Announcing the The Froglet Collection - beta testers needed

After many, many months of development we are very proud to announce the arrival of 4 new games from Parachuting Frog: The Froglet Collection; Solisqr; TicTacToe and Connect4. A lot of time has been taken to hone and develop our skills and have been keen to develop our own grid framework of which the four games are the fruits of our labour.  For those that know traditional games of TicTacToe and Connect4 these were early learnings to develop and enhance the grid framework before enhancing further.  As more was learnt the design angle and simplicity that was brought with 1800 made these games in their own right fun and enjoyable so felt it only right to launch and share.

All the games are a significant increase in the complexity of our previous games of 1800 and Astavoid with game features including:

• All new stylish menu system
• En vogue flat design ideal and in keeping with iOS7
• Localisation: translated and available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese
• Social gaming with leaderboard, achievements, challenges and turn based interaction with Game Center.
• Multiple on device and online games modes including: Pass and play, single player with Easy, Medium and hard game modes as well as online play.

The Froglet Collection will be all three mini games available with tier 2 pricing offering all online games modes without limitations and no advertss.

Solisqr, TicTacToe and Connect4 will be free games supported by ads.

Due to the complexities (to us) of the framework we have wanted to launch Solisqr to beta first to test our grid and menu systems as well as the localised translations of our core system.  

To set the scene of Solisqr it is based on the popular board game, Pegged Solitaire or Solitaire. The challenge of the game comes in the form of both completing the challenge of only one peg (or square) remaining in the central position and done in the fastest time possible.

What we are looking for are enthusiastic beta testers that want to play the game early, that speak the languages laid out above and are willing to provide regular feedback to help us weedle out those nasty bugs as well as provide constructive criticism to make this the very best game collection possible.

If you are interested in beta testing then please register here and feel free to ask any questions at info@parachutingfrog.com.

1800: A postmortem

It is pretty much a year to the day that I penned my last postmortem for Astavoid. At that time Astavoid was my first game and the amount learnt during that process was immeasurable. However, what it did do was open my eyes to just how difficult it is for an novice, indie developer to make a difference and just how difficult the goals set out in my project would be.

Roll on a year and I can safely say I have learnt a lot, lot more. Since that article I had six months of what felt like going round in circles but this led to a period of focus around Christmas / the turn of the year. The two factors that have contributed to the focus was the movement to Unity from Corona, and the other was the one game a month initiative.

To quote the one game a month (1GAM) website for those not aware of its goals: "Starting a game is easy. Finishing a game is hard. One Game A Month is a gamedev challenge where everyone's invited. Your quest is to create one game each month for the entirety of 2013. It might sound crazy, but the truth is that it isn't all that hard."

So this is exactly what I set upon during the early part of 2013 and actually at the time of writing is what I am adhering to. It is because of this approach that 1800 came about but it almost didn't happen.

During March 2013 I had just finished my game 1GAM for February and decided because Easter was falling early that year I would create an Easter game.  What I struggled with was a decent concept and played around with a few prototypes for a week or so.  What the 1GAM concept had taught me was rapid focus and discipline, and therefore if it isn't working move on. If it is unlikely to be completed within a month then its too complicated. If you can't explain your core game in a sentence, it is also too complicated.

The Design
With only 20 days of the month to go after my deliberations I set my thoughts on a design that was more about playability than graphics.  Something that I could programmatically generate levels to add content rather than bogged down with design.

I hit upon the idea for 1800 almost immediately.  Inspired by games like hundreds and gauge where style and accessibility win out over fireworks and sparkle, I felt that this would fit well with my new found approach and limited timeframe.

Additionally, I wanted to keep the file size of the app small and already at a disadvantage with Unity iOS Basic's unoptimised /compressed framework I didn't want to bloat with large spritesheets.

All these factors brought together led itself to a minimalist design that unwittingly hit upon an en vogue concept of flat design.

I won't talk at length about flat design within this blog as this article does it far better than I could, however, it essentially means applying no gradients, shadows, bevels or embossing to your graphics and having thereby having just flat coloured assets. This coupled with a hybrid pastel colour and 1800 immediately felt very appealing to the eye.

The main criticism, and rightly so, of Astavoid was its lack of depth.  One of my main goals I wanted to achieve from 1800 was to make it more "sticky" and by that I mean keeping players in my game longer.  While 1800 wasn't about making money but more tailoring my craft it was important to have the game engaging and encourage another quick go.

The mechanic of the game was simple.  I had created a rectangle and the player must stop a cursor as close to the middle of this rectangle to achieve as high a score as possible.  I would calculate the number of pixel offset from the middle (central axis) of the screen and subtract from a total score of 1800. Great I had one level now what.  Based on this calculation I started including lines and further arrows and carried out further mathematics on the differential between alignment to central axis.  This gave a little bit more depth particularly when varying the speed of arrows and lines.

Within about 8 days (25 hours development) I had finished 1800 and was ready for people to have a play and provide feedback.  I decided upon using Testflight to let some of my very helpful twitter followers test the app.  I cannot under estimate just what a useful step this was in the development of the game.

Testing
I'll be honest I was nervous when I released for testing.  Like a proud Dad I didn't want anyone to be disparaging of my efforts but even worse tell me it was a good game when it wasn't. What I was pleased with was just how consistent the feedback was from my 12 or so testers and that in the main very positive about how addictive it was despite its simple facade.

My twitter followers are probably an over critical bunch.  I mean that in a good way in that they fit a demographic of game developers and seasoned gamers.  I too fit this and having played games for nearly 30 years a game like 1800 wouldn't normally jump out at me as something I would be looking out for.  However, there was something about its mechanics that really appealed, not just to me, but to my wife and family as well.

A slightly discouraging feedback that came from the testers was that they had completed the 20 levels in under 10 minutes. This wasn't really what I was looking for when talking of stickiness in my earlier comments.

Some more feedback was having implemented a unlocking level star system, a la Angry Birds, it wasn't clear to the testers just what triggered an unlock nor was there really any incentive to go back and improve scores once all 20 levels were complete.

In addition, the most important feedback came back about my UI design and workflow.  I had overlooked a major factor in fuelling my stickiness and that was providing a mechanism to retry a game immediately.

Redesign
Based on the feedback from the testers I went about implementing some new features that would provide the goals I was looking for.

First of all I changed the mechanic of the star system to only provide 3 stars if 1800 is achieved on a level.  This on some levels was very challenging so would hopefully provide the desire to come back and improve scores.  I also introduced a new game mode called time attack which was unlocked after 40 stars (out of a possible 60) was obtained thereby providing further depth to the game.  Time attack was using the same scoring mechanism but this time over 60 seconds rather than just one shot.

The next big implementation was to add a retry button into the in-game menu system that allowed you to replay the same game immediately or go back to the level select.  In hindsight once implemented I had no idea why I didn't do this in the first place but I guess thats the value of beta testing.  

A few minor iterations of testing followed but at this point I was pretty happy to stick it up on to app store and kick off the review process.  This was around the last week of March 2013.

Measurement and analytics
So that I could ascertain whether this design concept had been successful I decided to include the mobile analytics SDK from Flurry, to understand how my potential players interact with 1800.  This I felt would let me know remotely what is and isn't working and adapt appropriately with updates. I also included Flurry's interstitial ads for a little bit of monetisation.

Additionally, I added Adwhirl into the game a decision I didn't take lightly as it went against the minimalist design of the game but I didn't want to completely rule out making money.  However,  I strongly felt the design and concept of the game didn't lend itself to In App purchases.

More on the analytics later.

Marketing
While I was waiting for the game to be reviewed by Apple I started on my marketing trail which would consist of twitter and forums. In my experience of Astavoid I encountered there are many reviews sites willing to take my hard earned cash.  Equally I didn't have an advertising budget given that 1800 would be predominantly free.

Instead I decided that each day for about 10 days I would post a teaser image or description of the game on to my twitter account (@gameproject10k) and the touch arcade forum.  At the very least I would get the name out there and a little bit of interest.  I wasn't expecting much from this approach (given I only have 250 twitter followers for example) but was more than I did for Astavoid.

1800 was approved in the first couple of days of April 2013 so I had decided to launch on the second Thursday of the month, the 11th.  This allowed me to step up my twitter campaign, begging for retweets etc as well as drumming up a little following on TA forum.

I had decided to defer the prMac press release (I did this for Astavoid too but on launch day) until a few days after 1800's launch in an effort to understand what effect this had on launch day.  It is very difficult to understand the worth of a release day press release campaign when twitter bots look out for new apps and tweet its arrival.  The only metric I had was I created a prMac press release as the only thing I did for Astavoid and to this day (June 2013) the launch day downloads still account for a third of its total.

Launch Day, downloads and stats
The day arrived and the usual nervousness kicked in as to whether it was going to work on all those devices, whether I had screwed something up when creating the release and generally how it was going to be perceived.

I had set myself the goal for 1800 of approximately 5,000 downloads in total.  The reason for this goal was to improve on the 3,500 Astavoid downloads had achieved in the 12 months prior to writing 1800.

Launch day was great, I managed to get over 2,100 downloads which beat my Astavoid launch day without any real PR. While taking a break from constantly refreshing chart positions and reviews I took a break to read the Toucharcade App to see what other launch day apps were out and I was competing against.  I was very pleasantly surprised to be greeted with the following:

Amazing.  The game had found some love on the Touch Arcade forums and like my assessment earlier forum members felt they shouldn't like it but they just did and kept coming back for just one more game, time and time again. Initial feedback was that perhaps my goal for stickiness seemed to be on track.

But this euphoria was short lived, no lack of exposure on the TouchArcade forums could stop the next day's download stats from being lower.  But realistically what should I expect given this was really the only marketing push it was getting.

That said the next big push was coming on the following Monday from prMac so I sat back over the weekend, refreshed the website, rankings and charts on a one minute cycle and see what would happen. By the Sunday just 4 days after launch 1800 was getting just 254 downloads, I say just as in context this was disappointing given the launch day.  However, on reflection some games don't even get that from their entire lifetime.

On the Monday, my prMac press release went out, a few TA forum quotes and a little background about what I was trying to do and I was ready to see its effect. I timed the release to go out mid morning in the USA which would still be picked up by european agencies in the afternoon. 

This I thought were decent tactics and better for me to measure how useful the prMac press was to future game launch campaigns.  However, in a good way, this was eclipsed by a feature Touch Arcade ran on 1800. Titled, '1800' - A Surprisingly Difficult Reaction Game, a fair appraisal of the game mechanics and a little bit of retro love put 1800 in a good light. I was naturally delighted and amazed.  The Toucharcade forums had clearly caught the staff writer's eye and despite the number of games that must fall across the desks / devices they took the time to comment on my efforts.  This has an enormous effect upon the next's week's activity.

The downloads went (relatively) mad, on the day of the PR launch I had 1,000 downloads, the next day to coincide with both the PR piece and the article I had 3,000. Over the next week the downloads halved day on day but by the following weekend I was still around 300 downloads a day.  

During this time I had been shortlisted and finished third in the Touch Arcade game of the week poll. Beating Mr. Crab, amongst others, which happened to be App Store's editorial choice for that week.

1800 was featured in a few countries' puzzle pages which certainly had an effect on sustaining chart positions in their respective countries.

The events just discussed make an interesting download trend diagram.  The usual whale's tail is in place but with a few spikes.

If you refer to the download graph below you will see that the first spike is launch day, the second the effect that prMac and the Touch Arcade coverage gave me. The third smaller one towards the middle of the trend was on the eve of the iTunes 50 billion app download.  While I can't be sure this was the case for the latter I can't find any coverage or article that could have accounted for this, nonetheless nearly 900 downloads were achieved on this day.

So without question from a downloads perpective this has eclipsed my goal of 5,000 downloads and a small one off feature having quite an effecrt  At time of writing (early June 2013) 1800 has been downloaded over 15,000.  Not bad for my second game that was written in a little over 25 hours and no marketing budget.

Chart Positions
So what countries did 1800 fair best in?

	iPhone
	Games	Games/Action	Games/Puzzle	Top Overall
Spain	33	14	7	106
Argentina	61	28	11	241
Paraguay	76	34	11	315
Poland	52	26	13	182
Grenada	110	45	14	264
Ukraine	57	23	18	211
Venezuela	95	44	19	291
Portugal	70	21	23	270
Chile	119	53	23	-
Domnican Rep	168	61	26	-
Guatemala	110	47	27	397
France	131	49	28	-
Peru	146	57	29	-
Italy	170	56	34	-
Mexico	174	65	34	-
Slovakia	154	55	35	-
Czech Rep	176	69	35	-
Colombia	199	78	39	-
Belgium	261	78	71	-
New Zealand	-	161	84	-

iPad

	Games	Games/Action	Games/Puzzle	Top Overall
Spain	90	27	19	214
Grenada	81	28	20	174
Slovakia	228	67	33	-
Peru	210	62	37	-
Czech Rep	352	108	41	-
Chile	259	76	44	-
Venezuela	333	75	49	-
Argentina	338	94	53	-
Portugal	328	79	59	-
Poland	-	118	59	-
Ukraine	-	109	74	-
France	-	111	88	-
Italy	-	165	103	-
Guatemala	-	285	114	-
Colombia	-	257	142	-
Mexico	-	301	158	-
Domnican Rep	-	357	170	-
New Zealand	-	267	199	-
Belgium	-	264	235	-

Analytics
What about other analytical factors we spoke of earlier.  Has the design led to more sticky games.

Pictures paint a thousand words!

Session Length

Over recent weeks the median length this has tailed off a little from 2 minutes a session to just over a minute, but nonetheless a median of over 1 minute playing the game across over 35,000 sessions is pretty good given that a game on any of the levels could be played in a matter of seconds.

Games played
The statistic on session length and short game bursts is backed up by the new game event I added in which shows the number of games played per session.

At time of writing 670,000 games of 1800 have been played.  A statistic which I still struggle to comprehend that my little game has been played that many times and occupied that many people's time and attention.

Audience
The last statistic was to ascertain just what the demographic of 1800 had become.  When I talked earlier about accessibility just how far reaching had it proven to be?

As can be seen from statistics that could be obtained it does show a pretty wide audience for 1800 which aligns itself to its accessible and casual nature.

Monetisation
Probably the million dollar question (pun intended :) ) is just how much money has 1800 made.  Not a lot, but to be honest when I originally wrote this that wasn't the point.  I wasn't comfortable in my artistry or execution to ask for someone's hard earned cash but instead decided to subsidise with ads. A decision I wasn't entirely happy with as it goes against the minimalist design of the game.

What was interesting as 1800 was accessed by more and more people was just how many people wanted to pay for it.  A concept and request I thought I never thought I would see.  People even asked for my PayPal account to make a donation.

Obviously not comfortable with donations I decided the easiest thing to do was to add in an ad removal option that would provide some money and give the option for donations.  While the sentiment was great this hasn't been a money spinner but instead 6 generous souls have paid for this option.

So just how much has 1800 earned and by what means?

Flurry:        $12.93
iAd:            $28.77
AdMobs:    $14.47

Total:          $56.17

Not bad I guess but certainly not life changing and certainly not enough for me to consider giving up my full time job.

Beyond Financial Reward
1800 for me has been a success which is weird thing to say considering what I have just stated above concerning the financials. Making the game accessible has meant the audience has been wide and diverse and that has naturally led to larger downloads. Hitting upon the "just one more game" obsession has seen the large number of games played.

Purely by chance the design element was a fortunate fluke and had no idea at the time it was en vogue.  Maybe I am doing myself an injustice and that my artistic eye hit upon something that was right.

What I have learned from my 1,000+ hours developing games is the craft of writing games and not the monetary reward.  If you put your heart and soul into something then the rewards will come.

The exposure in TouchArcade certainly helped a lot.  It will be interesting to see from my next game just how much exposure and cross promotion from this base will influence the download figures but without such influential placement and articles I have to be realistic that achieving these levels of downloads could be challenging.

But despite all of this 1800 for me has gone beyond monetary reward.  I won't betray the confidence of the person who wrote to me but instead will summarise their story to make my point.

A player of 1800 contacted me about a week after launch.  They told me their story of how they were once policeman who was called out to an accident one night. While at the scene they themselves were hit by a car.  A significant period of time passed which was spent rebuilding their life as the injuries sustained meant they would never work as a policeman again. The injuries had meant that multi-tasking and concentration had become a struggle.   Most recently they had been taking exams to build steps for their future.

The email continued to say that having played 1800 over a period of a few days not only had it helped them improve their concentration and reactions but had helped them achieve higher marks in their exam.

To me that is priceless.

1800 is available for free on iOS for iPhone, iPad and iPod via the AppStore

Follow me at @gameproject10k for further updates and adventures.

Non-public API usage woes

First and foremost if you have come across my post you have my condolences.  Not because of landing here but more you must have gone through the frustrating exercise that I have lost 3 days of my life to.

Having deployed my latest version of 1800 to app store I couldn't understand why I was greeted with the email of:

Non-public API usage:

Apps are not permitted to access the UDID and must not use the uniqueIdentifier method of UIDevice. Please update your apps and servers to associate users with the Vendor or Advertising identifiers introduced in iOS 6.
If method names in your source code match the private Apple APIs listed above, altering your method names will help prevent this app from being flagged in future submissions. In addition, note that one or more of the above APIs may be located in a static library that was included with your app. If so, they must be removed.

If you think this message was sent in error and that you have only used Apple-published APIs in accordance with the guidelines, send the app's nine-digit Apple ID, along with detailed information about why you believe the above APIs were incorrectly flagged, to appreview@apple.com. For further information, visit the Technical Support Information page.

... and an invalid binary for my efforts.  This has all come about due to a new privacy policy instilled by Apple on the 1st May 2013 which prohibits the use of using the devices UDID for tracking or identification.  If you want to read a bit more about it check it out here.

I am going to write about my experiences but I will summarise so that you can go away and solve the problem now but come back to perhaps pick up a few tips.

Tip #1 and my solution - Update AdMob SDK

Just to be clear I am using Unity, Futile and Prime31 plugins.  At first I thought it was the Prime31 plugins as I am only using Unity and those. The problem was the Adwhirl plugin from Prime31 but more specifically the AdMobs SDK. All you have to do is download the latest SDK for here and then copy its contents to assets/editor/AdWhirlAdMob folder. All being way you can see your friend again of "Waiting for review".

While Prime31 don't use the UDID uniqueIdentifier I was ignorant to how the AdMobs SDK was updated and assumed when I updated the Prime31 Adwhirl plugin it updated the third party SDKs.  Not the case so you have been warned. I also had a red herring as Astavoid didn't have AdWhirl plugin in its project but somehow was in the editor folder which meant I had earlier eliminated this plugin as an issue as it wasn't (in theory) across both apps.

If you have got this far into the blog then perhaps the above hasn't worked.  If thats the case then all is not lost.  I've tried a few things to try and get the solution above so maybe be these will help.

Tip #2 - Find and replace uniqueIdentifier
From within XCode do Cmd-Shift-f and search for:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier].

This should list out all instances of this method.  Instead using the above method use a hash of the mac address like:

+ (NSString *)GetUUID
{
  CFUUIDRef theUUID = CFUUIDCreate(NULL);
  CFStringRef string = CFUUIDCreateString(NULL, theUUID);
  CFRelease(theUUID);
  return [(NSString *)string autorelease];
}

or as alternative within code base use this method instead

 [UIDevice identifierForVendor] 

Tip #3 - Command Tools
Still getting rejected then the chances are one of your compiled libraries or frameworks has the little blighter in.  If so not a problem (well not yet anyway). I don't profess to be an expert in this area so apologies if factually incorrect and happy to be corrected for the greater good :)

Download XCode command tools.  Easier send than done you say.

Xcode includes a new "Downloads" preference pane to install optional components such as command line tools, and previous iOS Simulators. To open this pane click the "Xcode" button in the top left of the screen near the Apple logo, then click "Preferences", then click "Downloads".

Once downloaded open up a terminal window and navigate to where your xcode project is located. Then choose your framework files or libraries you want to check with the strings command of:

strings <your file>.a | grep uniqueIdentifier

This will then iterate through the files looking for the method you specified as the last parameter.  This will allow an investigation and the next area of investigation.

Hope this helps I certainly know information was scarce so if it just helps a couple of people then it will alleviate some pain that I had to go through :)

1800 out April 2013

Just a short note to say the game we have been working on in March is due for release to the App Store in April.

To get a preview of the game modes, levels and experience why not watch the short trailer below.

Also follow and support the forthcoming release on Toucharcade at http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=183923 and http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=183924

Indie Dev Insight: Whitaker Trebella

It was during 2012 that I first came to learn of Whitaker. Didn't know him from Adam and at this point hadn't released anything but everybody I was following was either talking about him or his unreleased game polymer. 

I couldn't quite work out why somebody who seemed a relative unknown like myself was getting so much attention.  This was four fold: 

1. Some notoriety in the industry for doing the music for games such as  Super Stickman Golf
2. An excellent marketing strategy - see more later on this
3. A great app in polymer
4. A thoroughly nice chap

Since then we have exchanged quite a few tweets not least because he was an early adopter of Futile and would very kindly be my sounding board.  If you haven't already follow Whitaker on Twitter not least for his obsession in changing his avatar every week :).

What proceeds is probably one of the most insightful blogs for newbie indie gamers and is the very reason I started my project and indeed this blog to share and have other people share such knowledge. Enjoy!

What got you into writing games?

A couple years ago, I was just starting to get into the world of doing music for games. While I loved it, the more I did it, the more I had the urge to make a game of my own. Unfortunately though, I had absolutely 0% programming experience. I hadn't programmed a day in my life. So I had a lot to learn. More here: http://www.polymerapp.com/ 

What's good and bad about what you do?

 I do music for games and I also create my own games. In some ways this is awesome. Whenever I hit a creative wall with one thing, I can switch over to the other. This gives me a way to sort of leapfrog over each other, always progressing in a different way. At the same time, this can be troublesome. If I'm in the middle of a successful programming run while making my game, I tend to have a very hard time stopping and focusing on music for awhile. The same thing happens in reverse when I'm really into a song I'm composing.

What would you do differently now given what you know from projects completed and experience from the gaming and app market?

It's hard to say what I would do differently in regards to Polymer. I seriously did the best I could with the knowledge I had. Of course, looking back at my code horrifies me now. But at the time, I just did what I could to finish it. I'm trying to be more organized this time around with my new game, but who knows what will happen as it progresses. The one main thing I would have done differently with Polymer was to take out the IAP's that popped up, allowing you to skip the "grinding." This pissed some people off, and I think it's one of the reasons that it wasn't quite as respected in the indie community as it could have been. I'm not against IAP's in any way, but I think the way I implemented them in regards to gameplay could have been handled better (I'm not referring to the purely cosmetic IAP's though). 

What tools do you use.  By this I mean software development kits/engines (Cocos2d, Corona, Unity3D etc), audio packages, art packages.

• For Polymer: Cocos2d
• For my next game: Unity and Futile
• For audio/music: Logic Pro
• For art: Photoshop

What made you choose these tools over others?

Cocos2d: it seemed like the best option at the time. It was iOS-specific (which was my only target for Polymer). And there were a TON of resources out there. Pretty much any problem I had could be solved by a Google search. Very helpful for a beginning programmer (well, for any programmer for that matter).

Unity and Futile: I really wish I could have made Polymer multi-platform. It's the biggest thing I'm looking forward to with my next game. I'm shooting for PC/Mac/iOS/Android. I feel that I missed out on a big chunk of market because of only focusing on iOS (even though it was the right choice at the time for my skill level). Also, Futile is very similar to Cocos2d in execution so it comes naturally. Finally, I may eventually want to get into 3d games, so making the Unity transition now is a good first step. 

Given you experiences in music what advice could you give to tone deaf indies who want to take a stab at their own music?

I wrote two blog posts about this.

Part I: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/music-theory-for-beginners/

Part II: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/music-theory-for-beginners-ii/

Music theory is super-complicated. Because it seems like second nature to me now, it's easy to forget how difficult it can be to explain. The biggest thing I can recommend for beginners is to *get feedback.* This is true for any new or amateur skill. Getting feedback from pros/teachers is by far the best way to improve your sound and continue on your way to more professional-sounding music.

 

What marketing tactics do you employ?  Forums, twitter, paid PR etc

I wrote a blog post about this too:

Promoting your game through Twitter: http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/a-guide-to-using-twitter-to-promote-your-game/

I think Twitter was probably the most important thing in all this. I've been building my follower count for years now, trying to make a good reputation in the indie gamedev community. It's really important to talk to other industry professionals, be willing to offer and receive help, and to be patient. As for other PR things, my wife Dana helped me a ton because she's a PR professional. One of the most important things with PR is to have a "story." My story for Polymer was that it was my first game, and I was branching out from doing music. I think this is what helped some people latch onto it, and also be inspired by it (I got a LOT of comments saying it inspired people to finally try to make their own game.) I posted my story (http://www.polymerapp.com/my_story) on Reddit, and it got a lot of attention. I also wrote a press release (with a TON of help from my wife) and reached out to a lot of targeted press contacts who I thought may be interested.

 

What effect do you think free to play has had upon your game design?

Not a lot. I've considered doing F2P, but I don't know if I want to go down that route, especially at this point. F2P is just not part of my brand. I want to make standalone games that you buy once and play. Having said this, I get very annoyed when people associate F2P with being "evil." It's a business decision that works well for many people. It's just not one I want to take at the moment.

 

What resources do you swear by for learning new techniques, getting more from the packages you mentioned above, news etc.  e.g Books (specific titles would be appreciated), forums / websites, social media

• Reddit's gamedev community: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev
• 3d games math (currently in the middle of reading this): http://www.amazon.com/Math-Primer-Graphics-Game-Development/dp/1568817231
• The Nature of Code (also in the middle of reading this and it's been EXTREMELY helpful): http://natureofcode.com/book
• Twitter (obviously)

There has been a lot in the press recently that app development is going through a gold rush and that the bubble will burst soon.  Do you see it like this?

I don't think the bubble will burst necessarily. But I do think we're entering into a totally different era of app development. It's way harder now to develop a super popular hit because of how inundated the market is. It's getting harder and harder for indies to compete with the big studios, at least when it comes to polish. It's incredibly important, more than ever, to polish your game as much as humanly possible. Make the best possible game you can. I've heard this said before, and I'll paraphrase: for each game, you have one chance. If your game's not 100% ready, don't launch. Making a good game is the most important thing, before anything else. The F2P revolution is also taking over so it will be interesting to see where that leads. 

Do you think app games will eventually kill off Triple A titles as we know them?

 Well, that's a tricky question. I think we may be leading towards a universal solution. I think eventually one app/game will run on all devices and there won't be many console-dependent things anymore. So I don't think apps will "kill" AAA titles, but I think gaming as a whole is going through a major transition. 

What does 2013 have in store for Whitaker?

 I'm currently working on a new game. It's taken me WAY too long to figure out what to do. I've prototyped a ton of things and thrown out a lot of crappy ideas. But I think I've finally settled on something that's gonna be pretty awesome. I've also been working on a lot of music, including the soundtracks for the upcoming Danger Boat, Super Stickman Golf 2, and Nimble Quest. 

Any additional advice you would give for up and coming indie developers?

Make the best game you possibly can. That should be your first goal. Get as many industry pros to look at it as possible. Get BRUTAL feedback. Network at local industry events. Do not settle for less than perfect (well, as perfect as your skills can get you). Use Twitter (correctly!!!). Don't launch until your game is absolutely 100% ready. Be insanely nitpicky about every tiny seemingly unimportant detail. Every single pixel matters. POLISH POLISH POLISH. If you do all these things, marketing your game will be much easier.

Go download Polymer immediately available for both iPhone and iPad!

Indie Dev Insight: Streaming Colour

When I first got interested in writing games abut 18 months a go my first choice for inspiration was to hit Twitter. Like the internet if you don't really know what you are looking for the choices, options and information overload is overwhelming.

Soon though you get drawn to those who repeatedly have something useful to say on regular occasions and have an affinity to on your development.  Owen Goss is one of those who I started following in the early days.  I don't recall why specifically but I think it was the fact that a number of people I was following were all following him.


Owen formed Streaming Colour  in 2008 for the purposes of creating fun, non-violent, and creative video games. Prior to founding Streaming Colour, Owen worked in the console games industry for 5 years at such companies as Electronic Arts Canada and Propaganda Games, developing for platforms like the PSP, Xbox 360 and PS3. In 2008 Owen decided to head out on his own and form his own company with the goal of making the kinds of games that he enjoys playing the most.

Most recently he launched the perplexing yet highly addictive game Finger Tied for iPad. Recently he took some time out to share his thoughts on a few of my questions.


What got you into writing games?

I've been programming since my early teens, but I grew up in an artistic household. I really wanted a career that would allow me to combine my love of art with my love of programming. Game development provides daily challenges at the intersection of art and technology. I love it.

More specifically, at university I got a degree in computer science and then got a job building enterprise Flash websites after graduation. A couple of years working there gave me the experience to get a job as a lead programmer at EA in 2004 building game UIs in Flash. I worked on console games for 4.5 years as a lead UI programmer and senior gameplay programmer. I left the console industry in 2008 and I've been doing the indie thing ever since.

What's good and bad about what you do?

The good: doing a job that I love; being my own boss; creating something out of nothing; getting to make whatever I want; and being part of an amazing indie community.

The bad: slogging through the parts of making games that are both really hard and aren't fun; dealing with self-doubt when you're working on something by yourself over long periods of time; and dealing with all the parts of running a business that isn't making games.

How many people are involved in writing games at Streaming Colour.  What roles do they take on?

Streaming Colour is just me. On most of my games I've been responsible for: game design, programming, art, sound design, project management, PR, marketing, accounting, and anything else that comes up. Though for some games I've hired an artist and/or sound designer. The one thing I always have someone else do is the music. However, I'm currently collaborating on a game with Matt Rix, creator of Trainyard, and this collaborative process is proving to be a lot of fun.

What would you do differently now given what you know from projects completed and experience from the gaming and app market?

With every project you try to learn from your mistakes. One of the biggest challenges in the app market is that it's constantly changing. But in general: try to keep the games small and stay agile. Look for the fun quickly and build on that. Worry less about more features, but instead concentrate on nailing the core of the game. Get feedback from people who can be honest with you earlier than you think you should. Don't build your own engine/tools when an existing engine/tool will do the job.

What tools do you use.  By this I mean software development kits/engines (Cocos2d, Corona, Unity3D etc), audio packages, art packages.

I've used a lot of different tools and engines since I started 4.5 years ago. I'll try to list the ones I've used more than a few times.

Engines:

• custom OpenGL-based engine
• cocos2d
• cocos2d-x
• Unity + Futile

Tools:

• Xcode
• MonoDevelop
• Photoshop
• Inkscape
• TexturePacker
• Audacity
• Garage Band
• Blender
• Git
• A notebook and pen
• twitter

(I only part kid about adding twitter to my list of tools. The community I've met through twitter has been invaluable over the past 4.5 years.)

What made you choose these tools over others?

Mostly familiarity and efficiency of use, but also price. I try to choose the tool that is going to allow me to complete the job as efficiently as possible. Sometimes this means paying for software, but sometimes, you get lucky and the best tool is also cheap/free.

What marketing tactics do you employ?  Forums, twitter, paid PR etc

I've had little success with running my own forums, as its hard to keep spam out. I've never paid for PR, but many swear by good PR firms.

Build relationships with your fans and players. Engage with your players where the players hang out (e.g. TouchArcade forums, etc). Keep making games and finding ways to let your fans know about it. More Games pages, twitter Facebook, mailing lists, websites. Build relationships with the press so they know who you are and what your games are. Go to conferences and meet people face to face. If you have a big enough game and timeline, show at PAX and other gaming events.

Marketing is just as hard as making your game. You need to be thinking about it and acting on it all throughout the process of making your game. If you're done your game and are just starting to thinking about marketing, you waited too long. All that said, this is an area where I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm still learning a lot about how to successfully market my games.

What effect do you think free to play has had upon your game design?

Honestly, I'm not sure yet, but it's something I've been thinking about more and more.

What resources do you swear by for learning new techniques, getting more from the packages you mentioned above, news etc.  e.g Books (specific titles would be appreciated), forums / websites, social media

Many of the tools I use, I learned at jobs before going indie. For things I'm learning for the first time, I like books for some things (e.g. learning a new programming language, math, physics theory), but for others I like forums, online tutorials, and digital documentation (e.g. I've been learning to model in Blender almost exclusively by watching youtube videos and reading their online docs). Having a circle of friends who are smarter than you is also a great way to learn.

There has been a lot in the press recently that app development is going through a gold rush and that the bubble will burst soon.  Do you see it like this?

The app market feels a lot to me like the .com boom felt in the late 90's. It felt at the time like you could do no wrong. All you had to do was create a website and get rich. People seem to have the same feeling about apps: I just need to make an app and I'll get rich. Those of us who have been making apps for a few years know that this isn't the case. Yes, some people are making a lot of money, but most of us, by working hard, are slowly finding a way to eek out a living. My hope is that we'll see more people approaching app/games development as a sustainable way of making a living. Not shooting for instant riches, but trying to build a catalogue of quality apps/games that garner attention and earns their developers a living.

Do you think app games will eventually kill off AAA titles as we know them?

No. I think there will always be room for the Big video games; the blockbuster, mega-budget games. But I think they will be less dominant. People are gaming more and more on the go. Once everyone considers themselves someone who plays games, I think Big games will just become another market in the larger games market.

What does 2013 have in store for Streaming Colour?

Right now I'm working on a new game with Matt Rix (the details are still secret at this point). After that, even more games!

Any additional advice you would give for up and coming indie developers?

Making a living making games is not easy. It will be hard. Sometimes you will hate the game you're making. Sometimes you will want to quit. But, if you really love making games, you will find a way to keep going. I believe the key to long-term success is persistence. Those who eventually find success are the ones who kept going; who kept learning from their mistakes; who kept improving. Sometimes this will mean taking on contract gigs or getting a job to pay your bills. But if you love it enough, you will keep at it.

Download Finger Tied for iPad   If you don't know Finger Tied is a multi-touch puzzle game, only for the iPad. In each Finger Tied puzzle, fill in a shape by moving up to four fingers around on your iPad at the same time. But be careful, lift a finger, or go out of bounds, and it's game over. Finger Tied will test your mental, as well as your finger abilities!