A lot of game studios are considered “indie”. Are they really? 

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Perhaps a flawed definition of indie

An indie studio is generally considered as a studio that

1. ◻️ Has a small team (1-5 people)
2. ◻️ Has a small budget

Most indie studios don’t have massive success. To me, a successful indie game is simply one that makes 100$ (this varies greatly, but it’s the minimum for a professional indie to me). 

However, some of these studio’s games will have huge success- take one of my favorite games, Undertale.

Undertale was produced by developer Toby Fox, with some help from Temmie Chang. However, Undertale made millions- estimations vary between 12.5 million dollars up to 50 million dollars, just from Steam. (So not including sales from GOG, the Undertale website, Console editions, and merch)

This conflicts our definition, as the “Undertale dev team”:

1. ✅ Is a small team (1 or 2 people)
2. ❌ Has a massive budget for their next game, Deltarune

So, are they an indie studio or a AAA studio? 

The problem is, there aren’t enough options to choose from. That’s why I created…

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My own ranking system!

The “Undertale dev team” is neither. Instead, they are a AA studio.

Here’s my idea: a new ranking system, with Five Tiers.

Solo/Newbie Tier. This tier is for the starting game dev, with perhaps a few jam games under his belt. Success for this tier? Well, frankly, getting 100 people to play your game, and with all your games combined getting 100$.

Indie Tier. This tier is people who can fluently code without checking resources/tutorials for most things. You should have released around five games, have a small community and be able to work as a game dev part-time to full-time, but still be all by yourself/in a small team relying on low budget. 

Now, here’s where things get tricky; and for me the difference between A, AA, and AAA studios are based on team size, budget size, and player willingness. 

For each of these criteria, a studio gains an “A” in my book:

1. Team size above 100 employees
2. Budget in the multimillions
3. If 10 000 people are willing to buy & play a game of theirs only because it has the studio name/logo splashed on it.

Back to Undertale: It has millions of dollars, and I bet you 10 000 or more people would buy & play a game by Toby Fox with no other info.

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What comes next?

After a studio reaches AAA, I add a “.1” for each factor multiplied by 10x.

For example, Nintendo is AAA.6:

1. They have ~1000 employees (100 employees x 10 to the 1st power | +.1)
2. They have probably 10 billion USD dedicated to budget (rough estimation) (1mil x 10 to the 4th power | +.4) 
3. I bet 100 000 people would be willing to buy & play one of their games (10 000 x 10 to the 1st power | +.1)

So, we do the math: .1+.4+.1=.6.

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Thanks for reading this, as it’s my FIRST EVER BLOG POST!!! I would love it if you sent me other studios with your opinions on how/where they can be found. (See my “contact” page)