I'm unusual because I'm genuinely interested in the business side of being an indie gamer. I love the whole entrepreneur thing, the setting the right price, getting expenses down and sales up, etc. My fave TV show is Dragon's Den for fucks sake. The vast majority of indie devs are programmers, and the C++ DNA seems to interfere with the DNA that makes people enjoy marketing or business. Most indies who make no money do very little marketing or promotion, because it terrifies them ... Marketing is a big deal. I know that Introversion put a lot of effort into marketing, and you can see the results there too. If you really are the typical shy semi-autistic sunlight-hating game coder, you need to get an outgoing biz/marketing guy to work with.

It's an interesting (and sensible) look at indie development; it's refreshing to read people being bluntly honest and not going off about the moral superiority of those who develop games for purely altruistic reasons.

Deserved Kudos: Positech's Cliff Harris Interview [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

We got a tip from some joker calling himself Skylab about this here indie game, KUDOS, which touts itself as a "turn-based life simulator".

Gaming is all about simulating life, really. But it's all about simulating a life you want to lead, if only for the short time that you're in the game. When I'm headshotting filthy Russian mobsters as Gabe Logan, international man of mystery, that's a life I can get into! Complicated algorithms about when I need to feed the cat, or what TV channel I should be watching, or how that date went with the whitecollar guy who lives in the next suburb... these things are infuriating.

Cliff's notes: Saving the world? Fuck yeah. Feeding the cat? Fuck you.

Even in the Sims, the level of fantasy was fairly high. High enough that once every few years I can stand to play it for a week or so, make some skins for some truly disfunctional homunculi, try and summon that horrible Social Bunny and get some hilarious screenshots.

But Kudos just seems to make you work, and work, and work, with no reward but your hideous and poorly-dressed denizen of the Uncanny Valley staring straight back at you from behind your myriad mundane menus, boring into your soul. And I do mean boring.

There's a free demo on the site, so go ahead and give it a try and report back. I'm on my Mac today so I wasn't able to run it. Eliza Gauger

From here [BunchofNerds]

Will Leitch over at Deadspin, a sports blog in our Gawker empire, has been mixing musings on sports with adroit Alex P. Keaton on speed references. Apparently, we're not the only ones who like our sports with a side of pop culture, since Deadspin landed some kudos from Yahoo and was named today's Pick of the Day. Two sentences from Yahoo sum things up perfectly: "Eschewing the faux hipness of the boys from Bristol, the site links to snarky takes on sports from across the Web. But it also provides more than just limp links, with an offering of reasoned reviews and informed opinions on the world of sports." We're including a few of our favorite entries after the jump.

Those Raving, Chattery, Jittery Ballplayers [Deadspin]

Jesus Christ, All-Pro [Deadspin]

The World's First Buzzsaw Blog [Deadspin]