Has the lack of game-design innovation among publishers driven indie games?
An independent movement has been around for a while, but it hasn’t really taken hold until the last few years. Two factors are driving this. One is that there are student programs training guys to create original systems and to differentiate on gameplay because small teams can’t differentiate graphically. The second factor is digital distribution is finally here, thanks to large-scale broadband penetration and ubiquitous tools like Flash. Why is digital distribution so important? Currently a game that you go to Best Buy and purchase–the publisher retains about 17% of the retail price. And then there’s the problem of used games. The third problem with retail is you have this shelf-space window–about a month to get your game out and marketed. If [the publishers] can start distributing digitally, all those problems go away. They retain 85% of the retail price. They can get creative and do smaller, more risky games because they don’t have to send it to every retail store. And then there’
