By IndieGames.com - The Weblog
 2D Boy's Ron Carmel calls relationships between indies and publishers "a system that never worked". At the Independent Gaming Summit at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, he explained why -- and further detailed the Indie Fund, a new alternative for independent games funding.
When software development began to be conisdered as an engineering field, design came before building -- the "waterfall approach", as Carmel says, involving big design documents that everyone scrutinizes before implementing. But in the 1990s, people realized that system is less than ideal, and agile practices emerged that emphasized iterative over upfront design.
This is not only easier but more cost-effective in both the short and long-term, Carmel points out. "I think we're facing the same kind of situation in the game industry today in comparing retail games to digitally-distributed games," he says.
What are the problems caused by this mismatch? For one, publishers give too much money; for digital games the budgets are much smaller (for example, 2D Boy's World of Goo had a budget of only $120,000.) Large budgets on smaller games are less efficient -- publishers not only invest too much, but they take too much in return, and the result is developer as "tenant farmer." Continue reading    
By Guest Reviewer
[This is a guest review by Cosmic Fool. If you’d like to write a guest article for TIGSource, go here.]
I live in Australia, and that means 2 things primarily; I’m lazy and no matter where I live, American ghettos usually have better internet than I do.
This makes it incredibly hard to play new games and when I do hit the bandwidth cap halfway through the month, it’s easy for me to get bored. Luckily, there are games out there for the man with dial-up speed net and I find it’s my duty to share this joy that’s accessible at 8kbs with the world.
Epicmafia is a nifty little game that streamlines and refines the popular forum game into something quite wonderful. If I were to market it to the fratboy, I would call it an online multiplayer class-based thriller in a mafia setting. For everyone else, it’s a game of wits and psychology as all sides of the match attempt to root out the others.
The multiplayer suite itself is quite robust for a browser-based game. Once you register (a free, quick, and easy process) it’s easy to jump into a match from the lobby or create your own match once you’ve learned the ropes. Quite quickly you’ll begin to understand both the game-specific slang and the easiest methods of beguiling your opponents.
The community is vibrant and very much alive and you’ll soon begin to recognize ‘famous faces’ around the community. Players are encouraged to play by the rules and not throw away matches carelessly due to an online high score board and one of the world’s only well-implemented karma systems.
In short, this game manages to create interesting and incredibly entertaining gameplay in a lightweight and easy-to-understand package. It is entertaining not on the basis of its amazing new engine but because of the variety of people and strategies you’ll come across. To get started will take you less than 5 minutes, so why not give it a shot? Continue reading  
By Simon Carless
 Montreal’s Kokoromi collective is reminding possible entrants on the January 31st deadline for Gamma 4, with game makers challenged to make "innovative, experimental new games played with just one button" to be showcased at GDC 2010 in San Francisco.
As recently announced, Kokoromi is partnering with Think Services' Game Developers Conference to bring the fourth edition of its renowned Gamma game showcase to GDC 2010 next March.
Comparable to a longer-form, targeted version of the 'indie game jam' concept, previous years’ themes have included Gamma 01: Audio Feed (games driven by live audio), gamma 256 (games with extremely small pixel dimensions), and GAMMA 3D (games using red-blue stereoscopic 3D). Standout games like Passage, Paper Moon, and Super HYPERCUBE resulted.
This time around, the Gamma organizers have framed the competition as follows: "Gestural controls, multi-touch surfaces, musical instruments, voice recognition—even brain control. Games are moving beyond the iconic hand-held controller, and into the future. But is the secret to good games found in high-tech interface hardware? Kokoromi proposes that game developers can still find beauty in absolute simplicity."
A number of intriguing entries have already started development for Gamma 4, with our sister site IndieGames.com highlighting videos of contestants in a recent post, and a special messageboard at independent site TIGSource to showcase and discuss entries. Taking place on the evening of Wednesday March 10th, 2010, the Gamma 4 kickoff event bridges the end of the Independent Games Summit and the start of the main GDC. The playable games will be revealed at the Mezzanine, a venue housed in a historic two-story warehouse near Mint Plaza, in the heart of San Francisco’s SoMa district. The curated games will be featured on large projections, and accompanied by live DJs.
Following the opening event, all the games will be playable for all in a dedicated booth on the Game Developers Conference Expo floor from Thursday, March 11th to Saturday, March 13th. In addition, game creators who are selected for presentation at Gamma 4 will also be awarded GDC 2010 All-Access passes.
Game makers around the world now have only until January 31st 2010 at midnight Pacific time to complete and submit their single-input creations. Full submission rules and guidelines are available at the official Gamma 4 web page.  
By IndieGames.com - The Weblog
Montreal’s Kokoromi collective is reminding possible entrants on the January 31st deadline for Gamma 4, with game makers challenged to make "innovative, experimental new games played with just one button" to be showcased at GDC 2010 in San Francisco.
As recently announced, Kokoromi is partnering with Think Services' Game Developers Conference to bring the fourth edition of its renowned Gamma game showcase to GDC 2010 next March.
Comparable to a longer-form, targeted version of the 'indie game jam' concept, previous years’ themes have included Gamma 01: Audio Feed (games driven by live audio), gamma 256 (games with extremely small pixel dimensions), and GAMMA 3D (games using red-blue stereoscopic 3D). Standout games like Passage, Paper Moon, and Super HYPERCUBE resulted.
This time around, the Gamma organizers have framed the competition as follows: "Gestural controls, multi-touch surfaces, musical instruments, voice recognition—even brain control. Games are moving beyond the iconic hand-held controller, and into the future. But is the secret to good games found in high-tech interface hardware? Kokoromi proposes that game developers can still find beauty in absolute simplicity."
A number of intriguing entries have already started development for Gamma 4, with IndieGames.com highlighting videos of contestants in a recent post, and a special messageboard at independent site TIGSource to showcase and discuss entries. Continue reading
By Simon Carless
 [We're excited to be working with the Kokoromi folks on hosting the latest Gamma event at Game Developers Conference 2010, and here's the latest info on the theme and submission guidelines - looking forward to seeing entries.]
Montreal’s Kokoromi collective has announced its theme for Gamma 4, with game makers challenged to make "innovative, experimental new games played with just one button" to be showcased at GDC 2010 in San Francisco.
As recently announced, Kokoromi is partnering with Think Services' Game Developers Conference to bring the fourth edition of its renowned Gamma game showcase to GDC 2010 next March.
Comparable to a longer-form, targeted version of the 'indie game jam' concept, previous years’ themes have included Gamma 01: Audio Feed (games driven by live audio), gamma 256 (games with extremely small pixel dimensions), and GAMMA 3D (games using red-blue stereoscopic 3D). Standout games like Passage, Paper Moon, and Super HYPERCUBE resulted.
This time around, the Gamma organizers have framed the competition as follows: "Gestural controls, multi-touch surfaces, musical instruments, voice recognition—even brain control. Games are moving beyond the iconic hand-held controller, and into the future. But is the secret to good games found in high-tech interface hardware? Kokoromi proposes that game developers can still find beauty in absolute simplicity."
Taking place on the evening of Wednesday March 10th, 2010, the Gamma 4 kickoff event bridges the end of the Independent Games Summit and the start of the main GDC. The playable games will be revealed at the Mezzanine, a venue housed in a historic two-story warehouse near Mint Plaza, in the heart of San Francisco’s SoMa district. The curated games will be featured on large projections, and accompanied by live DJs.
Following the opening event, all the games will be playable for all in a dedicated booth on the Game Developers Conference Expo floor from Thursday, March 11th to Saturday, March 13th. In addition, game creators who are selected for presentation at Gamma 4 will also be awarded GDC 2010 All-Access passes.
Game makers around the world now have from December 1st 2009 until January 31st 2010 at midnight Pacific time to complete and submit their single-input creations. Full submission rules and guidelines are available at the official Gamma 4 web page. 
By erin
Cat Wash is a quirky time management game that has you washing cats in a disco-themed pet salon. Pet grooming games are nothing new, but cat washing games are rare, combined with a theme that jumped straight out of the 1970s...well, the whole combination is something new.
While washing a muddy kitty, Susie wonders out loud if there's an easier solution to keeping cats clean. Her groovy Uncle Oswaldo overhears, and invents Feline Wash-o-Matic -- a cat washing machine that cats actually enjoy. At the center of this radical contraption is a disco floor that would do any disco queen proud. Thus, the Cat Wash was born.
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