Don't tell me that a game's budget HAS to be in the millions.

Related link: http://tinyurl.com/d545u

Risk averse game design is the enemy of fun. In other words, it's the enemy of, um, game design.

Yet we keep hearing that games can only be made with high budgets, and the game company's responsibility to the high-dollar investors necessetates risk averse policies.

But that will not stand, says I.

Guy Whitmore, who sent me this link, agrees:

"These are the types of avenues that will allow true innovation (and emotion!) into games. A $150,000 risk is easier for a developer/publisher to swallow than a $20 million risk"

The only thing that bothers me in this article is the use of the word "hungry," to describe the developer willing to produce a low-budget game. "Low budget" does not mean "low-profit" or "low-quality." Using the word "hungry" to describe somebody willing to use an alternate business model implies that somebody is going to be taken advantage of by Microsoft.

Not that that would ever happen.

I expect that, with or without the "hunger" dynamic, this kind of business model could be sustained in a way that would benefit everybody involved.

Please explain to me again all of the ways in which I simply don't understand "how business is done these days." But beware: most of the people who have patiently explained it to me over the last two decades are no longer in the business.