It’s not that long ago that games industry folks were acknowledging (or in some cases, lamenting) the end of the age of the ‘garage’ games developer. The one-person (or occasionally two- or three-person) team who could put a game together, and sell it.
Back when I was younger almost all games fell into that category. Garage developers either self-published, or sold their games to publishers. Developers and publishers and retailers made money (or they didn’t).
Then games got more expensive to develop and required more manpower. Ten people. Twenty. A hundred. Two hundred. Thousands of dollars to develop a game became tens of thousands, became what is now often millions of dollars, and the developers’ relationship with publishers changed.
