Are you aware of much of a reaction to the Tool announcement?
People are definitely surprised. Close friends and colleagues, it’s something I’ve been talking about for a long time, so they’re not really surprised. But there’s definitely people who don’t even know me who have said some really vicious things. I’m not sure what “selling out” means, but I guess in some way it means sacrificing values in exchange for money. That process started long before I considered advertising: it started when I got into iPhone developments. I hate cell phones, I don’t have one, they irritate me. I also hate stuff that’s made in China, especially by big American corporations. For the past five years, we haven’t bought anything that was made in China – and that means we haven’t had any new gadgets and gizmos.

Then, I was trying to figure out how to support my family in as palatable a way as I could and iPhone development seemed like a good way: I could still make my own games, and release them for free on other platforms. So I bought an iPhone. That was the first step where I did something I didn’t believe in to bring in an income for my family. Also I guess when people talk about selling out, people have ideals and then you see them driving around in a Porsche. That’s not what we’re doing: we’re still living a frugal lifestyle. Whatever money comes in is to send our kids to college one day if they want to go.


_{^{Rohrer's Primrose, a puzzle game for iPhone}}

How do you feel about the fact that, although you've earned acclaim for your own work, it doesn't consistently bring in enough money? Does it say anything about the way the indie scene works that you can make more money from consulting and making games for other people than you can crafting them on your own?
It is a bit frustrating, though I must take part of the blame: being an open-source, free software zealot tends to stand in the way of selling games to people. That said, I'm not sure there is much of a market for the kinds of games that I have been making. How much would you pay for a five-minute game? Granted, you can probably play it a few times before you really see all there is to see, so maybe you get 15 minutes out of it, total. But there's no market for 15-minute movies, either. People make them, but they don't tend to sell them - instead, they use them a stepping-stones into feature-length films. I don't see small games as that kind of stepping-stone to longer games. Small games, like short films and short stories, have value in and of themselves. I think that most mainstream games are way too long for most people. The vast majority of players don't "finish" most games that they play. Still, I think people crave a certain amount of gameplay depth from any game. Most of my games so far have been short and shallow, gameplay-wise. Now I'm focusing on games that are short and deep. Primrose is that kind of game, and people seem willing to pay for it.

But getting back to the open-source issue, the iPhone offers a kind of happy medium as a pay-to-play platform, because you can still have free, open-source versions of a game on Mac and PC.  In fact, even the iPhone source code is available for Primrose.  If you are so inclined, you can compile it yourself and play the iPhone version for free. That's something that confuses most people about free software.  It's free as in "freedom," not as in "free beer."  You can still charge people for packaged, delivered copies.  You're charging for the service and convenience, not for the content.  If someone wanted to build their own version of Primrose and sell it in the AppStore, there would be nothing stopping them. 

The problem with the iPhone is that there is no quality filter, except for the whims of the masses.  At this point, if you want to make a living off of iPhone games as a small-scale, independent creator, you'd be better off trying to make a living in Vegas.