Everyone else has mentioned that the social media ecosystem is dead and I suspect patreon will follow over the next few years as Internet personalities and micro communities are either reintegrated into a larger media structure or further marginalized.

That may be overly cynical.

Some small designers have more luck with patreon than actual game sales. Even this is probably a small amount.

This also has a knock on effect to production choices. No one is commissioning artist. Everyone makes their own graphics. If people happen to be working as a team, there is an understanding that the labor will not be compensated.

Again, I don't know that I'd say this is unique to this moment, but the economic realities of most truly indie devs is such that there is no financial kickback in any way.

The one thing that ties this current underground cohort together is an acceptance of unmarketability. People are making what they want to make with very little ambition that any of it will ever be a financially viable object. There is no underlying suggestion that anything created may be published

People are targeting specific genres with extreme prejudice. The fantasy of the universal system is dead. Everyone is making systems so focused that the walls constructed are like paper and if you push outside the genre motifs, you'll find void.

But even this isn't really a universal truth.

I am hard pressed to define any coherent movement out of this, save for a useless "eclectic design". People are drawing from anything and everything. It seems that we are in the midst of a genre revolution, both in the narrative and gameplay sense.

Speaking from the bottom of the mine, there is a vast ocean of indie devs creating below the second or third tier indie games that most people have heard of. This probably isn't unique to this era. What I think might be, is the huge amount of diversity in design sources.