An interesting article over at Arstechnica covers the ongoing trend of games industry veterans making the move into independent games development. Indie development has been seen as a highly attractive alternative for many of these developers who have been through the drudge of studio acquisitions and the changes in company culture, the heartache of working on game titles spanning many years that eventually get cancelled, the lack of any support from the publisher to market the games they've slaved on, and the list goes on. Matters are made worse when the outcome of some of these incidences are followed by staff lay-offs, where it has meant saying goodbye to an entire studio of friends...
One of the developers mentioned in the article is Irrational Games co-founder, Jonathan Chey, who explains how the market has opened up much more opportunities for indie developers. Chey is currently overlooking his self funded indie studio, Blue Manchu games, on their first title, a collectible card game/boardgame/MMO hybrid game called Card Hunter. From Arstechnica...
(Jonathan Chey) I've been thinking about this game for the last couple of years and, during that time, a lot of things have been coming together very quickly that make it now seem a much more reasonable plan than it was before...
The advent of successful indie developers, the rise of micro-transactions, the maturation of Web services and technologies, and the growth in all kinds of alternative distribution models are all things that are opening up the space for games like this.