December 2011
1 post
Lean back, lean forward, lean over
On Twitter yesterday I was raving about a fantastic Economist slideshow that sets out a credible and satisfying vision for the future of publishing: The slide show misses an important third mode of reading. For the Economist it makes sense to ignore it. Technical and “how to” publishers can’t afford to. The three modes are: Lean forward: rapid browsing, search, instant...
November 2011
1 post
Anatomy of a Training Video. First draft plan for...
anatomy of training video.pdf Download this file This is my plan for how to structure a 3-5 minute “how to” training video. Each video will form part of a series of videos that makes up a course. The structure ensures that: The reader gets a clear idea of what they’re going to achieve and why in the first 20 seconds. The instructional steps are clustered into logical...
September 2011
1 post
"Show Stuff Off As Soon As You Can" says
Indie Games Channel: One of the goals of events like IndieCade and IGF are to expose new indie games to a new audience. In your experience, what is the best way to market and create awareness for indie games? Ricky Haggett: It takes a lot of time to build awareness for anything these days – there’s so much stuff out there! And this is especially true if you’re trying to do something that hasn’t...
August 2011
18 posts
How to Make a Simple HTML5 Canvas game via...
So here it is! Let’s jump right in by walking through game.js. You can also play the game right here. 1. Create the canvas // Create the canvas var canvas = document.createElement("canvas"); var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"); canvas.width = 512; canvas.height = 480; document.body.appendChild(canvas); The first thing we need to do is create a canvas element. I did...
Developing your book in public -- Jesse Freeman...
This Flash game book is getting serious now, already up to 70 pages! Still need to flesh out the section on Blitting as well as Game UI sections. Blitting will probably be the largest part of the book. I already have a feeling like I am going to need to cut back or see if O’Reilly is ok if I go a few pages over my 100 page estimate. I would really love to add in a few pages of interviews....
Latest Kindle format introduces ebook rentals
Another innovation introduced with this new format is the ability to rent ebooks rather than buying them. Books can typically be rented for between 30 to 360 days, although the exact limits will vary from book to book. And rented book can be bought with full credit given for the rental fee, if bought before then end of the rental period. via teleread.com Had to happen really. Also new...
10 Steps to Design a Game for Learning (including...
via chloeatplay.tumblr.com A nice clear How To for creating learning games (and not just video games either). For an example of the sort of learning experience Chloe comes up with, visit Creepytown: http://goo.gl/LjfyW Or click the via for more details. Meanwhile, a book idea inspired by this for you to vote on: http://goo.gl/mod/zr8N Posted via email from David Barnes at...
Cocos2D Tutorial - Dynamically Coloring Sprites,...
Have you ever seen a game (such as Tiny Tower) that contains similar sprites that only vary by certain attributes (coloring, shading, accessories, etc…)? I would often wonder how long it would take the artists to create each permutation of these sprites. After discovering that you can call a method on a CCSprite called setColor, I realized how most of this customization is done in...
Emerging Job Market for HTML5 Game Developers
via indeed.com The job market for HTML5 game developers is growing fast, already out stripping advertised positions for Unity game developers according to job search engine Indeed.com. Posted via email from David Barnes at work | Comment »
Giving the three things clients and customers want...
Not just the first one. And not all three. But you really need at least one. 1. Results. If you can offer a return on investment, an engineering solution, more sales, no tax audits, a cute haircut, the fastest rollercoaster, a pristine beach, reliable insurance payouts at the best price, peace of mind, productive consulting or any other measurable result, this is a great place to start. ...
Unbound funds second book. ONLY THE SECOND?
Considering the amount of press Unbound has got, I’m amazed it’s only managed to get two books funded so far. Without the benefit of launch PR how can their model prove sustainable? Posted via email from David Barnes at work | Comment »
Porous Paywall Means Big Revenues for New York...
Felix Salmon has a couple great posts on the New York Times’ paywall. He notes that it has been successful and explains why. Felix says: Yes, the NYT paywall is porous — but that’s a feature, not a bug. It allows anybody, anywhere, to read any NYT article they like. That makes the NYT open and inviting — and means that I continue to be very happy to link to NYT stories. I’ve...
Image Showing Apple's Alleged Photo Manipulation...
via webwereld.nl Here’s the image showing Apple’s alleged manipulation of the Samsung product images. The Register adds… “… it was the supposed similarities between the devices that convinced the judge to ban sale of the Galaxy Tab within Europe (Netherlands excepted). Although Apple never specifically claimed the two devices had identical proportions,...
Fair, Unfair, and Non-Tests in Game Design
Combat Tests: The bulk of hardcore console games are action games that involve hitting and shooting. They are so for a reason. Combat games are highly master-able, often extensible and so players can immediately understand what they need to do in order to win. The test is whether they have the skill to do it. Agility Tests: Platform games, from Mario to Ico and back, test the player’s ability...
The Birth of Mario: How the World's Greatest Game...
Miyamoto originally named the character “Mr. Video”, and he was to be used in every video game Miyamoto developed.[7] According to a widely circulated story, during localization of Donkey Kong for North American audiences, Nintendo of America’s warehouse landlord Mario Segale confronted its then-president Minoru Arakawa, demanding back rent. Following a heated argument in which...
How You Can Build a Media Kit for Your New Game
A generalized Media Kit contains all the things a media organization needs to quickly see who, what, when, where, and why. It also provides artwork that the media can use for their website and print publications. A Media Kit will typically contain the following items: Company Bio Press Release Logos Banner Art Screenshots Videos Let’s look at each of those items in turn. via...
55.9% of Android owners still use Froyo, only...
via pocketgamer.biz Even though Android 2.3 has been out 9 months most Android users are stuck on 2.2. Targeting the latest Android platform is a dangerous game. If you’re an Android game developer, how do you cope with fragmentation of OS and device capabilities? A lot of the games I want to play won’t download at all on my low end Froyo handset — even technically basic...
How To Start a Successful Flash Portal / Arcade
Old time readers could remember Michael Edlavitch‘s Hooda Math, because two years ago I blogged about its case history and how Michael built from scratch a 10,000 visitors/day Flash Arcade site. A lot of time passed (actually two years in Flash related industry is really a big amount of time), and guess what happened to Hooda Math? It turned into a 2,000,000 visitors/month portal. Michael...
Amazon's Kindle Web App Will Make E-Book Purchases...
Amazon is set to launch a web-based Kindle reader that will work on PC, iPad and presumably smartphones too. You’ll be able to read your Kindle stuff from any device without downloading any software. And you should also be able to read books while offline. In the short term this is being discussed as a way of working around Apple’s restrictive terms. However as an ecommerce...
30 Private Beta Testers Prove Invaluable to...
- Did you let anyone play your game before release? Did their actions/feedback influence your design at all? We ran a very transformative private beta involving around 30 people. We learned a lot and made a lot of changes to refine the experience. There will always be aspects of a game that the developers are blind to for one reason or another so getting other people involved during development...
Dabll
A lot of people have an “AHA!” moment with Corona — and ours was when we we played with the Ghosts vs. Monsters demo and realized that you could accomplish so much with so little code. At that point, it became obvious that Corona was the tool for us. We were thrilled to have a playable prototype of Dabble within eight hours of development! (editor’s note: WHAAAT?????) via...
July 2011
9 posts
When will it stop being moronic to declare...
As ebook sales continue to trounce those of print books, and now with the demise of Borders, surely it’s only a matter of days until someone — probably a guest poster on this very blog — declares the death of the physical book. (They’d be wrong, of course — moronically so — to the point where you might ask who on earth is responsible for approving guest posters on TechCrunch, and whether they...
Paperback novels were born on the railway...
Penguin paperbacks were the brainchild of Allen Lane, then a director of The Bodley Head. After a weekend visiting Agatha Christie in Devon, he found himself on a platform at Exeter station searching its bookstall for something to read on his journey back to London, but discovered only popular magazines and reprints of Victorian novels. Appalled by the selection on offer, Lane decided...
These days we all need to be generalists. Seth...
As the deluge of information grows and choices continue to widen (there’s no way I could even attempt to cover science fiction from scratch today, for example), it’s easy to forget the benefits of acquiring this sort of (mostly) complete understanding in a field. I’m not even sure it matters which field you pick. Expertise is a posture as much as it is a volume of knowledge. ...
10 Things PopCap Hates about Casual Games
1. Gamification. He suggested it’s a trend enriching conference organizers trying to get corporate money into their pockets by promising to make anyone an “engagement expert.” “Really? Is everything a game?” 2. Portals. “I am sick to death of portals,” he said, specifically the commissions they charge game developers. “How can you charge developers 60 or 70 percent? I’ve been predicting for...
Forget 99c iTunes Games.
This week’s top-grossing iPhone titles are: 1. Tap Pet Hotel (Free) 2. Zynga Poker (Free) 3. Top Girl (Free) 4. Angry Birds ($0.99) 5. Tap Zoo (Free) 6. Texas Poker (Free) 7. Smurfs’ Village (Free) 8. Tiny Tower (Free) 9. Fashion Story (Free) 10. Happy Park (Free) Microtransation-supported titles dominate the iPhone’s top-grossing sales chart, with this...
Genre/Platform Match: Zeboyd Games Make More On...
via feedproxy.google.com And, according to the article: “As you can see in the images above, PC games seem to buy and play strategy, RPG and casual games the most, whereas console gamers spend most of their bucks on sports, shooters and action games. “Zeboyd’s two games are JRPG parody’s and firmly sit within the RPG category. On consoles this genre takes up 7.7% of sales,...
Amazon launches Kindle Textbook Rental
Big news from Amazon. Soon some textbooks will be available for rent as well as purchase: How Renting Works Kindle Textbook Rental is a flexible and affordable way to read textbooks. You can rent for the minimum length, typically 30 days, and save up to 80% off the print list price. If you find you need your textbook longer, you can extend your rental by as little as 1 day as many times as...
How have good book ideas
Here’s a three stage process to having good tech book ideas. 1) Brainstom lots of ideas This is very important. Do NOT commit yourself to one idea until you’ve considered several. You’re going to be putting a lot of work into your book. Take a few minutes to consider several options. Even if you have a clear idea what you want to write about, consider: Audiences — how much should your...
How much will people pay for technical ebooks?
… this is inspiring http://createyourproglang.com/ 54 pages, $39.99 for the ebook! Posted via email from Computer Books / Human Readers | Comment »
March 2011
15 posts
Console Makers: Welcome to Your New Job...
Games Brief has a long discussion about how “recent pronouncements from Nintendo and Sony show they don’t even understand the threat they face”. I have a short response. Console makers: your job today is simpler than ever and no less important. You just need to do it: Make hardware. Make it cheap. Make it good. Make it easy to program. Sell it like hell. Build an app store...
Developers express concern over pirated games on...
Apparently pirates run riot on the Android store. Developers already miffed at the meager sales the store attracts are seeing those sales disappear to pirates, who not only copy the game but reupload it to the store and sell it at a lower price! Even I couldn’t forgive a pirate that did that. I saw an article a few weeks ago saying that these pirated versions are often modified...
2 tags
Smartphone users! Your little brother is on...
iPhone and Android are neck and neck for the 25-34 range. Android is ahead for the under 24s. Blackberry dominates for 45-54. Curiously for over 55 Blackberry and iPhone are neck and neck. I bet the iPhone is big with the young retirees; the professionals still clinging to a job prefer Blackberry. More graphs here. Posted via email from Facebook Indie Games | Comment »
What's ad revenue of award-winning free game 10M...
Wow this article gives ad revenue iPhone games a savaging. For an award winning game (which means one that got lots of downloads and crucially WAS A GOOD GAME SO PEOPLE PLAYED IT A LOT): 10,000,000 downloads. 11 ads served per download. 0.03 cents per ad displayed. Therefore… 0.3 cents revenue per download. On 10,000,000 downloads the game made 30,000. Doesn’t sound...
2 tags
Designing games for the 43-year-old woman (via...
Excellent presentation. The keys for me: The 43 year old woman plays games that are put in front of her, not ones she seeks out. (My 30-something year old wife is similar. She will play web games I recommend, but would never search for games to play.) She plays games for relaxation, not challenge. A game like a glass of wine. Or a soap opera? This doesn’t mean she’s...
The Danger of Gouging (Please Stop It: Dragon Age...
Alec Meer has a thoughtful yet angry review of the Dragon Age Legends Facebook game and the way it tries to gouge its players. Game designers will do well to take heed: The impossibility of playing without currency. It’s in your interests to have as many happy players as possible. If 90% of your players can’t enjoy the game and keenly tell their friends without paying anything...
Why and How To Use Old-School RTs
Why you should switch to Old Style RTs I’ve started using Twitter again after nearly a year of quietness, and one thing that’s really annoying me is the new retweet system. OK there never was an “old retweet system” but the new twitter with all its popouts and rollovers makes putting an RT together yourself all the more fiddly. The new style is convenient but...
How Addictive Does Your Mobile App Need to Be?
According to a Techcrunch article, for the average mobile app on iPhone, Android, Blackberry: 26% of downloaders will use it once and never open it again 26% of downloaders will use it 10 times or more Here’s the full graph: The graph shows what percentage of users open the app exactly that many times and no more. For practical purposes it’s more useful to think how...
Console Consolation: 5 ways consoles can survive
Everybody’s boo-hooing about the death of consoles. But we have bigger, brighter TV screens in our living rooms than ever before. Why would we want to stop playing games on them? And if we’re playing games on them, why won’t we want hardware that makes playing games good and fun. Let’s be clear: a console is some hardware that you plug into a TV so that you can play...
The NEW Flash Games Programming book for...
Do you want to learn Flash game development while building real playable games? Packt’s new book, Flash Game Development by Example, is exactly what you need. It’s written by popular Flash and game dev blogger Emanuele Feronato. 10 months ago he posted 6 Games You Must Be Able to Make in Less than a Day — explaining how 6 classic games introduced the major skills required...
Zombie Farm success statistics
Zombie Farm is a successful freemium iPhone game. In one year Zombie Farm has got 11 million iOS downloads. Here are more statistics: Started with 2 staff. Now over 10. Fast growth but this is not Zynga… yet. (Small freemium game development companies don’t seem to last long. They all suddenly get big.) Top grossing freemium game of 2010. 40% of players are still playing 1...
Kinect launch bigger than iPad, iPhone, or KIN!
The cheesy me-too destined-to-fail product from Microsoft is the fastest selling consumer electronics product ever. Microsoft promises and indie SDK for Kinect this spring. Should be a fun new platform for simple casual games. Surprised? Read all about it. Posted via email from Facebook Indie Games | Comment »
How Spotify's Canny Freemium Tactics Netted 1...
Spotify — the streaming music service — has announced it has 1 million subscribers. This means it’s the biggest music subscription service in the world — and it hasn’t even entered the US yet. About 15% of its active users are ponying up for a subscription. These are figures that freemium businesses dream about. One of the secrets to Spotify’s...
Android hit by rogue app viruses. Open is better...
This is a real bummer for Android and Google. The iPhone app store has grown massive and hasn’t had a single bungle up like this. On iPhone: if you play by the rules, you’re safe. This is not the case with Android apparently: More than 50 applications available via the official Android Marketplace have been found to contain a virus. Analysis suggests that the...
The murky world of gold farming blogs
There’s a fascinating subculture of gold farming bloggers, looking for and sharing loopholes that enable MMO players to make gold fast. Here’s my favorite so far: http://coldsgoldfactory.blogspot.com/p/first-time-here.html I’m reading For the Win at the moment on my Kindle (for free!). If you’re interested in the culture of gold farming or like having pro-union...
February 2011
1 post
What will get you a job? Unreal, Unity, iPhone,...
Download now or preview on posterous How to make your mother proud.pdf (385 KB) If you are a freelance game developer your mum probably wants to know you when you’re going to get a proper job. It’s time to make your mother happy… but what game development platform is going to bring home the bacon? Read the document below to find...
January 2011
4 posts
The Violence of Angry Birds
So says Play This Thing: I didn’t notice it myself, the credit goes to my fiancee, ready to give birth, intuitively tuned into the sensitivities of life. “It’s so violent.” “Como?” “Yeah, you’re making these birds commit suicide in order to kill these pigs.” It is violent. With no redeeming morality at all. You control suicide bombers...
Pacman Cake (with bonus Rubik's Cube)
Posted via email from Facebook Indie Games | Comment »
The Top 5 Mistakes You Should Avoid in Social Game...
Read ‘em, don’t make ‘em. Take a look at @aquito’s analysis too. Underlying the 5 mistakes, as usual, is the need to remember that social gaming is more about psychological tricks with incentives and pay offs than it is about providing a quality entertainment experience. Posted via email from Facebook Indie Games | Comment »
Why Does Microsoft Pass Up the Easy Money?
What is Microsoft playing at? Why hasn’t a Windows App Store rolled out and appeared unbidden on our desktop with our regular updates to XP, Vista, and Windows 7? Apple has shown that bundling an app store automatically into a popular device is a license to print money. Google and Intel have followed suit, but they have a problem. To attract developers — and persuade them to...