Dave The Diver is undoubtedly one of the best games of 2023, but it found itself caught in a bit of a storm during awards season as at The Game Awards of that year, the fantastic diving game and restaurant management sim was nominated for Best Independent Game, despite it being created by a subsidiary of the huge South Korean developer and publisher Nexon.
Now Mintrocket CEO and writer and director on the game, Jaeho Hwang, has directly addressed the controversy in an interview with 4Gamer (translated by Automaton Media), stating that "it’s not like we applied for the award ourselves."
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Hwang emphasises that the nominees for Best Independent Game are picked based on nomination system that developers cannot nominate themselves for. The Game Awards website states that all nominees, regardless of categories, are "chosen by an international jury of over 100 global media and influencer outlets, selected for their history of critical video game evaluation", with specialised juries set up for particular categories.
"We did not intend for it to have an indie game feel" Hwang tells the publication, saying that "it's made by Nexon, so there's nothing indie about it".
"I wonder if people mistook us for an indie studio just because we’re developing games as a small team, or just because our art styles and game systems tend to be unique." It is, admittedly, pretty hard to put Dave The Diver in a labelled box like many other games, but just because something uses pixel art and has a completely unique premise and gameplay loop, doesn't mean it's independent.
The game just celebrated its 2nd anniversary
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Back when the discussion was rumbling, The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley shared his thoughts on the controversy during a Twitch stream, where he said "independent can mean different things to different people," and that "we defer to our jury" on making those judgments. He did acknowledge that the studio itself comes from a "larger entity" but was (probably) created with a "relatively small budget".
All we'll say is that Dave The Diver is a fantastic game, and we loved it back on Switch. And we may well be revisiting it again soon as Mintrocket has confirmed that the game is getting a free Switch 2 update "soon". It's also getting some DLC, but that's recently been delayed to 2026.
What do you think of Jaeho Hwang's comments? Let us know down below.