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This is a carryover post from Serebii forums. I’m moving some of my stuff from there over here, particularly the things I think will prompt worthwhile discussion. Hopefully the introductory post will clear up some confusion about the question I'm asking...
Is Pokemon an indie game series? Absolutely not. Nintendo's involvement and the marketing from the earliest of days make that pretty clear.
Is Game Freak an indie company? It's hard to argue that they are, again due to Nintendo's involvement as well as the fact that "indie" wasn't really a thing back then.
But I have noticed a lot more people talking about Game Freak's development strategy resembling that of a smaller "indie-esque" company, specifically in the making of the main series games of Generations 1 and 8. Regardless of one's thoughts on Sword/Shield's development cycle, both the most recent and the earliest games in the main series exhibit a sort of "rough around the edges" feel. For Sword/Shield, some of that feel could be attributed to the fact that the team for those games were relatively small while the other half of the company was working on Little Town Hero.
I probably wouldn't have given it too much thought except I've been seeing more the history of Game Freak as a company. Originally they were a video game fanzine that eventually expanded into game development. The concept of "indie studios" didn't really exist at the time, but a company with such humble beginnings evokes that idea to me at least.
I'm not entirely sure if this has any implications for the future even, but with the 25th anniversary coming up it was fun to look at this stuff. I hope it is for you too. Also "if I ran the Pokemon Company", I'd probably outsource a game or two to the indie company who made that Bug Fables game
Is Pokemon an indie game series? Absolutely not. Nintendo's involvement and the marketing from the earliest of days make that pretty clear.
Is Game Freak an indie company? It's hard to argue that they are, again due to Nintendo's involvement as well as the fact that "indie" wasn't really a thing back then.
But I have noticed a lot more people talking about Game Freak's development strategy resembling that of a smaller "indie-esque" company, specifically in the making of the main series games of Generations 1 and 8. Regardless of one's thoughts on Sword/Shield's development cycle, both the most recent and the earliest games in the main series exhibit a sort of "rough around the edges" feel. For Sword/Shield, some of that feel could be attributed to the fact that the team for those games were relatively small while the other half of the company was working on Little Town Hero.
I probably wouldn't have given it too much thought except I've been seeing more the history of Game Freak as a company. Originally they were a video game fanzine that eventually expanded into game development. The concept of "indie studios" didn't really exist at the time, but a company with such humble beginnings evokes that idea to me at least.
I'm not entirely sure if this has any implications for the future even, but with the 25th anniversary coming up it was fun to look at this stuff. I hope it is for you too. Also "if I ran the Pokemon Company", I'd probably outsource a game or two to the indie company who made that Bug Fables game