The opportunities in independent development are drying up, says an industry veteran with more than 20 years experience.

Fun Bits CEO Chris Millar, who has worked at Blizzard and Lionhead, and who has developed the Fat Princess series, said becoming a successful indie is extremely challenging.

"The state of independent development is still extremely tough and really challenging," Millar told the DICE Summit.

Millar suggested that as the processing power of mobile phones grows and nears parity with home consoles, smaller developers may get pushed out by the kinds of huge development teams that produce games like Destiny and Grand Theft Auto V.

"It's exciting when you see titles come out and really hit and try and do something different, but as cell phones are getting as powerful as consoles the quality bar is just going up and up and up," said Millar. "It's getting harder to be an indie, to even be competitive or be noticed - it feels like our industry is pushing super behemoth giant projects like the GTAs and the Destinys and it's almost pushing out the middle man... It's kind of scary because even as an independent developer you have to grow to compete."

Millar, whose studio employs 40 people, said that he preferred to work with smaller teams.

"You don't want to get too big," warned Millar. "40 is a big size for us. I like knowing everybody I work with. It reminds me of the time back on StarCraft when everybody knew everybody. It was really cool and it's a different culture when you just know everyone in the studio, you know where everyone's at, you know what's going on in everyone's lives. Everyone has value and has input in what you're doing."