I write about Steam a lot, because they hold my fate in their hands like a tiny bird.
(Photo by Chris Yarzab, link)
Given the recent flood of games onto Steam, I had high hopes for the long-awaited Discovery update, which introduced "organic" traffic channels such as customized home pages,
I just want to let you know, these blogs you’re writing do so much good. The developer of Epic Battle Fantasy had never even considered putting his game up on Steam and it took a lot of convincing by me to get him to try, especially by using the reference of how Defender’s Quest did in it’s move from Kong to Steam along with your various articles. He thought he wouldn’t get any more sales than he would by selling via Kongregate.
Being a major part of the Christmas Sale changed his mind completely, that was like Christmas morning for him. 
Now he’s developing games specifically with Steam in mind in terms of improved quality and content.
I’m assuming that selling your game / making ad revenue on Kong is just a nice, smooth slope with an initial bit of height that quickly slides downwards, not even a small stegosaurus involved? Maybe you should look at some of the promising Kong-only developers and share your articles and history with Steam with them, see if it’s possible to convince them to try to expand their horizons. Nerdook seems to have done okay with Vertical Drop Heroes HD on Steam.
Well, I just bought Alpha access to DQ2, mainly because I was feeling guilty about not paying for these blog posts I’ve been reading. As one of those incredibly smart people who starts on the Indie journey as the downturn is beginning (or is it?) I think I stand a much better chance of building a successful game and a successful business now that I’ve heard what Lars has to say (thank you, Lars!)
I have a feeling that a middle market for games will start to appear, with most of what is currently called ‘Indie’ being reclassified as ‘amateur’, and the ‘low budget’ audience (people who don’t want the repetitive AAA concepts all the time) strengthening. I’m certainly betting an amount of money on that feeling!
It’d be interesting to see if ‘small publishers’ emerge. I can see how they might be useful.
I have a feeling that a middle market for games will start to appear, with most of what is currently called ‘Indie’ being reclassified as ‘amateur’,
I don’t really agree with the word choice there, since not all indies are amateurs at what they’re doing [aren’t there some people who’ve worked for Big Companies and then went off to do their own Small Company for whatever reason?] Or of the implications that and ‘low budget’ have in context to your statement, but that’s just a matter of diction.
That said, I do agree with the notion that there will be more and more small companies who are getting their stuff sold against these big shot titles, at least on digital distribution platforms.
It is all about ‘some’ vs ‘most’, isn’t it!
Sure, Cliffski used to work on big titles before becoming one of the more successful solo indies. And he’s by no means alone. I’m not aware of Lars working for a big studio ever, but he’s very professional, and not what I would call ‘amateur’ at all. There are definitely quite a few serious professionals in the Indie scene. But, in my view, the larger population consists of non-professional types. Hence ‘most’