These days, the video game industry is fairly narrow. A few big companies dominate the scene, if only because they can pump millions of dollars into the development of what have become professional-level games. The visual design budget alone of any one of these games surpasses the money available for everything in a small studio, so it's practically impossible to compete. It's gotten to the point that ambitious startups are almost automatically dubbed "alternative" or "independent", labels previously applied to film and music that had too small an audience to be considered commercial. Read more
