Why game industry talent is going indie (2011)

There's another important aspect to this story: ten years ago, being an indie dev was not economically feasible. Before digital distribution, Best Buy had shelf space for like 100 titles, and they made the (rational) decision to spend this limited resource on high-margin, low-risk titles in order to maximize revenue. In other words, there was no opportunity for a long tail of gaming. Physical retailers couldn't keep around a back catalogue of 10,000 games for $10 a piece--the margin wasn't worth the inventory costs.

Digital distribution turned that on its head, and a long tail became possible. How quickly it became populated is a testament to the built-up frustration of devs having to work for The Man.

This would be a good time to have the promised follow-up with the developers mentioned in the article. There's some decent discussion about the risks of going indie, but it'll have more teeth when we find out that the devs actually lost their homes when the risk didn't pan out (if that's the actual outcome).

This is about a year old. I hadn't seen it.

You can guess from the headline (because big developers/publishers destroy your soul and your projects).

The mini profiles of games and people are sweet.