For all you indies out there, this story will warm your heart and give you courage.

A big shout out for the press at Kotaku who brought this story to light to help this kid.  And another for the “Game On Denver” crew who have graciously allowed the new “Game On” store some time to change their name so there isn’t confusion between the two stores.

I believe that the Technological Singularity is not near.  Moore’s law has a plateau point and I believe that we are fast approaching it.  It doesn’t matter if we can create computers with more processing power than all the brains on the planet if no one has any use for such a computer.  The stopping point of Moore’s law is that if there is a market that needs that kind of power that can exceed the cost of creating the next generation.

Even now, the CEO of Ubisoft recently said that the next generation of game titles will cost and average of $60 million to make (and this is an estimate before hyper-inflation starts to hit the U.S. Economy.)  Just how many people would have to purchase the game for over $60 for the producers to cover production cost, much less the cost of marketing and distribution?

One such way to cut down on costs is to outsource.  However, outsourcing has serious issues and among them is that you cannot keep the price of talent down because of the demand.  For instance, in the Philippines, one of the largest places for outsourcing talent, you are hard-pressed to finding a software architect or product manager with 10 years of experience.  Why?  Because they have moved out of the country.  In fact, it is an initiative for the Philippines to create incentives to keeping talent within the country or to return to the country rather than have all of its talent move away for greener pastures.

What I had conjectured in a previous post is a solid fact of many third world countries.  Talent simply leaves to go where they are paid more and live a better standard of living.  Those who seek a “better standard of living” generally aim for living an average life in first-world neighborhoods than seeking a life as a king in a third-world neighborhood.  This creates a “brain drain” effect where talent simply flees a developing country.

To the indie, this means an opportunity.  There is going to be a substantial market gap in the next few years for inexpensive, innovative and outrageous games that only indies can provide.

With the few comments I’ve gotten, it has reinforced some of the things I will be doing to the blog.

When I originally started the blog, I grabbed a pretty Wordpress Theme and modified it.  With some tweaking, I made some of my own changes, but found them inadequate.  Now that I am more comfortable with Wordpress and PHP, I will be doing some radical changes soon, among them is switching from white text on black background to black text on white.  According to most studies, it is better for readability.  And besides, black backgrounds are so 90s!

I will be laying out the site to be more vertical friendly which will allow for more posts per page.  Also I will be reorganizing all my categories and tags specifically for Game Design, Story Design, Industry News, Theory and Indie Spirit.  Also, I will be placing my current prototypes and published games prominently on the page so people can see what I am currently working on.  Space ROX and Strike Eagle are ancient history on my blog and they should be placed prominently on the front.

Also, for those who hate Captcha, I have enabled the ability for people to register on the site to make comments.  Please let me know if you have any trouble registering.

Here are my current projects that I am working on:

• Freelancing – Website modifications for a client
• Freelancing – Secure Website Application in ASP.NET for an overseas client
• Game Project – Summer game to be completed by August
• GameDevigner.com – Website redesign
• GameDevigner.com – Prototype-A-Week to be started by September

I took some time to recouperate some energy on Father’s Day.  There is a lot ahead of me.   Most of all, I hope to make some great games for all of you, and make this blog a happening place.  I’ll be getting more technical as my freelancing dies down and I start focusing more on game programming near the end of the summer.  Expect some radical changes to the site design and layout.

Also, I will be keeping “GameDevigner.com” as my blog.  But I will start moving all my published games towards “GameDiviner.com” as a portal for the games and prototypes I will be making.  I think that “Game Diviner” has a stronger potential for branding for a future game company.  However, as a persona, I love the word “Devigner” and will be keeping it for my own personal blog.

And please, plenty of feedback is welcome as these things happen!  (Or even better, before they happen!)