Btw, this type of stuff does go on here in "Your Announcements"..

...and journals, and to a lesser extent IOTD with the older version.

I don't think TIGSource necessarily have a larger amount of development going on than happens here, they've just collected it all together in a prominent, highly visible collection and ensured that the really note-worthy stuff is highlighted.

We've probably had just as much impressive stuff, but a lot of it goes unnoticed or slips away into oblivion after release.

A couple of examples:

• Danny Green shared a huge number of journal entries when developing his games Urban Empires and Gettysburg: Armored Warfare.
• Moonpod shared many updates during the development of their game Mr. Robot.
• Raymond Jacobs (EDI) used to very regularly update both in the developer journals and forum topics when making Morning's Wrath and STATIC: Investigator, and has recently started actively updating again about upcoming title Revel Immortal.
• Hero of Allacrost did the majority of their recruiting here, and various team members -- notably "roots" -- are regular participants.
• Likewise, FIFE did most of their recruiting here and had members regularly participating.
• "Endurion" posted 100+ updates developing and releasing a new C64 game.
• "Demosthenes" has updated regularly during development of his games Bennu and Fold.
• ...and many many more...

I think what we really need to do is organise this stuff and make sure we're presenting it front and centre, and that the archived stuff is still discoverable without having to remember what to search for (as I just did for those examples). We have members regularly releasing smaller games, demos, prototypes, and posting progress updates, but it all gets lost in the noise. A gallery (similar to the front page of TIGdb) of some of the most impressive stuff both past and present could potentially go a long way towards this, perhaps with a few random front-page spots reserved for new stuff. We have the content -- we just need to present it properly, and encourage even more contributions!

Also, LOVE the "challenges" idea Mike!

I think that with the right organization and categorization that this site could be a very useful community of independent developers working together on projects... so to answer the original post question - yes focus on game development and design more please =)

I'm all for the idea of promoting more game development, but I've only recently started thinking about it, so I haven't had enough time to let my ideas ferment...

Right now, all I can really think of to suggest is, if you have a showcase area for a project, maybe you could add some way of listing all of the people who are contributing to the project as well? The owner of the project, who sets it up, could give each member a title (e.g. artist, programmer, etc.)