I just wanted to clarify a couple of points from my post yesterday. I realized after the fact that it may have come across overly negative, something which I didn't intend.

1. I still believe independant developers can successfully find a publisher. The truth of the matter is that it is definitely not an easy task and I believe in some ways it may be getting harder due to the economies of the business.

2. I didn't exhaust the complete list of publishing possibilities but I did hit a long list of them. There are still a number of options available to me.

3. I do plan to continue trying to get Tiki Lounge Blackjack published. I simply hit a wall back in the spring due to life changes, etc. and I needed a break. I hope to start contacting more publishers this month.

4. I think part of the problem may be the quality of the game itself. While I enjoy playing the game I realize that it is not overtly flashy or innovative. I'm totally fine with this since it really started as a tech demo for my multi-threaded engine.

I also learned a number of things from the whole pitching process that I hope to improve on.

1. Dealing with the business side is a totally different bag. While my ideal world includes me being a lone wolf developer I don't think that works for dealing with the business side. The reality was that I worked for a year straight on the engine and the game and I acheived one of the hardest things for a hobbiest to do, I finished a complete game. I'm very proud of that fact but it just totally drained me. Having someone else take care of the biz end of things would have helped with that burn out factor.

2. Building tech yourself is not economical. Yes we all know this but it's important to drill it in again. I don't feel bad for creating my core engine from scratch since I did intend it to be a tech demo/learning process around how to utilize multiple cores. But the reality is that I could have made the same game in half the time had I used a mature engine.

3. Game developer != Game designer. The lack of innovation in my game is evident and a reason why it's easy to dismiss. I strongly believe that an indie with a fun new game idea would have people banging down their door. My game design skills are something that I plan to work on moving forward.