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They were: http://igf.com/2011/03/minecra...
But the Microsoft buyout definitely takes them out of a 3rd party studio status.

As a gamer, I couldn't care less about *any* award show.

I dunno, I'm a pretty big fan of the independent game festival, and seeing who won what. Usually nukes a week or two of productivity for me.

That fact makes me increasingly interested in just treating the history of games as something to mine for stuff to play. I used to have basically a 1- or 2-year game horizon: what I'm going to play this weekend was determined by choosing from the list of recent games. But now I have more like a 20-year horizon; I might play a recent game this weekend, or I might play a classic game I've heard a lot about that I haven't gotten around to experiencing myself, yet. It seems that as games get taken more seriously as a medium, instead of just throw-away entertainment, it ought to move in that direction. I mean, it's not like avid readers read only new-release best-sellers. Sometimes you do, but sometimes you read Victor Hugo or Isaac Asimov.

Even for new games, there are fortunately still a lot of less-expensive games that come out that can be innovative, and some even manage to get some decent press; World of Goo and Braid are two of the more prominent recent success stories. This year's Indie Game Festival has a lot of interesting stuff, too. Indie games might be even more vibrant than indie film is, these days.

Everyone interested in indie games should sign up to computer graphics world and Game Developer mag. They give away subscriptions if you're a developer. You know, basically anyone who fills out their form. Their online articles are decent too.

One of the best features of Game Developer is the postmortem, the what went right, what went wrong. Fascinating stuff about the industry for an indie publisher or an outsider to read.

The Indie Games show off some of the best out there.

While there are some very good indie works out there it is like the movies. You can tell the difference between a hollywood movie and a indie film, just like a AAA game title and an indie title. Although there are enough gems in both indie movements to make it interesting.

Independent game development studios are not part of company that publishes games. Since they must go to a publisher to sell their games, they are considered to be independent. Independent game development studios are a subset of third party game development studios.

Indie game development studios are small groups that are often poorly funded if they are funded at all. They generally try to make small games that garner attention by being different in a way that seems novel and interesting. Unlike regular independ game development studios, they rarely attempt to make AAA titles. Still, they are a subset of independent game development studios.

The days of one or two people with next to no money attempting to produce a commercially viable game are still very much alive. Some of them are even successful.

http://db.tigsource.com/top
http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html

The article fails to mention that Synaesthete won $2500 at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developer's Conference in 2008. I wonder where the $2500 went? To the school? To the students? I guess it should go to the school since the school owns the game right? Or did they give it to the students because it is their game?

The article fails to mention that Synaesthete won $2500 at the Independent Games Festival at the Game Developer's Conference in 2008. I wonder where the $2500 went? To the school? To the students? I guess it should go to the school since the school owns the game right? Or did they give it to the students because it is their game?

World of Goo is one of the winners of the 2008 Independant Games Festival. You should keep an eye on that competition, it really churns out a number of very good games.

1) a gaming PC is substantially more expensive than a console

Assuming you mean "a roughly equivalent" gaming PC, sure, you're right.

2) you frequently have driver and other compatibility problems

You'd have to define "frequently," but yes, as a developer supporting PCs is definately harder.

3) a number of PC games are launched in a rather buggy state

And this is a fault of the platform how? If anything, the ability to ship buggy software, making initial money, then ship the fixes later should lower costs. PC games don't need to be buggy, it's just what the market tolerates. And we're slowly seeing patches become more and more common for consoles.

4) the overall performance level of consoles has improved a lot in the latest generation

That's just silly. Sure, consoles get more and more powerful, but so do PCs. Sure, Rainbox Six: Vegas looks great on the Xbox 360 at 720p, but it looks even better at 1920x1024 out of my gaming PC.

There's just not a lot left that PC games can claim superiority on.

And here is where I really disagree. PC gaming can claim superiority in one key area: truly independent development. You can develop a PC game on a $600 desktop. You can ship it from a $30 per month web hosting account. No one needs to approve your game. The more unique, more experimental stuff starts on the PC. The best the console people can hope for is that the PC version does well enough to attract investment for a port. Developing for a console is much more expensive. The console's manufacturer is free to reject your game, locking you out. If PC gaming largely dies out, this will be the biggest loss. The cost and filtering will encourage the already cautious publishers to err even more on the side of sequels and knock-offs.

(On that note, if you're looking for interesting new stuff, I recommend Play This Thing!. It's a mixed bag, but it's almost always interesting. The Independent Games Festival used to be a really good place, but it's increasingly dominated by games that haven't even shipped a demo yet, let alone an actual game, which seems like cheating to me.)

I was at the IGF awards ceremony last year when Alexey was given the The Pioneer Award. He was surrounded by a the best of both indie and professional game developers. This year, one of the IGF winners thanked open-source software for making his game possible. He thanked GIMP, STL, and lots of other things I can't recall. It's twisted that Alexey stood in front of a group of people who were thanking him for his contribution, and that the next year he puts down the very tools that made it possible for him to be there, and the tools that made it possible for the game industry to even present him with the award.

This is the 2008 awards, not the 2007 awards. Secondly, I hate when people link to an article that largely just links to another article. Here is the original article.

http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html

Some of the games are already context winners from other competitions from what I hear. If people search online they can find for some more pictures of the games.

Cool action shooter game
http://www.napoleongames.cz/main.php?language=2&section=24

Interesting 1st person view physics puzzle action game.
http://www.penumbra-overture.com/media.php

Nice art and another original idea in an action game.
http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2008.php?id=167

Interesting physics game like last years entry
http://2dboy.com/trailer.php

Fast action 2 player eye candy game with a twist, despite that you can only play with another player only.
http://www.torpexgames.com/games.php

We've entered with our 12th title, The Wonderful End of the World in the competition, and this year, we have 172 competitors. Some of them have an interesting visual style going for them, such as The Night Journey , and others like Understanding Games are of note because they focus on ludology.

One thing that strikes me about this year's competition is how polished many of the titles are. Indie titles are generally associated with programmer art . But while I doubt Crysis has much to worry about, games like Globulos have clear, attractive art direction, and Penumbra: Overture looks pretty sleek.

One complaint is that interesting IGF entries often don't have websites up by the deadline . I always want to see more screenshots and videos. Indie developers can be such teases.
_____________________
Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years.

We've entered with our 12th title, The Wonderful End of the World in the competition, and this year, we have 172 competitors. Some of them have an interesting visual style going for them, such as The Night Journey , and others like Understanding Games are of note because they focus on ludology.

One thing that strikes me about this year's competition is how polished many of the titles are. Indie titles are generally associated with programmer art . But while I doubt Crysis has much to worry about, games like Globulos have clear, attractive art direction, and Penumbra: Overture looks pretty sleek.

One complaint is that interesting IGF entries often don't have websites up by the deadline . I always want to see more screenshots and videos. Indie developers can be such teases.
_____________________
Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years.

We've entered with our 12th title, The Wonderful End of the World in the competition, and this year, we have 172 competitors. Some of them have an interesting visual style going for them, such as The Night Journey , and others like Understanding Games are of note because they focus on ludology.

One thing that strikes me about this year's competition is how polished many of the titles are. Indie titles are generally associated with programmer art . But while I doubt Crysis has much to worry about, games like Globulos have clear, attractive art direction, and Penumbra: Overture looks pretty sleek.

One complaint is that interesting IGF entries often don't have websites up by the deadline . I always want to see more screenshots and videos. Indie developers can be such teases.
_____________________
Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years.

There are so many freeware and shareware games that have been released online by independent developers and programming hobbyists.

The Independent Games Festival is a good start. And to make things easier, there are a many sites and blogs that review indie games and make recommendations: the2bears and Shoot the Core cover shoot-em ups/STGs; Jay is Games handles flash and casual games; and TIGSource (for which I'm an editor), Independent Gaming, and Game Tunnel cover all genres of games. You can expect to find some overlapping, but they each have plenty to search through.

Bone: The Great Cow Race -- Yes, that Bone. NO! Not THAT bone! The other one. THe one in the comic books. With the little white guy. Oh, never mind.

At least for best name.

Surely these indy game awards/competitions have rules...

They do. From the IGF website: http://www.igf.com/guidelines.htm

I always love seeing stuff like this because often you see more innovation or cool gameplay concepts in these and independant games than you see in the "big company" games. Athough mentioned awhile back on slashdot I believe, I also recommend people check out http://www.igf.com/2006entrants.shtml to see all the finalists in this year's indie games competition. Proffessor Fizzwizzle has consumed countless hours of my free time lately much as Breakquest did for me last year.

Are you joking about the Independent Games Festival or are you really not aware that it already exists?

FTA:

"but in gaming, we have no indie aesthetic, no group of people (of any size at least) who prize independent vision and creativity over production values."

Umm, yeah we do.

I think there is a lot more than this author admits to. Why do you think there exists open source 3D engines like Ogre3D as well as a ton of websites devoted to game design techniques , etc? Yes, the indie scene could be bigger, but it is by no means non-existant.

I think the problem is the same as the problem with any popular entertainment media (movies, tv, etc) which is (with apologies to Peter Guber) "If at first you succeed, try the same thing again"

This is why there are like 12 CSIs and 24 Law & Orders on TV. If you want innovative stuff you end up on the baby networks or cable. The production quality and budget may not be good but the content is usually better.

The same goes for indie games. Sadly due to licensing strangleholds, they're unlikely to make a showing on consoles (except maybe the Revolution).

In the meantime, check out games like Tribal Trouble and the competitors of the Independent Games Festival.

• America's Army
• Battlefield 1942
• Call of Duty
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• Half Life and Half Life 2
• Unreal Tournament 2004

• Cube, which allows players to create their own maps.
• Nexuiz, under GPL, allowing everyone to download the source and modify it.
• Inago Rage, own indie FPS, which allows players to create environments from within the game.

The common sentiment seems to be that the video game industry churns out nothing original, and has not for years. The article certainly reflects that. I suppose it isn't difficult to feel that way when you see so many licensed games and sequels on the market. Regardless, I have to voice my dissent.

If you look deeper at the underground independent games you will see a totally different situation. Just check out the one source for independents that sometimes gets kinda-sorta media attention, the Independent Games Festival. Look at last years winners such as Gish and Wik and the Fable of Souls. Intensly original and very fun. How about Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, a charming little game designed to be replayable, with each game finishing in about 5 minutes.

Go to The-Underdogs and just browse around their top-rated titles. There are tons of freebies that are top-notch, very fun, and quite original.

I feel that this situation can be compared to looking out your in your backyard vs traveling to the rainforest. If you sit at home and look in your yard you see tons of squirrels, moles, etc. You get jaded and start to say that there are no unique animals. Occasionally perhaps a deer, and you get worked up over something that isn't really that spectacular. But if you go out and really explore the more wild area you will find tons of great stuff. It is not brought to your doorstep, and it is quickly being eroded away, but it is out there. Just go look for it.

Actually while I do feel that the independent underground is the best source for creative original titles, there are tons of published games that 'fit the bill'. People loooooove to spoute Katamari left and right, and it is an original game, but how about.. Mizuguchi's line of original games (Lumines, Meteos, Rez). How about Wario Ware? How about Dance Dance Revolution? Even the Battlefield series added major innovations into the FPS genre (the huge scale of combat and variety of vehicles) and Guild Wars is an MMORPG that pretty much seems to go contrary to every other MMORPG on the market.

Finally, the 80's were not the golden age of game innovation that people give them credit for. Currently I am intently reading through a great book The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon. Long story short (I realize my post has already crossed from '?interesting? comment' into 'psychotic rant') the 80's original and innovative games were simply original and innovative because there were so few games created yet! Once any succsessful game formula was established, there were an incredible amount of clones. The fact that is true now, is true then. Popular games are copied, repeated, and sell like hotcakes. Pac-Man, for instance, was beat in coin-op sales only by Ms. Pac-Man! There is constantly an influx of new game ideas, the 80's arn't so special.

/prepares to be modded into oblivion by the legion of /.ers weaned in the arcades.

Well, first thing you could do is check out the annual Independent Games Festival, then there are a few game sites devoted to just indy games, like Game Tunnel, or for a good example games you could try something like Gish or Saga of Ryzom. And, if people started taking more notice and buying more, we'd see a lot more indy developers giving it a shot.

People still make innovative games in their garage. With Open Source tools and engines growing up, you should start to see alot more too.

Check out the main page for the 2005 finalists (12.10.04 newspost), and the Student Showcase winners (01.21.05 newspost).

Off hand, I do know that the DigiPen-developed Scavenger Hunt is cross platform, but that's all I know for sure.

Check out the main page for the 2005 finalists (12.10.04 newspost), and the Student Showcase winners (01.21.05 newspost).

Off hand, I do know that the DigiPen-developed Scavenger Hunt is cross platform, but that's all I know for sure.

Here's the list of entrants for the 2005 festival.

If you want to try any out, start with Alien Hominid. It's a great side-scroller that they've ported to PS2 and GameCube.

Too bad they don't tell which games work on which platforms, though. I'm always looking for some new Linux games.

What are you talking about? I can name a class here for each of your parenthetical "fundamentals":

-CS280 - Data Structures
-CS330 - Algorithm Analysis
-CS250 - Computer Graphics II: 3D graphics engine creation with 3D math
-MAT250 - Linear Algebra: 3D math

All of those are in the first two years of school, more advanced versions of those classes and classes that build on those classes occur afterwards. In CS270 you make a linked list (in C, with recursion) and in CS280 you go over the O() notation (i.e. O(n) vs O(log2 n)) of using a list or an array, plus you also go over things such as optimization (like pre-increment vs post-). If you're getting people from DigiPen that don't know their shit, then they probably only graduated by brute force (i.e. throwing money at the school until they graduated).

Also, two DigiPen-made games are in the IGF student showcase, and one in the professional competition. Also, a DigiPen game won the Audience award at the BIG C competeition and the Jury Award winner Revolved is made by a company founded entirely by DigiPen graduates. They look like they have the credentials to me, but I'll let you judge however you want.

Ubisoft paid good money to get this earth-shattering bit of information posted on the front page of Slashdot. Please click the links and wander through the site a bit so your favorite news source stays in business.

http://www.igf.com/judging.htm, paragraph 4:

High execution scores go to games that run well, don't crash, exhibit bugs and are well thought out from a player's perspective.

If they're asking authors to intentionally exhibit bugs in their programs, sounds like a pretty stupid competition to me anyway....

It isn't even clear they give any points to developers that support more than one platform. So while it might give the winner a prize and a nifty badge to stick on their web site, it isn't help us gamers discover independent gaming at all.

I believe the two categories refer to the size of the game. If it is playable through the browser or can be downloaded in a small package, then it can be eligible to enter the web/downloadable category. The rules page, however, says that this is up to the discretion of the judges.

These people just want their games to get recognized and you are going to fault them because it doesn't run on Solaris? That's damn selfish.

Ob-Plug: Two of those games have Linux versions available:

Dark Horizons: Lore and eXtreme Demolitions.

Ob-Plug: Two of those games have Linux versions available:

Dark Horizons: Lore and eXtreme Demolitions.

Last year's winners are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.

As Audio Director for Flashbang Studios, I have been happy to grab some fame and recognition by taking precisely the approach so opposed in this article. In Beesly's Buzzwords, we managed to receive a nomination to Finalist in the Audio Innovation for Web/Downloadable at the Independent Games Festival at Game Developer's Conference 2004.

While one can never truly get in the minds of the judges, I believe we made it to Finalist precisely because we made our music sound MORE like a symphony orchestra and less like $20 Casio-tone keyboard. The web/downloadable category in large part represents the emerging "casual games" market. The audio budgets, both in cash and file size, can often be quite tiny. As such, synthy, repetitive pseudo-techno is often the norm. A similar game, Pop Cap's Bookworm, has a single in-game loop that's maybe two minutes long. It's synthy and happy and kind of nice, but after playing, I mean "researching" the game for an hour, I wanted to scrub my mind clean of that song.

Keeping that in mind, we gave Beesly four distinct songs, taking a cue from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Winter and Spring are light and airy piano songs on sampled grand piano, and Summer and Fall are full (sampled) orchestrations that sound a bit like Copland if I want to be generous. Which I do, since it's my own project. At the time, my friends Paul and Jon and myself were working on a shoe-string budget. We couldn't afford an orchestra (if we could I would have gone for it), but we could afford a few hundred dollars of sampled Akai CDs. The majority of people who commented on the music for Buzzwords said that they find the it "soothing" and "nice". Some have even gone as far as to say it's the first casual game they haven't simply turned off the music in a few minutes.

There's a reason many people like the sound of the symphony instruments more then synth-phony instruments. (Zing!) That reason is that the mainstays of the symphony orchestra, the brass (Trumpet, french horn), the woodwinds (clarinet oboe bassoon), the strings (violin viola cella bass) are all time-tested in a brutal darwinian competition for survival. For centuries composers have competed for funding and commissions, and in that competitive environment, only the sounds with waveforms and harmonics most naturally suited to some kind of average human ear have survived. Different cultures might find different timbers more appealing, but the surviving instruments have had centuries to settle upon overall pleasing sounds. (I am drawing heavily on a book called Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy here by Robert Jourdain. Slashdot is having trouble with the Amazon.com link.)

Synth instruments are relatively new, having mere decades of darwinian refinement by comparison. Let's take food and wine as an example. Not everyone knows how to cook, but everyone knows what they like. Chefs have had thousands of years to study what human neurology will like in the way of food. Now let's add in the metaphor for synthetics. Tang is vaguely like orange juice, but few people would say it is somehow as tasty or as rich as the real organic thing. Grape Kool-Aid can be tasty in its own right, but wouldn't most people with refined tastes would prefer a fine wine or at least real fruit juice?

Someday artificial foods may somehow surpass real foods, but they'll have to do really well to fool our highly evolved tastes. Take the Replicators on Star Trek- they could in theory replicate any food anyone could want or imagine. Thousands of tastes all at once that leave your taste buds reeling. So what do people usually replicate? Simple and familiar things. Steak and potatoes, coffee, or their old favorites from whatever planet they're from. And we'll use our cheap, flexibile digital hardware to try and make the best symphony sound we can for our next games. With luck,

Independent studios want to create wonderful, experimental titles, but are, in part, held back by business requirements. As businesses, our first priority is to become profitable, and the least-risky way to do this is to create more traditional offerings. (The same is true for large development houses.) Fortunately for us, better middleware tools and increased publicity can free us of this constraint. The former will allow us to experiment and develop easier; the latter will allow us to reach an audience now reserved for the large publishers. As these conditions improve, you'll see independents take more risks.

Middleware comprises the audio libraries, AI plugins, and 3D engines such as Torque, Conitec A6, and FMOD. These tidbits are the lifeblood of independents. Without them, we'd have to code everything from scratch, and you'd see even more Tetris clones than you do now -- little innovation. With them, we're freed from the low-level stuff. We can create games that look and sound good enough to attract consumers. As middleware improves, it'll become even easier to experiment and innovate.

Publicity is trickier -- while events such as the Independent Games Festival allow us to bend the ears of larger publications, it's still the big studios that are going to command the previews and exclusives. Having approached a number of print publications, I've found that it can be difficult to secure a sizable preview for our game, even though I think folks might like to hear about where we're innovating. But even this is improving; sites like The Adrenaline Vault are particularly indie-friendly, often posting press releases from smaller development studios.

I think, then, that it's only a matter of time before the smaller studios attempt experimental titles in substantial numbers. Many will be terrible; some will be great fun. But as it becomes easier to experiment, you bet we'll be doing more of it, simply because we can.

I'm going to reply to this instead of modding it down. Let's see how this works.

A heartfelt rant, I'm sure. The problem is that you ignore some very important facts.

First, while it is fair to say that companies look to profit from their copyrights, not every business interested in protecting their copyrights is some big business looking to pay those that already make a lot of money. I'm a small game developer that doesn't live in Bel-Air, that doesn't have any aspirations to buy golf clubs, and that considers it a financial treat to just eat out. Yet, I own copyright on Meridian 59 and would very much like to keep people from copying the work I've put my time, money, and effort into. People can create or buy their own work if they want it. The truly ironic thing is that the same copyright laws that make it illegal for you to download music also make it download for a large publisher to take music from an independent artist and sell it without compensation. Copyrights benefit the small businesses, too, and taking away copyrights will ensure that the large companies maintain their stranglehold on entertainment.

The second fact is that there are alternatives. There are a LOT of indie artists, developers, etc. out there that would love your support. For every overhyped Ms. Spears there's a handfull of hard-working bands that you'd probably enjoy. The problem is, of course, that looking for the independent is much harder than listening to the advertising singing the praises of the latest media darling. It's easy to listen to the ads that hype up some artist that sold his or her soul to the RIAA for superstar coverage. It's harder to go around town and find the small venues where the good local bands play.

The real solution to this problem is obvious once you consider these two bits: Go support the independent artists. The reasons for doing this are so numerous it boggles the mind. First you get originality, you provide a way for an artist to make money without having to sell out to a large marketing company like the RIAA, you don't pay more money so that the fatcat entertianment executives can buy more golf clubs, you don't have to break the law to enjoy entertainment, etc. The list just goes on and on.

This applies to most entertainment. Don't want to pay $18 for a CD? Hit an independent musician's site. Many times you can get free MP3's of their songs right off their websites. Check out some local bands at live shows in small clubs. Don't want to pay $50 for a game? Check out some quality independent games. The Independent Games Festival shows off some of the better games that were made without relying on publisher funding.

Don't want to pay for a box if you're going to pay for a monthly fee for an MMORPG? Check out one of the independent games that allow you to download the client instead of paying $50 in the stores. My own game, Meridian 59, only charges a $10.95 per month subscription fee with no startup fees. We intentionally kept the price low so that people would get a great deal from our game. Sure, it's not the most prettiest game out there, but it's fun like a good game should be. (If you just want to look at cool pictures, I might recommend a museum instead.)

In the end, there's alternatives to just taking what you want and applying flimsy justifications for it. There's alternatives out there, and lots of us independents that don't want to contribute directly to the large companies that harm entertainment would be more than happy to have your support. Consider checking us out instead of breaking the law next time you want something fun.

Really, it's up to the market to start supporting the alternatives. That's the only way that the executives will be unable to cover their Bel-Air mortgages and will have to re-evaluate their business model. Giving the independents the ability to compete with the lar

I also find the results rather... offcolor?

I can't seem to find any solid definition of what "independent" is. The best I can make out from their rules is "self funded" and "company whose primary business is game development as opposed to commercial game publishing"

That's pretty vauge, IMHO. And to me, "independent" means you don't have a company backing you.

Maybe there should be another category for people who develop games independently, as in by themselves with at most a small group of friends instead of a structured, funded company behind them.

I really think some of the more unique game ideas were overlooked as a result... Obviously a team of professional developers stand to develop a more complete and polished product than some guy working on it in his spare time, especially within the same timeframe.
=Smidge=

I also find the results rather... offcolor?

I can't seem to find any solid definition of what "independent" is. The best I can make out from their rules is "self funded" and "company whose primary business is game development as opposed to commercial game publishing"

That's pretty vauge, IMHO. And to me, "independent" means you don't have a company backing you.

Maybe there should be another category for people who develop games independently, as in by themselves with at most a small group of friends instead of a structured, funded company behind them.

I really think some of the more unique game ideas were overlooked as a result... Obviously a team of professional developers stand to develop a more complete and polished product than some guy working on it in his spare time, especially within the same timeframe.
=Smidge=

I work for Irrational Games, developers of System Shock 2 and Freedom Force. We are currently working on a number of titles including Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich and Tribes: Vengeance, and have an office in Boston (USA) and Canberra (Australia).

We've grown and prospered over 5 years, and all of us look forward to making great games that people enjoy. We also enjoy the freedom of making decisions that affect what the game will be, rather than being told how we should make the game.

In addition, I am a judge for the Independent Games Festival, where 112 independent teams of game developers have submitted their independent games that they have funded and developed on their own to be judged and presented at GDC 2004.

While there is a lot of recent setbacks for independent developers, especially in the UK, the people who want to make their voices heard independently will continue to do so, reguardless of their financial situation. Independent games will continue to be made, and those voices will continue to be heard.

I was part of a team that entered this, for the web/downloadable category, our entry is here: here

here if you take the time to goto the third floor, and a multiplayer version (not downloadable yet) is here. My point? It's fun and gives a lot of experience! The fee is little between a few people

One of the big problems in the hardcore gamer market is that most players demand millions of dollars in art and animation budgets to produce enough eye-candy to outdo the last round of hit games. This cost won't go away even if all the game engines are licensed and bring the programming costs down thereby. I think the real hope for innovation lies more in the mass market - even if a lot of them are out there now just playing online Hearts and Spades. They have a broader range of tastes and interests, and they've made games like Tetris and Minesweeper and Shanghai big hits, even without much of an art budget. Also they've made The Sims the biggest selling PC game of all time - it was expensive to produce, granted, but it certainly represents a developer putting out a new and different form of gameplay, and the market rewarded it. So I think there's hope yet. :X)

Another Independent game festival and a pretty addictive java based browser based game insaniquarium
(it starts off slow, is a simple game, and carpal tunnel inducing, but stick with it, it gets better)

e.