And here we are.

Riding the sweet afterburn of the biggest releases of the year, gunfire sandspray in our faces after parkour leaping over one solitary, glowing purple needle exploding against the first snowflake of the year.

And all I want to do is play Limbo again.

The mainstream, mega-million-dollar hits are wonderful examples of the widespread impact gaming can have, even in a corporatized entertainment world, but one thing that will withstand money and Satan’s suited minions is passionate creativity. This is why Indie games are the cockroaches of the gaming universe.

Not that the hardworking developers creating Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed or Halo are soulless cyborg monkeys. It’s just that many of their bosses are.

In the indie world there is a freedom of personal expression and talent apparent in every quality game that can’t exist with billions of dollars and 700,000 shareholders breathing down developers’ t-shirted necks. When money drives creativity, we get high-quality, technologically-advanced, market-saturated games. When passion drives creativity, we get good games.

Digital distribution is a friend to indie development and, conveniently, it is the future of gaming. When Napster broke popular music culture the industry fell into a sick chaos, predicting complete production Armageddon and trying desperately to sue the torrent out of its revenue stream. But nothing can stop evolution, no matter how badly that monkey wants to keep its luscious coat and lack of cognitive thought. We, consumers, drove the business to deliver its product in the most efficient and accessible manner possible, namely over the Internet, digitally. This not only provided consumers a better option, but it opened a lavishly exclusive industry to brokeass bands who would have never garnered the attention of big wigs or large audiences without their MySpace pages.

Indie game developers have an advantage even over indie musicians—apart from the fact they generally don’t wear skinny jeans or deep v-necks, and if their hair looks tousled it’s because they just woke up, not because they spent $50 on 2 ounces of hair wax—in their support systems. The Internet naturally supports indie games with sites like Newgrounds; companies like Valve can’t throw their networks at indie games fast enough; even Internet-connected consoles provide a direct link to indie content for consumers. And as feats like Minecraft have proven, indie gaming is now an extremely viable career and revenue source. The Internet loves indie games because we love indie games (Transitively, we are the Internet, but that’s a discussion for another blog).

With the inception of ridiculous amounts of pay-to-play DLC and a $60 flatline for each mainstream release, the indie gaming revolution is stewing, and it is completely in our hands.

We won’t stop Activision or Microsoft from creating big-budget games, but we can show them what we want, with our wallets, in our games. Quality, creativity, innovation and passion. Entertainment. Fun. Cockroaches.

Do you guys feel the indie revolution vibe? What do you want to see in your games, regardless of monetary support? What are some of your favorite indie titles? Let us know how you really feel in the comments!

Oh, and just for good measure, here are a few indie games I am personally looking forward to. What are yours?

And a movie: Indie Game: The Movie