Do you believe online play is a must to get a jump start on the business? I was thinking of doing things offline for a bit to if it's worth shooting for. Have to hit the basics before hitting that level. What do you think?

It depends on what sort of games you are wanting to make - a standard commercial FPS or RTS game pretty much has to have an online component these days.

However in the general case, I'd say the offline single player game market is still extremely strong and worth developing for. I still game primarily offline, and many of the good indie titles I've played recently are single player only. There's also not many good hotseat or multiple player to one PC games out there either.

So yes, it's certainly not a problem to aim for the offline market.

That's music to my ears! Thanks!