Another interesting thread on Indiegamer.
They talk about download size as a limit to sell games. Surely isn’t true anymore, but I’d say that still it matters. For example, a user with modem or ISDN connection couldn’t ever download not only a 250mb game (the game in question is iSpy, a children game on Realarcade) but even a 25mb will be hard to justify.
In practice, we actually miss a lot of potential buyers.
I dare anyone say the opposite. The broadband users tend to forget that there’s still plenty of people out there with slow connections, and those are also potential buyers. Think about it, people living far away from big cities, with few entertainment possibilities around, are more likely to buy games and play them, simply because they don’t have many other fun thing to do.
I am willing to bet that my next Universal Boxing Manager buyer will be there, more than someone living in a big town (there are those also, of course!!).

Yes, I am really thinking about putting voices into my next game. I don’t really know why I didn’t think about it before, if done properly, a narrator voice can add lot even to a shareware game like mine.
Here’s another screenshots from the Character Creation screen, of course in the game the resolution will be much bigger (is 800×600).

screenshot02

today I spent 1 hour making a rotating magic wand for my next game Magic Stones.
Yes, 1 hour. You might think I’m crazy 🙂
In effect, while I was making it, often I thought “this is a waste of my time” – and really time is the most precious of all things (for anyone, not only for a indie dev!).
The final effect satisfy me, even if still I wonder if that was time well spent.. 🙂 anyway I want to polish my next game a lot, and I want to put attention even to details like mouse pointer (yes sorry forgot to tell you, the magic want will be the mouse pointer!).
You might be curious to see it now, here it goes:

animated .mov file (you need quicktime to see it)

It seems that the “job” of indie dev is becoming quite popular in the net. No wonder, since recently it got coverage from big media like CNN and so on.
The problem is that most people think that being indie dev is easy, while that isn’t really the case.
Some good advices can be found in this Macgames & More webpage.

They’re good and valid not only for Mac developers but in general 😉
In general I’d like to warn anyone that is not easy, so “don’t burn the ship” unless you really can (i.e. you have no family to mantain, etc).
Of course you might think I’m saying this because I don’t want more competition… 🙂 but when you’ll have your first game out and you’ll earn 100$/month maximum with it, don’t complain!!

Being a successful indie takes time (I’d say at least 2-3 years minimum to get a stable income), and even if you ask more famous (and successful) developers like Goodsol or Dexterity, they’ll reply you the same.