Creating a game on your own is no easy task. Aside from making sure you have all the artistic and programming skills necessary—or that you can assemble a team to handle those responsibilities—there's the ever-constant need for funding to make such a project a reality.

Next to raising the necessary money to get a project off the ground, it's comparatively easy to teach yourself how to create the elements of a game. And if you've got a workable demo or a finished product, you can shop it around or show it off at the Game Developers Conference in an effort to pique the interest of a publisher that will hopefully pick it up for distribution. But if you're starting from scratch, getting someone to support nothing more than an idea is a hard sell, especially in this financial climate. ([URL=http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/01/searching-for-gold-the-challenge-of-indie-game-funding.ars]more[/URL])