Where’s the sense of vision in indie development?
I think the move to a more independent industry will produce some interesting changes (and it has been, but in very small ways), but I don’t believe that the “casual games” developers have added much over the years. And they’re the ones dominating the market these days, because they know how to exploit cheesy game mechanics that sell. And on the tails of that – if the indie market is at all successful, the only people who will profit from this venture are (again) the publishers. Those in control of the means of distributing your indie game (through online portals, etc) will ultimately be the ones with the most control of the game industry. That’s why, if things don’t change soon, history will repeat itself with little learned from its corporatist past. The industry is going to look much the same in 10 years – with different people clawing their way to the top. Already we see that publishing portals make many of the decisions for indie designers – like download size, demo length, title
