Gamasutra Member Blogs: From frustrating players to working from home

In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, such as avoiding the "Lonely Indie Developer Syndrome" when working from home, frustrating players the right way, and more. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs Working from home: Avoid the Lonely Indie Developer Syndrome! (Javier Cabrera) Let's face it: the path of the independent game developer is lonely most of the time unless he/she gets into a small team, and even then, it's a loner's game. Javier Cabrera shares how his team fights what they call the Lonely Indie Developer Syndrome. Is anyone else sick of staring at the sun? (William Holt) "You know, it's funny. I have a passion for video game design, but lately it's like I've been disinclined to play any games because they're all like a series of books playing on one theme from long ago that simply sold very well." The opportunities in mobile gaming are in asynchronous social multiplayer games (Kevin Corti) Omgpop's Draw Something might not be a candidate for a BAFTA game award, but Kevin Corti points out that it demonstrated how the effective application of asynchronous game-play can deliver stunning commercial success. Are turn-based asynch games where mobile devs should focus? The imprisoned player's dilemma (IPD): Disabling players in a meaningful way (Andreas Ahlborn) Andreas Ahlborn discusses the art of frustrating the player the right way. In most cases, when developers cripple the player's options, he or she will hate you for it, but when it's done right, they might end up praising you. On avatars (Hari Mackinnon, pictured) Hari Mackinnon looks at the conceptual options we have when creating our own avatars, and what our choices might mean.