[OkayPhysicist]

Eh, I'd put an asterisk on the "never been easier for a small number of people to build a great game" comment. On one hand, what can be achieved by an individual with today's engines is indisputably incredible relative to what was possible in the past. On the other hand, expectations from players have also had a pretty huge runaway explosion as well, meaning the ability for a small team to achieve commercial success is more of a mixed bag.

It obviously still happens. Lethal Company is a great example of that (1 developer, currently the top seller on Steam), but compared to the DOOM/Myst/etc era where ALL games were developed by small teams it's harder to establish a niche.

[fluoridation]

No, the problem is not expectations. There's a viable market for pretty much anything. The problem small developers face is not so much finding a market, but rather being able to be seen. Since it's so easy to make games nowadays, the indy market is flooded with titles. If you go browsing through Steam it's not too hard to find games that will appeal to you, but that you just never heard of. If the AAA studios are analogous to Hollywood, then the indy studios are analogous to YouTubers.

[kranke155]

of course it is, but the industrialisation of games seems inevitable. You had craft workshops then, with 10-30 people, now you have factories like Ubisoft making yearly releases of whatever game they can (Assassins Creed, Far Cry, etc)

The fact that Steam exists and dominates the industry however, was not inevitable, and its incredible that we have things like Early Access and other tools to enable smaller developers to carve out their niche!