Sweet jesus, they are giving a good deal on the UDK aren't they. I haven't looked at Epic's licensing rates since before the Unreal engine 3 came out, but I remember them getting up around $100,000. Way out of the realm of possibility for indie developers. $99 + 25% royalties is a lot better for the small fry since you really only pay out if you're successful. I would be somewhat worried about a publisher taking an even more sizeable chunk out of that and not leaving you with much, but there's always that risk and it's tough to get very far without one.

So I'm wondering how the course went for you (so far if you're still in it) Depression? Did it seem to work out alright or were your misgivings justified? Hopefully you can get somewhere in the industry eventually regardless of how it went.

Anyway, I like the idea of going the indie route for breaking into the industry myself. Two friends and I are actually about ready to start work on our first title. We plan on using the Quake 3 engine, with one of my friends handling much of the programming, the other doing most of the 3D, and myself doing the music/sound design and any plotting and scripting we need. I think we also complement eachother a lot in terms of skills because our programmer can do 3D, we're all musicians, and I'm learning C on my own at the moment (Quake 3 was programmed in C), so we know enough to speak intelligently about a lot of the different areas of game development even if we haven't brought our skills together to make one before. Who knows, maybe I'll run into Depression Moon or some other people from here at GDC in a few years.