I've heard things like this a lot. While I can understand your frustration there are the following issues -

Audio game "companies" are generally one man operations, thus complex games are difficult at best. The audio games are also not their primary job, limiting their available time. They also aren't "professional" games developers, meaning they have less breadth of developmental experience in the field.

Prices are difficult. Mainstream games can expect to sell thousands, even if they are considered a miserable failure. Audio games would do well to sell one thousand by contrast. When you're selling many times as many individual copies of the game you can afford to have a smaller margin on each.

I'll repeat, I share your frustration I really do. Sadly though the solution isn't quite so simple.

I'll also
point out that Quake is now about 13 or 14 years old. As excellent as the project was, it doesn't compare to games being produced just ten years ago. The variety of weapons is pretty poor, and it lacks secondary fire modes. Yes you have 8 weapons to choose from, but there is little difference between the two shotguns or the two nailguns apart from their power level. Luckily Quake is very customisable however, which increases its value to the AG community.

Edit:
Since this is game related I've moved it to the general game discussion.

yes. i know. but, lets see the jediquake mod, this mod advances the possibilities of old quake and when u install this or overkill mod, the old boring quake game, can be challenging, funny, interesting... these mods have a lot of inprovements, advanced weaponry, and other griffs. and for sec. yes. maibe that its too hard produce an good game, but, is it really so hard, program some sound effects, or be just little bit creative? e.g. i dont want blame tom ward, but whi is he putting outh thousands games "misteries" "series" i think the story is in 95% the same. and almost i forgot. i am frustrated, cause when i write to some game developers one email, with my questions, they will not unswer. i dont mean all. e.g. vipgameszone is in this category. its the best, that all others are unswering. not the same day, as you write, but maibe later. but take vipgameszone, they not unswered never.

There was a time when Lucasarts apparently shut down any and all unofficial fan web sites for Star Wars under copyright laws, so it's lucky they have eased up on that in recent years otherwise the Quake mod would be done for. It also doesn't as far as I know add secondary fire modes for weapons, which can add a lot of interest since you can do different things with one weapon without switching. Quake was well known for its moddability even just a year or two after its release, with huge numbers of mods existing. There were even air combat and car racing mods created.

As to the mysteries games, that would be because he kept getting lawyers sicked on him from another company which is producing a mainstream game of a similar nature. He didn't want to make multiple incarnations, he was forced to. Given I heard he apparently had lawyers turn up at his door we're lucky he's still doing anything at all with the idea. That detail is actually quite scary in my opinion.

yes. its.

i agree with you.

I'm not sure that mainstream companies use 500 people even, but certainly they have access to a lot more people. They also do nothing else, so can devote more time, and because they work on a different development schedule they also have a wider breadth of experience.

They also have division of labour, meaning they can afford to hire people just for doing the analysis and design or the sounds.

DRaconis is the biggest at I believe 12 people, but the rest are incredibly small, ---- Blind adrenaline literally just is! che martin, gma games comprises only David greenwood etc.

Even betwene audio game developers and similarly sized developers of independent graphical pc games though, there is stil a disparity, sinse there are lots of tools, utilities, programs or specifically created languages especially to be of help to small independent devs.

there are even game engines which allow the creation of completely new games by people with no programming skill whatsowever, simply because the engine has some amazingly complex and detailed in built game creation tools, and graphics, music and sounds can be modded, or indeed created directly with tools such as sprite editers to draw their own graphics from scratch.

This is why tools such as auydio game maker as it was planned to be, or tom's genesis 3D engine if it's ever finished would be fantastic for audio games, sinse they would allow some of the same short cuts which have been able to create huge amounts of independent graphical games, ----- some of which are, if not quite at the same level as games on the X box etc, are certainly up to the gameplay standards of the Snes/mega drive era, maybe even as far as the early playstation in some cases.

Hello,

With that you can make the ddifference between those who make games for fun because they like that, and those who just forget about it and/or want to make money with it.
I don't critic these last ones, that's just another thinking logic.

I personnally make small games for fun because programming is my hobby, and I think that listening to the players to see what they want is as important as doing what I personnally like. But commercials might not have enough time to make support or to watch how their production  are seen. Big error not to take time for it in my opinion, but  that's just my opinion.

Player sided answer :
about purchasing games, I'm not attached enough to some commercials (not hard gamer enough) to consider purchase them. If I like a lot one of them, or if it was done by a friend, and if it's not too expansive, yes, maybe, else forget it. There are sufficient gratis ones for a casual player like me.

Note that 3D action is not my favourite type of game. I prefer :
1 - idiot games like brickbreaker, pacman, tetris, space impact and other stupid arcade games that let you decompress for 10-15  minutes
2 - real-time or turn-based strategy
3 - RPG games

note / proof : my magic blocks and fast2type are in the first category, and connect4 in the second one.

Developper sided answer :
About free or not free games : I'm not a professionnal, I can't assure risks if the game don't work or crash by yours, tus I don't see why I should oblige people to pay for my games.
If I install paying system, it will be either only a symbolic  price (<=10$), or a plateform that would let you give what you want including nothing. The goal is anyway not to become rich.

If once I would be in a commercial society who whould pay me for programming audio games, my opinion would be of course very different. But at the moment, I'm only doing that for fun.

About programming alone : You are right, huge things are only possible with a team, but I think that it's difficult to make one, because we are not so many visually impaired but our tastes about gaming are as diversified as the sighted people.

Well game makers that I saw in the mainstream were mostly just platform game editors, which let you design the levels and that was about the limit. It was mostly superficial and nothing more than a toy. Then again a game engine such as Quake worked well for the purpose you would think game makers would be aimed at, but required more effort and technical knowledge.

Regarding commercial audio games, I don't see anyone making any money from even the ones that are "commercial". I'm not sure why some developers are more outgoing than others, maybe it depends on what they expect from the experience and how extravert they are.

I am not talking about game makers specifically as Bryan is right in that most end up being a joke.

there are however a host of tools, from scripting languages with in built commands, to free sets of libraries, to level editers which go far beyon the basic.

See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks%27n%27Diamonds a freeware project which may be used to create any boulderdash style puzle game, but also can be expanded to create virtually any similar style of game, ----- including packman, or even Zelda.

Other short cuts are more minimal, being classes and defigned sets of language., I have for example seen sites which run 7 day game creation competitions, could you imagine creating an audio game in 7 days?

Obviously there is an advantage, sinse the basic techniques of writing graphics to the screen and defigning various factors for their interaction are more well known than the creation of audio games, and as Tom ward has frequently said on the audeasy list, basic stand alone components in the likes of microsoft direct X are probably not as well supported for the creation of audio games as they are for graphical ones.

that's very much the case seen with the above mentioned rocks -n- diamonds.

while undoubtedly the actual game making software won't let you do much, I have heard of people who start with things like that, or other of the more complex level editers kicking around, and move on from there to a prgramming language with shortcuts and libraries such as dark basic, and finally onto completely their own programming.

this is a wildly different matter though frm audio game devs who have to do everything from scratch, ---- often without even the basic tools in languages to help them.

Depends what you mean by blind. I imagine most audio game devs have some level of visual impairment. If you want evidence of this, Josh de Lioncourt who runs Draconis also has a site for mac access news.

If you mean fully blind I can't obviously answer that, and if you mean directly present here I'll have to let anyone speak for themselves on that one.