2008 was mostly a year of triumph for indies, with just a few bits of controversy.  Here’s my list of the top ten stories related to the indie game world in 2008:

10) Luc Bernard and Destructoid’s fracas over Eternity’s Child review – A 1 out of 10 review spawns an embarassing tirade from game’s creator, Bernard, which in turn makes the rest of us indies cringe — we aren’t media professionals and media access to indie developers is easy; we are usually desperate for it.  But is all press good press?  Can’t ask Luc, he stated that he’s leaving the game industry, before quickly recanting his words once again.  Poor guy, he just wanted people to like his game.

9) Blurst goes live – The Casual-ish portal of quirky in-browser 3D games by Flashbang goes live, building on the success of the Snakes on a Plane of the video game world, Offroad Velociraptor Safari.  Blurst is the first major attention game engine Unity3D got for its browser support.

8) Reflexive Bought by Amazon – Not a lot of details have emerged on this yet, but seeing as how Reflexive was one of the largest casual portals to still be pushing innovative indie games, this will certainly have repurcussions for us in the future, hopefully good ones.

7) InstantAction.com goes live – The technology and the website that persuaded IAC to buyout GarageGames went live.  It has attracted less attention than they probably expected, though they just reported over 1 million subscribers.  Does this tech have a future?  It’s all about the games, baby.

6) Crayon Physics Deluxe wins big at the IGF, best field of finalists evar – World of Goo, Audiosurf, Crayon Physics Deluxe, and Fez headlined the event, and the underdog CPD came out on top.  Active TIGSource members had a huge showing (in their monocles) and the Grand Prize acceptance speech was a thing to behold (he just wrote F*** YEAH in crayon on a piece of white paper).

5) XNA Community goes live – Anyone can create and distribute their games via the Xbox now.  We have yet to see proof that this will inspire any good games, but I wouldn’t bet against it.  We’re probably likely to see a breakout hit in 2009 or 2010.

4) World of Goo, Castle Crashers, Braid, N+ print money on the consoles – These games each (likely) made close to or over a million dollars for their creators (and that’s probably conservative).  It’s good to be da king.

3) iPhone App Store goes live – A huge new marketplace open to indies.  For the first time, a cell phone carrier allows the public to create apps and sell them from their store without a prohibitive middleman.  A pile of cash was dumped on early adopters, but it’s too soon to tell if the iPhone marketplace will remain highly profitable for indie developers.

2) Digipen claims IP ownership over student-made game, Synaesthete – When a student makes a game at a game development university, does the student own the IP to the game?  Digipen said ‘no’ to the creators of IGF Student Showcase winner, Synaesthete (which, incidentally, calls into question their eligibility for the IGF).  It’s hard to be on the side of the college here, unless you are The Law, and then you are probably confused.  If you do happen to be The Law, please tell Digipen where they can stick it.

1) World of Goo and Braid become critical darlings, attracting attention of the mainstream press – After a year when Portal was the new black, these two games attracted even more critical attention to the indie scene — and they were worth it.  Stellar production values, huge fun factor, and perhaps most importantly for the game industry as a whole, they were fresh, original, new.

Like 2007, 2008 was a great year for indies.  Hopefully 2009 will bring equal amounts of success, opportunity, and innovation.  Keep at it indies!

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