I'm planning on getting an iPhone/iPod Touch sometime in February as well.  SDL is already unofficially ported, and working in Cocoa/OpenGL ES 2 is pretty simple.  There's a lot of polygon pushing power in that thing.

I think the employer-employee model can work well if you have enough sales income to pay someone a fixed rate for work. 

Additionally, contracting out for specific jobs seems like a good way to go.  For example, you could pay an artist a few hundred for an icon or logo, or some other art or audio assets.  Since so many people want to work in games, if you've got a product that's significantly far into development, some people are willing to donate their work/time to be a part of the project, or work for cheap.

As far as starting a company, I have some friends who run medium sized software businesses (LLCs), selling shareware with salaried employees and regular small contract people, where each person in the company lives in a different city (or country).  IRC and AIM are used for almost all the day to day communication.  It seems to work well for them, and not having an office saves a lot of money and logistics.

I AM SITTING AT A BAR, SMOKING A CIGARETTE, AND TYPING

Does anyone know what the story is with the competition idea where the first month is used for contributing art resources, and the second month is for building games using only the art resources from the previous month? 

I know of a few talented pixel artists that are excited to do some work with TIGS game designers....

Awesome.  I've gotta check some of this out later.  Also, before it gets pulled by google/youtube 

The game/fun/play for me is to play on my own terms, to design a game within the game. Can I penetrate the Wall of Punishers with just PeeWees? I want the ability to be creative inside the game. Sometimes it seems like the game designers thinks they are supposed to have all the fun being creative.

Yeah, I really like doing this as well. Sometimes it's more fun to play around with the physics engine in a game than completing required objectives in a game.  And I often end up having more fun playing with a game's level editor than actually playing the game.

I've had some thoughts about taking this idea into actual game design.  Combining straight ahead platform gaming with bits that switch you into a sort of meta-editor, where you use resources you've picked up to play around and build a path to the next spot in the game....

I also think this give-the-player-creative-control idea is the reason games like Line Rider and Crayon Physics are so successful.

My initial thoughts:

It would be great if you could roll your jeep, possibly only in multiples of 1 complete roll only, and if the game acknowledges a roll (or even better a DOUBLE ROLL) that would be great.  Also if it could acknowledge a combo of roll + dinosaur squish.

Which brings me to dinosaur killing  There needs to be more stuff to squish, and more ways to kill dinosaurs other than just hitting them.  Exploding barrels?  ways to incorporate running into stacks of things to use the physics to cause dinosaurs to die in great, somewhat rube goldbergan ways would be fantastic.

And finally, particle effect blood!  Lots of it on dinosaur death?  Possibly segment their corposes into different gibs models a la Rune?

Those are my ideas.  Very cool base, and it'd be great with more elements.

Wait till you have to play Psychobilly Freakout and Carry Me Home...

Expert Psychobilly Freakout is where I quit.  I invested so much time into those repeated 3-note stretch fast sections halfway through.     

30 USD too expensive for europeans and their titan currency?   Although maybe VAT makes it expensive?

PAUL MCCARTNEY -

Man, I've avoided downloading any Real player-related products for some time. I don't suppose there are any alternatives that run on Mac?

The current RealPlayer for OS X is actually not too bad.

[IN HEAVY ROTATION:]

IN HEAVY ROTATION:

8b050 Compilation from Blip
Ear Drum from Talib Kweli
ToneWars from 8-bit collective
Digital Shades Vol 1. in anticipation of the new M83 album due in Jan

ALSO
True Affection by The Blow
LOTS OF NOVELTY CHRISTMAS MUSIC.

Arg, bloody Real streams. Anyone know a way to watch them without real player? I'll be damned if I put up with all the adware that crap forces on you.

I haven't tried this, but there's: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

Looks like it has browser plug-ins as well.

I ran across this story in the NYTimes yesterday about an MIT physics professor whose lectures are videotaped and hosted online for free.  I watched part of his lecture on vector/cross/dot products last night and it's pretty good.

It's been 4 years since I took mechanics in college, and all the math crops up all the time in game development, so I thought I'd share.  The lectures are entertaining and informative, and if you miss something, you can rewind!

Here's a link to all the video lectures.  A lot of different game-applicable concepts are covered, useful for those working in 2D or 3D.



The only caveat is they're Real streams... but the content is good!

I agree with Derek/Alec about the $30 price, for a lot of reasons.  In the old days of shareware games, it was common to charge $25-30 for a game made by one guy on a floppy (AmbrosiaSW still charges the full price for old Mac OS games that no longer even run on modern operating systems -- $30 for Ferazel's Wand).  Now, a lot of games are more complex, and people expect to pay less for them?

The problem is the cutthroat business model of the commercial game industry, where most games sell the most in the first six months, and are then sold at budget prices.  The other problem is that a lot of indie devs seriously undervalue their own worth, and charge too little for a game.

This second point is very important, because customers will actually pick up on this.  If you charge too little for your game, people will sense, possibly subconsciously, that you aren't confident about the quality of your game, and they're LESS likely to buy it.  So charging a reasonable price for the value you're offering is essential.

Another indie who sells at reasonable prices is the Lexoffle guy.  $20 for Chocolate Castle.  I've considered buying it .

.

Btw Golds, what do you like better with this grinds than with the others?

Guert, the first impression of this grind is very good for the reader:  the screenshots and headlines break up the copy to provide lots of entry points, A link to the game's page is essential if reader wants to know more, or play and judge themselves.  It looks like you're polishing your presentation as you go on.

And I'll echo what Tex Pine said.  In the SB grind, you found lots of little things that I'd maybe thought about, but had left unfixed.  The grinds are a really good service and I like seeing them.   

cactus has made several cool schmups (Clean Asia is up for a couple awards at this year's IGF).  Kenta Cho of course has already been mentioned, and he does awesome stuff.  Then there's also Varia and Ablation (an artsy 4-color gameboy style shooter).

           

Outside the indie sphere, there's a bunch of really cool obscure Genesis shooters.  I'm usually pretty terrible at bullet dodging, so I don't actually play schmups that often, but I love the way they look :O.

I used to run a little MUD called Indigo, based on the CircleMUD 3.0 source back in the late 90s.  It was hosted on a linux machine at Moscow State University for awhile -- indigo.msu.ru:1234.  Long gone now.  I also used to hang around on StuphMUD in the 90s, and got my start on EliteMud.  Both of those are still around I think, and are both also CircleMud variants.

Anyways.  fun times. but MUDs have been supplanted by IRC for me.  

Hacking around an open-source MUD codebase could be the basis of a fun Text The Halls entry! 

When you buy the game, you get the URL to download the full version and a personal serial number to unlock it.  As far as I know, both of these are yours to keep and use for life.

The grinds are getting better and better!

One thing I will say is that from the screenshots, the color palette is nice and bright and colorful, which makes me want to play, and sets it apart from the general brown/muddysh trend in 3D PC games.  On the down side, the menu design reminds me of GarageGames' Marble Blast, which while a successful game, the menus look amateurish.Maybe less big black outlines around the boxes?  Anyway, the game looks good, and so does the grind!