So no Dominions 4?

[Kraftwerk]

Theres a real chance for indy developers and "niche" games, to really get out there right now. The PC game community is heralding the end of times, because the new consoles just came out, and sales are down across the board. Add on to that the fact that people are tired of more of the same, and spending 1000s on upgrades every 6 months to play the A+titles, and you have an enviroment where cheaper games, with solid gameplay, with digital distribution and large communities, are going to reign supreme on the PC for some time to come.

PC gamer companies cant compete the same way console game companies do, and they cant compete the way the did just a year ago.

Digital purchasing and downloading of games, episodic content at less than 10 dollars, matchmaking services for multiplayer games, and strong communities are what the PC has to offer that consoles dont. Adapt or die.

Id like to see the people who made this game (and not the people who publish it) make money on this game for the next 20 years. Instead of still playing this game for years to come, while the devs all work at telecom companies to pay the bills, while hackers and pirates, continue to create new content for a game they didnt develop or help support.

Digital distribution is the fastest way to not need a publisher. Then you have more money to spend on an A+ website, instead of something that looks like its an angelfire page from 1995.

[thejeff]

The devs do this part time and have, I believe, teaching jobs fulltime. (At least Kristoffer teaches.) They appear to be content with that. This isn't an attempt to break into the big time gaming world. It's a hobby that's self supporting and brings in some money. You have to understand that to understand the reasons for their attitude.

I fully expect Illwinter to be around, as long as they're both interested in writing games and able to bring in enough money to justify the time. 10 years from now? Why not? Or maybe they'll have moved on to other things.

And for the community point:
I don't know how many threads show on your front page, but it defaults to 50 and I'll bet you can't find more than a couple that are nothing but spelling/grammar flames. Maybe I just gloss over them, so if you'd like to point 20 such threads out...
There are some heated arguments, but very few are just here to troll or flame. The vast majority of people are told to leave are suspected piracy cases and even those are usually just directed to Shrapnel support.
This has always seemed a very friendly supportive community to me. That's largely a function of the type of players the game attracts.