For the past couple of years fanboys the world round have been foretelling a gaming apocalypse, a world in which creativity has given way to marginally improving sequels and innovation has all but ceased. The funny thing is, every time someone published an article about how the end of the gaming industry is upon us, a groundbreaking new original title would debut. But one point that repeatedly gets brought up again and again is the frequent deaths of independent game studios, whether that death be by financial issues or buy-outs. The primary reasons cited are usually increasing development costs, a lack of publisher support (marketing, for instance), and a decreasing interest in original titles. Sure it seems like doom and gloom, but there have been some huge positive developments for independent developers in the last couple of years. The biggest development was undoubtedly Steam, Valve’s broadband delivery system that allows companies big and small to sell their games directly to a huge installed base of dedicated gamers, and reap the profits without having to pay distribution costs outside of bandwidth. So far the service has been a smashing success, selling games from Half-Life 2 to Rag Doll Kung Fu.