A recent article in “The Artery,” an art news channel based out of Boston, is declaring 2014 “The Year the ‘Indie’ Games Died.” According to the article, the mainstream video game industry has leveraged its mass appeal to gobble up gaming profits and leave little space for the artistic license, innovation, and risk-taking that small, indie studios once enjoyed.
The journalist who wrote the article has clearly never met the team at Chile’s Sumersion Studio.
Sumersion is a one-of-a-kind gaming studio that is bucking the mainstream trend. The high-performing team makes games targeted specifically toward the “indie” sector: players that enjoy new and unconventional ideas. While most Latin American videogame development companies target casual mobile device players, Sumersion bets on a riskier platform but with bigger monetary gains: the hardcore PC gamer market. All their development throughout the past three years has gone toward testing: testing the game mechanics, the market, and the mass media. They’re taking all they’ve learned since 2011, and putting it into the game they’re releasing this year (“3 Days of Darkness”), which has the potential to be their greatest success yet.