I do believe games creation is an art form, a technical art form. We are in an era now, where there are similarities to when I started writing games. Individuals are writing and publishing games themselves. Of course people have always continued to do that, with flash games for example. But often for no financial return. It’s a romantic idea the struggling artist, but it’s not great for productivity and continued output.
The ‘someone publishing for me’ is a model that has been around for a while too. Sadly I have seen many cases where that did not work too, with artists not being paid having made sometime millions for their publishers.
Maybe in this Internet enabled world we are going to see viable self publishing models develop. What a great boost for artistic output it will be if we get that to work.