There's one thing that always seems to crop up when we interview prospective staff at the moment, which I'll paraphrase: "Why should I work for a mid-sized independent studio over a nice big comfy publisher?" Interesting question, I'm glad you asked...
 
First up, independent studios have a clarity of purpose that publisher-owned developers can't have; the success of a game (by whatever measure you chose – quality, time, cost) will have a direct impact on the success of the entire business.
 
Necessity being the mother of invention and all, this clarity serves us well and makes decision making very easy – the studios that have flourished have done so by picking their fights carefully and being creative in a narrow space. For instance, Zoe Mode focused early on casual/party games and have been incredibly successful, while here at Splash Damage we've carved out our own niche in multiplayer shooters. The longer we specialise, the more institutional knowledge we build. The better we get at making these types of games, the harder it is for a publisher to replicate without our expertise. Easy.
 
Then again, ideas can always be "borrowed." So what else do we have that sets us apart? Our culture. The culture of a company is built of many things, but eventually it boils down to this: a magical mix of people. From a job satisfaction standpoint, it means individuals are valued and can have more of an impact on the company's total success than they can at internal studios.
 
Good independent studios are massively important to publishers – they're always looking for a new safe pair of hands, but with that creative spark. A good team will never be short of work. Time and time again, we've seen studios that can deliver the goods over a long period of time becoming very attractive propositions to publishers. Bioware/Pandemic, Bizarre Creations, Evolution Studios and Travellers Tales were all gobbled up last year, probably for these exact reasons; unique culture, reliable output and creative vision.
 
So if being independent is so good, why would anyone work for a publisher? I'm not sure. Asking some of the guys that have joined us recently from publisher-owned studios, it seems a lot of them grew tired of the faceless aspects of corporate life -- huge teams, deadline pressure and corporate mentality.

There is this notion that publishers provide a more stable environment, but recent history doesn't really bear this out. Looking back over the last year, we've seen redundancies at many publishers. Pivotal, Sega Racing Studio, Razorworks, Venom, EA Chicago, Activision Foster City and FASA have all been shut down, while Swordfish and Massive Entertainment are in the process of being "divested". Independents that have failed? By my reckoning, just Stormfront and Flagship have closed their doors in the same period.
 
Then there is the issue of scope – everyone seems to want to work on blockbuster AAA games, and only internally developed titles have higher production values, right? This might have been true in the past, but you might want to take a look at who developed Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank, Project Gotham Racing 4, Gears of War, Crysis and Heavy Rain. All independently developed, all have polish to spare.
 
Of course there's no point in being too militant about this -- we need publishers as much as they need us, and we're all friends, really. There are downsides though – constant business development is required in order to stay in touch with publishers wants and needs. Even for a company like Splash Damage that is a full time job, and a lot of studios neglect this aspect. However, it does seem that independence is now being recognised as a real advantage – Microsoft allowing Bungie to break away and EA's new "city-state" structure is surely evidence of this. Like the man said, "If you love something, set it free."