Monday afternoon brought a pack of indie gaming stars out of their dark workspaces and into the spotlight of the Independent Games Summit. Kyle Gabler (Tower of Goo), Jenova Chen (flOw), Jonathan Blow, and several others were on hand to discuss the role innovation plays in independent game development. The overused "i" word has become a cliché in recent years with commercial developers using it to mask the ugly symptoms of sequelitis. But with smaller dev teams and less emphasis on making money, indie developers actually can focus on creating interesting content and stretching the boundaries of gaming conventions.As Gabler points out, computing power will continue to progress over the next several decades and exceed our ability to use it. Instead of inventing new gimmicks to distract us, games must focus on the one thing that doesn't change: human emotion. That's the reason Final Fantasy VII will make you cry (if you're a wimp), Beyond Good and Evil will make you hate Big Brother, and Tetris will lead to the development of an odd proclivity for stacking objects.
