Yesterday I worked on my entry for August's Experimental Gameplay Theme:

I just got a GDC press pass issued to us this weekend!

Luckily, Southwest flies from Philly to Austin and it looks like all the hotels are within walking distance to the convention center. 

Sadly, I'll have to leave Thursday afternoon due to my honeymoon/wedding taking place that weekend, but looking at the schedule I shouldn't miss any of the indie summit stuff.

Happy 4th of July everyone.  You can get our family physics puzzle game, the Magic Toy Chest completely free thru July 5th!

http://www.graduategames.com/blog/the-magic-toy-chest-is-free-thru-july-5th.html

I think this is a fantastic idea and would certainly join the organization, put up money, or help get it off the ground.

I do think that the Co-Op site should take more than 5% of Sales though - 20-30% like a standard affiliate deal.  A large portion of sales (10%+) should go to advertising the hell out of the site so it has traffic and becomes an important portal for developers.

Just an FYI that IndieGameMag.com has been redone.  There's a new homepage with a listing of the latest indie game news.  You can get your news posted on the landing page and our news page by posting in our new forums at

http://www.indiegamemag.com/forums/

so if you have some indie news you'd like to share, post away.

Thanks again for supplying the images and the interview

Games is definitely not finished...it's a prototype that I did in about a month (hence the non-automated level flow). I've already got some decent feedback from other sites and I'm definitely willing to update it, evolve it as I go along.  Certainly, if the interest in the core mechanic is there, I'll look at spending some dough on graphics etc.

BTW: sorry for the late reply but for some reason I wasn't subscribed to the thread

This issue is chock full of indie goodness. It features an extensive interview with Edmund McMillen and outlines some of his many indie titles. There is also a new 10 indie game demo review feature called “on Trial” where 4 different panelist review the same 10 indie game demos. There’s full reviews too….Ragdoll Cannon, Wonderland Adventures, and City Rain are just a few of the reviews in this issue.

Check out the newest IGM issue here

Digg the story: http://digg.com/pc_games/IGM_Issue_5_July_August_2009_is_On_Sale_Now

Just finished/posted my free game: http://blog.graduategames.com

There's a lot more I could've added and wanted to do, but I promised myself I would give myself only a month.  I learned a lot from imposing this limit on myself and think that I will continue doing free game prototypes or free flash games as I work towards my next full game.

I fully support the idea of having a TIGzine/Coffee Table book.  For anyone who would like to contribute to an ongoing magazine, check out http://www.indiegamemag.com and PM me or shoot me an email.  We're open to help from Graphic Designers, Writers, online contributors and more!

The Diner Dash DS is more of an article about the casual/indie space merging into mainstream gaming than an actual feature of the game...

I hear you though, Diner Dash isn't exactly my fav either.

it shoudl be fixed, thanks for the heads up

The new issue of the Indie Game Magazine is now available.
We have some new features and layouts in our new issue to coincide with our new website. In this issue: we relax with PSN’s flower, dash and blast our way through Caster, Adventure in the City of Malathedra, scheme away in Mayhem Intergalactic, manage an airport in Now Boarding, and more!

Digg it:
http://digg.com/pc_games/IGM_Issue_4_is_Now_Available#

Check it out:


Interested in Advertising?

I think Crayon Ball definitely got a boost from Crayon Physics...
More importantly, anyone who searched for Crayon Physics is already interested in physics puzzle games, so if they see an app named crayon ball during their search, they'll be more inclined to like that type of game.

How would the websites like BigFish earn that much money then?
They release a new game every day. Most of them are similar to other casual games released earlier. And people still buy them in thousands to hundreds of thousands range.

Big Fish Games makes a ton of money.  They have tons of visitors to their site (not to mention affiliate sites) and don't make all of the clones and games on their site.  They sell other peoples games and give them a cut of the sales.

You could go with Bejeweled, that's a pretty classic (tetris like) gameplay mechanic.

It's great that XNA is out there, but many indies have found it a terrible oppotunity to actually make money on.  Take a look at this article: http://www.gamerbytes.com/2009/03/gamerbytes_analysis_xna_commun.php

It also sounds like MS is snaking revenue away from developers.

Hey-

Mike here.  I'm mostly a programmer/game designer, but I do a lot of art stuff too.  I've been into indie gaming for about 3 years now, but for some reason never registered here at TIG.  I'm really bad at the whole marketing thing, but have learned a lot over the years.

This past year, I launched the Indie Game Mag in hopes of raising the profile of indie games and giving the community a magazine to read. It continues to grow and hopefully will start making money soon.

I've completed 2 indie games, Storked was my first and looking back on it...it is certainly flawed.  I just finished my second game, The Magic Toy Chest which is a homage to the Incredible Machine and features a physics sandbox to toy around with.

I look forward to becoming involved with TIGsource, especially since I am working on a free downloadable game prototype.