alt Hacker NewsYour chances are much more higher building your own game than playing the lottery endlessly. You forget that guy who made Stardew Valley had to self-teach everything he knew, till he got to the point he quit his full time job. I don't see in what universe you have a better chance to win the lottery, than to build a successful indie game if you truly put your heart into it. Some of the greatest inventions didn't come to us because someone won the lottery, they experimented and kept going. Look at Duck Duck Go, he had 30 other projects that 'failed' before Duck Duck Go succeeded.
The lottery definitely has worse odds, I just don't think that's saying much.
If you want to create indie games—and you can make it work without quitting your day job—go for it! But I don't think it would be smart for EA or Ubisoft to, like, stop making big-budget games and make indie games instead. If you can make a breakout hit, you can make a huge profit—but you have to make a breakout hit, and that comes down to a lot of luck.
---
Now, I do think it would make sense for EA/Ubisoft to try more mid-budget releases, which explore something new instead of continuing a 10+ year franchise. A lot of them will fail, but if a few are extremely successful, they could make up for the failures. It kind of felt like the publishers were doing this for a while (Grow Home, Little Nightmares) but my sense is that it has kind of stopped? Although caveat, I also haven't been following gaming as closely as I once did.