Are you talking about complex desktop/platform games or the whole social gaming phenomenon ? Here's an interesting article by Tobolds (http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-theory-of-fun.ht...) where he describes how the Metaplace virtual environment founder - Ralph Koster - turned around, created Facebook games and sold them for a pile of money to Playdom.

The question is, if indeed you are going the low-tech-but-flavor-of-the-month social games route, would you consider things like outsourcing your tech ? If yes, then becoming a small but successful game studio means that you can drop #1 off the list.

disclaimer: I run a outsourcing gig, that works on social games amongst other things