I chatted for a while with the folks at Kingdom of Loathing while at Comic-Con. These guys are determinedly indie: they sell merchandise, but they do it just about at cost. For income, they mostly rely on donations for the premium items, but they don’t engage in what most of the industry would call a real microtransaction business.

And it’s working for them, at least at this scale. Some stats, slightly lower than usual because of the usual summer doldrums:

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I will be a panelist at When Worlds Collide, an event put on by IGDA San Diego and attached to the Sandbox Symposium which is part of SIGGRAPH. (I think I have all those connections right). The topic is pretty interesting:

Steve Crane, EVP Product Development (Midway)
Raph Koster, President (Areae)
John Baez, President (The Behemoth)
…and another panelist to be announced.

With innovations in technology and business, video games (like mobile phones) are becoming smaller and more distributed; at the same time, video games are also becoming bigger and more integrated. Mammoth productions from heavyweight studios supported by hordes of A-list developers and “garage” games developed on shoestring budgets by independent and comparatively unknown developers are now pit against each other in competition for leading positions in the same league.

While worldwide sales of video games are expected to reach $13 billion by 2012, the once-homogenous market for video games has expanded to comprise serious, casual, and mobile games in addition to traditional forms of interactive entertainment. In this panel, leaders and pioneers will meet to share their thoughts on the challenges of diverging markets for video games. As game developers and business executives from both sides of the “big versus small” divide, each panelist brings a unique perspective to the discussion.

Anyway, it’s on the 4th, and there’s pretty limited space, so if you’re in town and interested, head on over to the website.