A big topic in tech and venture finance circles right now is the concept of Long Tail economics: the idea that the real value of the second generation of the Web is its ability to unite consumers and markets which have traditionally been kept apart by the realities of scale (the fact that it has previously cost too much to produce things of value that will only appeal to niche segments of the market).
The tyrrany of scale is why 95% of online games are played from behind the barrel of a gun or while weilding a medieval battleaxe (and why my wife spent years thinking every game I used to play online was still Quake II, which I bought in 1997).
The ultimate Long Tail approach to entertainment is one in which disparate artists have the tools needed to create what interests people like them (mass markets be damned) as well as access to consumers able to freely communicate amongst themselves and make recommendations to each other.
Sure, there's a lot of garbage produced that way, but communities tend to spot quality and bring it to the surface and send it farther up the tail (toward mass market acceptance). Tringo seems to be a perfect example of that. Can you imagine that developer selling such a game to EA (or any of the other huge publishers) on his own today....much less five or six years ago?
**INSERT SOUND OF DOOR SLAMMING**
I see SL as the ultimate exaple of Long Tail economics. Instead of one game, it's infinite games and markets populated by niches of one to ten-thousand. Everybody has the tools needed to affordibly build what interests them and then let the market sort out the wheat/chaff.
All that said, I think you can find interest on this sort of "yet another manifestation of the Long Tail" stories in publications like Fast Company, Slate, Business 2.0, Wired (where the term "Long Tail" was born last year), Red Herring, etc.
Seriously, just call the editor assigned to the business of technology (not the stoned, pimply video game review writing stringer), use the word "Long Tail" and you;re in.
Well, it might take more than that. If so, holler because I've done a lot of thinking on this topic and would love to help.
Charles Q. Churchill IV.