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I'm curious to see who out there plays indie wargames. Indie games can be easy or complex, free or costed, High production values, or low etc, etc. There are however, alot of quality examples out there and I'm curious to see what indie games the general Dakka community plays. For the purposes of this thread, I'm defining indie as...

1) Not affiliated with any major IP or large gaming company.

2) Not carried by the distribuition channels that feed msot FLGS's. Lots of indie developers will get their stuff into FLGS's themselves.

3) Often (though not always) does not have a dedicated miniature line, or has a line of figures sourced form outside the game company itself.

4) Often (though not always) indie games are free or less expensive than similar mainstream products.

There may be some grey area here, but let me start with a few examples of what isn't an indie game. Malifaux, Heavy gear, federation commander, 40k, Babylon 5, Starship troopers, Battletech. Also, some indie games are oop, but not all out of print games are indie. Rogue Trade is not indie. I'll have a thread later about oop and unsupported games.

So do you play any indie wargames, and if so what are they?

As for me, I find indie games to be a fun and cheap way to explore other gaming settings when I'm not working on my IG force or playing 40k.
I play, have played or will play shortly:
-Song of Blades and Heroes (Fantasy system By Ganesha games)
-Wastelands (a free post-apoc ruleset) going to be trying this out with my group tomorrow.
-Combat Zone (Near Future/post apoc system produced by EM4)
-Flying Lead (Modern combat system by Ganesha Games)
-Mech Attack (a mech game by Armor Grid Games)I'm acquiring MWDA minis right now for the purposes of playing this game.

"Edited 11/3 based on feedback for clarity of Indie definition"

Eilif wrote:2) Not available in FLGS's

I would disagree that this is a criteria of an independent game. Traditional definitions of "indie" do not preclude a game from getting carried by a distributor and thus stocked in some stores, nor does it preclude an author from doing the legwork to get his/her game stocked by stores themselves. When I published the first iteration of my wargame, it was carried in a few stores around here but it was definitely "indie".

The traditional definition of independent tends to rely primarily on the size of the company publishing it or, even more generally, how much money is behind it.

To answer the question, I'm not even playing mainstream games these days (too much schoolwork); most of my gaming-related time has been RPG-oriented or working on a second edition of my game. In the past I've messed around with Full Thrust, a couple other space games I can't recall offhand, and of course Aetherverse. Void, Vor, and Clan War, while small, probably had too much financial backing to be considered independent (FASA and AEG being the publishers of the latter two).

I've seen Song of Blades and Heroes in the FLGS.

The important question is: independent of what?

Eilif wrote:2) Not avaialble in FLGS's

3) Often (though not always) does not have a dedicated miniature line, or has a line of figures sourced form outside the game company itself.

4) In general (though not always) indie games are free or cheap.

I think these three points are very debateable in your definition of an Indie game.

I play (and assisted playtesting/ruleswriting for) Brushfire from On The Lamb games and I'd definitely classify it as an indie, but the models and rules are available in FLGS' and it has a model line, comparitively priced with major company's models.

Zombies!!! may be considered an indie game - certainly not produced by a major games company - but it's been in most FLGS's that I've been to and has plastic models available. The games themselves are fairly priced, but Twilight Creations provides supporting content on their website to expand the game free of charge, something that OTL plans to provide as well.

I also love SG2, not widely available in print now (free download), although you can buy a copy now and again. There's one in a local bookstore as a matter of fact.

A true indie, Cheapass Games, produces games for less than $5 that a local FLGS carried until the store went out of business. Great and fun games all, and very independant producers of each.

Why can't an indie game be expensive?

Again, I ask. Independent of what?

Let's go ahead and try to answer Mal's question about what "Independent" means, since the OP did a hit-and-run, and since I agree with Mal that his definitions of "indie" are somewhat biased towards "cheap and obscure" rather than the more traditional "not corporation-owned".

The easiest comparison would potentially be with role-playing games, where the d20 system some years back allowed for the creation of MANY small product lines by single writers or by rather small companies. The RPG side of gaming is so heavily dominated by one or two companies that an "independent game/book" is extremely easy to define: "Not published by one of the 'big' companies, ie WOTC, White Wolf, AEG, Fantasy Flight and maybe Paizo". This doesn't really add much to our discussion except to give us a nice dividing line: an independent product is one that does not have the financial backing of a large company.

"Indie" is often used in association with other forms of media, especially films, music, and comics (as well as video games occasionally). In pretty much all of these cases, the term is used to describe a product being made or distributed without the help of a major studio/label/publisher. The "major" category also includes smaller companies that have a large amount of investment (compared to the relevant industry).

What it gets distilled to is control: an independent game is one produced by a person/people primarily out of their own ideas, without their having to adjust their product based on the desires of a larger controlling entity. Someone writing a 40K Codex, for instance, absolutely must do what GW tells them to do in every way; one of Privateer's writers might have some more freedom in what they can design but must still meet the base requirements to include certain characters. When I write a game, though, I can do whatever the hell I want because nobody else is forking over cash to support it.

Other definitions of "independent" are rather nebulous, at least given the diversity in those industries. In comics, it can be a byword for "cheap" or "counterculture"; indie video games are almost always exclusively distributed digitally and without the help of a major publisher. Indie music and films are often produced out-of-pocket of the band/filmmaker involved, but often with the goal of getting it picked up by a label. There's also the question of what happens when a film is produced out-of-pocket by someone extremely wealthy? The Star Wars prequels, for instance could be labeled "independent" because Lucasfilm made the films without input of Fox (who simply handled distribution), but is George Lucas on the same level as a Clerks-era Kevin Smith?

Privateer Press would be an interesting case study: they were founded by a few industry-types looking to do their own thing (classic "indy"). However the sheer volume that they were able to put out means that there had to have been serious finances involved (classic "corporate"). I don't know the history to make that kind of decision, though: did they go into massive debt or spend their savings to found the company? Or did they go to investors, saying "we're a team with experience in this growth industry who can leverage our synergy to compete on a high level with the market leaders"?

That's pretty much the dividing line for "independent". What the OP might be looking for more, mentally, is "experimental": products that are done very cheaply because they just want to get new ideas out there or are more concerned with the message of the product than selling it. That's probably a whole different discussion.

*Yes, I cite Wiki here because it's quite effective on subjects that aren't particularly politicized. It provides a nice overview of the subjects at hand.

Wow, wanted to find out who'se playing, but it looks like I started a whole different discussion.
Thanks for the feedback. In answer to a few points that were raised.

-Price: Of course not all indies are cheap. Not inclusion of "not always" in my initial description. Will edit this one a bit for clarity

-FLGS: This is a good point, I should have said not carried by most distributors. A good indie game designer will try and get their stuff into as many FLGS's as possible, but most indie's won't be carried by the distribution chains that feed most FLGS's. I'll change this momentarily.

-As for "independent from what?", I'd say: "Independent of (or simply undiscovered by) corporations, large gaming companies and major distribution channels." Though as was pointed out above Indie has all kinds of connotations regarding various ways of being non-mainstream, counterculture, affordable, etc.

Anywho, now that I've clarified my definition (and it is mine for the purposes of this thread) anyone care to mention what "indie" games they are playing?

I like indie games, I wish I played in general more regularly so I could try out all these other games.

I think for an indie game to see any kind of success it needs to be easy to learn so you can figure out how to play and quickly and easily teach your friends how to play too, and the costs involved to get started should be cheap (and/or low model count) but scale up well enough that the people that really like it can have a bigger force if they want, and of course it has to be a lot of fun.

Necros wrote:I think for an indie game to see any kind of success ... the costs involved to get started should be cheap (and/or low model count) but scale up well enough that the people that really like it can have a bigger force if they want

That kind of goes hand-in-hand with being an indie game, especially in an already low-margin niche of gaming, and ESPECIALLY especially in wargames where if you want to make real money, you probably need a miniatures line and thus need lots of money already.

If the indie publisher is content just to make some games and isn't really in it for the money, or is publishing a wargame as another product in an already existing line (such as an indie RPG publisher expanding their listings), then it's pretty easy to be low-cost: target gamers that already have miniatures. At that point, the only cost-of-entry is the book/PDF. Either narrowly skirt existing games' IP* (the idea of heavily-armored space troops isn't exactly original, for instance) or just create a fairly amorphous background, relying on the rules' being good being the selling point. I'd say the best of those worlds is to make an original background, but include a system for custom army lists, but that would be blatant self-promotion.

The nice thing about tabletop games, and especially wargaming, is that the indie publisher does NOT have to spend any time bringing people into the hobby. There are a couple of 800-pound gorillas that do all of the work to bring new players into tabletop gaming (WOTC and GW, obviously); all an indie publisher has to do is to get word out about their game. There are always people looking for options besides 40k or D&D, and the internet has made it extremely easy to get that word out (when I originally published, neither Facebook** nor Twitter existed), whether through traditional gaming forums (TMP, Dakka, RPGnet, etc) or through the aforementioned social media websites.

*: this is NOT highly recommended, but it can be done if you're careful and graceful.
**: OK, Facebook launched in Feb 2004 and Aetherverse released in June of that year, but nobody HEARD of fb until much later.