>> "When the original Dexterity Forums closed in 2004, Indie Gamer was born and a diverse community has grown out of a passion for creating great games. "
Yup, that's the one. I was there at that time. I was not very active, but it was valuable nevertheless. Apart from Cliffski (who still has a very successful indie career and insightful blog), I mostly remember princec, who built Java based games which performed like native ones but didn't have much commercial success at the time. Looks like his puppygames is still rolling, so he finally made it work!
Interestingly, IIRC the more freewheeling TIGSource, mentioned in another reply to the parent comment, was created in response to the indiegamer community being too doctrinairally business-/casual-games-oriented in its outlook.
> The TIGS website was started by Jordan Magnuson (aka flamingpear) and announced to the world on the IndieGamer.com forums in January '05. Initially the site caused consternation among independent developers for its irreverent style and unabashed criticism of the "match three" clones that were prevalent in the "independent" game community. The site rapidly grew in readership, and quickly gained a cult status.
I spent about 10 years very involved in that forum :) Met some of the people at Casual Connect in Seattle, and randomly elsewhere throughout the years. Cliffski is still going at it, Steven Zhao is now running a very successful VR space franchise (Sandbox VR), I've dipped in and out of games (Google -> Improbable -> Google). I remember getting into extensive debates about C++ vs Java with princec. That forum has a special place in my heart <3