In years of gaming, the most "establishment" games I've ever bought were a used copy of Dune 2000, and, uh, Fallout, last week. Pretty much every gamemaker I've bought from has proceeded to crash and burn, or get bought up (in the cases of Volition and, sort of, Reality Pump). And when they get bought up, they become part of The Evil which suckifies all it touches. This is what happens to pretty much anyone innovative- they lose their niche market to some bland mimicries of the real thing with better ad campaigns, then get devoured by one of the companies that makes money entirely by killing smaller companies. Case in point would be Westwood, which hasn't had an original concept of its own sincethe first Dune, but continues to dismantle small, excellent companies by the bucketload and be richer than God.
Which is why things like scratchware are popular- too small to buy out, too cheap to get screwed by one of the bigass corps, too mom-and-pop to get greedy.
You know, with all the FS work that's going on, we really haven't developed our own game, actually. We're re-vamping the code, we've given it a rebuilt engine and some shiny new ships, but it's always been largely Volition derivative- I think we should try branching out on our own entirely, give actual gamemaking a shot. We've got the coders, we've got the skill, we've got the community, and we sure as hell havethe free time. Moreover, it'd be marginally profitable- and getting something for once from hours of computer work doesn't sound bad to me.
