Indie Video Games Come of Age

Christopher Lawton notes — "from the underground," which is on odd place for a Wall Street Journal writer to be — that "indie" video games are coming of age:

"Chronotron" made its debut on Kongregate's site in May and has since amassed more than one million game plays. In return, Kongregate gave Mr. Rheaume 50% of the advertising revenue it got from the ads that ran alongside the game. So far he's made more than $1,000 from the advertising. "It's been surprising," says Mr. Rheaume of his success on Kongregate thus far.

I'm not sure that $1,000 over the course of five months is particularly impressive, but it was an amateur effort by one hobbyist — and the market as a whole is quite large:

Overall, revenue for the casual-gaming market — including downloads, subscription fees and advertising sales — reached roughly $1 billion last year, according to Parks Associates, a market-research firm. Michael Cai, an analyst with Parks, says there are more than 150 million Internet users in the U.S., and the majority of them play some kind of casual game.
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Among the companies reaching out to smaller developers is Kongregate. Before, the San Francisco startup shared advertising revenue with its developers. But starting this month, the company will also give developers up to 80% of the revenue that's generated when gamers purchase premium features.
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Big gaming companies such as Microsoft Corp. and EA are also connecting with small game developers. In July, Microsoft began testing a service on Xbox Live — its online gaming and entertainment service — that allows independent developers to distribute games, set their download price and share in 70% of the revenue from premium fees. Microsoft also released XNA Game Studio, an easy-to-use software tool that lets the masses develop unique games. The software can be downloaded free online, but developers would have to pony up $99 a year in order to submit games to Xbox Live.