Paint.net comes to mind... http://www.getpaint.net/

I can be frustrating to deal with many of these small, unlikely to occur issues that cause crashes, but they do need to be fixed... and it should not be that hard. Zman has some good links there for you to look at. Most of the crashes with controllers that I found had to do with non-signed in controllers trying to do things that only signed in ...

Been living in Madison, WI for the past couple years and likely for the forseeable future. Bounced around a bunch of areas in Michigan before that (mostly Upper Michigan).

[quote user="Chapel"]I think most of us...if given the choice...would take a high paying game development job over our current jobs.  But I'm well aware that my earning potential is much higher in my day job than it would be as an Indie Game developer...so I stick to my day job.[/quote] What's really turned me off from a ...

[quote user="Chapel"]But I'm just curious how many are into this like I am (conservatively involved and not expecting any real returns) and how many are really trying to make a full blown, life supporting job out of this?[/quote] I'm trying to make this a life supporting job (which is why it's doubly disappointing Nasty ...

I spent over $1,300 on my first game (mostly in art/music assets). This doesn't include my time obviously. I've yet to make a third of that back and at my current rate it will take years to do so... probably have to do a PC release to make it worthwhile. Somewhere in the sales thread I have a much more detailed account of this if ...

You know what would be a really, really cool idea to do with this? Take the concept of the distributed high scores and apply it to Awardments so that we could create our own running gamerscore like system for XBLIGs. That would be sweet. Might be a bit complex to manage / setup, but would be really cool if done right... and kinda a waste if ...

I'm hoping to finish my Abudction Action! game this December... but for these reasons just mentioned, I don't plan to release until at least a week or two into January. Some extra time to polish the game won't hurt either.

Once you have the basic idea, start with something small. When doing my first XNA game, I started with drawing a player on the screen. Then I made him move. Then I added blocks he could jump on, then a gun he could shoot, then enemies that could kill him, etc. Lots of little pieces added up to one whole game... 8 months later :D

Congrats! How'd you manage to snag the interview?