It’s also just so painfully 2011, and 2012, and…
I worked in the game industry a little over a decade ago. I left after three successive “hire, crunch, layoff” cycles, and in the decade after that watched all of my friends and acquaintances continue to cycle through the same thing.
It’s broken.

Tony Randall won the Emmy for best lead in a comedy, The Odd Couple, after it was cancelled.
He sad "Thanks, but I'd rather still have a job".

The industry has been way too into the habit of rewarding success with unemployment. Activision-Blizzard had that running like clockwork every time they'd announce annual record breaking profits, and two weeks later laying folks off.

Make a game without labor and tell me how valuable it is. Then lets revisit that one guy's theory about value.

I truly don't know how they expect to make games without people.
I know their dream is either no or free labor, but obviously they're stupid, dumb and bad.

*game does bad* > everyone is laid off
*game does well* > everyone is laid off, C-suite gets a bonus

It’s an honor to be nominated, I’m proud of how much ass my team kicked, I just wish it translated into a bit of security for us

Since I evidently still have the critical acclaim juice, if you know of anyone who needs a narrative/content/game designer with technical and management skills, 15 years of experience, acclaim in related fields, and has some other fancy awards like being a Forbes 30 under 30, I’m your guy!

I’ve worked in indie and AAA, shipped games on pc/console/mobile as well as VR/AR and tabletop, but I’m also a published author in fiction and nonfiction (marvel, dc, vertigo, Hachette, Vice, Cracked, others) who is so extremely open to work outside of the games industry too.

also I’m kinda funny

Isn't Debut Indie specifically for Indies Dev's that just have never gotten a nomination for a Game Award and not just their first game?

I actually got tripped up by Geoff's wording in the nominations video.

"Best Debute Indies recognize developers that haven't won a game award before, in fact this is their first game"

It's on me, my brain just completely missed that last bit of the sentence lol

"For the best debut game created by a new independent studio."

It's not about TGA, sadly the "new studio" part is what journalists focus on, and why we get literally telltale with another name as a best debut

Japanese has "Doujin"「同人」
The translation for that being
"Someone like anyone else" implying that it's made by normal everyday people

Tho you also see that one getting broadened upwards in the same way indie does nowadays too but not as bad or often.

i think the word indie is fine, what we need is actually a word for the mid scale stuff like dispatch/e33. AA games makes me want to ram my head into a wall, and my first instinct of "Middle Class" has so many connotations i should be run over

AA needs to come back as a term, especially when it never really left in countries that arent United States of Murica.

i feel like this kind of indie is filling in the void of what a AA game used to be, which is nice i guess but we NEED a term for it so they stop eclipsing small single-dev games