Years ago I learned to program on a mixture of computers including BBC Micro/BBC Master, Acorn Archimedes and Amiga. My inspiration was computer games such as Missile Command and Elite and later hits such as Super Cars 2. However by the time I graduated with a degree in Computer Science Quake 2 had shipped and Quake 3 was on it’s way. Computer games were now all about flash 3D graphics and required large teams and big budgets to produce.

The days when a lone programmer in their bedroom produced a game over a weekend, or a programmer and graphics artist churned out a new game a week seemed to be well and truly over. Graphics and big budget effects had won, seemingly at the expense of addictive fun gameplay.

Over the last couple of years however I’ve been wondering if I was wrong. Perhaps the small team of game programmers could still turn their simple game ideas into a successful business targeting the wide range of low power (computing power) devices that we all seem to have these days, i.e. mobile phones, PDAs, and even ultra portable laptops such as the Asus EEE PC.

So today I read with interest a story on WhyDoWork (Mobile Moolah: Want to Make $125,000 a Month?) about Steve Demeter. Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism as a side project, and he’s apparently now quitting his day job, because he’s generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer.

Given that T-Mobile and Google have just announced the release of their first Android powered phone and the fact that Google is planning to make their marketplace more open than Apple’s, the wide range of Symbian powered smart phones available and it seems that there is plenty of opportunity for the small time, "bedroom games developer" to launch their own computer games business.

Right I’m off to reminisce with my brother about the games we made as kids on our Amiga.

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