20 characters are no Yus bird? For shame...I really like these, though.

- Adam

I think that's maybe a little bit pessemistic. I make a pretty good living in pixels, and I don't have to work on projects I hate to do it. But a lot of your advice is well-said.

"Bully/Dog eat Dog call it what you will is GTA with kids. It's the Sims with violence. Who in their right mind would want to sit building Sims year after year?"

I'm guessing you haven't actually played the game? Bully has some of the most refined, intelligent game design in years and the story and characters are just fantastic.

"If you come into the games industry you must realise that what was once fun becomes the way to pay the bills, pure and simple. And if Microprose offer you a quarter of a million to develop Strawberry Shortcake or Muppet babies. You snatch it out of their hand so fast their heads spin. And hopefully you can try to do the best Strawberry Shortcake or Muppet babies title ever."

But those licenses aren't necessarily a bad thing either. It just depends on where your interests lie. I've found that it's often easier to create new gameplay and convince a publisher to go with stranger gameplay ideas on a less-prominent license, not to mention your gameplay is less built-in. By this I mean if you work on a Naruto game, the gameplay, animation style, etc. is pretty much decided on and expected before anyone starts on the game. With a Strawberry Shortcake game, there might be a lot more room for experimentation and artistic ownership.

- Adam

I think what Alex is doing is fine. He's creating content, and charging for it. Just because it's like free content here doesn't mean it has to be free elsewhere. So long as he's not reserving content created by people other than himself in these sections, I don't see what's to argue about. I'm frankly kind of surprised you made such a spectacle about it, Helm. This really could have been handled via PMs if you're really concerned about it.

- Adam

Has anyone posted this yet? I was at the store tonight and saw that Legos has a new line called 'Mosaic'. Basically they give you a flat panel and a ton of pieces, and instructions on how to create a flat image. The result is more or less pixel art. It's interesting to see the sensibilities of this art style applied to something as universal as Legos.

http://shop.lego.com/Product/?p=6162