Yes, it seems that for some people, everything is just an excuse for NOT working on your projects. Is really weird that for some reason I never read any of those “very useful” blogs or articles about personal motivation and still released quite some good titles in just 2 years.
Is just waste of time. Fire up Visual C, Photoshop or whatever. Do even some marketing looking for new links or ideas on internet, but don’t just post in forums or read stupid blogs that will promise you’ll become a living god in short time…
I really think that motivation should come spontaneously from within yourself. Is not reading bullshits like “earn 1 million in 30 seconds” that you’ll find motivation at all.
Many people are in indie business NOT for passion, but just for money. And curiously I think that those are the one who will earn less money in the end… 😀

Yes in the end I had to give up my goal to not buy anything more to heat my room!
I bought this ifrared stove, just 22 euros, it consumes 400W though.
Not very cheap, but is like having 4 normal lamps of 100W turned on… anyway I couldn’t work anymore here without at least 19-20°C!
This morning when I woke up I had 15°C LOL…!

Ok I’ll try to explain why all those “you cloned my game” or “that game reminds me of…” are absolutely pointless and why people say that instead that RPG game or that simulation game is very different.

A game is composed by gameplay elements. Let’s say in an arkanoid clone for example, there’s the ball, there are the bricks, the bat and so on. You can make variant of it (like adding puzzles or particular target to hits, or other gameplay element) but the problem is that if you’re going to make a casual game, you don’t have much space for your ideas.

Is much harder (I would say almost impossible nowadays) to come out with an original idea, using simple gameplay. Because with simple gameplay there are less gameplay elements. Instead in a simulation/strategy/rpg game, there are so many elements that the chances to make a “clone” are very very low.

So please avoid those pointless discussion. Unless people who made the original games want the other devs to stop completely making new ones, of course 🙂

Make a original game with simple gameplay if you can. The last one that was made is Tetris I think, and that was quite some time ago…

Yes, this new 2006 started really well. I have so many project going on that I’m excited 🙂
First of all my main goal will be to release USM2 in time for the world cup of Germany. USM2 was in development already since some time, but I had to rewrite the database engine. As it was the 1st title (Universal Soccer Manager), I want it to be running ultra-FAST even on really awful pc like Pentium 3 450mhz with 256mb of RAM 🙂
I should finish within one month max the new update of Magic Stones, then I’ll be working 100% fulltime on USM2, in particular in the match game engine.
I really believe I’ll surprise people with my idea, if I’ll be able to implement it as I have in mind…

The year has started and I have some ambitious projects going on. The most important surely is USM2, it has been in development since 2 years but had too many breaks, mostly to finish Magic Stones that from the initial idea of a match3 clone became a full card/fantasy rpg game (quite a transition, heh?).
I have so many ideas to put on it! but of course the I need finish to release a good version 1.0 before the next World Cup. Then I’ll continue to update the game as I’m doing with UBM and other games of mine.