The growing interest in collaboration between industry and independant games development practices presents a threat to the emergence of deeply experimental gaming; whether as 'market stimulants' or as inexpensive research, divergent technologies, techniques and ideas are readily organised toward the logical outcomes of an industry seeking widest market proliferation.

Open Source games development and projects with a small target audience will continue to suffer under the heatlamp of 'market performance' resulting in a conceptual and technical truncation of potential. Large projects, only justifiable within bigger budgets and reliable subscription bases have highly conditional contexts for testing and experiment. Game-engines become more expensive while middleware homogenizes project outcomes by providing 'solution' driven packages.

In recognition of this, we, a council of independent developers have established the necessary context: Developers in Exile.

D.I.E will be an environment for exploration of the widest possible potential for gaming and game-based technologies; in the interest both of consolidating the community, and providing a context, archive and codebase for development outside of the agenda's of industry or institution.

D.I.E will manifest within the universe of persistent worlds as a sovereign island state. Using a MMORPG engine, D.I.E will be a non-subscription based world offering security and citizenship to artists, developers and designers seeking independence in their game projects.

Code Bandits, Pixel Gypsies, Mod Magi and HighwayWomen. Now you can rest.