Some people need to hate to fill the emptiness they feel inside. Gamers sometimes like to act as though they're better than most by not watching reality tv or some shit but they're really no different in engaging in pointless drama. I remember seeing trailers for when the Wii or Switch were both coming out and expecting people to be excited and I saw gamers shiting on Nintendo like hell. I'm like, damn man, no one is forcing you to buy it ... Also, Expedition 33 is a game that transcends its medium. It deserves all the positivity it's getting.

For what it's worth most people are more mad that E33 won best indie and best debut indie. It's not an indie game, many people have said as much and it's completely unfair that they won in categories meant for small budget games by small teams. Totally deserved in other categories, but that does leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I've only seen bitching about it not being an indie and taking those awards. They hired out a small army.

That's pretty much where I'm at too. Though the "Indie Award" has always had similar problems before, such as the **Dave the Diver** debacle. But even though you could technically argue E33 is an indie it felt really wrong to have it up against something like **Blue Prince** in the indie categories. E33 had a huge budget with A-list actors ffs.

I guess I'm confused because I didn't know that "low budget" was now synonymous with "indie." They are an indie dev that made their first game yet their game doesn't count as "indie" because they had a budget? What about a game like No Man's Sky? They were an indie dev that got promoted by Sony and everyone kinda forgot they weren't a massive company and trashed the game when it came out. In my opinion, that seems even less fair. I'm not saying they deserved the award more than any other game, I enjoyed all the games nominated, I'm just saying that if E33 flopped I highly doubt anyone would call them more than an indie dev that bit off more then they could chew like No Man's Sky.

> I guess I’m confused because I didn’t know that “low budget” was now synonymous with “indie.” There aren't any hard rules of what an indie game is, and TGA don't set any because they don't take their jobs seriously, but it's usually accepted that indie = small teams, small budget. Otherwise, technically games like Cyberpunk 2077 are "indie" because they're self-published, while games published by Devolver Digital are technically not indie because they have a publisher despite the games being made on a tiny budget and occasionally created by only one person. Expedition 33 had a huge budget compared to other games in its category, and much more developers. They had mo-cap, they had popular voice actors, and they had tons of contract workers overseas. It's not fair to put it up against games that didn't have any of that. E33 is what the industry refers to as a AA game. Mid-sized budget, mid-sized team. As opposed to AAA, massive budgets with massive teams. > What about No Man's Sky No Man's Sky (on release) is *way* smaller in scope than E33. It was made by around a dozen developers only, and they actually self-published it which makes it much more "indie".

I am sad now that I'm not into this dark fantasy stuff.

> executives who never played a single game in their lives... Makes me think of Gaben who is a Dota2 nerd.

> Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. This is why I don’t care anymore about what other people think and check the communities of games. I just hope the game, I like the most wins. If it happens, great! If it does not, sad but that’s okay. That’s life. I went over to Reddit so I could keep track if the game awards because I didn't have time to actually watch it. Holy shit the hate E33 is getting is completely ridiculous, as Reddit does. Whether you go to the Silksong, KCD2, Death Stranding, Dispatch, Arc Raiders, or any other games subreddit that was nominated for any award about half the comments saying E33 is trash, overhyped, and their game deserved to win instead. As someone that has enjoyed all of these games, the salt is absolutely bonkers. Most of the ones complaining are basically saying "I never played it but I heard they did [blank] so they don't deserve [blank] award." > I just don't get why they need to shit on other people and the games they like just because their game didn't win. Because it is the internet and nowadays people only think about themselves. “I like this game, I want and need this game to win”. The internet allows people to be sort of anonymous and that brings the worst out of people (because more often than not, there’s no consequences of the actions when it is written anonymously).

E33 was the surprise of the year for me. It came from nowhere.

So a successfully crowdfunding campaign could make a game not indie anymore? "Indie" means "independent", which means there is no publisher or investor that could influence creative decisions in the service of profits. (As CDPR is publicly traded and does answer to investors, Cyberpunk would not qualify.) If you want a low budget award, call it low budget award and define a threshold for said budget.

>But it's been that way for almost a decade at this point and I no longer care to split hairs about it, Haha, us old farts have been arguing about what constitutes an RPG at least since the days of the first Diablo.

The category is misnamed. It should be best single A game from an independent studio. *Technically* Sandfall is an independant studio. A very well privately funded independant studio founded by industry veterans supported by a great publisher. But no-one is arguing that other games published by Kepler Interactive aren't independant. And with 30-ish full-time employees Sandfall's scale is that of an SME, not an Ubisoft/EA/Sony. The award doesn't feel right because this middleweight AA category was completely abdandoned the previous decade (which legacy studios are now paying a heavy price for), and "indie" came to mean "single A" because if the material conditions of being an independant company. At the same time though technological advancements enabled small teams to take on larger and larger projects. "Indie" does not mean what it used to, and Clair Obscur is trailblazing this AA renewal. Award shows simply need to adapt and start restricting entry based on team size or something.

That's one area where you can see it is indie despite the large development cost. They were published by Kepler Interactive and for some markets Bandai Namco. Neither of which have Ubisoft or EA's marketing budget which normally makes up something like half of the development budget of a game. They did have *some* marketing. I know a lot of French streamers were paid to play the game on launch. But yeah not "in your face for 6 months in front of every YouTube video and inside every happy meal box" like a new assassin's creed or something.

Gamers make me embarrassed to enjoy video games

I think a lot of it was just getting sick of E33 discussion. I remember when Hundred Line released this year some time after E33 and on Steam forums (which, to be fair, is as bad as most gaming forums), while people were, er, "discussing" the game, plenty of valid complaints were topped off with "just play E33 instead, it's cheaper and much better" Like, I don't even disagree, HL was disappointing, but why are you bringing it up, it's apples and oranges. It was also the first I heard of E33 personally so it wasn't a good first impression, even if the devs are sweet and actually gave a shout out to HL.

>and TGA don't set any because they don't take their jobs seriously Jesus fucking Christ people, we are talking about video games. Get a grip.

I agree it's a wonderful game and it deserves recognition, but I also agree it's not as good as BG3. The thing is, that doesn't detract from any of it's awards this year because it was only competing with the games that came out in 2025, not the ones that came out in 2023. Had BG3 and Clair Obscura come out at the same time, I think the split in awards would have been very different.

What a benign comment to respond so strongly to lmao

The problem with the Internet is that it amplifies minority negative voices. Hundreds of thousands of people played that game and 100 pieces of shit get on reddit and be assholes and it gives all of their players bases a bad name. It's the same across anything. On the Internet a loud minority is going to piss in everyone's lemonade because they are trash humans. What makes it worse is algorithm based social media prioritize rage bait since it creates engagement. It's breaking all of our brains.