While the oppression of corporate greed usually leads to the loss of basic liberties and artistic expression, in the case of independent media, a lack of freedom only pushed them to rise above their much larger competition.
Since the early 2010s, major corporations stopped caring for their consumer’s interests and solely pushed for profits. However, lesser studios seized this chance to appeal to the general public, and ever since then, the 4.8 billion dollar indie media industry has been making waves among the competition.
Indie studios’ appeal to the public played a large part in their success. In the modern era, the popularity of “cancel culture” plays a part in what audiences enjoy watching. Before the rise of cancel culture, smaller creators and artists were often sidelined in the belief that following the status quo was beneficial. This assimilationist mindset immediately began to be challenged because the cancel culture movement penalized the admiration of popular culture and media, and thus, alternatives such as indie media were more appealing.
Indie media began to thrive because of its anti-mainstream approach, as experimentation and deviating from the standard path found the industry immense success. Unlike their counterparts, indie animators, story writers and staff are not burdened by unreasonable profit margins. Most indie projects start off as passion projects, and games such as “Stardew Valley,” “Bendy and the Ink Machine” and “Omori” were meant to highlight topics such as small-town life, corporate greed, depression and suicide. Consumers were able to resonate with the underlying messages, helping these games gain a cult following.
Acceptance of independent studios and industries also aided the development of pop culture. Independent studios are able to connect with the general public in a way that major corporations are not. Behind the ever-turning wheels of an independent studio, there are executives with day-to-day struggles that mirror that of the general populace. Therefore, those executives are able to create media that relates to the struggles of the general public. Lesser-known indie animation studios such as Glitch are a prime example of this. Glitch produced vast amounts of 3D animated content the mass public could relate to, such as “The Amazing Digital Circus,” which contains meaningful messages of how society values statements of shock value and grandeur over actual, solid fact. On the other hand, the general public has long since figured out that media produced by major corporations is too profit-focused to facilitate such thought-provoking discussion.
In a world where those with money and influence overshadow all else, major corporations are, ironically, the sidelined studios. In the status quo, corporations such as Disney and Marvel do everything they can to appeal to the younger generations, but much of their media is designed to simply appeal to a specific group of people in an unstimulating manner. On the other hand, the indie media industry gradually grew as consumers became increasingly dissatisfied with the media produced by corporate greed. Slowly but surely, indie media became something people of all backgrounds could relate to.
