrants for the 2008 competition. This is the 10th IGF.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that indie and experimental games have gained a lot of popular attention during the last 2-3 years.
Just 2 years ago I felt that indie games were perceived as “games with low production values”, but now it seems to be more accepted that they can provide something unique, a special sensibility.
Perhaps it relates to new distribution methods. Student project gets massive publicity, becomes PS3 downloadable (flow). Quirky indie game is sold on XBLA (Eets, Space Giraffe).
With casual games and downloadable console games, we have a distribution method and economical model for smaller games.
There’s Steam as well, and increased media visibility for companies like Introversion has had a bit of a splash radius for other indies. Also there are some great indie game blogs that update daily with new releases that didn’t exist a few years ago.
Technically another student project is going retail, at midnight tonight in fact: Portal (known as Narbacular Drop in a past incarnation).
Agree about Steam and Introversion.
And then there just is a public visibility that wasn’t there before.
TIGSource, Jay is Games and so on. (The public indie games sphere.)