Dave the Diver is one of the many games up for Best Indie at The Game Awards. The problem? A lot of people don’t think it’s an indie. Its developers are employed by huge publisher Nexon, and rather than take a stance, Geoff Keighley has been his usual noncommittal self.
When asked about the controversy stirred up by this nomination during a Twitch Q&A (first spotted by Kotaku), Keighley said, “Independent can mean different things to different people and it’s sort of a broad term.” What’s indie and what isn’t has been a hot topic in games journalism in the last few years. Back in the day, to dub a game as independent just meant the developers distributed the game themselves without the aid of a major publisher like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft. Now, it seems to mean games with a particular art style.
There are loads of ways we could define indie moving forward, as Keighley notes. “Does independent mean the budget of the game? Does independent mean where the source of financing was? Is it based on the team size? Is it the kind of independent spirit of a game, meaning kind of a smaller game that’s different?” Rather than answering any of these questions, he simply shirks the responsibility his position holds.
You can’t tout your awards show as the Oscars of the gaming world and then do nothing but non-critically advertise upcoming releases. The Game Awards has been historically bad at actually taking a stance on something, but defining one of its categories feels like a really low bar to clear. And yet it still fails. After allegations of workplace misconduct at Activision Blizzard surfaced and the company was sued, its games weren’t advertised at TGA. What seemed to be an actual stand was later revised by Keighley, disappointingly. There was no mention of unionization efforts last year, and I’m doubtful Keighley will mention the vast layoffs seen in the industry when he takes to the Peacock Theatre stage in L.A. this December either.
Rather than seek a definition of indie, or even offer up some guidelines and suggestions, Keighley has left it up to everyone else. “We really defer to our jury—120 global media outlets—that vote on these awards to kind of make that determination of is something independent or not,” he explained. That makes it sound like we could all vote for Apex Legends in the Best Debut Indie category and TGA would just run with it, which it obviously wouldn’t. So, TGA must have an opinion, but it seems like Keighley just doesn’t want to share it because having any kind of opinion that can be wrong isn’t attractive to advertisers.
