This forum won't die if the amount of activity drops off. In fact, it might help things. A lot of the time I forget to reply because posts sink to the bottom of forum pages quick-smart. I know what you're saying (seriously, the point isn't lost on me), but I'm not sold on the idea of activity being the reason (or a strong reason) for forum success. This forum has grown because of the quality of information, (Dexterity originally) and the quality of the people involved.
HAHA! If you only knew... But man, leave it to me to start the great indiegamer civil war. I lost interest in this thread about 3 pages ago. Quite the fruitless debate, imo.
You've mentioned you've got closed forums, why not use those for the professionals and once a post has run its course, if it's good enough move it as a read only post to some other forum? (Similar to forums featuring News posts that aren't reply-able) Or maybe have an articles section where the professionals write these informational articles for reading only. It seems people are either saying keep it open, or close it all down to only professionals. Really, you could have those private forums act as your professional forum and the public ones as the 'noob' forums. If a professional doesn't want to join because he see's some noob forums I doubt he'd join if he came across a forum with no visible topics. EDIT: I think I understand indie a bit better now. Now that people have noted to me that companies like Valve and id are also indie, I might understand it more.
Why not use these forums as intended, for the business side of things (whether you're noob or not), and keep the hobbyist stuff to other forums.
Dexterity Games (the start of all this) espoused an ideal of creating, marketing and selling your own games from your own site, retaining total control. The advice shared ran the gamut from web design and copy editing to game programming and demo creation. It's pointless to decry the loss of "professional indie" when the definition has been expanded to include portals, XBLA, iPhone, et al. What advice can a strictly portal / XBLA bound developer possibly share? Maybe some programming and basic contract negotiation? How does a community grow around that? Indiegamer has been all about the lotto mentality of chasing portals and platforms for years now. If the community is failing it's because the "old guard" failed it by giving up on the "hard stuff" of running a business. Although there are plenty here who can tell you how to turn your company site in to a BFG / Reflexive affiliate farm. Way to live the dream!
I'm really surprised so many people have responded to this thread. JFizzle's intentions are crystal clear and the video (while somewhat humorous) will be old news in about a week. The real important factor is if this "game studio" will be around in two years. They may- or they may not. My advice: just let them be and see what happens. We all have enough to focus on (life, hobbies, our own game projects). It just baffles me to see so many people giving attention to an obivous PR stunt by a team that doesn't really deserve this much focus. *I do realize that by even posting here, I'm giving some attention to JFizzle- but more of it is directed towards the reaction of the forum as a whole.* Key point: If you give a class clown more attention, they'll act up even more. If you want them to stop- just ignore them and they'll grow bored after several pathetic attempts. There are much more important things to discuss about indie game development than J Force Games. Those are my thoughts at least.