It was fun reading some posts in indiegamer about “AAA art studios offering big discount for indies”. That thing didn’t sound right to me. Of course they couldn’t provide any price indication for it, not even a rough approximate for the example they posted.
They even seemed annoyed when me and other forum members pointed this out, like if they didn’t want to put a fixed price in public.
I don’t understand at all this attitude, since I’m not even bothering to ask them if they can’t post any info about it.
Also, when one replied with a figure, it said “in the thousands”. Too fun, in the thoussands what exactly mean? $3000 or $8000 ? I don’t know if they understand that even $1000 is a big figure for an indie devs. They think everyone is successful as Popcap, Funpause and so on. The truth is that for most indies even a “small figure” like $1000 for art is already the limit.

Is really fun to discover, when talking privately to fellow programmers, that most of the successful indie developers are not what is commonly considered “a good programmer”.
For me,a good programmer is the one that gets the job done. In time, without (not many) bugs, etc. Language or ultra-knowledge of all latest tecniques does not matter.
Not the one who makes the best C++ ultra-polymorphic engine 😉 but often people are like that, and then they find out that they can’t port their code to other platform like Mac Os X because they used a particular class/structure/library etc.
I won’t make the names because I want to respect their privacy. But is not a secret to anyone that Platypus was made with Blitzbasic and was in the top 10 of the best casual games portal around… so you really don’t have to be an expert programmer to be successful in this industry.

Today I uploaded the first expansion for my game Magic Stones, “The Bonelord”.
Is still BETA version even if I think there shouldn’t be any serious bugs 🙂

If you want to try, check those links:
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/MagicStonesTrial.zip (mac)
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/MagicStonesTrial.exe (win)

you’re welcome to report any bugs or give feedback!

I read on indiegamer forum the “sad” news of my friend Cliff being fired from his daily job. That sucked for him I suppose, but I am glad that someone as talented as him now joined the indie developers world.
I supposed now he will have mixed feeling, but if things will go well for him (which I hope), I’m sure he will be more than happy of the indie lifestyle!

…if things go bad, he can alwasy try to relocate in New Zealand, since he’s british he should have big chances of getting in there 😉