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History disagrees with the sentiment that it was easier to "make money" as an indie in the 1980s, or 1990s than today....

In the 1980s the distribution channels were being established which meant either you scored a deal with a bricks and mortar retail store, such as Sears, Babbages or Toy's R Us, or you ziplock bagged your PC game and tried to sell them at swap meets and computer stores.

In the 1990s there were more direct retailers and amalgamations of bricks and mortar stores occurred. The shareware model emerged and ziplock bagging disappeared. If anything, the 1990's were a bit of a dark ages for indies as either you had a publisher to get into a store or shareware.

From the 2000s onward we have an increased number of target platforms, and increased demographic of game players (from kiddos to those who grew up playing games for 30+ years... see: http://dmitriwilliams.com/will... (warning: Word doc)) , and increased number of channels (e.g., bricks and mortar persists (barely), online services like Steam, bundles, etc...)

If you (have aspirations to) develop indie games, it may seem likely everyone is creating them and the market is saturated but it's the same mentality as a musician at a "Guitar Center" thinking everyone in the world is now in a band; no, it's just the community they choose to surround themselves in. The signal to noise ratio is such that indies can succeed if they spend time build a great game and heed the lessons of other indies in how to market it through these channels. (GDC Vault has many free videos on this topic, such as: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1... )

I even have a personal example of a AAA dev who use to work with me, but left years ago to start his own 1-man shop. He was a graphic programmer who taught himself to become a better artist and has been making a living, creating games, for a few years now. Check out his studio: http://www.epacegames.com/ And can also site Discord games ( http://discordgames.com/ ); larger than a 1-man group but by making an awesome game and marketing it appropriately, have an opportunity to sell Chasm to eager players, an opportunity that would not have existed 20 years ago.

I see Scientific American has about as much to do with science as the History Channel does with History. "60 second news?" I see the author didn't spend more than 60 seconds reading the report.

Contrary to the article's implication, players in the sample were still overwhelmingly male, and while female players were more likely than male players to be "hardcore", numerically there were still more hardcore male players than hardcore female players.

There are a number of datapoints in the study that are interesting:
http://dmitriwilliams.com/LFGpaperfinal.pdf

- The sample was self-selecting. The survey was offered to all players logged in during the sampling window.
- Self-reported gender: 80.22% male, 19.72% female, .06% declined
- Self-reported as being employed: 66.29% of females, 79.84% of males
- Self-reported sexual orientation: Female: 14.15% Bisexual, 2.28% Homosexual, 6.4% Declined; Male: 3.64% Bisexual, 3.37% Homosexual, 3.6% Declined.
- Self-reported played with a romantic partner: 61.52% of females, but only 24.77% of males

What I found more interesting was that as many as 22% of female players were lesbian or bi-sexual, far more than in the general population. This was not mirrored in male players.

I'll speculate that females playing more hours than males is in some part accounted for by the 13% employment gap reported between males and females in the sample.

As to whether to believe the better than average self-reported BMI and exercise numbers from the women in the survey? What, women misrepresent their weight online? Unheard of!

The lead author is on the faculty at USC. By the same author:

• "From tree house to barracks: The social life of guilds in World of Warcraft." The researchers joined guilds and interviewed players on line.
• "A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games." Women in video games average 32"-25"-35". Games for adults do have female figures with bigger chest sizes, but, surprisingly, the waist size increases too.

There's much more like this. The papers are competent but mediocre.

The lead author is on the faculty at USC. By the same author:

• "From tree house to barracks: The social life of guilds in World of Warcraft." The researchers joined guilds and interviewed players on line.
• "A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games." Women in video games average 32"-25"-35". Games for adults do have female figures with bigger chest sizes, but, surprisingly, the waist size increases too.

There's much more like this. The papers are competent but mediocre.

The lead author is on the faculty at USC. By the same author:

• "From tree house to barracks: The social life of guilds in World of Warcraft." The researchers joined guilds and interviewed players on line.
• "A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games." Women in video games average 32"-25"-35". Games for adults do have female figures with bigger chest sizes, but, surprisingly, the waist size increases too.

There's much more like this. The papers are competent but mediocre.