You should check out the roaring indie game scene. The Humble Indie bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com) has given me spectacular gameplay for very little money. (No, I don't pay pennies for the bundle).
Slightly offtopic, but Wolfire has also written one of my favorite articles/blog posts as of recent, as well - http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-deve...