Creating independent games is not about building the next “Halo” or “Gears of War”. Giant game studios with multi-million dollard budgets work like film studios to create “safe game titles” that appeal to the broadest base of game players possible. As result, big studio games tend to look very similar. They share the similar stories, styles, game mechanics, and characters. And with multi-milion dollar budgets, they can’t afford to be wrong.

Independent game developers are free from these budget cages to innovate and create very niche game play. A successful independent game earning tens of thousands of dollars is nothing to a big studio, but it definitely keeps an independent game developer going. The key is to break away from the mold that big studios follow. If you can’t compete with a 300-person studio on a polished FPS game, then take them on with a fun and quirky independent game that everyone must have.

Here’s something to get you started. Now that I’m pretty deep into Silverlight, here’s a quick little application that I wrote to help you to start thinking outside of the box. It’s a fun reminder about what it means to be an independent game developer. To run the application below, you need to install the Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Browser Plug-In. Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to FLASH for creating rich Web-based experiences.