clarry: I'm looking forward to all the new bugs and outages ;) Good luck GOG.
Darvond: Well, they said major changes were coming, but as is typical of these promises,
they tend to get outshown by small indie devteams of around 1. Just that one image alone has told me more about what's coming up for Stardew Valley than I've ever been able to ascertain for GOG.
For sure.
I have some experience being a solo dev, a small company dev, and a corporate dev...
I not exactly sold on the idea of fabled "10X developers" but I sure as hell do believe in 0.1x work environments, they are everywhere. Corporate bullshit, micromanagement, lack of ownership and such are an incredibly easy way to make progress grind to a halt. Add a critically important pile of legacy software to the soup and you can have tons of people working hard achieving practically nothing at all.
A solo dev, by contrast, can be the master of their universe. They know exactly what they are up against, where they want to be, and how to get there. And when it turns out they don't, they can change their approach and means and goals on a whim, because they are only accountable to themselves. If they feel there's a better way: just go that way, no need to ask anyone, no need to bring it up with TPOs, managers, whatever.. no arguing, no explaining the situation, no communication overhead, no waiting for a green light and context switching to other tasks/projects... Just go the way you want to and do what you feel is best.
This is why indie devs can kick ass while AAAs are churning out more of the same that is easy to parallelize.. huge open worlds with new assets in ever higher resolution, disconnected errand boy side quests, etc.