When does indie stop being 'indie'?

An indie game will remain indie forever.

indie games are independantly funded.

It's linked to the popularity of the company and its games. The ones who made The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy don't have the power that big corps like Ubisoft or EA have, but they're not unknown any more either...

I think the price point of the games is a good indicator too. Indie Games are around 10$. Popular ones like Bastion and Super Meat Boy are greedier and are around 15$-20$ and I think that's a sign that they're not that indie anymore.

In reality it's all about the independence of the developpers, who are supposed to keep all the rights to their creation, but indie has also become a style... So the line isn't quite clear.

most of the time i've seen indies as a genre. e.g. platformers with retro-graphics. not always true, though..

As people write dictionaries and not the other way around new words often get thrown around in situations that suit them without anyone knowing where the exact limits are. So we are left to use our subjective minds to rehash some kind of overall definition that most agree upon.

Independent companies could be called low staffed, low budget, self funded (or public as is the case with Kickstarter) companies that create A or AAA titles.

Usually they create games the "old way". Meaning innovation and gameplay over graphics and scope as they can't possibly compete with the workforce of publishers and developers of big firms. Still if the game is unique enough they might strike gold even in heavily competed genres. On the other hand big firms can't actually risk with innovative and gameplay as if their AAA game fails to sell they might have to cut back on spending as the company might sink very fast.

When big companies create/buy a game, it isn't really an indie game anymore ( correct me if I'm wrong )

When the game isn't called "indie" anymore :3

Honestly, I have no idea.

as soon as they move into a proper office

An indie company is a company who can publish games all by themselves, without a publisher. Valve is indie in a way because they make games and publish them on steam (on PC at least), there is no external publisher.

When they start making games to make money instead of to create something to express themselves. A good example is Tim Schafer, the dude makes games for the same of making them and trying something new, not to make money. Making money is just an added bonus.

Oddly enough, this reminds me of a story I heard a while back. The author was stating that some jobs just can't be done by robots/AI in the near or even distant future. His example was people who buy cotton wholesale. They would take samples of the raw cotton, feel it, smell it ect. then decide what sort of quality it was. When they were asked how they decided, they couldn't really say how they knew, they just knew.

Indie is a bit like that, you generally know when a game is indie, but it's hard to pin down what indie is.

(Oh, and if you're wondering, the author hypothisised that the cotton wholesalers were subconsiously measuing a whole variety (20+) of things, such as weight and texture, then brought all the information together without realising that's what they were doing. Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed with his example.)

"companies like Valve, Hidden Path, and so on aren't really considered indie, but they are"
Valve? Really?

Wait. Valve is indie company? Da fuq?

When it's outie

I would say, an Indie game is any game, that does not use well-known names for promotion. Those might be a title, a well known publisher/developer, similarity to some other game and so on.

I think the term "indie" sould be only indicative of a business role, instead of a type of game creator/team. The only other thing separating them from bigger corporations is this: big companies don't like to take risks by releasing fresh ideas, so they stick with working formulas while indies are generally free to do anything (especially if the game is free) + the funding behind each, which is obvious.

independent music used to mean artists who didn't rely on a label (publisher, marketer, distributor) to get their music heard. their fans, their families, and themselves are what got their music noticed (remember, this was tough to do before practical ways of delivering digital music existed).
pretty soon, independent labels were created. they had the same spirit of self-driven ways to get unknown artists heard, without relying on the "big" major labels. it made sense, since the indie label could handle all those sorts of tasks for multiple indie bands. it didn't really stop being indie, but it does slightly skew the original definition.
eventually... indie somehow became a genre. even if you're on a major label, you can have an "indie" sound. here, the definition is hugely skewed from the original intent, but... it's still "indie".

I think it's just important to determine which indie you mean when you're talking about indie, rather than say "this is indie, this isn't".

Indie stops being indie when they're releasing the 8th sequel to their original beloved indie game. I watched "Indie Game: The Movie" and the guys there were really independent, having no money, blah blah blah...

When devs start to act like a "big bosses" of videogaming, attempting to take your money away from you via DLC and Collector's Edition stuff bullshit.

For me, indie means independent, something made for a few persons (how less persons are involved, more indie is). Valve is a good example of no indie (wtf).

Also, in music for example, indie would be when a person make something that dont follow what the most of people do.

I'd say developers who can appeal more to a niche audience, and making profit doing so, instead of trying to streamline a game nobody knows about, as there are plenty others already.

That, and everything else "indie" already involves in it's meaning. (Budget, independence, and so on)

When creating a game is worth enough to make a living out of it

Indie is self funded and published. On other hand I would disqualify Valve for being publisher. If you fund other companies and sell their games you aren't indie anymore.