The past year has been near-legendary for indie games – from the smash-hit success of Balatro, to games that crept up into success like 1000xResist. Nearly every month, dozens of indies dropped to soak up players’ time. But despite those successes, indie developers felt the harrowing issues of the video game industry just as keenly as anyone – from a lack of funding to issues of even getting their game discovered in the first place.
With that in mind, Inverse had a chance to talk to the winners of this year’s Game Developers’ Conference and Independent Game Festival Awards. Despite the rampant innovation in the indie game scene, we asked them what the industry as a whole could do to get indie developers more support – and there were some obvious trends that emerged.
