Here in the US the Discovery channel has been running a fascinating documentary series about the rise (and fall) of the video game world.
On the first documentary it is shown how many ICONS of the video world were born
in the first wave of the video game boom (70's early 80's) and how thanks to limited resources, creativity was king (PacMan,Defender, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, The Atari 2600, Pong )
...until the inevitable take over by the corporate world.
Creators were fired from the companies they created, an a more business mentality took over the whole industry.
After this there was a period of market over kill that drove quality to the ground.
And a lot creators and developers (the one who brought the boom in the first place) where left on the street.
One infamous example shiining example of games of this era is "ET the game" .
12 million copies of the games were produced at a time that ONLY 10 million users of the Atari 2600 existed. And to make matter worst the game was REALLY BAD.
So bad that most of them ended up used as landfill in New Mexico (true story) .
The result of this fiasco, and more like it, was the first video game market crash of the 80's.
For more information check out their site:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/video-game/video-game.html