Fun and good looking game. Nice one.

Interesting reading - thanks to all of you who took the time to share their views.

I guess it pretty much confirms my worst (and best) thoughts. I have to say that Cas's efforts on Alien Flux are an inspiration in their own right., proving that an Indie developer can produce a high quality and well received game in Java.

Thanks for your honesty!

It's the last part that hits the nail on the head  - the need for something that "feels worthwhile"

Anyone ever actually done this successfully and lived to share the tale?

I've been coding for something like 20 years. I love coding, and I'd say I'm pretty solid at it. I've cut code commercially in probably a dozen languages - from assembler, through C/C++, and up to Java (which I personally love, although I'd be hard pressed to say exactly why).

For some odd reason - I feel drawn to a desire to get into games development. Is it the lure of eye-catching graphics? Am I an aging frustrated skateboarder? Or is it just the idea that it might be more fun than another message based, enterprise app. development project.

I'd love to hear experiences, or just plain "don't do it", "you're too old", "you'll hate it" views

Check out OSGi - it's not specifically for gaming, but it is specifically intended to provide a dynamic puggable environment:

OSGI web site:
http://www.osgi.org/

Oscar (open source implementation):
http://oscar-osgi.sourceforge.net/

Knoppfler fish (also open source):
http://www.knopflerfish.org