DIY

For the last three years I've worked as part of the Silent Dreams team, and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it.  Sometimes, it's really nice to just be given some tasks and assets and putting things together. I usually get to be creative when I want to be, and don't have to be when I just want to grind a little. We've made some great games. Things didn't always go well, and more often than not game reception did not go as we had hoped, but we're doing what we love. So, why go indie?
2 reasons:

• 1. As a studio working with a publisher, we have next to no say when it comes to marketing or public presentation of our work. If something in marketing or distribution goes wrong to affect how people see our game, we potentially have to sit there and take it, and probably end up taking the blame for it, too. That can be very frustrating.
• 2. This:
  
  It may not look like much, and I'll be the first to say I'm no artist, but this sprite sheet exists, and that's something. It is one of 3 I made in one day. To some, that may not mean anything, but here's what it means to me:

Working in the games industry, you make friends with other developers, and establish a network of other developers adjacent to your inner circle. Most of the graphic artists I know are employed and have lives. When working on a solo-project, asking any of them for help means waiting weeks or maybe months for maybe a handful of assets. The other graphic artists I know, I don't work well with. I'm sure part of that is because my projects are my babies, and I don't handle outside creative input well when I have my mind set on how I want things to be. Monster Face was completed 8 months before it was ready for release, because I just could not get anyone to draw me some faces. When I sat down and learned to create vector graphics, all my faces were done within that week.
I still look forward to some collaborative work with a talented artist, or two one day, but the point here is I don't have to rely on anyone else to get my game done. Anything I need, I can make in a timely fashion, and I don't have to twiddle my thumbs waiting for assets to eventually come around.
There's always the option of outsourcing or browsing the web for free assets, and there are plenty of them. There is definitely something to be said for developer independence.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Stay tuned.