[Sombre]

I remember the creator of Exile/Avernum/Geneforge talking quite frankly about how indy developers actually have less chance to innovate because innovation is a risk they can't afford to take. He pointed to his rpgs - on the one hand you had an innovative rpg set in the british isles at a time when Romans were fighting the locals, he put a lot of thought and depth into the setting, made an entirely new system of magic, really did a lot of innovative work there, his best work he said. On the other hand you have the exile series which he saw as a far more conventional rpg of dragons and at least somewhat familiar fantasy game stuff, priests and wizards and whatnot. Of course Exile sold many many times more copies than the other game (which I can't even remember the name of now) and he actually got pretty bitter about it. He had gone off the beaten track and been punished for it. Where he had followed roughly what others had done and produced something he felt wasn't innovative or his best work, it had been his best seller and he had become known for it.

He concluded that people looking to the indy developer for innovation are misguided in the extreme and pointed to the kind of games indy developers usually make. Recycled and far from innovative war sims and puzzle games. Arcadey shooters. By the numbers rpgs.