pffff... you want the moon on a stick, dont you!

It's not a genre and it's not even a useful label...

The Witcher 3 is an independent game as it is self-published by CDPR. Journey isn't an independent game; it was published by an enormous multinational company.

Basically, for a lot of people, the term 'indie' is just a go-to term for any game that isn't Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

uh no it wasnt

the witcher 3 was published by

cd projekt
namco bandai
1c company
wb games
and spike chunsoft

does that sound selfpublished to you anywhere except poland ?

Genres in general are never precise or set in stone. They are malleable, and there is a lot of subjectivity that goes into what constitutes any particular genre. It's an oft-discussed topic in other mediums as well: music, film, literature. Not everything fits into neat little compartments, nor does everyone agree on what something should be classified as... and when some new style or idea starts spawning others to create works with similar traits, new genres can emerge and eventually become new standard genres.

An indie game can be published by a large publisher, no problem. However, in order for it to be indie, it must not be financed by a publisher. The independence involved is financial independence, securing creative freedom for the developer. Once the game is made, if a publisher wants to publish it, that doesn't make it any less "indie".

Hm, was it published by those companies or just distributed by them?

Well, Journey was part of a three-game contract between Sony and Thatgamecompany. It wasn't a situation where Sony just came in last minute to distribute it.

Why? If fecal matter tasted like coffee, that would turn the coffee industry on its head. "Honey, I'm just going to shit a cup." And caffeine free too! It's tags, not categories, and it's there because people realised how stupid trying to slot everything into categories is.

In general "indie" simply means "low production values" or "not a lot of money put into the game". I agree, it's not a completely useful label.

Because it does evokes a certain concept, even if it's fuzzy. Reminds me of 'alternative' genre in music...

Fancy names for common things are just one of the many wonderful ways to annoy someone, and I predict it won't go out of style anytime soon.

Indie is a game genre because Crimzon Clover and Lords of Xulima are similar games...wait a minute, they're not?

Anything indie is great until it becomes self aware. At that point it must be systematically destroyed like fucking Skynet. Otherwise it's nothing but world domination and killer robots... and who wants that coming from the art scene?

You may want to check what you wish for as most expensive coffees are taken directly from animal fecal matter:
*Bah* Snowkat posted the link I was going to put here!

Hence why they taste like shit. So *Bucks sells shit and also doesn't give a shit, amazing!

As for indie, never really understood the concept, I just look at each game as its own entity and judge from there (other than R* games, DarkSouls and MMO's which no longer even come near the radar).

If you go to steam, and check category, you will find indie there.

I know the difference between those two ( tags and categories).

Strategy, rpg etc they mean something describe a game in a way, inform us what can we expect from a game, but indie doesn't inform us of anything.

If you call a game AAA, it says it had a huge production budget.

Overall having AAA category would made more sense, since it inform me of thing as good quality of product, at least it should be.
Indie only inform me that it was made by a company that doesn't have big developer behind it,. It doesn't translate into good quality product. haha a good one :P

But not all things you mentioned are bad,

remasters are good if done properly. There are tons of games that didn't aged good. I myself i find a lot of game horrible to a point of not playing them because how they look.

that only one semi good thing :P I post when i have something i want to ask, something to say or just rage.

I do not find myself liking to chat on forums. Not my cup of tea.

Then you have answered your own question from the title.

- It's a category not a genre.

- Many gamers are interested to play indie games and support indie developers. So gaming communities, websites, reviewers use "indie" terminology to categorize those games.

- Gamers use many tags and concepts. It does not mean all of them are "genre" or they must be genre.

- I don't think it's a big problem that GOG uses indie as genre. It's just a way to categorize indie games and help GOGers to find them easily. For example, click on indie and you will see FTL. And in the info section its genre is strategy, simulation and sci-fi. So do you think it's really an issue?

- Steam tag system is another example. It's a mix of genres, terms and features. Nobody thinks that "Great Soundtrack" is a genre. It's just a good tag to find games with good music.