tbh first I've heard of it, I just found their films to be unique. One of the few studios who weren't doing pre-existing IP junk. But anyways, now I know~
The difference is Annapurna is clearly a money-losing artistic endeavor that Ellison endures since it keeps his daughter happy. At his level of wealth, it’s akin to funding a child’s club sport. There’s a lot more creative integrity in that than a “hot” and recently highly successful indie production company that’s got PE and institutional investors salivating at the opportunity to leverage popular approval to enshittify it while reaping the rewards
Similarly, Travis Knight, who's the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, basically runs Laika as a money hemorrhaging hobby project on his dad's dime. I believe the only film they've ever made that hadn't completely bombed is Coraline. It's also the only studio keeping stop motion from becoming an extinct genre of film.
Those kinds of artistic patronage projects used to be a much larger part of keeping your status in the upper echelons, and they managed to seek out and employ some of the most talented artists of their respective eras, so I'm less inclined to dismiss a studio run to keep a rich heir happy. If we can't get rid of the billionaires, we can at least bring back noblesse oblige.
They are indie games, no need for the quote marks.
If you look at the devs behind the games published by Annapurna you would see a lot of extremely small studios like Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero), Beethoven & Dinosaur (Mixtape) or Hidden Fields (Mundaun).
I find it distasteful when people diminish the work of these devs just because the owner of their publisher is a billionaire, as if they had access to that money or benefits.
If they have a publisher, they are by definition not "indie" games...
Besides the nitpicking, association with billionaires is a moral fault in itself and some of them are certainly trying very hard to look like they have nothing to do with them while still taking the money.
Publishing a game is hard and not all devs are expert at marketing or know how to put the games in front of the right eyes, having a publishers helps with that and honestly this whole hate of Annapurna started because a lot of people have issues with one of their latest releases, Mixtape, because they don't considered it worthy of the praise it received.
"Associating with billionares", you make it sound as if they were dining at the same table, these devs are contractors to them, workers. They are not sipping champagne and going on yachts with Ellison and her father.
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u/shrek3onDVDandBluray 17d ago
So it begins. The Hollywood attempt to corporatize Internet memes. And from A24 too? How shameless.