Indie Developer Positech Games is releasing an incredible game called “Gratuitous Space Battles“:

Positech developer Cliff Harris made big headlines on SlashDot when he wrote an open letter to pirates asking why would they steal from a small indie developer. He got some surprisingly frank answers and posted them on his blog. He took many responses to heart and made some changes to see how the pirate community would better receive and actually buy his product.

Unsurprisingly, many pirates didn’t.

After all that trouble, I certainly hope that he makes some gratuitous amounts of money with this beautiful game.

In my last post, I cited Blizzard as being “indie” because they have the independent spirit of not bowing down to anyone, preserving their integrity and doing things right – even going against the wishes of their fan-base and not releasing games they deem as mediocre.

Recently, Blizzard announced that modders could sell their maps on a service that they will launch with the new Battle.net 2.0 that is releasing with Starcraft 2.

At first blush, I thought that it was silly to let people release and sell yet another derivative version of “Big Game Hunters” on Battle.net until I saw what could be done with the game editor and scripting language:

My jaw hit the floor.  Starcraft 2 has just become a viable indie development platform and distribution service all-in-one.

If people thought that 2009 was the “Year of the Indie“, they haven’t even considered what we as Indies can do in 2010.

There are a lot of misconceptions on what it means to be “indie” in all artistic endeavors.  Particular to the Indie Game movement is the notion that all Indie Games are low-budget, artsy, cheap, and made by some man-child living in his parents’ basement.  The guys at Wolfire attempted to answer the question on what it means to be Indie.  I thought I’d toss my hat into the ring and give my definition.

An “Indie” is someone who dedicates himself to the integrity of his craft.

The reason anyone goes “indie” is to be independent – free from the constraints that may compromise his or her integrity.  Often when it comes to putting “food on the table” an artist will have to make compromises on the final product.  This is a necessary compromise, and the artist who “starves” for his or her craft is rightly lauded.  However, there is a difference between a necessary compromise and a compromise that destroys one’s integrity.  The true indie does not bend to that.

This is also why many independents do not wish to have publishers control their ideas, their intellectual property, or force them to publish an incomplete product that promises the world or is half-baked.  Part of the reason so many gamers are cynical about the game development scene is that they can feel the compromises that are being made just to make a quick buck.  And in the end, everyone feels cheapened by the experience.

It is also one of the reasons I highly respect Blizzard.  Blizzard will never compromise their integrity on a bad product.  Pretty much anything they make will sell.  But they have gone out of their way to destroy products containing dozens of man-years worth of labor and effort, simply because they do not believe it is a good product.  People may whine, get frustrated, or even get angry that the game they have been longing for is delayed or even canceled indefinitely, but the one thing I know for certain is that they had a good reason.  And for that, I can always put my trust in the quality of Blizzard’s games and uncompromising integrity.

An Indie will not even bow down to his own fans if it is the wrong thing to do.

And if that isn’t “independence”, I don’t know what is.