I'll use an anecdotal evidence and use myself to counterpoint your argument of working under pressure. I worked at university better when I was doing stuff alone and without pressure. I still do. I work well under pressure, and boy in my line of work we do have pressure, but me and many of my colleagues worked and work best in a relaxed environment, which is why I went freelancer to begin with.
Which is why you went freelance and not into video game development.
I personally can't dunk a basketball, which is why I didn't go into the NBA. More to the point, while I love friendly competition I hate actual vicious competition which is why I didn't follow through with Wall Street recruiting after spending time at some banks a few years back. I loved the actual work but hated the way it got done. I wasn't cut out for it.
Some people aren't made for some things.
However I think that there's working under pressure, and there's working under brutal pressure without rewards, without incentives and with a very fucked up corporate culture.
As I keep saying, there need to be rewards, but of course a product needs to sell for those rewards.
I also disagree with "brutal."
the younger generation is reading, seeing and sometimes even living the working conditions of the industry and rather go alone for themselves than work under a publisher.
Or maybe it's because it's an insanely hard industry to get into without doing something first, and indies are a good way to do something and get noticed. Now that mods are mostly dead, in the way that we used to have constant Quake and HL mods, that avenue is gone. Indies are really the only way to create something new.