we all know what makes a good tripe AAA game. great graphics, awesome story, multiplayer, open world, player choice the more the better.
but what makes a great indie game? its kinda harder to pin point. to me indies have to bring something different, while at the same time still being fun.
what do you think are really great indie games? what do you think makes a great indie?
Uniquenesses that at the same time brings a lot of nostalgia to the overall picture, while quality and value are still on par of AAA productions.
Journey is a great example.
Journey is not an indie game. flOw, Flower and Journey were all contracted by Sony.
“Indie” isn’t a genre, and neither is “AAA”. The question is what makes a good game. The answer changes over time, and is dependent on a ton of things. And there is are so many types of games, that there isn’t a simple or single answer. Additionally there are many dependencies. For example the things that may make an FPS great may not be the same that make a puzzle game great, or a mobile/pc/console game.
While there are are several over arching (very broad) elements that make a game great, they are so broad as to be pointless to discuss as general topic. For example, a great game should be “fun”. While true and obvious, that alone ins’t informative enough to help design a game. There are many great books on the topic. But I always believe that you should make games that you want to play. Design around your gaming passion.
Sorry, not very helpful, but I think it is going to difficult to an overly valuable answer on a broad topic. Maybe narrow it down to a type of game or mechanic or style/genre.
If you think these are not indie studios you should learn more about them. There are plenty of indie games on Sony’s platforms.
Also, the idea of ‘games must be fun’ is totally dated; There are already out there some enjoyable games that are not fun but still are good interactive experiences, doesn’t really need to be fun; “Fun” is today a stigma in game design.
Pretty much any topic can turn into a game, but devs still trying to please the ‘kids’ with somewhat empty moments of pleasure. Yeah, I’m tired of all games everywhere trying to be fun, and cool, and badass and, and…
Look at music and movies, these are not always fun, but can be a very good experience while not being fun; Game designers should just do the same, you know, they should just grow up a bit.
I think you have a very strange and possibly restrictive definition of the word fun. It doesn’t mean cartoony and playful. A game simply needs to be enjoyable to be considered fun, and if its not enjoyable, then why would anyone play it?
Also, Journey wasn’t just “on a Sony platform”, it was contracted and paid for by Sony. When you are under contract by a company like Sony, and Sony is funding your development, you are not “indie” (by any definition that I know of).
That’s a really good question. I don’t think i have the answer. First we would have to agree what “Indie” means. is it related to the size of the teams, the founding of the project, the subjects ?
I don’t differentiate between indie and AAA when it comes to being a “good” game.
Either I have fun or I don’t - OR- I’m challenged or it’s boring.
Either I can’t put the game down - or I can’t put the game down fast enough.
Either I tell my family and friends about it - or I don’t.
Either the graphics quality is right for the genre - or it’s not.
Either each level offers something new or interesting - or each level is boringly the same.
Either it sucks, it’s an okay game, or it’s a great game. It’s just that simple to me.
Some ppl need examples so, lets see…
E.g: Many MMOs have characters that can level up to 100, 200 even 300 experience levels.
In these MMOs the player need to grind killing monsters non stop for 10+ hours a day, during 1 entire month to achieve a single level up when the character is near the ‘end-game’ phase. Do you think is fun to play something like that? I don’t.
Many players share accout to handle that, many do use bots, but also most players just do it… Playing.
And you can ask them “-Why are you doing this? Do you think is fun?”. Most players won’t be able to tell you a real reason why. They can tell you for hours things they hate on that game, but most of the time they will tell you they play because of friends and the game itself is not that good, but that not the real reason.
The reason is people can play a game for many reasons, not just because it is fun. If fun were the basis of every gaming experience, everyone would play a game for at max a few minutes, trash it and never look back. ‘Fun’ is the cheapest and most entry level experience provided by a game, but it is not key component of a good game.
Wow, I think I just realised why I can’t stand MMORPGS.
Same here.
I think what makes a good indie game is something at least slightly unique, but most importantly, something fun.
K. Someone please tell me what’s unique about Super Meat Boy?
AAA and Indie are business models, not genres, first!
AAA means that a publisher has greenlit a game concept and is paying money to ensure superior quality (that happens increasingly rarely these days, but eh. That’s how it is in theory), but that the game is under business direction from that publisher at the same time to ensure that they get that return on investment.
Indie means you the developer have full control…with the tradeoff being, a limited budget. You’re still expected to provide the superior quality.
However, a good game is the same regardless of business model. Is it:
An experience you voluntarily pursue?
A consistent experience?
Inspiring curiosity/provoking thought?
Enriching the lives of your players?
In my opinion, limited though it is, if you can answer ‘yes’ to all four of those, you’re onto something major.
What makes a good Indie game?
Great graphics, awesome story, multiplayer, open world, player choice the more the better. 
To be honest, there no difference. Indies are simply about managing skills, limiting your design to what you can achieve in a way that still looks polished and has great aesthetics.
Great visuals can be achieved with most resources as long as someone in the project has taste. Think we can agree Minecraft looks rather nice.
If you are not a great writer, then you should limit your story to a very basic one (Plumber needs to save the princess!)
Multiplayer is not a most, but Async multiplayer is all the rage lately and GameCenter (iOS/Mac) does a lot of it for you and there is some basic functionality in Unity.
A game can feel open without really being open (Look at the classic Zelda or any classic JRPG.)
Mind you, a puzzle game does not need an open world or a story, but the great graphics sure help a lot!
Anyways, sorry but there is no magic formula other than “make the best looking game you can with your skills and don’t forget to make it fun.”
I think in a way super meat boy was unique, at least for the time that it came out. If you look at it yeah it looks just like any platformer. Playing it however the gameplay was done really well, it had short levels and even thought the game was hard the levels made you say to yourself just one more time. Video games that are hard and at the same time not frustrating don’t come by all too often and I think that’s what makes super meat boy such a great game.
I think there are very very few, if any, people in this world who really really know the formula for making a really great game. There are certainly not that many really great games, as most games are either quite good or average or below par or really bad. And often the success of the really successful games is perhaps a large part good luck, or accidental.
I sure as heck don’t know what makes a game great, otherwise I’d be able to just say do this, do that and out would pop a huge winner. Who here can do that? Probably hardly anyone. This is actually for me what scares me about making games and causes a lot of flip-flopping - the fact that I don’t know what the heck I’m doing in a big wide-open medium where it seems like most other people don’t know what the heck they’re doing either, hoping that you might accidentally get it right. Learning curves, n’all.
Exploring this medium, learning from mistakes and gradually improving over time is the name of the game, which may not ever reach the point of total mastery for most people.
Without splitting hairs about definitions of indie, based on the general idea of indie I think the best indie games have a strong element of uniqueness, of breaking the mold, exploring new technologies and gameplay elements, different funky ways of presenting the game visuals/audio that give the game a stylized look, etc.
Games though like super meat boy, as someone mentioned, I was not impressed by… the main uniqueness of it is the meat-and-blood theme, which is somewhat immature, in my opinion. There are a lot of games that spring from immature minds based on not well thought-out ideas of killing and zombies and death and such easy to do unrefined nonsense. Maybe I’m being a snob here but I prefer to see evidence of attention to detail and a higher quality of thought behind the game, I want to be inspired more than have my ego stroked.
As Ryan mentionned, SMB was all about the gameplay 
I wish there were more hardcore games like this.
Ed McMillen himself said that his design document was essentially “Super Mario Bros.”
I’m not saying its a bad game, but there’s certainly nothing unique, or even creative about it (maybe the characters). It was a run and jump platformer. Spikes kill you. That’s it!
This really does make me curious as to why people would gravitate towards a game like that. To me, it feels more like the hipster scene. People love it because other people love it and its not “mainstream” like CoD or Halo.
Really? Cuz I would argue that Call of Duty is more creative, more original, more fun, and has more replay value than Super Meat Boy.
Gamedesign is not necessarly equal to “gameplay”, though 
There could be an awesome gamedesign, but poorly implemented, which would traduce into a bad gameplay, I guess.
Super Meat Boy translated a simple gamedesign to a brilliant gameplay, with no visible default, which served perfectly the transition to a higher global difficulty.
Oh, and the pace. They got the pace really right
(Gameplay pacing is one of the most important feature in any VG, imho)
You played it? I have not played it I am honestly asking, I hold no opinion precisely because I have not played it, but I admit the visual presentation does not attract me.
Maybe it’s the wall jumping and wall sliding. Those things can add an INSANE level of fun to platformer when nicely implemented. Just add both to any platformer and you will feel the game suddenly takes a whole new level of dept.
I have a prototype hanging around in my hard drive, a scheme that allows me to do ledge hanging and other stuff without having to make flag anything on the map as “grabblable” (as I have seen some sugest in these forums,) the character just knows how to grab to things. I should revisit it… but I have a lot in my plate right now. But yea… darn fun stuff.