It wasn’t long ago that nobody really knew what an indie game was. The early parts of this decade was a ghost town for indie developers. Think about it for second; there was no mainline distribution channel, next to zero digital distribution services, and even blogs, which accounts for it’s fair share of video game journalism, hadn’t yet become a prominent medium for journalism and reviews. Suffice it to say, if you were an indie developer just seven or eight years ago you were facing a serious uphill battle.

Sony wouldn’t talk to you. Nintendo wouldn’t talk to you. Microsoft wouldn’t talk to you. It was a major league game and the only place you were allowed to play was in your own backyard.

Of course, that’s all changed in today’s day and age. Indie games are rising higher than ever before and with it has come exclusive distribution channels, a wide variety of media outlets who are excited to play the latest indie game, and even a dedicated channel on the second most popular home console in the world, the Xbox 360.

Yep, today is a great day to make an indie game, but tomorrow will be even better.

With the skyrocketing costs of making games these days it’s no wonder that the big publishers (EA, Activision Blizzard, THQ, etc.) are focusing much of their development into either sequels of successful games (Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Madden) or on tried and true formulas for a great game (Mirror’s Edge, UFC, Dead Space). There’s actually very little innovating amongst the mainstream industry. I’d be willing to wager that most truly innovative titles get axed long before they are ever even considered to be financially viable at most large publishers. It’s just the way of the industry nowadays. Shareholders demand profits, and publishers know what makes money.

While this may seem like the worst possible scenario for gamers who love non-conformist titles and interesting plot lines outside of the good guy, bad guy/anti-hero scheme that’s ever so popular these days, this is actually leading up to one of the biggest revolutions in the history of this still very young industry.

Before I go any further with this I’d like to point out a few games that, within the last couple years, have already made a huge impact on the industry and millions of gamers:

Narbacular Drop: I’d be willing to guess that you’ve probably never heard of this game, or maybe you have… Whichever it may be you have certainly heard of, and most likely played, the spiritual successor to Narbacular Drop; Portal. That’s right, the Valve developed portal-based physics puzzle game which took the world by storm in late 2007 was very closely related to the indie game that most people never even heard of. In fact, Valve actually brought in the DigiPen team (the developers of Narbacular Drop) to develop Portal. This was a game that revolutionized the way we see FPS games as not always having to be about bald space marines and World War II privates.

Braid: The 2D platformer is a dying genre amongst the industry. It’s unfortunate too because there is a certain elegance built into the perspective that comes with it. There is no better illustration of this than Braid. Braid was released in mid-2008 with most people muttering a mere “huh?” at it’s existence. It’s true, the game didn’t sell overly well, but it’s style, message, and outstanding puzzles have lasted the tests of time. Braid was a fantastic indie game that had one of the most intriguing gameplay elements brought together with the best damn art style I’ve personally seen in a long, long time.

Audiosurf: People like music games. After three Rock Bands, and a gajillion Guitar Heroes it’s apparent that people like to interact with music in more ways than just listening. But Audiosurf did something different than both Rock Band and Guitar Hero and no, I’m not talking about adding a new instrument. Audiosurf takes the basic principle that everybody loves their own music collection and made that it’s main priority. With it you aren’t tied to some set list of songs that, more often than not, are crap (for me anyways). The trade off being that you aren’t actually playing the music through a faux guitar but watching the rhythmic beats through a track. It’s an absolute delight to play and, combined with the leaderboards for each individual song, adds a whole new dynamic to what already amounted to a fun, new, and interesting way to experience your old music collection.

Each of these games contributed to the industry in ways nobody could have imagined. They inspired and drove thousands of more indie developers to create their own experimental game. Likewise, they got the industry to sit up and take note of what the indies were actually doing. All of a sudden, the mainline publishers was no longer the innovators, they were the repeaters.

And so it shall remain as long as the big time publishers continue to take shareholder money, which they will. This inevitably will lead to a golden age of indie developers making games that can have both mass appeal and low costs. A neo-renaissance, as it were.

We are on the verge of a tipping point where indie games are not only contributing to the industry as a whole, but also driving it. They will be the ones who are proving what games and sub-genres are fun and can be profitable not the big-time publishers. They, ultimately, will be deciding what games you play in the future as the big publishers quickly attempt to just buy out or copy any successful indie platform and make it into a mega-blockbuster that will be the next Halo, or Mario Bros.

Of course, will the big time publishers ever stop innovating entirely? Absolutely not and I’m certainly not saying that. If anything, the big publishers will simply buy up tiny indie developers and fund them as indie studios, much in the same way Hollywood does so with their “indie studios.” These publisher-owned indie studios will be created for the sole purpose of figuring out what new gaming phenomenon will take the public by storm and more than a few times will they absolutely nail it. But, by and large, it will be the small time, true indie developer that will stumble upon something great.

After all, when you have a developmental force in the thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, each with their own ideas and experiments… well… there’s just no way to compete with that amount of creative force.

Goodbye dark ages of gaming! Hello renaissance.