Take energy of a raging lighting storm, add in the cute factor of 1,000,000 drowning puppies, and multiply it by fun and one gets the fantastic CSS or Cansei De Ser Sexy.
Hot off the heels of a 2008 release (their second album Donkey), and currently still on tour, CSS is on of the most successful independent bands ever. Go through their myriad of singles and one will probably find music that people have seen on any number of television programs, video games, or otherwise. By 2004, their music had appeared on several South America shows, and even the Sims 2: Nightlife! It wasn't until a year later they received a record contract, and another two years before they signed with cansei rent label, Sub Pop.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series , will debut never-before-seen games & content updates across more than 100 titles on May 25th.
"The best games of the year and the creative teams behind them were in the spotlight at the grand award ceremony of the German Computer Game Award 2024." - German Computer Game Awards.