"Independent" used to be an important term in the game industry. (still is, I guess, but hear me out) To get any measure of financial success, you had to get your game on store shelves and that was well beyond what most developers could afford. So you needed a lot of dough or you needed an agreement with a publisher. This gave publishers a lot of power over developers and abuses of that power were common.

The Scratchware Manifesto (http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=433) is an interesting artifact of this time.

But there were exceptions to that rule: people and studios who were able to operate and make a living without relying on publishers! Through shareware, giving your game directly to local shops, or via the Information Superhighway, they were able to get their games to people without a publisher's help! They were subverting the established hierarchy and demonstrating that freedom was possible, even if very difficult!
But since then lots of people have tried to put their own values into the word "indie". I'm not sure when we made the switch from independent to indie but I'm pretty sure we were just continuing to copy the film industry. Anyway "indie" started being what people used to refer to various communities. Or to a price point. Or to a business model. Or to a budget. Or to a development style. Or to creative freedom. Or to a level of development experience. Or to game quality. Sometimes still to a relationship between a studio and a publisher. Somehow freeware got rolled up into a term that was about a way of conducting business. Nowadays there is argument over whether a deal with a major publisher makes you indie or whether one person making freeware is more indie than some other person making freeware.

Somehow the term even went from applying to studios to applying to events, games and saddest of all even applied to PEOPLE.

So no. I do not consider myself indie. I and many others like me make games. Sometimes it's for a company like Electronic Arts, and sometimes it's on our own. I don't go around telling people I'm a bread-eater or a socks-wearer or a non-lumberjack either.

If you have something specific you want to talk about like personal stories or game scope or creative freedom, let's talk about those! Let's not force labels onto things and people just to separate them into groups for no reason.

He posted someone else's game on Glorious Trainwrecks and his own website claiming they were his.

They'll all get played at least a few times I'm sure! A handful of IGF Kart games got lots of people talking about them and articles written about them as a result of being in the kart. So there's definitely a chance, but I don't think individual game creators are going to become famous from it.

I'd say it doesn't matter much. People make games for these because they think making games is pretty great, not because they want to use it to get fame, fortune, or 'indie' cred (though I guess there was that incident w/ samusetroid).

The pleasure is certainly not all in the making! Plenty of people had fun playing the games from previous karts! I know I sure did, even if I didn't actually find time to play all that many. I don't know if I can quantify what the balance is between the pleasure of making and the pleasure of playing. You do a bunch of one and then a bunch of the other and they are both wonderful!

You're government isn't working? Have you tried turning it off and back on?

Well, this country sends robots to assassinate US citizens without trial (Google Anwar al-Awlaki). It is the official policy of this presidency that assassinating US citizens or locking them up indefinitely without a trial is acceptable as long as someone thinks they are somehow connected to terrorist groups. Groups of people using neither violence nor threats of violence and making no demands is being called domestic terrorism. It's not like mainstream media hide this.

I get that the question was kind of mocking things, but there just isn't much to like or respect about The Man.

Everyone would be invited to contribute an ingredient. Some would add delicious things, some would add literal garbage. The end result would be a massive, dripping, inedible, four-foot-high mound of stuff with a slice of bread on top. We would all eat it very carefully using a spoon to pick out bits that look good.

Before each round/hand everybody is dealt N cards. They sign their name on one of them. Shuffle them all back in and then start playing the game. If a card w/ someone's name on it is played, that person can't win the trick/round/hand/whatever.

After a set number of hands/rounds, open a new deck of cards.

Going through the list real fast, I think I played 53 out of those 321. I'd played many of them before they were in the Pirate Kart, though.

Do you think future Hanging Out With Your Friends projects would be helped or hindered by having some kind of monetization strategy?

I mean I guess it depends where you are going with this and what you think is important about a Pirate Kart. I can imagine see a Pirate Kart-like event being used to raise money for a charity as a really cool thing, and I could also imagine some jerk charging a fee for submitting a game or charging to download it, which would be really sad.

But seriously who the fuck looks at this and says, man, I wonder if we could make money off of these people making shitty games for the fun of it. Fuck this question.

I'd hate to do that! One of the super cool things about the karts is that you really have no idea what is going to be in them! Surprises are cool! Plus, I know people have dropped out of Ludum Dare because they didn't like the theme. I don't want a stupid theme restriction to make someone decide not to make a game.

BUT since we are talking hypotheticals, I think I would pick 'a game you decided not to make'. Take some idea you once thought about but didn't go with, and make something out of it anyway. Don't worry if the result will be any good! Just make it or at least some half-assed version of it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39313706@N07/6787364089/in/photostream

Hey look! Somebody else got that email, too! ;)

Not sure I've completely got a handle on what 'scene' means in this sense. I'm part of an ever-growing community of people interested in making things and sharing them and enjoying each others' work and encouraging each other to continue and welcoming everyone to do the same! I don't know if that's a scene but it's fucking awesome!

Do I feel alone? Over a hundred people sent games for the IGF Pirate Kart and I raised thousands of dollars for a stunt like bringing another Kart to GDC this year! The Global Game Jam was this weekend! Last I looked, that was 11195 people at 246 locations around the world working on 2304 different games in ONE weekend!

If I ever say making games makes me feel alone, punch me in the face.

Okay I guess when I asked the internet for questions I should have expected the same one I get from everyone I ever have to show ID to :)

I have a common name. I am neither a fictional killer nor a comedian.

Am I a photographer? www.mikemeyerphotography.com/
Or do I make signs? http://www.mikemeyersigns.com/
Or do I play football? http://www.hawkeyesports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/meyer_mike00.html
Or am I a realtor? http://www.mike-meyer.com/
Or do I work on Mars exploration at NASA? http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mgs/michael-meyer.html
Or am I a professor in Switzerland? http://www.astro.ethz.ch/people/meyermic
Or am I a mentally handicapped fan of Superman? http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/10/17/mike-meyer-superman-theft-children-hospital-donations/
Do I make movies? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0583275/
Am I one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meyer_%28disambiguation%29
Okay I am well past bored of Googling my name now. I'm none of those.

I am strongly pro-butts. I think everyone should have a butt. I never go anywhere without mine.

They can and they do, but having an additional communication channel for a different purpose has its benefits. Specifically, this A) allows more than 140 characters B) separates the Q&A from my main twitter feed C) lets you ask anonymously.

"epic win". I shouldn't complain though because I misuse awesome as much as anyone and that's basically the same word misuse as with epic.

Hearing "exponentially" used to describe something that has nothing to do with exponential growth/decay/whatever always bugs me too because I am a huge nerd.

How about no company at all?