Mark

Grossnickle

Programmer

Kihon is running a special this weekend by offering Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig) for free.  If you haven't already, now is the time to check it out!

Still hesitant?  Whats wrong with you!  Check out this review, it sums up our new features such as Costumes, Backgrounds, Free Monkey Bucks, etc.  Review.

I'll be at UofA Video Game Developer's Club this coming Monday, Nov. 21st.  It'll be at 5pm in the Gould-Simpson building, room 813.  I believe non-students can attend.  More details can be found on the club's homepage: https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/

If you are in town, come check it out.

Sooo. What are you doing here still reading?  Go download Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig)!

I am looking forward to checking out Casual Connect Seattle this week.  If you have any interest in meeting up, shoot @kihongames a tweet and we'll work it out.  We should be carrying a demo around of our latest game, which is finished but we are just coordinating some launch details.  Hope to see you there.

Cheers!

June marks 1 year since I packed up, left my corn-fed Indiana life, and moved to the Tucson desert to make games for Sony.  I had the chance to ship one game with Sony, which was an outstanding experience.  But unfortunately, the Facebook landscape changed enough during development that the virallity of our game (wildlife refuge) did not stand a chance and we ended up in the red.  Turns out, our game wasn't the only one struggling at Sony Online Entertainment and the Tucson studio was closed back in April (along with Seattle and Denver).

Soooo.  Why am I still in the desert?

Good question.

Besides the perpetual sun, lack of tornadoes, and beautiful mountains, I also found a job here.  I use the term 'job' loosely here as most jobs typically pay money... ;)

Myself and 4 colleagues started a game studio we dubbed Kihon.

I am very excited to be a partner in this adventure into the world of indie development.  I do not think I could have found a more talented, passionate, and enjoyable group to collaborate with.  Follow our antics on twitter here.

Nuff of the mushy stuff.  I plan on writing more on Kihon.  Feel free to drop any questions below... What would you like to know about making mobile games, about starting a studio, etc.   I'll try to be as transparent as possible.

Cheers for reading!

In Part 1 I decided to follow #Sworcery and see if positive reviews and pr could lead to being featured in the App Store.

As I stated before, this is by far not a fool proof case study since I do not know if #Sworcery is doing any advertising in conjunction with their PR.

With that disclaimer out of the way, lets see how #Sworcery is doing.  Last we looked they were not in any of the list: top apps, featured, staff pick, hot, or new & noteworthy.

Today the landscape has changed for #Sworcery... drastically.  Right off the bat, they are listed as 3rd on the TOP PAID iPad Apps list.  912 Ratings at 5 Stars... wow!  Scrolling down... they are listed #6 on the TOP GROSSING ipad Apps list.  OK, lets check featured.  New and Noteworthy for all apps? Nope. Staff Favorites? Nope.  Wait a sec... there it is scrolling in the top banner.  iPad Game of the Week!  Ok, so its the game of the week, but its not in the New and Noteworthy. Interesting.  Moving on to What's Hot.  Nothing. Not even in the banner.  So it went from no where to the top charts and it is not considered Hot... interesting.  Lets check out the Games Category.  Featured and in your face, top iPad Game of the week showing up in the top banner.  Also, #1 under New and Noteworthy.  Ok, so it wasn't noteworthy for all Apps, but apparently very note worthy for games.  Strange, since other games appeared in New and Noteworthy for all Apps.  But anyways, moving on to What's Hot for Games.  Nope, not there.

Ok, in summary:
#3 in Top Paid Apps
#6 in Top Grossing Apps
Displayed in Banner for 'Featured' and in the Games Category as iPad Game of the Week
#1 in the Games Featured list

Not to shabby. Hell, that is freaking awesome for them.


Do I think the PR, reviews, and general buzz helped them get featured as iPad Game of the Week?  Of course I do.  Can I prove it?  Unfortunately, I can not.  Without access to the 'GateKeepers' at Apple, no one can.

One could argue that this game is spreading due to the twitter integration which is there for ANYTHING you click on.  I personally haven't seen many tweets on it, but apparently others have as Hilary Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief at IGN recently posted:

Starting to feel like #sworcery tweed are zombie chants. I see one and it's like, "They got you too!"

I am sure that has helped.  Do a quick search, results keep trickling in. It is an endless stream of free advertising goodness.  They are owning the word 'sworcery' in the seo world and its working to their favor.  Regardless of whether it intrigues twitter users or pisses them off (due to spam) it is drawing attention to the game.

Ok, so that is one aspect outside of traditional reviews/blogs that is helping their numbers.  What about word of mouth? Do people enjoy the game?  I would think most of these people tweeting enjoy the game... otherwise they wouldn't post it on their wall.  But tweeting in game content is not quite the same as telling your friends that this game is awesome, go check it out.  Judging by the fact that 852 of the 915 ratings are 5 stars, I think it is safe to say this is getting positive word of mouth.  Only 25 Four stars. 9 Three Stars. 2 double stars. And 23 singles.  That is incredible!

I honestly don't get it. Maybe I am not far enough, but I find this game extremely boring. Sorry.  I respect the fact that it is indie.  I think it has a cool art style, yet I am not enthralled by it.  Music is great, A+ there.  But as a game, its flat out boring. Lots of clicking and panning.  Just not my cup of tea I guess.  I would have given up on it long ago if I hadn't spent 5 bucks and wasn't writing this blog series.  I'm going to keep clicking my way further and hope the game opens up into something more fun. But for now, I would tell my friends to not waste their money.

Anywaaays, 852 Five Stars?  Top iPad Game of the Week?  I guess I am in the minority on that one.  I'll be interested in seeing if a majority of these initial reviews are from people who have been following the game for awhile and have bought into the buzz.  Now that it is featured and mainstream, I wonder if the majority of future buyers will appreciate the indie flair.  I suspect Part 3 of this blog series will look closely at the reviews and any changes in the charts.  Can the game maintain its position or was a just a burst?  That insight may just help us deduct just how #Sworcery made it into the featured list and onto the main stage.  Stay tuned.  And as  always, share your thoughts below.

*UPDATE*
I don't see the need to post a part 3.  #Sworcery's reviews have stayed strong, dropping just slightly under a full 5 stars.  Apparently I am in the minority and my theory that their ratings would drop have been debunked.  They have fallen out of the top 25, but I would not be surprised if they jump right back up there when the iPhone version is released or if they even choose to run a special below the 4.99 mark.

In summary, I believe the reviews and PR helped, either by getting them noticed by Apple or getting them noticed by the masses and then by Apple.  A solid product, twitter integration, and great community relations also played a major role from my outsider viewpoint.
*UPDATE END*

I had an interesting exchange w/ a guy from g4 who claimed:

"The way mobile games are priced, they're typically an impulse purchase vs. someone seeking them out based on coverage."


That made me stop and think a bit.

Ok. I can't argue that once a game is in front of someone's face its not an impulse buy. BUT, it can only be an impulse buy when its in the checkout lane, not when you have to ask the store clerk what aisle its in.

Where are the swedish fish!?

The holy grail for many app developers is to become a Staff Pick, Featured, and then ultimately hit the Top Charts.  Once you do that, then you have the impulse factor working in your favor.  But this all occurs well after the snowball has already started down the hill. The real question is how do you get noticed by Apple and hit one of those lists?

Going back to my initial conversation, could reviews and positive PR lead to being Featured in the App Store?

With that question fresh in my mind I started noticing chatter about "SuperBrothers: Sword and Sworcery".  Do a quick search, there is a fair amount of buzz about the game online. [insert LMGTFY link here... ]   9.5 from IGN.  Now that is nothing to sneeze at.

OK, so we have positive PR and positive reviews.  Lets check out the top iPad apps... its not listed.  Featured? Nope. Staff pick? Nope. Hot? Nope.

Ah, Release date is tomorrow. Hmm, that is weird. I still was able to purchase it. (downloading now)

So I am wondering, can their positive PR and Reviews lead to being featured?  Lets watch and find out. Its not a fool proof case study... not even close. I don't know if they are advertising.  I don't know if a staff member will feature this game because they like it, without even reading a review.

Still, I find the exercise interesting.

If you see any advertising for the game, please let me know.  As well as if it hits any of apple's charts.

I'll be keeping an eye on it and will report back what I find.  In the meantime, my download is done so its time for some sworcery.

The People's choice for Hackathon came down to a photo finish.  Winner, gets FDT Max. Runner-up, joins the rest of the participants and receive FDT Pure. (thx Bruno!)

Voting was done by using the game's MochiPop score (how often they are played over time).  You can find any game's MochiPop by searching for the game via MochiGames.

When voting came to a close, we had 2 games tied in first at 59 MochiPop: New Continents & Earthquake.

I gave the contestants each 5 days to break the tie by pimping their games and encouraging people to play.  At the end of the five days, both games improved their MochiPop, but one game more so than the other.

Our winner of  Stanford's Hackathon Game Competition's People's Choice 2011 (haha, how long of a title can I make this??) is Earthquake!

Congrats to the winner and congrats to all the participants who will now receive a free copy of FDT Pure.

Thanks to everyone for participating, playing, judging, supporting, and just being Benevolent.

Ok, I promise, no more blog posts about this competition!  ;)

The judges have spoken and the votes have been tallied.  It was a very close competition, cheers to all of the entries!  Below are the top three winners from the Hackathon Game Competition.  If you participated and I have not yet reached out to you, please send me your contact information so I can put you in touch with our sponsors. My contact: ickydime[ at ]yahoo.com


THIRD PLACE WINNER: 

Earthquake

$50 donated by Mochi Media
Featured on GamesChart 

Roughly two weeks ago I parted ways with Sony.  It was a short ride, but very fruitful.  My exit was on the best possible of terms and I have been told the door is always open to return... which is the ideal situation whenever you part ways.  I believe my exit went smoothly mainly because I made sure I stayed on board with Wildlife Refuge all the way from start to finish and waited until we were in a stable maintenance mode before I made my departure.  I highly recommend making every possible effort to tie up any loose ends and meet any previous obligations before departing ways w/ an employer... although I realize that can not always be done.

Stanford Hackathon Game Competition has come to a close.  The entries are finalized and I just now sent the entries to the judges.  I will contact the winners and post a blog post as soon as the votes are tallied, which may not be until late next week.

In the meantime, we need to determine the People's choice.  The People's choice will be awarded FDT 4 Max!  The way we will determine the winner is by using MochiPop:

MochiPop is a game popularity index which scores games based on a range of network data such how many plays the game has been getting. 

Basically, you vote by playing the game you like the most!   Since MochiPop is calculated over time we will let the voting continue until February 28th.  At that point we will freeze the MochiPop and calculate our People's Choice.

Here are the entriess:



PYC - Pair Your Charity


Earthquake

You can be disqualified from receiving any prizes if your game is deemed to be not compliant with the spirit of this event.

For those of you who want a jump start on the competition, head over to Iain Lobb's blog and grab the source code that he is graciously giving away.  Even if you aren't joining the competition, you should definitely check out his code.  He was the technical reviewer on The Essential Guide to Flash Games (which basically means he knows his stuff and then some).

I am continually impressed by members of the Flash community like Iain.  He has taken the spirit of the competition and has ran with it.  The Benevolent Bug is spreading!  ;)

GamesChart graciously volunteered to place the three winning games on their featured chart.  I updated yesterday's competition announcement with the updated prizes.

We also have had some nice PR from MochiMedia and JayIsGames.

If you or your company would like to get involved with supporting or promoting the event (or Hackathon in general), please contact me at: ickydime { at } yahoo.com.

Much love for the Flash Community right now...

Stanford University's 2011 Hackathon is throwing a three week long Flash Game Competition in conjunction with their upcoming philanthropic coding marathon.  We have lined up prizes valued over $3000 and an all-star cast of judges!  Anyone can enter so check out the details below and post any questions you may have.

DEADLINE: February 13th at Noon PST

THEME: 'BENEVOLENCE'

As Wikipedia states, Benevolence is the act of, or a general inclination towards, charity. However you interpret the theme is up to you.  Possible ideas include but are not limited to:

• The game could be about charitable acts in general.
• It could be about a particular charity.
• It could draw awareness to a certain cause.
• It could educate on an issue.
• The game could be unrelated to charity but then donate its proceeds to a charity.
• It could take the word Benevolence and twist it in any manner that deems fun an appropriate.

Judges will be instructed to choose a game that not only do they enjoy the most but also ties best in the theme described above.

JUDGES:

• Jeff Fulton 
• Steve Fulton 
• Iain Lobb 
• Keith Peters
• Squize

GRAND PRIZE:

• One Master Adobe Suite donated by Lee Brimelow & Adobe
• One Pro License to GameBuilder Studio (once it is released)
• Feature Review by JayIsGames ... I can not guarantee they will say nice things. ;)  But all PR is good PR, right?
• Featured on GamesChart 

SECOND PLACE:

• $100 donated by Mochi Media
• Featured on GamesChart 

THIRD PLACE:

• $50 donated by Mochi Media
• Featured on GamesChart 

• FDT 4 Max donated by Bruno Fonzi of FDT ($699 value). The voting for People's Choice will occur shortly after the deadline.

ALL PARTICIPANTS:

• FDT 4 Pure donated by Bruno Fonzi of FDT ($129 value).
• Invite to Private Beta to GameBuilder Studio 
• Single Developer License to Push Button Engine's Isometric Component ($50 value).  Generously donated by GameBuilder Studio to anyone who wants to use it in the competition. This is Available now! All you need to do is validate that you are entering the competition by e-mailing me with your game concept and contact information.  Then either myself or Lavon will send you instructions so you can use this immediately.  My contact: ickydime[ at ]yahoo.com
• Recognized as Hackathon Supporters and projects will be displayed/promoted in our official records and online releases.

This contest is directly tied to Stanford University’s Hackathon, which is a software development branch of Dance Marathon. Their 24hr Hackathon will start on February 12th and finish on noon of the 13th in conjunction with this contest. All entries to this competition will be considered part of Hackathon and thus gain the recognition and promotion from the Hackathon organization. You will retain all rights to your code and final creations. You can learn more about Hackathon at their website.

Post any questions you have below. Good luck!

I haven't been able to speak much about what I have been doing at Sony since I joined in June.  Our game was tightly under wraps until our quiet beta release this past November.  After a month of bug fixing and additional features I think its finally time to dust off the keyboard and try to put a couple sentences together about the game.

Given that its nearly Thanksgiving and all, I am hoping I can guilt some people into registering for a Hackathon in February (12th-13th). Basically, you code/design for 24hrs on projects for non-profits.  Its a nice boost to the porfolio/resume, an opportunity to network, and a great way to give something back to the community.

This particular Hackathon is being organized by Stanford University.  Although it is coupled with their Dance Marathon event, you do not need to be affiliated with Stanford to participate.  I joined in the fun last year as a remote hacker (I participated from Indiana) and helped work on some interesting projects w/ very talented individuals.

If you have any interest, you can learn more about the organization and who they help here.  And if this sounds like something you would enjoy, then please register here.  Ignore any questions that do no pertain to you (residence/room number/etc)... this form is used by students as well as remote hackers.  Make sure you answer the last two questions.  By existing team, they mean do you have an organization or group of friends you are registering... Lets say your user group is interested, not everyone in the group needs to register, just register the group itself.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments.  If I can't answer your question, I'll direct you to someone who can.

With the upcoming release of our game (any day now), I can't think of a better time to finish up my sequence of posts on Scrums.  If you haven't already, please check out Part 1 and Part 2.

In this section I'll cover my opinions of the pros and cons of using Scrum.  Back in August when I initially wrote Part 1, I had entended this piece being somewhat more balanced... however, having gone through an entire project I must admit my opinions of using Scrum is more biased.

The Cons:
1. It takes time away from production.  We spend an entire day of planning every two weeks.  On top of that, we spend another 15-30min each morning for our daily Scrum.  Additionally, we also meet every Monday for an hour for code review (however, this doesn't particularly pertain to scrum... but it is part of SOE Tucson's process).  Each of these meetings involve everyone from the development team and even some people from Art, Design, Production, and Management.  This can quickly add up, and may be hard to justify if you are charging by the hour.

2.  The setup and management of a Scrum board, cards, and the meetings can be burdensome.  This is similar to #1 in that sometimes the process can get in the way of getting things done.  As we neared the end of development cycle we switched over from Scrum stories and cards to filing dev track tickets and reporting on those.  With hundreds of dev tickets going through the system it would have been counter productive to make a card for each of them and track them on the board.

The Pros:
1. As an individual you know what you need to get done each day.  You can focus on your tasks at hand without getting overwhelmed by the remaining items to do.  By focusing on small tasks you can easily see if you are behind or ahead for the day/week and know if you should be staying late.

2. You have a good picture of where the project stands and who is working on what.  If something breaks with the 'inventory' mechanic, you usually know if someone was going to be working on that today... and if no one was, you usually have an idea of who has spent time in there before so you know immediately where to go for help.

3. You pick your own fate.  By playing planning poker you are defining your own tasks and your own deadlines.  Granted, come crunch time some of this goes out the window; however, you still have a voice to some extent.

4. All of that planning leaves less surprises.  As a team you have a good understanding of whether or not you will hit your deadline well before crunch time hits.  Without a Scrum, sometimes you can get hosed by the amount of work that always seems to 'appear' towards the end of a project.  With a Scrum, you should hopefully have these items listed and accounted for.

Bottom Line
I think it comes down to the project and team as to whether a Scrum should be used or not.  If the timeline is vaste or the team is large, I would not want to work without Scrum... or at least something equivalent.  On a small team or project that is just a couple weeks or a month... all of that planning and daily meetings could be a waste.  Instead, you may be better suited using some well defined milestones, a beta launch, time to test, and a hard deadline.  Those milestones combined with close communication with your small team basically covers the same objectives as a Scrum without the formalities.

Coming from a freelance background and small studio background, I am usually fairly anti process.  I had viewed them as good in theory but bad in practice as they were usually counter productive in my experience.  Cover sheet on my TPS report? Yeah sure, I'll be right on it...   However, I had not experienced a large enough project or been involved with a large enough team.  I was too green in those areas to realize the importance of process.  Now I can not imagine trying to pull together the game we just created without a scrum (or code review for that matter).  It would be a nightmare.  Therefore, I have come to love Scrum and would recommend using it or a version of it in all future projects of any significant size.

The much-anticipated Part 2 has arrived!    Ok, so maybe not much anticipated, but you are here aren't you?

One of the things I have really enjoyed here at Sony is working within a Scrum.  I plan on covering this topic in three separate posts.

1. Sprint Planning Meeting
2. Daily Scrum
3. Pros/Cons

Lets start with the basics... What is a Scrum? As Wikipedia says:

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management and agile software development.

That seems a bit wordy.  I typically read at a 5th grader's reading level, so from my perspective: its a process for breaking up a large project into manageable bites.  In Sony's case, 2 week 'sprints'.

At the beginning of each sprint we hold a Sprint Planning Meeting, which is the official title for figuring out what the hell we need to do in the next two weeks to meet our deadline.  This meeting usually starts by prioritizing the list of 'stories' we need to complete and estimate how long each one should take.  A story could be 'I would like to able to log in and out of the game.'

We (anyone involved in this story) then estimate how long this story will take to complete by using Planning Poker.  Planning Poker involves giving each person a deck of cards with numbers on them representing days of work.  Each deck has cards with numbers (1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100,?).  Each person decides how many days he/she thinks the task will take, finds the appropriate card (rounding up), and then at the same time everyone flips over their cards.  So if you think a task will take 6 days, then you will find the 8 card and flip it over.  If everyone agrees, great, move on to the next story.  Otherwise, the people with the highest and lowest estimates plead their cases on why they think it should take as long as they estimated and then everyone gets a chance to pick a new card and flip again... this process continues until there is a compromise/majority.  Once a good chunk of stories have been estimated we look at how many days of production we have available for this sprint and figure out how many stories we can tackle.  This entire process of choosing and estimating stories usually takes most of our morning.

In the afternoon we meet with our teams (in my case, the client team or Flash team) and we break down each story into tasks.  A task might be 'Create a modal for when you get disconnected from the server."  For each task we then estimate how many hours we think it will take, using a similar process as above although we are usually less formal at this point.  We give ourselves 6 hours of work each day to buffer for everything that comes up during a normal day as well as to help counter underestimating on tasks.  Tasking out all of the stories for the two weeks usually takes the remainder of the day.

Thus, we just spent 10% of our two week sprint in initial planning alone.  From here, we jump into our work while monitoring our daily progress.  I will explain in more detail in a future post.

Besides being a 5'2 buck nothing powerlifter, she is also incredibly talented artist.

Last year I helped her get her portfolio together by tooling around with a simple Flash site that takes one of her pointillism drawings and makes it somewhat interactive by using a custom particle engine, which you should check out here.

The pointillism/stippling pieces are incredible. They take her months of concentration and patiences to complete. But once done, they are truly impressive. If you have any beer drinkers & Yeungling fans in your family, check this canvas out on etsy. The detail on it is crazy... the pictures do not do it full justice.

If you get a kick out of her work, be sure to add her on flickr and follow her blog. She is working on a 45 North Wine stipple that I am sure she will be posting more about in the near future.

Alright, enough pimping. Back to work everyone!

I discovered my subconscious's persona. Its true. He was swimming around in my head this whole time. He is an old man with a short white beard and disheveled white hair. He has thick black rimmed glasses with a round frame. He tends to wear a purple robe and has a cartoon appearance that falls somewhere between wizard and mad scientist. He is very agile for an old man and is a mischievous prankster. I'd say he is roughly half a foot tall, lives underwater, and keeps within a turtle shell for protection.

Still with me?

I've been doing some reading lately and have been very much inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's Blink as well as Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design. I highly recommend both.

Each book touches on a similar topic: the power of your subconscious.

Gladwell focuses more on how it solves complex problems in the blink of an eye as well as impacts your daily actions without you even realizing it. Would you believe me if I told you that you would score 10% lower on a Trivia game if you spent 15 minutes before the game thinking about being a Football Hooligan? I don't have the reference in front of me, but read Blink and it has hundreds of examples like this that will make you ponder what is really going on in your head.

Schell mentions the subconscious in a chapter on brainstorming. He explains how powerful it can be at solving problems and coming up with ideas, especially while you are focusing on other things. Ever wake up and suddenly have the answer to a problem you had been working on for weeks? That is the subconscious at work.

Personally, I had always been under the impression that the subconscious does what it wants and if it speaks up, hopefully you are listening. However, both authors disagree with my assumption and they describe how you can practice, train, and hone in on your subconscious. Gladwell makes an effort to teach you how to be aware of its impact and to try to pick and choose when to let it affect your actions. Schell describes ways of keeping in touch with it, focusing it on a direct problem, and listening for the answer to pop-up down the road.

One way Schell suggests using to get in touch with your subconscious is by giving it a persona. Try to understand how it acts and picture in your mind what that person/thing may look like so that every time you want to 'use' it you can think of that image.

I tried this the other night as finished reading the chapter and was about to fall asleep. The first thing that popped in my mind was the tiny old wizard in the turtle shell I described above. Completely random, I know. Somewhat crazy, sure I admit it. But it could have been worse, it could have been...