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Moderators Note: (8/26/2003)
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I have pinned this thread in the General Chat forum as it is a great resource for new users to introduce themselves as well as get to know the existing members of the community.

A little history about this thread, it was originally started by Steve Pavlina (Dexterity) back when the forum was first created. After many replies it began to retreat into the history of the board. A few months ago Steve created a new thread with a similar purpose entitled "Lurker Come Out Party" to entice the boards many lurkers to register and introduce themselves. That thread has been merged with this thread to bring it the state it is in today.

New users, de-lurkers, feel free to create an introductory post in this thread. For all you existing forum members, I'd like this thread to just contain introductory posts. So if you see someone you recognize or would like to respond to an introductory post with some small talk, please send a personal message or start a new thread with your comments in this forum. Happy posting!

-Dan MacDonald
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If you happen to pop onto this board, feel free to reply to this message and introduce yourself. Here's my intro:

I'm Steve Pavlina. I founded Dexterity Software back in 1994. Some background on our company can be found here:
http://www.dexterity.com/aboutus

Basically, I started out working with retail publishers, and that didn't work out well at all. But I had released a few shareware games along the way, and I noticed those were still selling after several years. So I switched my focus to shareware full-time, and from there I was able to build a thriving business after releasing our first shareware hit (Dweep) back in 1999. In 2001 we began publishing other developers' games, and since then we've released eight new games from other indie developers.

Like many players I've grown dissatisfied with the lack of originality in the retail game market. I see the real innovation happening in the indie sector. Both as a publisher, a player, and an indie developer myself, I'm strongly motivated to see the indie community thrive.

You'll notice that there are no ads on these boards -- this isn't any kind of profit center for Dexterity. We already receive far more game submissions than we can publish, so we don't need these boards to promote our publishing services either. The main purpose for this indie forum is to help support the indie community as a whole.

My name is Ronald Frazier. I am an indie game developer trying to break into the market. I have started my own company, Kronos Software, and released my first game Miko & Molly in August.

History: I have been programming for about 8 years. I graduated at the top of my class from the University of Michigan - Dearborn in 1999 (Computer Science). Spent a year and a half doing web development for an e-commerce dev company. I have since come back to work at the University full time. It pays less, but the extra vacation time and relaxed work schedule allow me more time for my hobbies.

As far as game development, I dabbled in it a little back in '95, then picked it up again in 1999. I spent a few years working on some high tech game engines before deciding that the indie market was more appropriate for what I wanted to accomplish. So, in 2001 I scrapped my current projects, designed something simpler (Miko & Molly) which I could sell by myself to a more casual market, rather than a huge project that would require a large team and a major publisher to sell to hardcore gamers.

I live in the Detroit, MI area. I'm currently working together with some other game developers, big and small, in the area to put together an IGDA (International Game Developers Association) chapter for Southern Michigan ( http://www.igda.org/Chapters/detroit.htm ). We hope to promote the area as a viable place for game development. While we do have a big developer in the area (Outrage), we have a lot more indie developers (a couple that have been around for a number of years and are quite successful). We also hope to build stronger ties between industry and education. We have some students involved, and the nearby Universities have some decent game development courses and clubs.

Steve/Dexterity has been an excellent source of motivation for myself. Seeing how he pulled himself away from the big-publisher market and into the indie market so successfully through pure dedication is quite inspirational. Hopefully in a few years I'll find myself in a similar position.

My name is Mike Sellers. I live in Austin, Texas, and head up a small studio, Online Alchemy (http://www.onlinealchemy.com).

My background is in programming and user interface design, and I have a degree in cognitive science. I've been working in the games industry since 1994, and this is my third startup. The first, Archetype Interactive, I co-founded with my brother to develop the MMP game I designed, Meridian 59 (the first 3D MMP yada yada yada). We sold that company to 3DO, and then shortly thereafter started another one, The Big Network, focusing on family games and community. We sold that company to eUniverse in 1999, and I went to work for Maxis (Electronic Arts), leading the design effort on SimCity Online. That project morphed into The Sims 2 (which still hasn't been released, due to The Sims phenomenal success), and from there I went and worked with Will Wright on The Sims Online. Then last year I was asked to come down to Austin to lead the design of the next game in the Ultima Online franchise. We parted ways earlier this year, and I started Online Alchemy.

OA is currently developing several small games, some of which may find their way onto Dexterity's site; we'll see. While I haven't worked with these guys yet, I have heard nothing but good things about them, and that means a lot to me. Let's just say that working with people of integrity would be a welcome change from a lot of what I've seen over the past few years (if you ever find yourself wistfully thinking of how great it'd be to work in a huge game company... don't).

I think too that the "shareware" market is quickly maturing past that name. For many of us (us older guys anyway!) that name conjures up images of amateurish software sold in the online equivalent of ziplock bags. I think the "downloadable software" market (or whatever it ends up being called) is more significant than the BigGameCo's recognize -- analogies to mammals and dinosaurs, or English frigates vs. the Spanish Armada come to mind. :-)

Anyway, I'm happy to be here and hope to be able to contribute and to learn from the rest of you about navigating the indie market.

My name is Yann Cleroux, president of Yamisoft Entertainment Inc. (http://www.yamisoft.com) I never liked saying that, so I prefer just stating my role as an independent game developer with many other shoes to fill (my modesty will be my undoing, as the Borg would say...)

I’ve been making games for the past 16 years, both as a hobbyist and working in the game industry. I’m a designer, programmer, artist, and writer – something this industry absurdly fears, as specialization becomes the reigning quality. It’s not my fault; I’m from the good old days when 1 person did all of the design, programming, graphics, and sound for a game. :) My last paid position was Senior Programmer for a startup game company, following my work on a Microsoft-published game. As a multi-talented geek armed with the everlasting desire to create original games and lead their development, I had no choice but to start Yamisoft and learn to grow my own food to survive - literally. Well ok, starting Yamisoft has been a dream of mine for the past 10 years, so it was definately by choice. :)

We have no interest in owing money and therefore work up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, to design and create original games, each increasing in quality depending on income from prior releases. Our focus is fun, depth, and originality, aided by a few secret ingredients we’re incorporating in our upcoming game. It all sounds so simple, but there are always unexpected bumps in the road to complicate matters. Since I can’t afford to pay anyone, as with most indie authors, I’m left with many intrusive and unrelated tasks, such as veering around those alien bumps.

Cramgene, a 2-month project, is officially our second title, although only our first release. Suffice it to say that Dexterity has a very good developer article mentioning the importance of doing research before negotiating.

Since I’m not a marketing guy and my obsession lies with game development, Dexterity offers the perfect opportunity for a developer like us. I’m hoping our upcoming platform game will gain the attention it deserves and make it on Dexterity’s list. So far, it sounds like they’re the marketing department we lack.

Excuse me while I go tell someone that we’re not just another shovelware company...

Hi,

My name is Michael Le,
I am currently working on my DirectX skills to create a 2D game in the near future. My goal is to create a 2D puzzle game that will be published by Dexterity but it seems like a lot of people are doing that. We'll see however, because I am really motivated and having fun at the same time when working on my programming. It's going to be a grueling fall working day and night but I feel like I can actually do this as long as I see my goal as being possible and realistic. And it is so far =)

My name is David Michael. I'm co-owner of Samu Games (http://www.samugames.com) (http://www.samugames.com), a small independent game development company, and DavidRM Software (http://www.davidrm.com) (http://www.davidrm.com), a small independent software company. I have been fully independent since 1999.

Since 1996, Samu Games has put out several small online-only games, including Paintball Net (which was taken offline in 2000) and Artifact (http://www.samugames.com/artifact) (http://www.samugames.com/artifact). In 2000, we did an unreleased (through no fault of ours) game for Sierra Online. Currently, we are working on a 3D version of our first game, Paintball Net (it was a 2D "arcade MUD" the first time around).

Besides the games mentioned above, in 1996 I also began my independent sotware career with the release ofThe Journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal) (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal), which has been a moderately successful shareware product.

I have written several game-dev articles, most of them published on GameDev.net (http://www.gamedev.net). I also contributed to the recent "Game Design Perspectives" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1584500905/davidrmsoftwa-20) book from Charles River. And, speaking of GDNet, I'm also the moderator of the "Business of Game Development" forum there.

Finally, I recently landed a book contract with Charles River, with highly guess-able topic that I hope discuss more openly soon. :)

Hi, I'm Phil Harvey, have been in the industry for nearly 12 years now. Currently working on PS2 and XBox games. But do have a couple of smaller projects going on. Have worked for people like Bullfrog, EA, Activision, Sega in the past, on just about every platform there is out there.

Recently developed a couple of PocketPC game, to see how the market was.

Currently developing another PocketPC game, and will also be converting it to the PC and Mobile phones.


Phil

My name is Gil Zussman, I'm a Computer Sciences student working
on small time computer software gigs.

I live in Israel, which isnt so bad to live in as you think,
I despise politics and violence, so keep me out of those
discussions.

I'm currently working on a nice 3d platform game,
trying to reach the level of ID's Commander Keen,
or maybe Sonic's success.

I've aimed the game to appeal to the largest audience
as possible, as arcade-platform game are always fun,
addictive, elegant and easy(er) to program than other
large scale games which are never finished.

thats about it,
feel free to check out my website.

Gil

My name is Eric W. Lund. I graduated college in 91 with what essentially amounts to a BA in English. I've been fascinated with computers since I was a pre-teen, and did my first game on a TRS-80 Color Computer not long after. I made a concerted effort to break into games part-time in the early 90's, but sold my soul to Corporate America for the past six years to do web development. Three weeks ago I quit my job. I'm going back into game development and I'm determined to become successful at it (read: self-sustaining). I've got a year of savings before I have to go back to the mines. Wish me luck. See the Game Entrepeneur (www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=11) thread I started to give some advice to people making the leap.

I'm Michael Sikora, I just recently registered Guardian Light Studios as a business, and have been working professionally on games during the last 2+ years.

I've worked privately on contract making board games, and now have just recently finished having the Champion Board Game Series published by Xing Interactive in retail, and selling direct over the web through Guardian Light Studios (http://www.guardianlightstudios.com) .

Now that I've got my shoes wet in both retail and online distribution, I'm cooking up some more *original* games. (Not that board games can't be fun to work on... )

I live in Canada, and no, it's not always snowing here ;)

Hello all,

I'm Paul Jones. I dont have my own company, but I do love making games of all types I'm very skilled in programming, graphics and music. I have written several games but my latest work can be seen at http://www.powergfx.com I'm hoping to meet some great people here and hopefully work my way into the industry. this is a life long dream for me, hope to talk to you all soon.


Thanks

PaulJ

Hi everyone.

My name is Ilya Olevsky (the first letter is an i not L) and I'm currently a senior at the New Jersey Institute of Technology majoring in Computer Science. I plan to start a small game company sometime soon after I graduate, but I will probably have to get a job for a year or two to save up the capital required (since as you can probably guess being a college student I'm quite broke =)).

I've read all of Steve's articles and found them very inspirational. Before reading them I was very skeptical about starting my own game business but after reading some of the articles I realized why most developers fail at this. Armed with this knowledge I think I have a good chance of succeeding.

My friend and I have been programming a reusable 2D game engine for over a year which uses SDL (for portability) and OpenGL (for hardware accelerated graphics effects). My friend is currently working on a GUI, and I'm concentrating on finishing college so I'm not doing much programming right now.

I'm very excited that Steve created this forum. We'll surely learn a lot from each other and from him.

Wow, a lot of posts in a very short time.

Let me briefly introduce myself. My Name is Todd Chodorow, and I am a producer here at Dexterity Software. My background is in computer games and Interface design, and among other things, I am responsible for Helping to decide which games we acutally Publish, as well as the QA testing of those games. If you end up submitting a game to Dexterity, i am the guy you will probably talk to (but please, no bribes...well ok, maybe a few small ones :D ), and if we publish your game, you will talk to me a lot :)

Look forward to talking to all of you here, on our forums.

Todd

Hi,
My name is, you guessed it, Dan MacDonald. I want to start by saying hi to all my favorite goblins from the "business of game development forums" over at GameDev.net (http://www.gamedev.net) who have made it over here.

Like many of the above posters, Steve was the source of inspiration that lit a fire under my butt to get serious about my goals to become a game developer. For the past 8 months I've been hard at work on an adventure puzzle game. Despite various set backs the project is comming along nicely. (you can check out the progress by clicking the links in my sig.) I even convinced some of my friends to help out :).

After watching EA's slaughter of the Origin team and the UO2 project just months before completion I pretty much swore off ever working in the industry. Once I figured that out I knew I had to get serious about doing it on my own. I still work a day job but my goal is to be full time in a year and a half. I look forward to getting to know all of you and learning as much as I can from your expirences as well as sharing some of my own.

Alrighty, I'm Neil Graham, I wrote the Dexterity released Fitznik.

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand so I'm a bit out of the way.

I started out some whiles ago doing Amiga coding (I still yearn for many of the features of the old Amiga operating sytem) At one point I worked on a flight simulator (one of the types that has a huge steel dongle).

On the PC I wrote a few little games slowly building up to bigger and better things. Over the last few years I have alternated between writing games and studying philosopy at university. I'm writing games at the moment.

I have several new things in the works at the moment and I'm multiplexing best I can. Things are coming along though.

Hi,

My name is Maher Farag, I live in Egypt and I was lucky enough that Dexterity published my game Pharaohs' Curse and they are really doing a great job.

Well, I started back in 1989 on MSX computer, Amiga (Lovely old days) and now PC.

I was programming in Z80 assembly language and it was fun :) and I started by making a Brick out style game called Crazy Ball (never published although it was good in those days).

I am programming databases for living but with Dexterity I started to 'burn the ship' ;) and concentrate on making games, currently we are working on another arcade/puzzle game which will be very welcomed by many people especially Dexterity's customers, I am sure it will ;)

I would like to thank Steve for this great work and I am looking forward to seeing online reporting soon, also I would like to say a 'Big-Thank-You' to Todd as he was/still of great help refining/QA the game.

Keep up the great work guys

Feel free to visit my site http://www.ancientsoft.com

Hi.

My name is Andrew Waltz, and I live near Philadelphia.

I'm really quite impressed with the level of game developing
experience many of you have. Even though I've
been fooling around with directx and programming for awhile, I've not yet produced any complete/polished products.

However, learning from my past mistakes along with a
smaller workload at my day job makes me optimistic
that I will complete my (non-game) project soon.

After that I hope to develope 2d games that are
fun and easy to play.

I'm positive that this forum will be a great resource.

Hi gang. I'm Cliff Harris, I am the one man band behind Positech Computing Ltd www.positech.co.uk (http://www.positech.co.uk)
I started coding games on the Sinclair ZX81 with its 1k of RAM (yes thats 1024 bytes...), Then I gave it up to be a session musician and boatbuilder around the time Molyneux et al became millionaires...
I've been seriously coding games in C++ for maybe 5 years? I've done a long stint as an indie working from home (ran out of money) went to work for a big developer (Elixir studios - the code behind the newspaper in Republic - thats mine that is!) for 18 months, then got cheesed off with the big developer thing and am now back at home writing games again, but probably going to work full time again soon to pay the bills...
I'm well known for my rants about the dire state of the games industry, I think the indie/shareware market i set to explode big time, although if that's going to happen some of us have got to stop making puzzle games... I'm as guilty as the next man, I've got one in development.
Oh and by the way I'm 32 years old which makes me ancient to most of you. I remember before VHS and before Star Wars...

Bruno Sousa here.

In short, I'm from Portugal now residing in Scotland and working for VIS entertainment.

I also wrote Game Programming All in One and apart from that, I'm just another uni drop out :)

Ohh about experience, I'm 19 with about 7 years of programming in C/C++ and a couple of completed but unpublished games !

Greetings,

My name is Brandon Wood, my game Once Twice Thrice, launches here at Dexterity next friday Sept 27.

I've been programming for about 7 years, including 4 years getting a BS in computer science at the University of North Carolina (where Michael Jordan played college basketball).

I've been poking around gamedev.net for the past 2 or 3 years, but I finally got all my ducks in a row and turned out a respectable product with OTT.

So far, working with Dexterity is great, and I haven't even recieved my first check! I'm feverishly working on a second product that I'm sure will be even more proffessional and polished than OTT.

hey cool...... my name is Gregory L Lipscomb, 33 year old
owner of GLIPS Entertainment, Inc. i started my company back
in 1999 but was forced to go fulltime 1 1/2 years ago.

The PAST:
i quit college in 1992 after getting offered a programming gig. i
didn't get my first "game programming" job until 1997. i helped
put out a turn based strategy game called 101:The Airborne Invasion of Normandy,(Former Boss owns this site (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/)
afterwards i worked at another company
and helped put out 3 more commercial games:
Email Chess, Checkers & Backgammon(i did the checkers game),
Slingo for PC and Parker Brothers Card Games(i did the Solitaire game). Box Shots of the Games here (http://www.glipsentertainmentinc.com/resume/GregoryLLipscombResume.html)

The PRESENT:
i operate out of my corner office/retail store in the downtown
business district where i live. if you're in the area,
stop by the store and say hi:)
i'm currently finishing up a contract gig for a comic book publisher,
afterwards i'll resume my own development projects. also getting
set to release the next volume in my CDRom series here (http://www.garagedeveloperinternational.com/profile/demosoncdrom.html)

The FUTURE and BEYOND:
it had always been my ultimate goal to live
and work as a "real" indie developer.
it's great to see so many developers
that share similar business views.

this forum looks to be shaping up as a great place to
meet and exchange with new friends. kudos to steve...i had joined the ASP specifically because of the knowledge and
experience that he's previously shared in his articles.

I'm Brian Azzopardi and I'm from Malta (see if you can find it! :) )

I just graduated last year in Economics and Political Philosophy. I've been programming for the last 6 years (C/C++ for the last 5) and am currently working as a programmer coz it's fun and it pays well :)

Game programming is interesting, and like many others, have finally succumbed to temptation and started working on one. It's been both fun and a challenge so far. I'm not doing it for any financial reasons but purely for the joy of coding - the same thing that has driven me for the last 6 years.

I must thank most people (including Steve for his articles) and the people at flipcode for the motivation - seeing other people's work gets me all pumped up and ready to code!

Good luck to all indie developers out there!

Brian Azzopardi

Hi, my name is Diodor Bitan, I live in Bucharest, Romania and am a 22 years old aspiring indie game developer.

I can program quite well, I have been playing around with ModeX, DirectDraw, SDL, OpenGL, 2D and 3D graphics (including a fair share of low level ASM fiddling), graph theory, data structures and algorithms, AI. I can find my way around 3D drawing programs, and I like game design even more than a programming challenge.

I've worked on a number of unfinished projects, like a 2d tanks game and a rogue-like rpg. I have helped with the creation of Smugglers 2 and TV Manager (testing, doing art, design, and a drop of programming). Right now I'm trying to make my own games. My next project is a collection of classic logic games (Othello, Go-moku, and the rest of them).

Hi everyone!

I've been hanging around GameDev for almost three years now and it's nice to see some familiar names on here already.

About me... I started programming in Atari 8--bit basic in the mid-eighties, moved onto 6502 assembly, Amgia (AMOS & M68000) PC (C then C++) etc etc but programming has always been a hobby (it's got me some good gigs in Engineering though as Mechanical Engineers with C programming skills are a rare commodity. I've made attempts in the past to break away from my day job, all so far have been to no avail.

My day-job peaked about 4 years ago, and I found myself in a position where I was ready to begin game coding again.

So after a few years of even more learning/tinkering/hair loss, I'm a reasonable DirectX/3d/C++ coder with a couple of serious projects under-way. I have a small website here (http://www.matibee.com) which is not being promoted at all until the projects are closer to release.

I'm hoping Jeepers Leapers will be a suitable candidate for Dexterity's publishing route, but I'm not so sure Ground Attack Force is; with it's level of voilence. We shall see!

Bye -and good luck everyone!

Matt Bennett

I'm one of the founders of Twilight Games - We have 3 titles out now, all initially self published, with several new projects in development. (3 active titles in production and one of our older titles now being ported to palm and pda devices) I've been doing this full-time for about 2 years, but I started about 4 years ago with the very first version of Aargon.

Before that I wrote many games, just to play them, on all kinds of different machines going all the way back to the Ti99/4a for those who remember. I have extensive experience working for large well known corporations in North America writing many types of software from robotics to medical and financial, but I'm happiest doing what I do now, in part because I love games but also because I love working for myself.

I guess I'll try to bring this post back on topic:
My name is Joel Carlson and I am a hardcore programmer that has a creative side, too. I'm happy to find this forum because it looks like a good collection of people who are serious about the business of games. A nice fit between the inexperienced imaginations on GameDev and the hardcore coders on FlipCode.

I, like many of you here, see the beauty of creating a collection of software that can earn you money even while you are sleeping, and the fact that it's games makes it that much more appealling. I've read all Steve's articles and I must say you can add me to the huge list of people you've inspired.

I'm currently looking for someone to team up with to make some money in the shareware market while having fun doing it. I've been able to find people with talent, and people with creativity, but noone with both. I have finally started updating my website ( http://www.jc3d.net ) to show some things I've been working on. Please check it out occasionally, and if there's anyone here with talent and ideas and wants to try partnering on a game, let me know.

I look forward to participating on these forums a lot more in the future!

Greetings,

My name is Jai Shaw and I live in Australia. All my childhood I have been facinated by games. I learnt to program and wrote a few very small games on the Apple 2e and the Amiga but when I left high school I ended up in application programming jobs for about 6 years.

Eventually I had to get out before I had a melt down so I decided to go to university to try getting a degree under my belt, however somewhere along the line I ended up programming games.

I finished Dreamstars in August and have come to the realisation that games programming is definatly where I want to be in life. However even though Dreamstars is selling a little I have I am pretty much flat broke so I'm looking for work, prefferably in the game industry, so I can get on my feet again.

My eventual goal it to be an inde developer or start up a small development house of my own.

I have dabbled in Story writting and can occasionally come up with a peice of nice artwork but programming and design is definatly my strongest points.

I have a few projects in the works and there is some possibilities to get a start up company going due to some nice offers from the Acadamy of Interactive Entertainment and the Australian Government at the moment so I am keeping my option open.

I'm at an exciting crossroads point of my life at the moment. I know my destination, but the path there is still to be determined :)

Jai Shaw

Hello, my name is Keith Weatherby II. I live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America.

I've been programming close to 10 years, but didn't really get serious until 5 years ago. I've completed 3 games, got two of them put on the cd accompanying Bruno Sousa's book "Game Programming All in one", and i'm attempting to sell my games.

So far i had 1 sale from someone I didn't know.

If you want to see what i've done head on over to
http://www.uhfgames.com and see if you like any of them.

That's about it.

I'm shaft,

I'm 26 currently a grad student in software architecture and engineering. I enjoy long walks on the beach and holding hands... oops sorry.

I used to want to be a game developer until I learned software architecture, and I learned how to develop expandable maintainable software. Since software architecture / engineering is not likely to enter into the pro world of game developement, I'll have to survive making double the money in another software industry and doing the game projects I want in my spare time...

My current project right now is a VERY powerful scripting engine. It's a complete object management system that plugs into any C/C++ system and manages dynamically loaded Java objects (There's a lot more to it, but that's the short version). It's pretty sweet. The 3rd and final design is faster than unreal script and AT LEAST as expandable (I need to update the website so I can point people to a better explanation). It's pretty cool and has really given me a chance to learn a lot about software engineering.

My goal is to land a job working under a skilled architect in a company that has a strong software engineering process. After a few years of that I would like to start my own business.

My name is Jason Chong. I am 26 too, going on to be 27 end of this year.

I used to work at imaginative illusions and did a raiden style
vertical shooter. Got it published, but didn't make much moolah.

I left the company to further my studies. I just finished and look forward to resume game development as indie.

I haven't finished my new game project yet, because like steve has mentioned in other threads, the psychological factor needs to be dealt with. ;-) Recently attended some job interviews but i am not so sure about taking them if i do get any offers.

I am slowly moving back and getting on track, and you can see the screen shots of a rather old page of my ongoing project at http://www.geocities.com/jcvw75/

I am gonna try and finish this side scroller now that I've finished my education (sort of, still no degree yet. ;-)). I am burning my bridge to go full steam ahead, but of course will do occasional custom software development work on the side when the need arise.

Soon I am gonna have .com website and a registered company name. I really hope to get some results from gamedev.

I only need usd 500 a month to be able to be an indie game developer full-time. So i believe if i don't do this then I am screwing/wasting my youth chance of a lifetime. Others here may disagree and think I am screwing my own youth now by not getting into the corporate world. :-/

Anyway, I have no loans to pay, no debts to clear, no kids, no chicks and no life... hehehehehe. Why waste such a good boring
lifestyle ? Be an iNDIE !

Hello:

I am Mike Boeh from the Chicago area. My company is Retro64, Inc. at http://www.retro64.com

I have been an indie game developer and publisher for 2 years now, and have no regrets! :-)

I am currently in crunch mode because I am releasing my next game, "Best Friends" on October 1st. To add to the stress, I am also launching a totally redesigned website at the same time.

Cheers

Hi,

I'm Marc Georgeson from Addictive 247 (http://www.addictive247.co.uk).
We set up in May 2001 with the intention of writing games where playability was the key and not just the gfx or sound. During May we released our first game Smuc's. Later on that year, in November we released our arcade/action tank game called Onslaught.

There are 4 of us who make up the team and there were several debates over what the next game would be. It was eventually decided that we would go with an original arcade/puzzle game called Shift 247. Shift 247 was released at the end of March 2002 and an add-on pack for it called 'Shift 247: Advanced Racer' was released in May.

All that seems a long, long time ago :rolleyes:

Currently we're working on two games. One's a puzzle game and the others a football (soccer) game. The puzzle game will hopefully be released at the end of October and I think its our best work yet. The football game called 'Addictive Footy' will be released next year. All the latest info on our games can be found at In-Development (http://www.addictive247.co.uk/Indev.htm)

Hi there. My name is, unfortunately, Caspian Rychlik-Prince, and I'm still merely a wannabe indie game developer. I was working on a game called Multiple Injury (some old history found at www.shavenpuppy.com might enlighten you) but of course it's too ambitious to finish on my own.

So I'm back to square one with a new, much, much smaller game, which once upon a time I wrote on the ST and lost. It's a 2D arcade puzzler. Currently in dire need of art.

I use OpenGL, OpenAL, and Java to develop my games. This surprises most people and makes others derisive, but that's because they don't know :D But should you think that's the way to do it go and take a look at http://java-game-lib.sourceforge.net/ which is what came out of my abortive game efforts last year.

I am the same princec who pops up on gamedev.net and JGO too often.

Cas :)

Hi. Hanford Lemoore here. I was a level-designer and animator on a bunch of bigger-production games a while back for LucasArts and Disney before switching gears to do user-interface design for consumer-electronics products.

Now I'm back to video games, but this time working on my own (much-smaller) games rather than working on someone else's. I just started selling my game last week on www.monolux.com.

Glad to see these forums. Dexterity's a great company.

~Hanford

I'm Gregory Micek from Sacramento California. I'm 26 years old and work at Verizon Wireless doing technical support, but none of that matters.

I'm one of the people putting together a new gaming news site called DIY Games. Its purpose is to cover the gaming world(like too many other websites out there), but will concentrate on Indie games. It's not meant to be a link site with downloads and such, it's more of a indie.ign.com kind of thing.

We'll be opening it officially in about a week or so, and expect to get some decent traffic because of an interview I did with Lt. Col. Dave Grossman a couple weeks ago. Most the people here probobly won't see their titles in the library yet, the main reason is time. We're still trying to finish the entries we have in their now, and will wait to add more until after we launch, that way they can be mentioned on the main page.

Anyway, that's it, and that's me. Stay tuned and all that fun stuff.

I am Stephen Burns.

I am 21 years and I live in Australia. I started working on computer graphics in 1998 and have continued to develop my skills (self taught). I have mostly being working on projects that I find fun. 1998 I was at Tafe learning computer networks. In 1999 I started to work on card games and board game which ended up on the back burner. 2000 I got my first job but quit so as to continue with my graphics. 2001 I started helping out a local community centers and tried to get the government to help local youth in my city. 2002 I quit my volunteer work to focus on my first computer game project.

This year I have meet 2 programmers and we are working on our first computer game.

I can do a lot of art related stuff on the computer.
I enjoy drawing a lot and want to get back to drawing. But the computer game has been keeping me busy. Also I am into role playing games and I am developing my own role playing game system.

Here is my web site http://www.gplgames.com/B-Games-Main-1.html

My name is Dax (Named after some Scottish detective or something. My Dad never did explain it properly) And I'll be releasing my first "proper" game soon.

There are two things I have learned in my 27 years on this planet:


1) happiness is more important than money.

2) I will only ever be happy working for myself.


After finishing University with a degree in computer science, I worked at a games company as a 3D artist, and eventually progressed to lead designer, which a lot of people think would be their ideal job. But personally, I couldn't freaking stand it. Taking orders from people who knew next to nothing about games, simply because they were in a higher company position started really getting to me. So I quit. Making games is the only thing I have ever had a "passion" for doing. When you are younger, your aspirations tend to jump around from one profession to another, but with me it always landed back on games. So that's what I'm now trying to do, not for fame and fortune, but because I think its the only shot I'll have at leading a happy life.

Not to get too off topic, but I can't stand the current corporate culture that says the only way to be a good human being is to become an employee in a large corporation and work your way up the ranks. So many of these people are completely miserable and stressed out, but still see this as the only path a "productive member of society" should take. Get a job. Work hard. Get a promotion. Work harder. Never complain. Don't rock the boat. Increase your earning potential. Here's a thought... how about actually enjoying your life instead! Pretty radical idea huh?

So that's my motivation. I'm prepared to give it everything I've got to succeed. And I wish good luck to everyone else in a similar position.

I am Jake Stine, and I'm still trying to figure out how/why I named my profile 'Jake Stine' and not 'Air' ... I guess that's what I get for signing up on these forums 5 minutes before I went to bed.

I have been a gamedev and multimedia programmer of the amateur brand for about 8 years now. Like a lot of people, I have a heck of a lot more experience with starting projects than finishing them (until I finish my current project, that ratio is ad-infinium, really). That doesn't stop me from trying; and just like most other people, it doesn't stop me from making a nice website either! :)

My plan is to make a couple cool games, make enough money to upgrade my living status from 'boxed shelter' to 'makeshift hut', and to promote a general good feeling of achievement among myself and my friends and co-workers who put up with my wackiness.

- Air
- Curious? Hour 13 Studios (http://www.hour13.com)

Hi all -

My name is Bill Keller, and I live in north central Florida. I've been programming professionally for a little over ten years now. I'm currently an independant consultant, doing custom software for small businesses. So in a way, I'm already doing the indie thing. Sort of.

I have set the goal of living completely off of software sales, at my current level of income, in 3 years. 36 months. My plans are to split my development efforts between games and pocket pc apps. I'd like to be able to get an app done every 2-3 months. Each won't sell for much, but 15 or 20 of them will add up.

I'm glad Steve set these forums up. In the lurking I've done so far, there seems to be less noise here than over at GameDev. Let's hope it stays that way.

Take care,
Bill

edit - I hate typos

Hi, My name is Nick Bischoff.

I am currently a lecturer, I am pretty young I guess (21), I lecture networking, TCP/IP and mostly networking geared towards Windows related architecture, AD etc.

My real passion is game development, but I have yet to complete a project for release. I have been messing around with game dev for the last 8 or so years.

I am still studing, doing a BCOM (IT) with a few years left of that.

I recently purchased a .com, check out my first release there. In the sig!

Oh, I live in South Africa, but I have lived in the states, Tampa FL.

Hi. I'm Charles Oines.

I am currently a freelance and contract artist. For the last twelve years, I've been working at varous companies doing game production art. I left my last gig because I was just plain burned out on game production.

So, naturally, I'm making my own game :). I'm working on an idea I've had floating in my head for a few years now, and finally have the tools and skills to do it myself.

My name is Christopher Emirzian, I'm 21 years old. I've been making cheezy computer games since I was 13. Recently I've tried to make a carreer out of it, and it's been a learning experience all the way. I hope to someday be successful enough to live on my own from the income I get selling games.

You can check out my page at www.toastsoft.com :)

- Chris

I R Bernie. I am a professional software engineer specialized in 3d visualisation, CAD and GIS softwares. I love creating games in my spare time since I had been employed at one of the first gamedev company in Hungary in the last millenia.

And I live farther than Malta... :)

My name is Brian Lockwood - I founded LockwoodTech software in 1998 and run it as a full time business.

I don't write games but in every other way my interests are shared with other Indie developers. I work at home office, sell software over the internet via a web page. I develop my own software from an idea, publish it and hope each product does well. I also have to create graphics, help files, installs etc.

I run a virtual company with several virtual employees in Canada, Chile, Russia and India. I have worked with most of them for 2-3 years. I wrote an article on the unique nature of a virtual company here:

http://www.lockwoodtech.com/index.asp?PageId=articles/virtual_company.htm&TitleID=articles

I also recently wrote an article with tips on starting a software biz that has gotten a lot of good feedback

http://www.lockwoodtech.com/index.asp?PageId=articles/commercial_software.htm&TitleID=articles

Hello,

I am Peter Sokolov from RUSSIA. My company is Warlock Studio at http://www.warlockstudio.com

I have been an indie game developer and publisher for 1 year.

My new game GUNNER2 ready to releasing and I will do it soon.

__________________
Best Regards.
Peter Sokolov
Warlock Studio
http://www.warlockstudio.com
"Fun is just a click away!"

G'day, I'm Daniel Neville, a C/C++/Delphi programmer, bitmap artist and dilletante living in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I was the main programmer for Space Jihad I and II flight sim projects (both involving 700kg dongles with slice-and-dice capability).

I'd be developing my own games, but I suffer from the endless prevarification syndrome, or perhaps a lack of initiative.

I do manage the odd burst of productivity though, such as with the artwork and sound for Lerc's game, Fitznik.

Hello,

I'm Patrick from Midnight Synergy, http://www.midnightsynergy.com

I've been working on games as a hobby since the early 80s, where my first game was a vector-graphics space game programmed in Simon's Basic on the C-64... oh, those were the days! :)

Did some work on the Atari ST (and first dabbled in Shareware) in the late 80s and early 90s, and finally switched to the PC platform in 1993. Under the Midnight Synergy label, myself and other team members have published four games since then: Operation Carnage, Colony, Intensity XS, and Intensity XS: ReCharge.

Currently we're hard at work putting on the finishing touches for our next game, Wonderland, which should be out "very" soon.

Looking forward to some interesting discussions.
Cheers,
Patrick

Hello

My name is Joseph Qualls. I am CEO of the RenderMatrix www.rendermatrix.com . The RenderMatrix has been around for two years now. We are working now to slowly move into the game indusrty. We do everything from computer consulting, web design, implementing computer networks, and game developement. Currently we are working on our second game the "Deliverator". Our first game was Accounts in Action which was shipped to high schools across the US. This was an educational title to teach people about accounting.

The Deliverator will be done at the end of November.

Joseph

Hello,
I'm Alexander Samarin fromVSBgames (http://www.vsbgames.com/). About one year ago we've released our first shareware project - Xtreme Tankz Madness II. Now we're working on our next project - Paradoxion. It will be a board game with classic concepts combined with some new features. Currently my duties are programming, graphics and game desing.

Hello

My name is Kyle Nau from Cancerian New Media. I started off selling texture collections and am moving into indie game development with Scramble Knights which should be ready in November.

Before that I had an unpleasant stint as a level artist for Rockstar Games. I don't really mind mainstream games (although they do rehash the same ideas over and over again) but honestly can't stand how corporate the development process has become.

That's why I'm here, I guess :)

Hello to you all!

My name is Kai-Peter Bäckman and I am running a one-man
startup here in Helsinki/Finland. I have a 15+ year background
in programming and many years as contractor.

I started thinking seriously about a career as indie
developer about two years ago, even if writing games
and demos had been a hobby before that. With a contractor
background the legal structure was ready so during the summer
I made the leap and started working full time on games.

I am aiming for the streaming market where the total file
size doesn't hopefully matter that much. My genre of choice
revolves around science fact/science fiction games. The first
project, scheduled for initial release in the beginning of 2003,
is a non-violent real-time strategy game.

My main fascination with working as an indie is the ability
to further oneself in many professions. In addition to
programming I am interested in visual arts and
entrepreneurship in general.

Wow, this looks to be a great forum! I've been downloading some great shareware games recently and I'm thrilled to see that several of the developers are regular posters here! (Mike at Retro64, for example.)

My name is John Cutter and I've been a professional game developer since 1983. Got my start at a sports game company known as "Gamestar", then was the first employee at an Amiga-based company called "Cinemaware". After that I worked at "New World Computing", "Dynamix", "Cavedog", and others. I took a year off and tried to start my own company, but that didn't work out so I recently had to take a job as Senior Designer at a large developer in the Seattle area, working on console games.

My current job is fine, but I hate office politics and working with large teams; and I'm tired of making money for *other* people. Twenty years in the business, 50+ games on my resume, 5 games listed in Computer Gaming World's "Top 150 Computer Games of All Time", and I've never worked on a SINGLE project that paid royalties. <sigh>

I'd LOVE to work on shareware games full time, but I have too many financial responsibilities. Still, I've got evenings and weekends to run my side business: "Escapist Entertainment", and I'm really looking forward to it. (Strange as it may sound that I have to escape from my job of game-making to... uh... make games. ;-) )

Anyway, I'm very excited to have found this forum -- I know I'll learn a lot and perhaps I can even reciprocate with some nuggets of wisdom I've learned over the years about game design.

Yo John - good to see you here. I think we have quite the PNW contingent growing up here (though I'm in Austin now -- a fine town on its own -- I still consider myself to be from Portland).

When were you at New World? I visited there a few times after 3DO acquired them in 1996 or '97. Just wondering if maybe we've met.

Heya folks, just checking in....

Jonas Stewart
Artist and Co-Owner of Silver Creek Entertainment creators of the Hardwood game series:

Hardwood Solitaire ( in it's diffrent variants)
Hardwood Spades
Hardwood Hearts
Hardwood Euchre

We've been around since '94 making card games and in the last few years running our multiplayer game servers for Hearts, Spades and Euchre.

I also wanted to say thanks for The folks at Dexertiy for setting up this cool message board.

Well see ya folks on the message board :)
<waves to Steve and pals>

OK, I'm here.

This is Thomas Warfield, my products are Pretty Good Solitaire (two time Shareware Industry Best Game of the year winner, also two time People's Choice award winner), and the brand new Pretty Good MahJongg.

Hello,
I am Tams11 and I'm currenting working on creating a gaming community, The Tams11 Lobby Http://www.tams11.com, with a variety of different games, mainly card, dice, and word games.

I don't have a long programming history. I've had a passion for computers since grade school. I took a few pascal courses in high school back in the early 90s. But didn't really do much until about 4 years ago. Since then I've created over 17 simple games.

I'm working solo right now, but someday I would like to join a team and create a game with more substance.

I look forward to the valueable information I can obtain from this forum and Thank you all in advance for the information you give. :)

Hey there folks :)

My name's Jon, and I'm *gasp* an artist. I've been working on games of one sort or another for several years, and hey, maybe one of these days I'll actually get paid for it :P

Right now I'm working with my friends at Hour 13 Studios (http://www.hour13.com) , but I've usually got the time (AND DESIRE) to do some work for anyone else who might need it.

Ah, my dream has always been to make games, which I am doing. My dream is now to be paaaaaaaaaaid to make games :D

Hey guys, I'm Wozza, and I'm a Gameaholic

*round of applause*

I am 21 and have been a 'hardcore gamer' for as long as I can remember, and have allways been interested in the industry. I have a strong interest in Art, Journalism and Web Design. I have completed a one year Art course and I hope to do a course in 'Internet Technology' next year. I currently help run http://www.videogames.co.nz and write for a new free New Zealand gaming Magazine, 'Press Start.

This year I have moved into a flat with two of my freinds who are programmers to start up out little game development company, 'Left Eye Dominant' (LED). I am the art and internet guy, but I know no programming at all, but thats where the other guys come in. We havn't finished any games yet and I am currently making a website for us.

Recently found Dexterity and I should be around often. :)

(edit)

Just to add that I really like the Indie perspective and outlook towards games and such. I have had a few average, to say the least jobs and I have decided that there is really any point in doing things that relate to my interests. I hate pretty much anything that stifles my creativity.

Given that this thread is a kind of old, no one will probably ever read this, but here goes anyway. :)

My name is Paul Kerchen and I've been making games for close to 10 years now. The bulk of my experience came from seven years at Maxis, where I worked as a simulation programmer on SimCity 2000 (PSX and SegaSaturn versions), SimCity 3000, and the unreleased SimsVille. I had a lot of fun there and met a lot of great people (including Mike Sellers, aka alchemist--hi Mike!), but I decided I needed a change and a better place to raise my family. So, last year my family and I pulled up stakes and moved to the wilds of rural southeast Michigan (outside the town of Almont), where I took a year off to build my own house.

Now I'm back in the game (so to speak), starting my own development studio with my brother-in-law (no name yet--finding just the right name is tricky). I've always believed that one who has the talent should be able to make a good game no matter where they are, so now I get to put my belief to the test! At this point, the only obstacle to success that I can see is spending far too much time playing Earth & Beyond. :)

I'm glad I found this board and I look forward to meeting everyone and discussing games, game development, or whatever else comes up.

Cheers,
Paul Kerchen
kerchen@glis.net

Hey Paul! Great to see you here. Drop me a line at some point - I'd love to catch up and hear what you're working on.

I hear you too about pulling up stakes from the Bay Area. There are days when I miss Maxis (not many that I miss EA management duels :) ), but I'd much rather be here in Austin than back in the SF area again.

Hi.
My name is Vytautas Shaltenis. I am from Vilnius, Lithuania. I am 20 y/o and have 5 years programming experience. Currently i am a second year student in Vilnius University, faculcy of Mathematics and Informatics. I have been trying to break into indie gamedev industry for 3 years, meanwhile without success.
You can find more info on my homepage: http://www.mif.vu.lt/~vysa1570
Random stuff:
Language of choice: C++
OS of choice: GNU/Linux
Favorite browser: Links
Favorite drinks: Black tea and beer

ummm... that's pretty much all of it.

Hi All,

My name is Ciaran and I live in Dublin, Ireland.
I first started programming when I was 13/14 on the old Apple II in school. From there myself and a couple of friends got heavily involved in the C64 scene writing demos and platformers for cover tapes on magazines. Great Fun!

I've never worked in the game industry as such, though I'm currently working in the area of machine vision as a algorithm developer.

In my (limited) spare time I've been working on a project, and its only now comming to a close finally.
I'm returning to college next year to do my PhD and I'd really like to support myself as an indie in my time studying.

Enjoy this forum a lot! Cheers.

Hi,

I am game developer from Europe, Holland. Got experience as game developer for some years. In the begin when I started my goal was to develop commercial games for retail publishers. After I realised that most game publishers (even the small one) are not fair to deal with (so many reasons), I tried to figure out if there was another way to work in this industry. And there was only one possibility, the shareware marketing. My opinion was always, to be honest, that most shareware game developers fail. And my opinion is still that most fail. Only a couple survive, because they got the mix of a good developer, marketeer and patience. It take many years to be succesfull. I agree with Steve that you can do consultancy/ freelance work for small/middle big companies, like lawyers, etc. to survive. Because the game will generate after a couple years, if you got luck, enough income to live from it comfortable.

I also like this forum alot. It's more useful then gamedev.net, because there is here plenty information about marketing etc.

I like games like:
3D Racecar actions, like Driver, Midtown Madness. etc.
3D Speedboat, Miami Speedboat Racer
3D Helicopter, the one from EA couple years ago.
3D Space, like Starwars (Space driving)

Unfortunately I don't got the money to develop these kind of games. :(

But, I also like:
Puzzle strategy, Stockboy, Fitznik
Puzzle logic, Tetris, Block out
Platformers, like Duke Nukem Manhatten Project, Tarzan, Jazz Jack Rabbit. The first two titles are using 2D and 3D techniques (still expensive). Jazz Jack Rabbit, also Rayman are so cheap to buy in the stores (I think also online), how do I competete with it ?
So platform games isn't the right choice, unfortunately.
Mahjong I only liked for a little time, so that isn't also the right choice.

I like arcade action games, but most arcade games are 3D.
So it's difficult. The graphics can be a true problem, I am not a modeler. I made as game developer 2D arcade action games and also edutainment games. The market for edutainment there isn't a well big niche for, unfortunately. Design is however interesting.
So I decided to go for the best possibilty and that is puzzle strategy games. And I only go for one product. I am sure that this will be very interesting and get a nice result.

Hi,
My name is Ray, I've got more or less the same profile as carrot also am working on the same project as him. Hope to work for myself in the near future (developing games) and move out of Dublin. Hey carrot I see you've got time to post messages to this thread but not reply to my mails ;).

Ray Mitchell

Oops, wrong date on my system, sorry carrot.

I'm Kevin Ryan and I've been developing games since the earlier 80s. Most of the games were done with Dynamix and published through various publishers. Just recently I've worked on a couple of games with Garage Games.

Kevin

Hi Im Jo, a high school student who's suddenly fallen in love with the idea of making games.

I started my first game about a month ago, and it's comming along fairly well. I just wish I new whether or not other people would play it.:D

I never really play games much anymore due to my huge busy class schedule, but my avorite genre has always been strategy games. ALPHA CENTAURI AND STARCRAFT rule!!!!!

I havent got around to learning any programming languages yet, so I make everything so far with Multimedia Fusion. This software is great, I recomend it to anyone!

My dream is to start an income so I can survive through college and spend my time studying instead of working. I hope to one day learn to program in c and make my own 3D commercial quality games.

I think game programming is fun and looks like an excellent source of income while I spend my life persuing my true passion.

My name in Johan Peitz, I'm 25 and I just got to these forums. I have however developed freeware games for a few years now and I'm slowly trying to convince myself (or dare myself) that it's time to move on and actually make some money.

So far I have released a handful of games of which some has become extremly popular and I count downloads in thousands per day. This is something I never could imagine when I first started out, but regarding the popularity of my free games, I think it would be possible to at least get a few bucks from a non-free game.

I'll have my master degree in computer science before the year is over (I hope!) and I'm looking into various ways to make my hobby into a living. This place seems like a good place to start.

Feel free to drop by my site and see my work here: Free Lunch Design (http://www.freelunchdesign.com)

Well, that's it I think. See me around!

I registered a few hours ago as well, so I'll introduce myself as well :)

I'm Almar Joling, from The Netherlands. I started programming like six years ago, in Visual Basic. I'm still working with Visual Basic, but by noww I consider my self pretty proffesional :). I run a site with many of my stuff, and also a sort-of knowledgebase how to speed up Visual Basic code, called VB Fibre (Persistentrealities (http://www.persistentrealities.com)) .

I started with DirectX programming in 1998, still pretty basic. I learned myself everything through the few samples that existed, for DX5. By then I started to work on my game called Quadrant Wars (Quadrantwars.com (http://www.quadrantwars.com)). Well, after all those years, QW is still in development :rolleyes:. The multiplayer code has been the hardest part of all... I have learned a LOT on multiplayer programming in those years :) Well, the game is like almost complete now. I went from DX5 to DX7 to DX8... for all just one game.

Now, meanwhile I'm working on a new smaller game... Which is comming up nicely, and I actually hope to publish this game here at Dexterity.

My name is Daniel Hedrick. I have been lurking on the Indie game dev forum for about a month now, and figured it was time to say hi. I am not a game developer, although I make believe that I could write a game if I had a good enough idea. My wife and kids love puzzle games, and so I've got about a half-dozen ideas for them, but I've never really written anything. Mostly, I work for the Man and contemplate being my own boss.

I stumbled across Dexterity (and Steve) when reading the articles cross-posted to iDevGames. Steve's insight to marketing shareware is helpful in my own endeavors. I may not be a game maker, but MUCH of the information that is presented in this forum is of a more generic nature that is highly useful to small business owners and specifically shareware authors.

Even stating that, I haven't really released any shareware yet. I'm working on a couple titles simultaneously that are primarily for testing the waters - simple utilities.

So, a little bit about me. I'm 32 years old, with two kids (age 4 and 6), and a wife I've been married to for 6 years and in love with for 11. I currently write web application software as my Day Job and do minor consulting/contracting gigs when time permits.

While at work, all of our software is written in Java and we have a mix of Windows and Unix servers, my computer passion is MacOS X. Writing software for it is just dreamy.

Anyway, that's me. Please don't hesitate to drop me a line anytime. I love having e-mail dialog with other shareware developers -- knowing I'm not the only crazy one is a Good Thing.

Peace,
Daniel

Hi my name is Simon Vaillancourt

I'm a new one in game industry. I hope to get a chance to be published. My dream is to be a game "guru" in the Montréal region in the province of Québec in Canada.

I am 22 years old, I made the mistake of going in a computer institute to be Analyst Programmer, now I seek a job and no one want to take the risk of hiring me. I am quite good in C/C++ and I am learning how to build software in the Win32 environement.

I love games and live for them. So if you have a debug or paid testing job for me I'm in.

I have returne to college to get a human science diploma. To get in graphism in college or university. I want to touch to everything in my game dev. business.


Simon

Hello all,

My name is James Prudente and I've been doing various software development for over 20 years.

I've recently taken the plunge, and founded Tiny Science, an independent shop focusing on mobile game development.

Before Tiny Science, I spent the last year and a half developing a mobile multi-player game architecture that is currently in production at Mobliss. Previous to Mobliss, I worked for Amazon.com for three and a half years. During my time at Amazon I designed, implemented and maintained several of your favorite features including the shopping cart, top 100 sales ranking, and the wishlist.

I'm currently focused on single player games for phones, but with the success of multi-platform games like those found at popcap I'm considering other platforms. I am also interested in developing more multi-player mobile games once Tiny Science is established.

- James

Given the number of posts that begin with, "I've been lurking here for months and finally decided to introduce myself..." I thought it would be good to have an official Lurker Come-Out Party. So if you've been lurking for a day, a week, or several months, please take a moment to register and introduce yourself here by replying to this post.

We had a similar Roll Call thread when this forum was first launched:
http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=10

But this is a special roll call for lurkers who'd like to convert to registered users. It's free to register of course, and it only takes a minute or two. Most of the fields on the registration form are optional, so you only need to fill out a few required fields to register.

If you'd like to register, just click the "register" button in the upper right corner of your screen, or follow this link:
http://www.dexterity.com/forums/register.php?action=signup

When you register the board will keep track of which messages you've already read and displays new messages with a different icon color, so even if you don't plan to post, the board simply works better in registered mode.

All are welcome here... newbies, students, amateurs, and pros alike. Please don't be intimidated if you're just starting out. Keep in mind that there never was a winner who wasn't at some point a beginner.

Well, I'd hardly call myself a 'lurker' because I've been a member since last year and have 80 some-odd posts, but I never formally introduced myself so here goes:

My name is Bruno Campolo and I'm 23. I live in NY and am a computer science student at New Paltz University. I made my first game (space invaders clone) in C with dos graphics lib in highschool, and a few other 'cheesy' games around the same time. About a year ago I started getting into DirectX and started an RPG. When, like most, I realized that this project was a huge undertaking (especially for a first game), I toned it down a little and started my current project: Trials of Werlin. I frequented GameDev.net's forums for a while until the noise ratio got way too high, and then I stumbled onto Dexterity's site through one of Steve's articles. I love the forums here and don't think my game would be nearly complete without the people here. Anyway, I'll be releasing a beta of my game in the next month and an actual release when the beta proves itself ready. Thanks
~Bruno

I found this forum a few days ago. I've been developing games for a few years. My target platform is Windows 95,98, NT.....
I started out using Visual Basic but moved on to VC++.
I'm 18 and have taken a break from school to serve in the millitary (it's compulsory in Sweden). Due to the lack of sparetime for the next 14 months I won't have time to develop new games.
I'm working on a new game for the Swedish market only (it's a puzzle game where you combine letters into words).
My goal is to make a game that people is actually willing to pay for.

My two latest creations can be downloaded from http://www.deodec.com

I guess I am a lurker I come here once in a while and look at the forums. I live in Michigan. I graduated high school in June and will be pursuing a degree in electrical and computer engineering at Wayne State University beginning in the fall.

I got into programming at the end of the summer of 99. A year or so later I started my website that has a few free programs on it (most of which were written quite a while ago).

The original reason I got into programming was to make games. However, I obviously didn't have the ability to create games right away, so I made several failed attempts at games (As well as a pretty much functional pong game). So I made some other programs in between attempting to come back to game development. Now I am working on a variation of the game I originally envisioned making 4 years ago, but this time I think I have the ability to eventually complete it. I have decided to not push myself to get it done by any particular time but to just keep coming back to it and working on it. Eventually I would like to finish the game and look into distributing it online using shareware methods.

Although I came out a couple of weeks ago, I've been a lurker for months. I was introduced to these forums and Dexterity in general by a friend of mine that is working on some children's educational software. I also frequent Gamedev.net, Flipcode.com and Ludumdare.com (a participant in all 3 48 hour game compos) and I am lurker and occasional poster at pixelation.swoo.net. One day I plan to fight my chronic laziness and actually finish some sort of game, but I can't really decide on what I want to make (well, I know what I want to make, but I don't think it's very practical as a one man project.)

I, like BrewKnowC, have never formally introduced myself. So I guess this is as good a place as any...

My name is Brady Wright and I've been programming for a pretty long time and have started many game projects but have sadly never fully completed a game. (Well, there was that one cheesy 3-level game I "finished" for a VB class I had.) I've wanted to write games for as long as I can remember, but only recently found a good path for me to take to actually realize that dream.

With no way to break into the mainstream retail side of the gaming industry, I was flailing about not knowing what to do or where to start to make this my livelihood. I had never really thought that shareware could provide the kind of meny that one could really live off of. But my first indication that this was false was when I stumbled upon dexterity.com probably over a year ago. Steve's articles really motivated me and helped me see that it could be done.

I still didn't have a plan yet, but I was encouraged. Later, I contacted the developer of a shareware game called "Billionaire" that I thought was pretty good to see if he could tell me if he's had some real success. He was very kind and answered some of my questions and that made me feel better about the ability to actually make a living from shareware games.

I was almost there. Not long after that, I ran into a guy over at flipcode.com who was also a HUGE help. I asked him for some advice, and he responded with tons of extremely helpful information about his own personal experience. It really reminded me of when I had read Steve's articles. Ironically, by this time I'd forgotten the address for dexterity.com and had somehow failed to bookmark it. I went looking and looking for it but couldn't find that place I'd found so much helpful advice.

I finally decided that I should start small and work my way upward in baby steps until I could actually finish a full game. The important thing for me was to actually FINISH a project to the point that it was actually ready to sell. So I started with a screensaver I'd toyed with earlier. I have since finished this project and have been selling the screensaver for a few months now. I'm coming out with a handful of other screensavers soon, and after that, I have a few game projects lined up. But with each iteration, I'm inreasing the difficulty level for myself and taking it all in steps. I learned a long time ago that if I try to bite off too much at once, I'll NEVER finish. I also learned that if I work on projects without any clear direction, I'll never finish and I'll never eventually get where I want to ultimately go.

Just to close this loop, I came across one of Steve's articles over at gamedev.net not too long ago, and when I realized that this was the same guy who's articles I'd read so long ago, I jumped for joy! I immediately signed up to the forums and now here I am.

So now you know about everything there is to know about me. :) A huge thanks to Steve for everything he's doing for the community and the industry! Thanks, Steve!

well,

reading this board since a few months, but i have only a few posts. like most others i stumbled upon this page by a link to the articles from gamedev.net or something.
man, i have to say these articles here really got me thinking; not only about game developemt but about general life stuff as well (things like what i want to achieve etc., things which i didn't/still don't know). no doubt the best articles i ever read.

anway, i'm 25 years old, already have a few years experience in the commercial games industry (as a programmer), but now my utlimate goal is to work indipendent and to develop my first shareware-game. i don't know for sure if this will work, but i learnt to be optimistic.

i have a bit of funding, am already working full-time on the game (it's some sort of "unusual" strategic puzzle game),
i love to work on it and am feeling confident that people will like it. my only worries are that it's a 3D game,
apparently the more "hi-tech"-games don't sell too good on the shareware market, maybe because of the system requirements etc. (please correct me if i'm wrong).
oh, and i have absoluetly no business/marketing experience :) , but fortunately i have ability to visit some free business seminars soon, really looking forward to them.


anyway, i *will* finish the game (my goal is end of september), + installer + editor + auto-update + website :eek:
until then i go into lurk mode again, and then hope to find lots of testers here :D

Hi everyone,

I've been watching this forum for only a week. Stumbled on it and have been very pleased with the content. This is a fantastic resource.

Anyway, my name is Keith Sink. I'm a 35 year old programmer who's been working primarily in the SQL/CRM industry doing programming work for business and the government. On the side I've been programming small games since I was in college. About two years ago I started wanting more and started learning everything I could about programming. I wrote a book on DirectX programming with VB through SAMS and I graduated from the University of Washingtons new Game Development Certification Course.

My programming languages are VB, C++, Python, and the .NET technologies.

I currently work with a small group of developers and artists working on an UT2003 mod and hopefully starting to create shareware in the near future. We renovated a building I have out back. We're located in Woodinville, WA(near Seattle).

Nice to meet everyone. Keep up the great topics.

I'm not exactly a lurker either, since I started posting about a month ago, but I am new to this forum and I've never formally introduced myself, so I will now.

My name is Damon Du Bois. I first started making games as a kid before anyone I knew had computers. I created my own little pen and paper RPGs, and played them with my friends. I've always loved making games. I've also always been very seriously into art as far back as 4 years old. Even today, I'm a much better artist than programmer. When I was about 11 I saw the movie War Games and was instantly and forever after obsessed with computers. Tron also of course helped fuel this obsession.

I got my first computer about 6 months later. A Texas Instraments 99-4/A and within a few weeks had written my first computer game, a very simple and short text adventure. But I lived on Kauai (in Hawaii) and had no contact with any other programmers, there were no computer stores(I bought my computer from a music store), and I had no internet access so my programming skills didn't go very far.

When I was 19 I moved to southern california and soon after got a job(I was VERY lucky) in the games industry as an artist. I've now been working in commercial game development for almost 11 years now as an artist. About 5 years ago I started seriously getting back into programming using C++ and started trying to create a shareware game in my spare time. This was back in the DOS days(sortof) and I ended up getting stuck on getting sound into my game. So I abandend that and soon after moved to windows and started learning directX 2. A string of unsuccesful and unfinished games followed over the next few years. The biggest of which was a RTS that I worked on for 1 1/2 years before realizing I'd bit off way too much and was a long way off being done.

I then decided to start a small, simple arcade game and I actually finally finished something! If you're interested you can take a look at it here http://wizardslab.com/NetWarInfo.htm

I've now started my second game and it's going to be a bit more complex. I still find DirectX and especially Direct3D very complicated and difficult to use though and on my new project I've switched to using Blitz3D. I've only been using Blitz3D for a month now but I can aleady say I really love it and it's a much better fit for my programming skill level.

I also hope to eventually make enough money at shareware that I can go full-time with it. Working in commercial game development has been a great experience and I've learned a great deal but in that environement I'm kindof just a cog in a machine and only work on one part of the overall game. And I'm not able to come up with my own game concepts and make them happen. My real dream is to make games independently.

Anyway, I arrived here on this forum the same way so many of you have: through a link to one of Steve's articles. Over the last year and half I've been coming back to re-read those articles and study every aspect of how Steve has set up his company. Though I only about two months ago started reading the posts on this forum and realizing what an awesome forum it is.

Anyway, that's it. Thanks to Steve and everyone on this forum for providing me with so much great information and inspiration!

Woo! Lurker party...I brought the Chex Mix and Pictionary. I'm not sure what that is floating in the punchbowl over there, but I'm not responsible.

Howdy, everybody. I'm Sparky, the non-programming half of Octopus Motor, working on They Came From Hollywood (http://www.theycamefromhollywood.com), a giant-monster-vs.-cities action/RTS that we're going to be self-publishing (mail-order sales, not download) whenever it gets done - hopefully before the end of the year. <sigh> It always takes longer than you think it will. :mad:

hi,

I'm not a lurker since I've posted before under a different name (jih) but I've decided to introduce myself with a new account name after my new website.

I've been a c/c++ programmer for several years, but after much soul-searching, I have recently decided to take the (scary) plunge as a full-time indie game programmer. Although I am nervous about my decision, I think the risks are worthwhile because like many people here, it is very much a labor of love. For me personally, games hearken me back to a much simpler and innocent time of life. Now, crafting games as a grown up recaptures in a small way, the innocence and nostalgic feeling of that time.

I am very glad to have discovered this website for I have learned much about the indie game business and am grateful to everyone for making it a great place to share advice and learn.

Hey,

My name is WreckerOne, I'm 25 and am working out of Golden, Colorado. Its been about 18 months since I quit my pro job fo two years. Now I'm writing my own stuff and hopefully will have my second ever indy game out any week now, called Jupiter Grid. I wrote a really bad scroller called Zulu Assault back in 1998.

Now I'm working on my stuff, I have no funding and I'm totally broke so I often am forced to make textures out of construction paper and models out of popsicle sticks. kicking the microphone can be a really cheap source of sound effects in a pinch.

My website is at http://www.arrowhd.com

Hi and hello to all, I am what you would call your classic lurker!. As you can see, this is indeed my first post here.

My real name is Stephen Greener, and I have been coding semi-pro titles on and off for a while. Two of my recent completed titles are Revenge of the mutant camels 2 (llamasoft) and Dr Franken (elite) for a publishing company called idigicon (aka Guildhall lesuire). Also wrote a number of public domain/shareware/licenceware titles for the Amiga too.

Now I have that experience under my feet I fully intend to enter the indi-dev scene and to make it my life! (one day).

Got a nice spanky webby address aquired already ( www.sublimegames.com ), and now I am just spending my spare time building some contence for it!.

Hello, I'm Steven Zhao, here is my formal introduction:

Klik Programmer for 7 years. 20 Years old. College student at UCSD.

Developed two games: Ballmaster and Meeklits. Each game sold over 1K units and has some great reviews.

Currently working on a game with Buddhist philosophies.

Wow lot of people from USA :)
Well I do a little introduction to myself too. I am from Italy (but since the weather got so bad I'm thinking of relocate!!!) and if you don't know, in my country game developers are pretty rare :)
However there are some talents here, and I hope to be one of them :)
Since now I have only made some budget games for italian market, programmed with VB + DX, but now moved to Blitz3D and I am developing since 5 months (part-time though) a soccer management game.

Like someone said here, I started with a huge project, but after some thoughts I decided to "reduce" the amount of work by removing some features. After all I can always add them later :)

I too am programming a game with some uncommon system requirement (that is 1024x768 only) but I hope to get some sales anyway (after all I am doing a niche market game).
I'll be sharing sales figures when I release the game... hoping to celebrate with you!!!

Hi Folks!

Well, I guess you can say that I'm a lurker too:)

My name is Joe Hillman and I'm from Dallas, Texas. GO COWBOYS!! I'm currently a software engineer developing software for our DSL line of products at Efficient Networks (Siemens). Our group consisted of 20 developers and after going through 12 layoffs, there's only 3 of us now. I consider myself very fortunate.

During the after hours, I work at home on my screensavers and hopefully will start on a shareware game. I'm a developer at heart and know nothing about marketing and sales. Although, through the help from Steves articles and the invaluable information from this forum, I plan to change all that.

Anyway, it's great to be part of this growing family and I hope that I will be able to give something back to the community.

Thanks.
-Joe
www.webappstogo.com

I did a little "coming out" thingy recently, but I'll maybe spill the beans a bit more.

I'm Phil Carlisle. 30 something and currently a programmer for Team17 Software here in the UK (working on Worms 3D right now, which will be my fifth title released by Team17).

In about 2 months or so, I'll be leaving T17 for a new job as a Senior Lecturer job at Bolton Institute (about an hour up the road from home) where I'll work part-time.

During the rest of the time, I'll be running a small indie-size dev company doing a number of different things.

My first project is "The Secret Life Of Aliens" which is a 2D game based loosly along the lines of a "Theme Hospital" type game.

I'm also developing a game called Deep Space Legends, which is essentially a remake of XWing (Tie Fighter, XWA et al) for modern times.

If thats not enough to see me to an early grave, I'll also be doing some articles and other stuff for various publications (AI Wisdom 2 is the next book article, plus the journal of game development).

I'm lucky in that I've got a pretty healthy bankroll AND a job that supports and encourages me to be an active developer (and more importantly, it doesnt own my IP).

I guess I'm one of the guys thats gotten a bit tired of the whole "pro" developer scene and is trying something new. I suspect that this might even become a trend, as more and more games are released as sequels, movie tie-ins etc.

Maybe we'll do a peice about this whole transition at the IGC in october. :)

Phil.

PS: www.stormchaserstudios.com is my website, but frankly, I'm not sure about the name. Its not a great one for branding, which might be an issue in the longer term. Plus the damn thing isnt actually up properly yet (its a work in progress! :))

And another one - recently (~4 weeks ago) found this forum while hunting for all information about indy game development available on the net.

I'm from Germany, working as a game programmer but as the current situation of the industry here is getting worse each month and I think I might give the indy game development another try. About 4-5 years ago I tried it already but at that time we (it was me and an artist) failed badly - maybe because we just had not the neccessary experience to do it right at that time :-(
You can find some information and images of our former main project at www.clawdesign.com (it's all German but all you need is a click on projects).

Have fun,

Michael

As I have only posted a half dozen times as being a registered member, I might as well consider myself a "lurker". First off I'm familiar with programming concepts and terms, but don't consider myself one. I mainly stick with artwork and business development.

I started a company (about 3 months old) called Rocket Games which I started soon after I left RealOne Arcade where I served in a marketing role for the group, mainly covering web games. At Real is where I really learned about the whole shareware games business, gained some great connections and learned the ropes from some really talented people.

The company is composed of myself and an old friend of mine. I handle the game concept creation, graphics and marketing, he handles the programming, backend server work and web site maintenance. My list of game concepts has only grown since the company got started, I just need to catch up a bit more :-)

Our first game, WordBlitz Deluxe, is the result of looking at several technologies and finally settling on one! It's a simple puzzle game ala Bookworm or Text Twist. Hope you try it and drop me a line with any thoughts you have about it.

Our main goal is to help other indie game developers get their names and games noticed by partnering with them to sell their games on our site (www.rocketgames.com). Too many other sites out there charge an arm-and-a-leg to carry indie games and we thought there was room for improvement.

We have another game that I just finished (took far longer than expected) but is already off to the programmer. It's another puzzle game title which I spent countless months pouring over. I'll make sure I post the beta here to collect some good input from everyone.

Great forum you have here Steve. In many ways, more informative than the ASP stuff. Always found your articles very inspirational.

Hi everyone, I'm Andrew Ewanchyna (the only half of ApeZone.com). :D

Released Starships Unlimited in late 2000, got signed by Matrix Games in late 2001 and produced Starships Unlimited Divided Galaxies (wargamers love long titles), got itchy to be completely independent again so I've just put out a new version of the original game.

Currently working on a naval game called Battleship Chess. Been fulltime 3 years *before* Starships Unlimited was released (hey, it's good to plan ahead). ;) Did the quit-my-9-5-job-thing before that. Absolutely no regrets, well, except that I wish I had done it sooner.

Sparky, release your game already! I want to crunch some puny human cities.

I already posted something in the Jazz-Jackrabbit-sort-of-game-thread a few days ago (even though nobody responded... :)), but here comes my formal introduction:

I'm 17, also from Germany, and currently working on my first shareware project: Terra Vera, a 2D jump'n'run/fighting/adventure/whatever game. Selling shareware games is something I always wanted to try.

In the past I have only released one freeware game and done some minor side-projects while working on Terra Vera, like test games for my lib or the last Ludum Dare game coding contest. I'm better at coding (Delphi and C++) than at producing content, but except sounds and music I think I can do everything in my project.

Hi,
I am lurking around here for some months, the last 3-4 weeks on a regularly basis.

I am so happy to share this with you. I feel much better now that it's out.

I found my way to dexterity software throught the enlighting path of the articles. I think, the articles are great. I am so hardcore a gamer I don't now if I would like those games. I can't play them because they don't run on my Mac. That makes me sad. The articles are great thought.

I found those articles when it became clear tha the dotcom agency I was involved in would cease to exist. It is still in biz, but I don't care anymore.

I started to study the fine arts after deciding that big bussiness (which basically meant to me working your best pieces out for somebody else (who in most case does not even care about your work but mererly the cash he makes with letting you work)).

I wanted to start my own biz (around computers offcourse), the I read those articles. BTW, great writing skills Steve! I have several relations to that motivating thingies industry, so I have some experience in those things. The articles made me moving my best pieces. Thanks Steve!

Anyway.

I started to work on a project half a year ago. I am doing this in java and I am working on a turn and tile based startegy title.


I have to end this post now due to time management issues. That means I have to leve this place I am posting from. I will come back!

Hi,

My name is Glenn and I'm 24 years old from Brisbane, Australia. I'm a Network Administrator for a international manufactoring company. I do a little bit of C++ programming, but my real strengths are art / pixel art and writing.

I'm currently in the process of developing a side scroller game to be released at shareware, however it still has a lot of work to go. I enjoy lurking here as it gives me a lot more information about things like marketing and sales that I have very limited experence with. I am hoping my game will be completed in the next few months so I can finally release it.

I haven't formed a company as such, but I am looking at setting up something as soon as my game is finished / near finishing. I have completed a few small games, however these are more of a learning experence games and will remain unreleased :-P.

Found this forum about a month ago myself when slashdot linked to the gamedev article. Hadn't really paid any attention to the gamedev site in the past year due to the signal-noise ratio. I'm still amazed at quality of posts on this forum.

I'm 23 and have been programming about 5 years. Worked on a few games that I never really finished due to them not turning out as well as I'd hoped. Well that's the excuse at least. ;)

Right now I'm trying to work part time on a relatively simple 3d rts game while working at a full time job doing database programming. Not sure yet whether I'm writing this game to get into the indie business or to try to get into the retail game development. I just know I don't want to keep writing business software.

I'm Allen Varney, a writer and game designer in Austin, Texas. Like many others I've lurked here for a month or so.

I've been a full-time professional designer in the computer and paper game industries since 1984. I've published three boardgames, two dozen roleplaying supplements, seven books, and 250+ articles, columns, and reviews. I've worked freelance or on staff for Origin, Interplay, Looking Glass, and others. My most recent gig was writing dialogue for the new Star Wars: Galaxies MMORPG from Sony Online Entertainment.

The grievous condition of conventional computer game publishing has dismayed me, but in Steve Pavlina's essays I found inspiration. I have turned a programmer friend on to them, and we are partnering to work on several ideas. The first is a simple side-scroller, intended as a learning project, that we hope to complete within the year.

What entices me about shareware, aside from the clear health of the field, is that many (all?) factors contributing to your game's success or failure appear to be under your own control. You can succeed or fail on your own merits. If that's wrong, please correct me before I get too deep into this!

I've introduced myself before, but what the heck.

Name is Nick, I live in South Africa. Im 22 . I am an IT lecturer focusing mainly on MCSE, A+, N+ related subjects. I also run my own web hosting/design company (which I hope to do full time ina few years). As for as programming goes, Ive been using clickteams products for 9/10 years now. I use php for a lot of backends for my clients, and Ive also written many internal programs for varies companies using c/c++ to interface with their intranets/databases.

Ive have a shareware program, url history, which has sold a few 100 units in the last year. (learning curve for future shareware products...) Im working on a shareware game at the moment with my brother; Chris- http://www.artofchris.u4l.com more news on that later ;)

Ollright-than! I am back online again.

Well, what remains to say? Some facts about me personally: I am a young (25) german boy, my name is, er wait, I`ll say differently: Hi, I am Christopher and I am lurking around here for some 8 months now.

The last few years I worked in different agencies in northern Germany. I did jobs in different areas like marketing, web design and graphics design. It all started out in making some CD-ROM stuff in Macromedia Director.

Now, how did I come into this game thing? Well, how did you come into computing? Because you saw a spreadsheet in some office and you thought "Wow, if I could handle my taxes with that, I would..." Offcourse not. You start with computing because you see a game somewhere. :-)

Anyway.

I think I can enrich the community more in the artsy-artsy area, and offcourse web design issues.

BTW, the main reason I am addicted to this stuff is because you guys keep me going with your talk about our industry. If you would not talk all the time about this I think I would not believe so much in my game dev efforts. Thanks guys (&girls(?))!

I’m not exactly a lurker, but this seams like a good place to tell you about me. I lurked for a long time before I made my first post. Then after about 15-20 posts I lost them all in the great server crash. It was sad, but I reregistered and started again. From reading this thread it looks like many of you true lurkers have a lot of different experience. What makes this board great is the amount of posts from people who really know what they are talking about. The more post from people with different experience the better. So I hope all the lurkers will become posters so this forum can become even more valuable. It took me a while to start posting. I would read a post and think of a response, but I would never bother to post it. I just assumed someone else would. Start clicking the reply button!

Anyway, about me and my game, I am a student and University of Missouri – Rolla. I’m working this summer in the big, bad, real corporate world which gives me inspiration to work on my game. I am currently working on a card game, called Trigone, in the evenings. My goal is to release Trigone in September. I hope some of you all will be willing to play my game and give me some advice it nears release. I plan using a different model than most of you to promote Trigone. The plan is to release a Shockwave demo that is available only on the web, and sell the full version as a download. I am currently programming the full version in c++/SDL.

I don't exactly remember where I found this page but I think it was through gamedev.net.

I'm 21 and I have been wanting to make my own game since I played my first nintendo game when I was five. Then I found my fathers old commadore and began playing around with that, doing the examples in the documentation (which was in english and I didn't know english back then) and experementing, doing simple text-games. I think I was nine or ten when I did that. Now I'm a university dropout trying to get by. Hopefully doing games for myself or some other company in the near future. I've dabbled in C, C++, director, flash, haskell and php.

I've made a few small games (if you can call them that) for different school projects which can be seen on my homepage and I am currently doing a 3D thing which I'm hoping to get done to beta in a few months.

- Richard

OK, maybe it's time I introduce myself.
I'm a CS student at Chalmers in Sweden, going to begin my second year this fall. I've been coding for almost as long as I can remember. From GWBASIC to Qbasic to Visual Basic to DJGPP C++ with Allegro to MSVC with D3D on PC / GAPI on PocketPC. I have also done hobby development on a variety of game consoles and the TI-83 calculator.

I've been and still am involved in the european PC demoscene, mostly writing 64kb intros, and winning some contests with them. Lately I've also gotten involved in the emulation scene a bit, it's incredibly fun writing game console emulators :) Actually it's too much fun, taking away way too much time.

My biggest project so far is my PocketPC program PhoenixStudio, which has been selling from almost no marketing, but quite slowly. I'm trying to change this situation at the moment, with a new release with support for all major PocketPC:s this time. I'm also planning a game or two for the little machines, which may be moved/expanding over to the PC later.

I may be a pretty harsh critic, especially of graphics, at times so take me with a grain of salt ;)

I found this page through the same gamedev link everyone is citing :) I really enjoyed your articles, Steve, and this forum is just great. Thanks!

Hi, gang! I'm Jason McIntosh, 31 years old, long time programmer (I use Visual C++), designer, artist, musician. I was involved with an ambitious Quake II mod project (Dawn of Darkness) and that got me into managing virtual teams, so that's also the route I'm taking this business venture. With so many tools available (many for free) there's no reason not to grab talent from around the world.

It seems to me that the time is ripe for "indie" developers to become the next wave of smash hit producers. The retail sales model is stagnating (like Hollywood) with phobic risk aversion, and with broadband and a good virtual team it won't be hard to make a retail-quality product a fraction of the development cost. My goal is to work up to that gradually, building infrastructure as I go.

This forum is an incredible resource, something we need more of for ideas, feedback, and inspiration. So let me end with this very relevant link that any business owner in any industry will appreciate:

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/12/almanacdeclare.html

Over and out,

Hi!

My name is Thobias Jones. I'm actually a game developer for Human Head Studios (www.humanhead.com), but in my spare time I run Genkisoft (www.genkisoft.com). I discovered Dexterity several months ago through a coworker. Unfortunately, it was really late in the development cycle of my first product, TurboHex (www.genkisoft.com/products.shtml), to really use what I've learned from this board.

I've only been lurking because Genkisoft isn't developing games yet, and I didn't want to accidentally hijack the board for non-game related discussion. However there is a lot of info here that can be applied to other types of shareware. It is my goal to do some games once I work out the bugs in the business. Programming is certainly the easiest of all the tasks I need to do...

TurboHex (www.genkisoft.com/products.shtml) was finally released a week ago, and although its not a game, I'd certainly listen if anyone had feedback on it, the website, or anything else. Thanks much to Steve, and everyone else, as this has been a great resource!

Well, I'm not exactly a new lurker, but I suppose I've never really introduced myself.

I'm 30 (for a just wee while longer), and from the cotswolds in the UK. My real name is Zooey Ball, though almost everyone on and offline has called me Zogs or Zoggles since as far back as I can remember.

I got dragged in here kicking and screaming by Dan MacDonald quite a long time ago now, and seem to have snagged some item of my clothing on the revolving door. I keep drifting in and back out again, occasionally managing to throw a few comments in here and there.

I've been designing games (board games and computer games) since the age of about 8, and some of the creativity I attirbute to having grown up without any brain-destroying inventions like the television. Mostly I've just written small games and utilities for friends and family etc on a variety of different machines (Amstrads/BBCs/Acorn Archimedes/Amigas/Psion Organisers etc and now PCs) but have been involved with a couple of retail software companies in the past.

For the last few years and up until fairly recently, I have been mostly spending my time on the pixel art scene, doing graphics for other people's games, a couple of the most recent being Blastorama (by SatelliteMoon) and CritticAge (online rpg type game). Slowly but surely I've been lured back into writing games and utilities again though, and just this year I've pretty much gone full time at it (save for the occasional bit of freelancing to bring in a bit of desperately needed income).

Anyway, nice to see a whole load of lurkers coming out of the shadows :)

-Z-

i'm 24. Trying to code my first complete game. I've studied physics here in the Netherlands and i\m currently unemployed.

Happily lurking for a couple of weeks.

-Alan

I've been lurking in this excellent forum for a few months too. I'm from Ireland living and working in Dublin as a Vision Engineer. Am currently working on developing games with a friend in my spare time (of which there's not much). Coding using VC++6 and DX 7 and am currently struggling with the graphics. Should have an alpha version finished in the next month or 2.

Scott Campbell, 27, living in Birmingham, England, but originally from Scotland.

Did a CS degree at Glasgow Uni, then spent the last four years in the industry, programming and doing a bit of project management. I won't embarrass myself by naming titles.

Made redundant in Feb, and determined to work from home.

Oh, and an ex-yarozer. Any others about?

Like zoombapup I am also a pro-dever, based near his company too.. working on a short term contract for a company called Gamezlab doing some TV show game. (due to start recording around about now) worked on oodles of titles before but got really into shareware when I discovered this forum and especially the people on it. Escotia I'm not an ex-yarozer but I am an ex ps1-ps2 homebrew dever (www.napalm-x.com) but currently writing engines and what not at home with the view of doing a simple platform game mainly for the sheer hell... if it ever goes to market I look at that as a bonus rather than an aim.

That's me out of the closet so to speak :D


as a side note.. maybe a devers questions/answers would be a good amendment to the dev section here, as I enjoy helping people rather than coding 99% of the time.

Well, I've posted on here a few times, but I'm still fairly new to these forums, and haven't really introduced myself.

My name is Jerry Frame, and I live in Huntington, West Virginia. I'm 29 years old, and hold a BS in C.S. I work as a software engineer on both full time and part time jobs right now (doing mostly database apps) . I have a good friend that used to work for High Voltage games near Chicago. At one time, he tried to convince me to move out there and join him, but I didn't want to work long hours, for relatively little pay, and end up only doing the grunt work on a game (with no creative input.) Thus, I decided to take what spare time I have, and try my hand at some indie development.

Hello, everyone. I’ve been lurking here for a few months; someone directed me to the site when I mentioned the casual games market at an IGDA chapter meeting. We’re still completing our company’s formation--so our choice of name isn’t finalized--but we’re based in the Phoenix, AZ area. Currently, we have four employees: myself for programming, my brother for audio, and then two friends I met during my college days for art.

We’re using Virtools Dev (www.virtools.com) for our platform: their browser plugin for web versions, and a compiled stand-alone version for downloadable versions. To escape the horrors of endlessly polishing our first product, I post experimental work--along with source, albeit only applicable for other Dev users--at http://dev.flashbangstudios.biz:800/~matthew/devlab/ . Some of the tests there are fairly playable, if you’re bored (make sure to try the content-filled tank test and Smallball).

Hi everyone...I've been lurking around here for around 12 months now, so it's about time I came out of the woodwork.

My name is Peter Butler, and I live in Aberdeen (UK). For the past 11 years I have been designing instrumentation systems for the offshore drilling industry. I have been trying to develop games/screensavers for several years now, but have never really had the time due to work commitments.

So, I recently quit my job and set up a company called 'Event Horizon Systems' to allow me to develop full-time. I have two current projects, and hope to release them next year.

I also must thank Steve for