As I wrote in my book Masters of Doom, id Software's lead programmer and co-founder John Carmack grew up making games on his own. These days, of course, it takes teams of people and millions of dollars to churn out most mainstream titles. That's why mobile games have such an inherent appeal to people like Carmack. These are cool little things you can effectively go out and code on your own.
After getting his mobile game in with his game Orcs & Elves, Carmack is now joining the conversation about iPhone games and, more interestingly, iTunes as a potential for game distribution. "The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand," he wrote recently on Slashdot, "The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market."
