The business of making games isn’t cheap these days. Even relatively inexpensive titles can easily cost millions. Industry lay-offs and the growing practice of micro-transactions and the phenomenon of Day 1 DLC are some of the more visible symptoms of systemic bloat in the AAA ecosystem; at least that’s the line towed by the fans of all things independent.

Bastion & Transistor

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Super Meat Boy

“ It wasn’t glamorous, it’s never glamorous and I never thought it would be…

As more and more of this prolific new crop of developers begins gearing up for the next generation, that narrative doesn’t quite communicate the unique struggles and risks of those in the scene.“We self-funded Bastion and we're self-funding Transistor… in fact we turned down offers for publisher money, because maintaining creative control, keeping the intellectual property, and remaining independent are all very important to us.”While that dedication to independence isn’t at all clear in the final product, the team has been rather public about the corners they were forced to cut. Large chunks of the voice work, for example, were recorded in a closet. Similarly, with Transistor Supergiant isn’t looking to build an extravagant big budget title. “It's not that different,” Kasavin says, “other than we're now paying ourselves above poverty-level wages and working in a small studio instead of a living room.“ As dire as financial needs may once again become, the pressure of making a commercial hit doesn’t quite match the desire to make something in which the team can believe.“At any rate, our primary concern is creating something that lives up to our standards. That's a more manageable problem than dreading financial failure. Since we're a small team, our costs are relatively low and we don't need to sell millions of copies of a thing in order to keep going. What's more important to our long-term, I think, is being able to sustainably create great games together as a team. The good news is we get better at that the longer we're able to do it.“It [isn’t] easier than Bastion. I don't really want it to be easier than Bastion. On a personal level I feel that unless I'm struggling then I'm not doing my best. If things are going easily for me it makes me feel very uneasy, like I must be missing something important.”Within the “independent” world there are often subtle undertones of whom or what is more “indie” than any other is. Some would say, for example, that even though Bastion and Transistor are almost completely self-funded, that they don’t count because Supergiant secured a publisher. Others would say that putting too much of your own cash down also disqualifies you and your game from that coveted pedestal. Regardless of what definition you pick, though, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, definitely have a claim.The developers behind Super Meat Boy were one of the more dramatic stories chronicled in last year’s documentary, Indie Game: The Movie. At the time, McMillen drove a totaled truck and nearly fell $50,000 in debt from medical expenses, and Tommy, the other half of the development duo known as Team Meat, was borrowing money from McMillen to help make rent. In 2009, McMillen’s best year, he grossed right around $36,000. The release of Super Meat Boy ended all of that.McMillen and Tommy are one of the few, the very few, that have managed to break away from the standard high-pressure game development cycle. The Binding of Isaac, McMillen’s first follow-up, took little more than a few weeks of actual work to make, and wasn’t intended to be much more than a passion project, a quick, easy game to chase the prolonged development of Super Meat Boy. He wanted to make something, “weird, that [he] didn’t care about selling, to remind [himself] why making games is so fun.” When people suggested he sell it, he thought, “no one is going to buy this shitty game.”

“That’s why I love indie development so much. Me and Tommy will never be in the kind of situation where we somehow invested millions of dollars into something so that we have to sell millions of copies to break even. To be indie means to take risks, to do that you have to keep your overhead low and you have to be realistic about it.”Team Meat’s next game, Mew-Genics, is something of a crazy cat lady simulator. Passing up a direct sequel to Meat Boy, something that would be a safe hit, to work on a strange pet project is probably about as far from conventional wisdom as it gets.“Veterans, gaming veterans, are getting outdone by kids with almost no experience. I mean these guys should be able to destroy these kids, but they can’t. The mainstream has become so bloated and so scared and so they say ‘We know this will make money, so let’s just keep doing this and keep doing this.’ They can’t take a risk, because a real risk for them would be the company going under and tons of people losing jobs. Indies have taken that opportunity.”In the incessant march of modern military shooters, McMillen says, “It doesn’t take much to make something that stands out these days. Okay indie games will average an 8 on most websites because they’re taking risks, but because the teams are small, and the budgets are small, the risks are small...if Mew-Genics doesn’t do well, outside of the emotional hit, I won’t really care. There was no investment. Also the soundtrack . People will definitely buy that.”