No Hope for Indie Developers?

It's only natural that a lot of video gamers dream about making games, but breaking into the industry without the support of one of the big publishers is getting more difficult all the time. Independent developers convened at E3 2006 to discuss the enormous barriers facing small game companies and startups. Red Herring has a summary of the event, where Warren Spector describes an indie company's odds of success as "zero percent." They also recommend against taking your idea to an established company, because they already have a huge backlog of ideas to sift through. So what advice do they have for aspiring game makers? Consider working on casual games. "Difficult to define, but hardly short of participants, casual games are often classified as basic puzzle, card, or trivia games that are easy to play on a PC or phone and don’t require a large time commitment. They also require much less money to develop." (Thanks Slashdot.)