Google Trends Charts Explosion Of Interest In Indie Games Since 2008

If you ever needed evidence of the rise of indie games since 2008, or as our very own Dominic Tarason put it, the “indieplosion”, then a Google Trends graph certainly provides just that.

In an interview with Gamespot (this one), Jonathan Blow of Braid, The Witness and Indie Fund fame, said the following:

“Back when Braid came out, there certainly had been indie games that people were paying attention to before that. But, sort of that year, 2008, saw a number of indie games that all came in the same year that were all kind of at the same level of seriousness…these are no longer tiny games that you just kind of like ‘aww this is some kid doing something cute’, right? There’s enough meat here to this game so that you might care as much about this game as you would a AAA retail game”.

He then goes on to name these games that he is referring to which we’ll list below with a couple extra noteworthy titles thrown in, all from 2008:

• N+
• Braid
• World of Goo
• Spelunky
• Castle Crashers

It was games like these that Jonathan Blow says turned indie games into something that people learned to expect things from and that they’re worth paying attention to. We have to agree with him on this and it seems that if you look at Google Trends, there is strong evidence to suggest that 2008 was the year that everything turned around – arguably, when indie games became an interest to a wider audience.

Here’s the chart of which we speak below and a link if you want to get a good look yourself:

It’s quite easy to see the explosion of interest in searches for “indie game” since 2008 – quite significant. The reason that the chart starts at 2008 is because the volume of those searching for “indie game” before that was too low to be effectively tracked.

We love these kinds of things and it’s especially great to see that indie games are becoming more and more of an interest to people and culture in general. Of course, since the explosion has started, the rise of mobile gaming has also carved another huge path for indie game development to rise and at a great rate. Let’s hope it continues to, there are certainly no signs of it slowing down.