[nadam]

I call bullshit on this 'passion economy' thing. Masses of people never in history could make a living from what they love, and unfortunatelly there is no sign that it will happen now. Musicans, writers, indie-game creators: most of them do their passion besides a day-job. Long-tail never made much money and with globalisation it is worse than ever. The unfortunate truth is the opposite: not only long tail does not really work, but as Peter Thiel said: money is in monopolies. Non-monopolies 'compete-away' the profit.

As a developer, you are better off to go work for a monopoly: they pay well. (Google, Facebook, etc).

(This does not mean I do not have a passion project ('indie game'), I just know that the chance that it can replace my day-job is quite low.)

[rrsmtz]

RE: the appeal to history

Things are different now. People consume much more media, which is much more diverse than ever before. Thank population growth and the iPhone. Today, there are YouTube channels that only write video essays about The Simpsons, webcomics about engineering, blogs about crystal healing, and cartoon porn; you name it, there's probably a significant audience for it these days. The number of audiences and their sizes only get bigger with population growth, whereas an artist only needs a certain number of sponsors to sustain them, whether it's 100 or 1000.

The real obstacle is monetization, which primarily comes down to the business skills of the artist/producer, as well as competition between fungible alternatives (why pay $20 to watch a video when I can watch it on YouTube for free) and other external factors.

[giantrobot]

The 1000 True Fans essay is specifically targeting the small transition region in the long tail graph where the tall head becomes a long tail. The thesis is that most creators aren't going to end up in the tall head (statistically) so they should target that transition region because it offers a good living doing some artistic endeavor.

At the high end of the transition region people can make a good living, at the low end they can significantly augment their day job.

[atlasunshrugged]

Sure, I totally agree, I think the realistic outcome is that we see a trend in more fields towards the 'rockstars' and 'pro players' but instead of having them behind gatekeepers (teams, agents, etc.) they're on platforms

[yters]

Maybe the passion project can make an impact within the monopoly? E.g. use indie game dev knowledge to improve costumer engagement with the product?

[gowld]

Is that a good thing? "Engagement" is usually toxic Skinner boxing.

[yters]

Most things can be used for good or ill. A well defined and engaging UI can certainly be a good thing, if designed appropriately. Most business software is a boring slog to use. Why not design it so the user feels uplifted during the workday? Work could potentially benefit the person as well as the company bottom line, and become a virtuous whole.

[logicalskeptic]

If you want irrational amounts of money, you need a monopoly.

But I don't see any problem with 6 figure Engineers working competitively.

Is that not enough money?