At his always-excellent blog, Games * Design * Art * Culture, long-time game designer and rabble-rouser Greg Costikyan has just posted the PowerPoint presentation from his Free Play conference keynote, wherein he issues a manifesto for demolishing the current game industry paradigm by any means necessary.

His system is elegant and simple: remove publishers and retailers from the game distribution chain. Direct from the developer to the player--the only two folks in the current model that give a damn about good games. It's a brilliant idea, particularly when he proposes a unified front of indie developers utilizing a single web portal/presence for marketing, distribution, and sales direct over the 'net to the player. I'd hit that bookmark every frickin' day if someone ever gets such a site up and running, and if they can then cut cost of the end product because of no packaging and no corporate wanks? I'd be buying a game a week.

Greg C. has gamer cred like very few in the world, and his insight into the videogame industry is always top-notch. This presentation just crystallizes all of that into a handy, easy-to-read format complete with charts and graphs.

Found via BoingBoing.

Update: ScottC reminds us that some folks may not have PowerPoint, and thus points those types to this viewer.

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