SAN FRANCISCO–It wouldn’t be a gaming conference without a “State of…” panel, and the Game Developers Conference Indie Games Summit fulfilled that requirement Tuesday evening with the final spot on its two-day schedule, a panel discussion titled, “The State of Indie Games.” The panel expressed a range of attitudes toward the future of indie gaming, with degrees of optimism running the gamut from cautious to unbridled.

Jamie Cheng, president of Eets: Chowdown developer Klei Entertainment, kicked the session off with a hope that the future of indie gaming will see the niche shed some of the assumptions people have about the scene. Specifically, he takes exception to the notion that indie games have to be “quirky,” since that’s often a code word for “not commercially viable.”

“That’s the kind of stigma we can fight to change,” Cheng said. “We can educate distributors that any developer should and can create different games, but also if they choose to, that they can create mass [market] games.”

That hope reflects Cheng’s personal view of indie games. As president of Klei, Cheng must handle both business and development concerns, two tasks he loves so much that he said he could never make a game purely for commercial or artistic success. Presumably, Klei’s current project, a microtransaction-driven, free-to-play game set to be published by Nexon, is a satisfactory balance of profit potential and artistic endeavor.

Grubby Games cofounder Ryan Clark was slightly reserved in his appraisal of indie gaming’s future. While he was confident the medium would thrive, he was less confident about the prospects of any individual developer or studio in an increasingly competitive section of the market. Having a great game is by no means a guarantee of continued success, he noted.

“It’s not for the feint of heart