# #51. Was 2025 a great year for indie games?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/indieventure-6655297/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/indieventure-6655297/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games.md
Podcast: [Indieventure](https://stenobird.com/podcast/indieventure-6655297)
Published: 2025-12-18T14:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://indieventurepodcast.podbean.com/e/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games/
Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/uwcrk2aa4yqarz9w/ep-51_mixdown.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/indieventure-6655297/episodes/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games
Duration seconds: 7330

## Resource

The festive season is well and truly upon us, which can only mean one thing! …Actually that's not true, it means loads of things to all sorts of different people. But to an Indieventure listener, it means our increasingly established tradition of putting together a two-part end-of-year round-up! Tune back in for our Game of the Year list discussion on December 22nd, but first, it's time for a more free-form look at the year that was. If you've listened to one of these before you'll know that this episode can end up being quite… cathartic for your trio of hosts, who've once again witnessed a year in the games industry that can generously be characterised as full of highs and lows. But aside from… all that, what were this year's big trends in indie games specifically? We delve into the unusual prominence given this year to longer indie games, indie game sequels, and indie games as digital third spaces (because we know "friendslop" is mostly meant as an affectionate joke but haven't we landed on a much better name there?). Also, expect some spicy takes on whether Steam's monopoly in the PC gaming market is causing them to increasingly become more of a problem than a champion for indie publishing. We end as ever with our hyperfixations, and Rachel is keen to bring your attention to Thinky Dailies, a new daily series of in-browser brainteasers from our good pals over at Thinky Games – guaranteed to make you feel smarter than Wordle as well as being much, much less cursed. Liam is eager to highlight the excellent and highly timely video essay Greed is Destroying the World by Drew Gooden. And finally it's a rare musical recommendation from Rebecca, who's been listening to the Mountain Goats and their amazing new concept album, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan. Our m…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/indieventure-6655297/episodes/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/indieventure-6655297/51-was-2025-a-great-year-for-indie-games.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.