Tetris certainly counts. Minesweeper and FreeCell have a lot of players -- but how many people have *paid money* to play them? A much, much smaller set. There exist freeware versions of Tetris, but it first became a hit as a full price game, and continued to generate money on many different platforms for years. The other two became generally famous due to being bundled into Windows, and thus being "free".
Making smaller, puzzle-y games is one career move I've considered. Phil Steinmeyer (http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/) (formerly of Pop Top games) has actually made that move, and I quite enjoyed his first "indie" offering (http://www.newcrayon.com/).
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Date: 2006-01-20 07:56 pm (UTC)Making smaller, puzzle-y games is one career move I've considered. Phil Steinmeyer (http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/) (formerly of Pop Top games) has actually made that move, and I quite enjoyed his first "indie" offering (http://www.newcrayon.com/).