I'm told our office (Twisted Oak Studios) is the old GoInstant office. We're both companies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There is also Compilr, toplog and a few others around here. Jevon of GoInstant also does the the http://startupnorth.ca blog.
Can't wait to see what people start building with the tech; looks neat.
I've got a dev team of ten, working mostly on iOS and android game apps for hire. We've done 8 iOS/android games in the last couple years, some of them AAA, some not.
Paid ($1) games of a decent quality typically generate sales between 40 and 100 thousand; and can do much better if 'everything goes right'. Development costs are roughly the same. For apps, seems around 75% of cost is on the engineering side. Design is all from third parties here but included in the above figures.
I also find the tone of that post aggressive and a majority of the criticism unfounded.
I agree with the criticism about lack of visual hierarchy. Feel as if the whole page doesn't really take the user's goals into account as much as it should. I'll try to send a detailed e-mail about my thoughts as soon as I get a free minute.
The funding had its plug pulled at least once (or not renewed), afaik. The authors continued on despite this and more funding was found. Indie Game the Movie chronicles some of this.
Thanks for thoughtful exploration. Here are some of my open questions.
Should patents be abolished and copyright extended to cover non-transcribed acts of copying (e.g. pharma, creating the same program with different source)? Is copyright or short term patents (7 years? 15 years?) a viable alternative?
What are some downsides of not having patents in their current form? In a shorter term form?
How do we move beyond patents as a society and business community?