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Celebrating the Art of Indie Video Games

In its latest episode, PBS’ Off Book series explores the creativity and innovation at the frontier of independent video game design. “In the beginning, video games were actually independent ventures,” Jamin Warren, a journalist and editor of gaming magazine Killscreen, explains. As game design grew into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today, he says, creative teams became larger and lost some of the freedom that smaller studios have. Like indie film, however, independently created games are flourishing. With the rise of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, creators have been able to raise six-figure budgets directly from fans to create games outside the mold of mainstream games.