Intro about games in popular culture, game industry size and money, and gamification.

These indie games (in release order) were developed by very small teams and had a great impact in the game industry:

  • Grow series (2002) - Ongoing series of minimalistic web puzzles created by Japanese developer ON (Eyezmaze) with a cute cartoonish design that defined a new genre of gameplay.
  • Cave Story (2004) - Considered the great pioneer of modern indie games, an amazing platformer RPG with great pixel art and chiptune music, developed over five years by Daisuke "Pixel" Amamaya.
  • flOw (2006) - an open world 2D game developed by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark, described more as an art form than a video game. Selected to be part of 2012 Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition "The Art of Video Games".
  • Dwarf Fortress (2006) - An extremly hard random generated open world simulator with 2D text graphics developed by Tam Adams, where the players motto is "Losing is Fun". 
  • Passage (2007) - A minimalistic 2D side-scroller created by Jason Rohrer on the subject of life and death. Selected in 2012 to be part of NY Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) collection.
  • Minecraft (2009) - a sandbox random generated open world simulator with a 3D cubic art style created by Markus "Notch" Persson, partially inspired by Dwarf Fortress.
  • Fairune (2013) - A nice casual RPG for mobiles with a female protagonist, created by SKIPMORE (Y.Kimura) and URARA-WORKS (M.Yonehara).

This should inspire you to get out and start doing something - a great idea can change the world, even with a small team.