Once upon a time, not long ago, it looked like bedroom coding was dead – at least as a commercial pursuit. The nineties brought in a growing obsession with detailed 3D visuals, requiring ever-larger teams of ever more specialised coders, artists and designers. And while an indie gaming scene continued to flourish online, the fruits of those labours were largely unseen and unappreciated by mainstream gamers.

But a lot has happened over the last three years. Vitally, Microsoft started trawling the indie scene for content to fill its Xbox Live Arcade service. Sony and Nintendo soon followed suit, resulting in the likes of Braid, World of Goo, Mutant Storm and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People becoming key downloadable releases. At the same time, the growing PC casual gaming scene, together with the arrival of the iPod and iPhone as fully-fledged gaming platforms, has built an audience that clamours for graphically simple puzzle and word games. In a sense, casual gaming has legitimised non-naturalistic, often 2D, visuals and intuitive gameplay, reclaiming videogame culture for the masses.

Bedroom coding is back.

What we're seeing now is an intriguing interplay between the community ethic of indie coding and the commercial clout of the industry's corporate giants. And Stickman Studios is a great example.

Formed in 2005, Stickman is essentially Simon Nevill and Harvey Greensall, two ex-Codemasters staffers with backgrounds in web design and architectural modeling. Bored of churning out trees, tarmac and other peripheral objects for games like Club Football, LMA Manager and Colin McRae, the duo quit to set up their own studio. Originally, their plan was to abandon videogames altogether and work on a card trading game, but an encounter with Imperial Glory by Pyro Studios got them thinking about creating their own pirate adventure.

"We really liked the naval battles in the game which were set during the Napoleonic Wars," explains Nevill. "The ships looked great and it had a good feel to it, but it had a point-and-click interface and the ships moved incredibly slowly. We thought that a faster-paced, arcade-style game could work for this same period of history. Our own idea was to give the player control over a single ship as opposed to a squadron of boats and make the ship itself the 'character'. So we based the game in the Caribbean and gave the player direct control of their very own pirate ship".

The result, released via Steam at the end of last year is Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy, essentially an arcade shooter, based in wooden ships rather than spacecraft. Players blast through a variety of missions, upgrading their boat as they go – sort of Team Fortress meets Midnight Club on the high seas.

It's a remarkable achievement, especially considering it's ostensibly the work of two men – and neither of them coders. Their first decision was to license Torque, a fully-featured cheaply priced 3D engine developed by indie publisher GarageGames and available to small studios for just $150.

But price isn't the only attractive factor. As Nevill explains, "we wanted an engine that was not completely reliant upon having a full time coder sat working with us. Torque's script-based coding system meant that many areas of the game could be changed by us… simply altering settings in existing scripts. There is also a great community spirit on the GarageGames forums and any problems you encounter are likely to have been seen before, so there is always help readily available."

The GarageGames set-up, part-commercial publishing hub, part thriving community, is what indie gaming is all about in 2009. And the fact that large publishers like Vivendi are employing Torque is another hint that the mainstream industry is now happy to court the indie sector if the price and the results are right.

It's also the community element that insured Buccaneer became more than just an idea scribbled on the back of a fag packet. "We have had masses of help from a number of great people throughout the development process," admits Nevill. "Being basically self-funded (thus poor), we haven't had a budget for outsourcing work and so have relied heavily upon the good will of a number of people. Our time spent in the game industry meant that we already had contacts in the industry skilled in programming and several were willing to help us out in their spare time. Massive thanks must go out here to Neil Palframan, now working for Electronic Arts in Canada and Mr. "Winston Wolfe".

"We were also approached by a number of guys via the GarageGames forums who offered to supply audio work for us because they simply wanted to be involved with a pirate game. Our original plan was to do the vocal work ourselves and have some musically talented friends create a theme tune for us, but fortunately due to the incredible work supplied by some very talented individuals, Harvey and I were not required to get our microphones out. Special thanks have to go out to Pattarawit Arinyasak for his great Artificial Intelligence work, Joel Steudler for his unbelievable musical masterpieces and Captain Paul Bergel… the gravelly voice of Buccaneer."

Brilliantly, Stickman also somehow became involved with New Jersey-based, pirate metal band Swashbuckle who let the studio use some of their material in the game. They make a virtual appearance at the Buccaneer Tavern. "In return we put together a music video for their song "Drink Up!", which is accessible from our website."

Along the way, Simon and Harvey carried out freelance work for a range of companies to fund their pirate project. One client was veteran Leamington-based developer Blitz Games, to whom the chaps showed a demo of Buccaneer. Suitably impressed, Blitz offered to support the remainder of the game's development, providing vital QA testing and also using its bulging contacts book to secure distribution via Steam.

Coincidentally, Blitz was also making contact with another small studio, Regolith Games, entering into a similar partnership with them to see through the development of crossword puzzler, KrissX. From here, the company decided to formalise the process, setting up its 1>UP programme to fund and support smallscale game projects. "Funding is just one of the resources that we supply, and in fact that part is always likely to be a minor element," explains Chris Swan, Director of Blitz Arcade, the developer's specialist downloadable game studio. "We aren't trying to be a publisher here, and in fact one of our clients put it best when they likened us to a 'Swiss army knife of an agent' since there are so many elements that we can potentially provide. Things like advice on game prototypes based on our knowledge of the marketplace, resources such as art, design, code and audio, licensing our high-end BlitzTech, providing PR or legal advice - these can all be put into the mix.

"To be honest though I think one of the largest benefits is our network of contacts, which stretches all the way from outsourcing and developers to publishers and distributors. By being one of the largest independent developers we are also able to meet with a lot of the bigger players who are simply unable to provide the time for reviewing individual proposals from very small developers. So when Blitz has a meeting with a client, we can present an entire raft of games, some of which are ours and some which come through the 1>UP programme."

Blitz's approach reflects an industry-wide interest in embracing the indie community. The likes of XBLA (which should see a conversion of Buccaneer soon), PSN and WiiWare represent a reasonable revenue stream for publishers and developers, especially with a recession looming. However, in-house staff may not have the skills required to punch out cool, hugely intuitive budget games, with little or no management. If you look at something like Geometry Wars from Bizarre Creations, the project was started in the free time of experienced coder Stephen Cakebread, and may never have happened had he been shunted on to different, larger projects (see my blog post on the subject).

Instead, big industry players are reaching out to the indie scene to source talent. Blitz has formed 1>UP, but you've also got Epic buying small studios like Chair Entertainment and People Can Fly, and Valve nurturing its own mod community into tomorrow's A list developers.

It's probably the Valve model, of engaging with - and nurturing - a dedicated home coding community that's going to shape the industry over the next few years. Maintaining massive in-house teams will surely become all but impossible for many developers, and outsourcing only solves half of the problem – outsource studios are usually highly specialized, perfect for churning out graphics and audio to strict pre-agreed templates, but often not able to provide their own creative ideas. Meanwhile, buying studios is a risky and expensive move, with no guarantee of subsequent product.

What 1>UP points to is perhaps a videogame publishing model that works more like – for want of a better allusion – a terrorist network: independent cells working on their own projects with only the loosest direction from a higher authority. If one cell goes down, there are others to produce the goods. Of course, there will always be a place for epic Triple 'A' blockbusters, but at the moment, the industry is undergoing a major period of fragmentation, both in terms of audience and available platforms – the only way to hit all the targets is to produce a lot of cheap, original content.

Chris Swan agrees that creating small, highly-targeted games could well be the way ahead. "It's always hard to predict ahead in this industry, but I'm confident that in the long run this is an area of growth. In particular, as the portals and platform-holders more sublimely present the consumers with tailor-made game lists, we should be in an era where every kind of game can reach and make an impact on its ideal audience". Through the inter-coupling of indie guile with corporate experience and finance, the industry is going long-tail. Chris is right; nothing is really predictable from here.