You certainly have to be one crazily determined individual to leave the security of full-time employment at a leading local games development studio to make it out on your own as an indie developer, particularly in these rather uncertain times, but that's exactly what Logan Booker has done. The ex-Tantalus designer and now former Firemint media relations / PR personel has explained on Kotaku Australia why it was the right time to pursue his passions and go full indie.
The slow pace of the follow-up to his Zombie survival simulator, Zafehouse, during his tenure as a full time games developer and the legal issues on who has creative rights to his work outside work hours were some of the motivating factors for his decision to move on. It's an icky issue, however these kind of work clauses are fairly common in a lot of industries...
(Logan) The problem with working in the games industry is that while you’re working on games (awesome!), most developer employment contracts stipulate that you can only work on games for that company. Anything you do outside of work hours, even on your own hardware, instantly becomes their property.
Logan has described his first five days as a full-time pyjama wearing independent games developer as doing some of the necessary although unexciting preparations that need to get done before the real work can get underway, including setting up a home server for development and Wordpress configuration.
While the title that's being worked on, Zafehouse 2, has been given a really rough release estimate of between 6 months and a year from now, we'd like to wish Logan all the best on his new venture.
For Logan's complete write-up, head on over to Kotaku AU.