Flash Game Blogs

F-F-F-Friday! This week, we take a break from wacky office escapades and take a look at the (hypothetical) adventures of one of our (imaginary) fans!

We Have A Winner

This week’s winner of Flash Game Friday is Crazy Armadillo by PadanFain!

This is a fun game to play with simple mechanics and clever power-ups.  The object is to help the armadillo find his hole in the ground by rolling around different levels and avoiding spiders, cliffs, and such.  Good game, good fun- congrats PadanFain!

As is the case with every Flash Game Friday winner, we will feature this game on the MochiGames home page as well as the publisher feed.

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Sorry we've been a bit quiet here recently, both Olli and I have been beavering away like a couple of mentals on projects which hasn't given us any free time to devote to the blog ( Also we didn't have that much of interest to say ).

Knight's Quest, our first Facebook and our first RPG, has been my main focus for weeks. It's finally starting to come together after weeks of just working on the techy side, so I thought it may be of some interest to go over some bits and bobs from it.

The game is iso, which is a pain at the best of times. Z-sorting is murder. How I've gone about it is to split the map into sectors. Each sector is 16x16 tiles, and we only z-sort on those visible areas ( Also we turn off any plotting in sectors which aren't visible ).
This really reduces the sorting to just what is needed, also the floor tiles are burned into their own bitmap ( See this old post ) so we're only having to sort tiles and sprites, which helps.
Also as we're using the blitter we don't have to worry about sequential indexes, it's like as2 all over again, where you could give a sprite any old depth and not care about it.

Next up, the dungeons. I've used Olli's generator ( He's written tons about it previously ) and it works a treat. Basically it creates "cells" which are in this case 4x4 tiles. The cells tell us which walls or doors are present. Rather than just randomly plot tiles I've set up a lot of mc blocks, eg.


I think that's about it for now, there will be more to share real soon.

Squize.

Well folks, Bubble Tanks 3 is well under way and in full blown development and has been for a bit now.  It’s not just announced, we are actually working on it and making progress every day.  We’ve been getting a TON of “When is BT3 coming out?!” comments; so before you ask- let me tell you that we don’t have a release date yet.  So sit tight.

As we are going through the game and working on it, a lot of details are coming together so I can start sharing with you all a little bit about the game and some of the features.  Here are just a few of the things you have to look forward to:

• Classic gameplay in the style of Bubble Tanks 2- It’s blue again, we’ll start there.  Also, you’ll be able to move freely from Bubblefield to Bubblefield as before and exploration will be a big part again.  Bubblefields will finally come in different sizes.  And again, if you’re looking for a harder game you can race outwards, those looking for an easier relaxing experience can spiral around the start point.

• The improved Tank Editor and system- We’ve taken a lot of feedback from BTA and are keeping it in mind moving forward with BT3.  Bubble Points will be out and replaced with a new Complexity Meter (think Spore).  Larger classed tanks will have more Gun Points available for trashing enemies.  A lot more will be considered when determining tank size too, 4 small bubbles spread out to the corners will still remain a Class 1 rather than 6 as it was in BTA.  Enemy tanks also now degrade and shrink as you hit them.
• PARTS-  Lots of ‘em.  BTA had no new weapons.  BT3 will have so many new parts it will make your face melt. Not only that, but it will have new part types!
• Interface Parts- Some parts won’t be weapons at all, some will give you other advantages.  For example, a type of scanner part may show little arrows around the edge of the screen pointing to enemies.  Better parts will give you more information about enemies.
• Behavior Parts- Units with computer controlled AI can now be equipped with Behavior Parts!  Rather than just having enemies wander around randomly, new behavior parts can be equipped to direct them.  An Aggressive part will cause an enemy to get up in your face while a Cautious part will have the enemy try to keep it’s distance from you.  Other behaviors such as Healer will allow enemies to aid each other.
• Allies- Yes, you’ll finally be able to get some allies in your battle against all.  Allies will come in all shapes and sizes from the Fighter Swarm in BT2 to some really heavy guys that break off your main tank.

That’s not even the best of the features!  Stay tuned to the blog as we reveal much more on the upcoming Bubble Tanks 3!

Well, the summer just won’t end, which suits me fine. Just when you think it’s over, it pops back up for one more go like a slasher in a horror movie.

Which is great. It means the games I said we would release “in the summer” still aren’t late.

And if they are, it’s not my fault. Honest.

We have 3 projects finished, but for various reasons they won’t be out for a week at best.

Moto X and Destroy More Cars will be the first off the blocks.

Any day now, I promise.

Red Code 3 might take a while though. Although it’s finished, it needs a sponsor.

Sometimes finding a sponsor takes ages, but it can take longer.

I’m trying to speed the process up, ‘cos I really just want to deliver this one to the players as soon as I can.

I’ve played it to death myself now and I’m very, very happy with it. I also played Red Code 2 this morning for a comparision and there just isn’t one.

Don’t take my word for it though- you can watch me playing if you like. I know it’s not the same as playing it and it IS a complete spoiler, but it’s all I can offer.

http://www.screencast.com/users/makingfungames/folders/Default/media/6a0f4954-d03f-4498-bb5a-bfb7e097c59c

I know, you want to PLAY it. Believe me, I want you to play it too. Nothing would make me happier.

But, like me, you’ll have to be patient.

In the meantime we’ll all have to just find something to keep us busy until then.

With all these projects coming to an end, it’s time for me to knock out a few design documents. Maybe even create a schedule for the next few months.

Deathracers 2 is around the corner too, then it’s a mystery.

I  do plan to be more prolific between now and Christmas.

**SPOILER ALERT **

Unfortunately there is no such thing as Santa (sorry). So I need to start saving for presents.

As a small treat for my kids, I’m going to let them both star in my next game.

Well, my next 5 games to be exact.

I’ve already starting work on the design for a 5 part episodic adventure. Hopefully we can produce an episode every month. It’s something I’ve done before, with the “Phantom Mansion-Spectrum of Souls” series, which was pretty successful.

As well as that, I’m hoping Moto X does well enough to warrant a sequel.

Plus another game featuring bikes that will also work very well on Android, A version of Deathracers for XBNA and something I’m calling “Rico the Space Ninja”.

Oh, and a cute little match 3 game for the ladies.

So hopefully, there’s gonna be lots of presents this Christmas after all, for the whole  family.

I don’t know how or when, but I’ve a feeling that horses are going to feature in our portfolio before the end of the year too.

I was at the Dublin Horse Show a few weeks back and it put me in a very Equestrian mood. So, I reckon a sensible Horse game produced in tandem with a completely stupid one would be a good idea.

This schedule is gonna be pretty ambitious and I think I’ll need to recruit at least one new development team. Which means playing more games and finding some new talent.

So I’ll be checking out Newgrounds to see if there’s any platform games featuring a Ninja on horseback. In space.

Then I’ll start doing some proper work. I promise.

If you need to work with Roman Numbers, I’ve made a script that will make this easy for you.
(...)
Read the rest of Roman Numbers (259 words)

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After much thought and discussion by myself or at the FGL chat I made some decisions about how to make Bold Pixel more modular in order to simplify my own work. Since we are still on top of contracts, I couldn’t give enough attention to this but my brain was dealing with it in the [...]

Creating Successful Games: Lessons In Virtual Currency

Mochi Media President and COO Josh Larson gave a presentation at Casual Connect in Seattle in July 2010 on some of Mochi’s findings and best practices when implementing a virtual currency and how best to utilize in games.

Check out the video!

Slideshow Only

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Work has really been progressing on Roaming Fortress and as promised, we plan on revealing a lot more about the project as it develops.  One of the coolest parts of the game is the art and the variety of really neat creatures and units- it’s something we definitely want to start showing off.

Cue the Roaming Fortress cards!  Each week we will be revealing/featuring a new unit/enemy/whatever from the game as part of a collectible card!  As we move along, all of our blog visitors will get to see some cool art and learn a lot of inside information about the world of Roaming Fortress.  Our first in the series is the Burden Drake:

A good reputation is more valuable than money -Publius Syrus As a flash game developer, your primary objective is to create memorable games that are fun to play. That’s why big name sponsors are paying money to sponsor your games. They want the games that are the most fun to play will be associated with [...]

Armor Games and Fishing Cactus are bringing Shift 2 to the iPhone, and we need your help. We are looking for users to create and submit levels for ‘Shift 2′ that we can feature in the game.

If we end up featuring your level in Shift 2 (iPhone) you’ll get your full name in the credits as well as a free copy of the game in the app store.

The rules for the contest are as follows:

1. E-mail your level codes to support@fishingcactus.com
2. Make sure you include your full name to be listed in the credits
3. Lastly, submit a e-mail address that is easiest to reach you so the game can be sent to the winners.

Armor Games wishes all contestants the best of luck! To get started, click here.

For this bi-weekly poll, we’re hoping to get some feedback on our Friday comics. So we’ve put up two polls on the matter. Let us know what you think!

Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Hi everyone I really like books. My biggest flaw is not owning a e-reader, but it will arrive mid-September, don’t worry! While I read some non-technical books occasionally, like most of you (our dear friends and blog readers) I mostly read technical books. One of the issues with technical books is to find those that match your [...]

• can anyone think of some good techie interview questions to ask Junior PHP devs? #
• @JimSterling got a free app of the day recommendation for you: http://itunes.apple.com/app/quartet/id373768592?mt=8 #
• @sidchip that's Shockwave, not Flash.. still awesome though #
• Hemp Vodka! http://twurl.nl/ftctab #
• It cost £20 for the dentist to take 30 seconds looking at my teeth, confirming that yes I do actually brush them. Time for a career change?! #
• New PC ordered.. Core i7 loveliness this way cometh… booyaa #
• "You could win £100 worth of FREE books" – wtf? if they were free in the first place, how do I get £100 worth of them? #
• I know I shouldn't bid on it, but Ultima V Warriors of Destiny, with map and coin.. god damn you ebay http://tinyurl.com/ultima5 #
• @troygilbert without, I get a noticeable FPS "bump" whenever gc feels like kicking in, which is usually when I want it least! in reply to troygilbert #
• @benje upgraded already? in reply to benje #
• CRM systems are like the most boring thing in the world. Ever. #

• can anyone think of some good techie interview questions to ask Junior PHP devs? #
• @JimSterling got a free app of the day recommendation for you: http://itunes.apple.com/app/quartet/id373768592?mt=8 #
• @sidchip that's Shockwave, not Flash.. still awesome though #
• Hemp Vodka! http://twurl.nl/ftctab #
• It cost £20 for the dentist to take 30 seconds looking at my teeth, confirming that yes I do actually brush them. Time for a career change?! #
• New PC ordered.. Core i7 loveliness this way cometh… booyaa #
• "You could win £100 worth of FREE books" – wtf? if they were free in the first place, how do I get £100 worth of them? #
• I know I shouldn't bid on it, but Ultima V Warriors of Destiny, with map and coin.. god damn you ebay http://tinyurl.com/ultima5 #
• @troygilbert without, I get a noticeable FPS "bump" whenever gc feels like kicking in, which is usually when I want it least! in reply to troygilbert #
• @benje upgraded already? in reply to benje #
• CRM systems are like the most boring thing in the world. Ever. #

This Week’s Winner

We chose Zombie Exploder by Javi Hernandez this week as the Flash Game Friday Winner!

We chose this game because it has great graphics, good game mechanics, and hey- its got zombies!  We will feature Zombie Exploder on the MochiGames homepage for the next week, as well as feature it in our publisher feed.  This is a really fun game and we suggest you give it a try- you’ll get hooked!  Congrats Javi!

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Wow, this week went by fast, and it’s time for another comic! This week, Jared uses a complex yet concise method to explain his latest game concept.

If you’re sitting up late after the sun’s down, I’ve got some tips that will make it easier for your eyes to look at your screen.
(...)
Read the rest of Working while it’s Dark? I’ve got a tip for you! (239 words)

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BTTD 1.5 is now available on Kongregate and Newgrounds! It’s also available to anyone else that would like to host it. For info on hosting it, check out our Release Packages page!

Today we’ve decided to introduce you to another character in the Mary Reed Chronicles. Stella! We don’t want to give too much of her back story away, but let’s just say she’s Mary’s ally. But only in the alternate ending! Meaning you’ll have to collect all the letter drops to see her.  She’s pretty hardcore in her own right, too. You’ll see what we mean, but trust me, she’s awesome!

Here she is, in all her steampunk glory:

Okay, I’ve got yet ANOTHER game for you to munch on. It’s a product of my 48 hours work in the latest Ludum Dare Competition.

The theme was “Enemies as weapons” and there were a bunch of interesting games that came out of it. Die alien die uses this concept in a pretty simplistic way: it’s a shoot em up where you don’t shoot, but instead use your gravitational pull to fling enemies into your Alien nemesis.

Defeat each of his five stages to beat the game!

We received an awesome surprise in the mail today thanks to Cadin Batrack of The Pencil Farm. We hung out with Cadin last month at Casual Connect since he won our free ticket give-away, and as a thank-you he sent us a great art piece that I can’t resist sharing! It’s ABE the robot from Cadin’s game Plant Pong holding a shiny MochiCoin.

Abe with MochiCoin

It’s always really inspiring for us to see all the talent and creativity in the developer community. Keep the great games coming! And if you want to see more of ABE, head over to play Plant Pong here.

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So here it is: Invisible Ink. It’s not the epic kind of game and it does require to put a little bit of imagination and thinking at work. Watch the pen move and guess the doodle being drawn in invisible ink.

The game is available in 5 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Romanian.

And, seriously, it’s a coincidence it was released on August 23rd, the former National Day of Romania

A few words about the game:
Idea: Not much of a game-play to be honest, but mostly inspired by a “pillow game” , that kind that usually go with the pillow talk And a bit by Z-Rox.

Production: about 3 weeks, including localizations requested by the primary sponsor (Spil Group).

Graphics: Doodles were traced with Inkscape. Rest of the “graphics” were done with pen on paper and a scanner.

Programming: required attention in two spots. One was the SVG path reader, that was ported to HaXe and tweaked to fit the specifics of the game from the DrawSVG AS3 source. The other was a Bezier curve (adaptive) subdivision algorithm, again ported to HaXe from the works and research of Maxim Shemanarev. If anyone needs the HaXe sources for these two, please ask and I’ll post them.

Licensing: the game was added to FlashGameLicense and after a month and a half, 6 sponsor views, 7/10 editor rating, 5.05/10 developer rating and one bid later, the primary license went to Spil Group.

Feel free to suggest possible answers, if you think they fit the doodle, and please enclose them in spoiler tags ( [spoiler ] and [/ spoiler] ).

As promised, today I’ll be sharing a bit more about my internship here. The last entry was about the last arc of the development process, so today I’ll talk about the process of getting started. It’s not as easy as you think, but it is one of the more fun parts of the development. For me, at least.

Planning   It’s important to have a pretty solid idea of what the game will be like before you start coding. Sure, you will need to change some features, but you should still have a clear idea of the game going in. You need to set up the code with most of your features in mind, otherwise adding features could mean rewriting a bunch of code. You’ll also want to have a good idea of how you’ll set up the code, which means knowing what variables and functions you need, and what classes they’ll need to be in.

Time  Depending on your situation, this might not be an issue. If you’re in it for fun, you’ve all the time you want. If you’re trying to make a profit, either as a freelance developer or as part of a company, time is very much an issue. It doesn’t matter how great your idea is if you can’t afford to finish it.

Skill  This also affects your time constraints, so it’s important to go in with realistic expectations of yourself. Get some practice on smaller projects before attempting something huge.

Is it fun?  When brainstorming a game it’s easy to get caught up in the thought of trying to be innovative and unique.  But the game should be fun too. Always try to make a unique game, but remember the players come for the fun.

• Took Tommy to see Toy Story 3, how super cool was that?! Loved the touch with the clouds at the end. #
• @RetroGT does this mean my t-shirt order will be delayed? in reply to RetroGT #
• @retroremakes distill them down low enough, and all games ARE pretty much the same thing in reply to retroremakes #
• Level 1 Double Wookiee Birdrider ftw http://bit.ly/cOHfQC #
• What's your Geek Mind score? http://bit.ly/dtBSoi (lovely video game quiz by @dom2d ) #
• Steak and Beer – literally http://bit.ly/bQAcza (jpg) #
• Wow, Realtime Worlds goes into Administration (http://bit.ly/dvqx0f) mostly because APB was expensive pap! #
• @stewartgilray away from a computer – a bit like you right now, after all your "where are you?" messages in reply to stewartgilray #
• My Twifficiency score is 33%. What's yours? http://twifficiency.com/ #
• @moshboy I didn't realise it would auto-tweet! I've just revoked it's access in reply to moshboy #
• @UntoldEnt I killed it the second it auto-tweeted.. that's too lame for words in reply to UntoldEnt #
• Can anyone recommend a good site to register a .de domain? (and transfer an existing one there) #
• My son is all gowned up and happily playing in the children's ward. 15 mins to go until his op. Am nervous as hell! #
• I hate waiting ……… #
• @annilita 40 mins, but that was 1.5 hrs ago in reply to annilita #
• @annilita exactly.. I'm sure everything is fine. I just never was any good at waiting! in reply to annilita #
• Just got the best txt ever from my wife: "He's out and snuggled on my lap xx" – woohoo! I can stop shaking now #
• And to celebrate, an awesome Pringles picture http://bit.ly/cVv5rp #
• @fhd ahhh congrats my son is 4, but it doesn't really matter what age, they're still your babies in reply to fhd #
• @flazm cool, who sponsored it? in reply to flazm #
• Glad to have my family back together again. Everyone super tired, but happy #
• Wow, that's quite some storm outside #

Iiiiit’s FRIDAY! This week, we invite Eric to lunch and he politely declines.

Also, these comics now have their own category within the blog!

 

An upgrade system is the backbones of any simple, addictive game. Done right, an upgrade system will convince your players to stay in your game world, playing until they have unlocked every upgrade imaginable. Progressively Earn Upgrades Once an upgrade has been unlocked, it’s appeal drops significantly. It is no longer an unreachable goal in [...]

I know the Bubble Tanks 3 post has gotten a lot of item suggestions on it. So, give us your best ones! We’re looking to have a LOT of items in BT3 and we’d like to hear what you guys want.

Comments on this post are ONLY for BT3 ideas! Off-topic comments will be deleted! This’ll make it a lot easier for us to go through and just look at your ideas. Thanks for understanding.

Get Excited. It will be out in a couple of weeks! Check out the trailer here if the embed doesn’t work for you: Chaos Invaders Trailer.

The title of the talk was ‘Writing Games: Tall Tales of Triumph and Terror’ and it was held last Thursday at the Writers’ Guild of America, West headquarters in Los Angeles. It went alright, with some discussion of what it’s like to be a game writer, the new and growing position of game writers within the WGA (which allows game writers to join according to lower standards than film or television writers), and lots of nods to Uncharted 2 and Half-Life.

Everything pretty much went as I expected, but I found it very unfortunate that we did not see a discussion of the art or craft of game writing. We only really heard about the differences in work environment and technicalities. For example, it was generally agreed that game development involves far less clearly defined roles than filmmaking, so a writer can expect to play some role in game design and should expect the game designer to play a role in writing. A script writer should also expect his usual 125 page script to shoot up to around 800 pages for a game, since games are longer and a player may only experience a fraction of a game’s writing in a single play through. We did not, however, hear about anyone’s ideas on game writing, how a game is structured, approach, how they use the game to convey meaning or feelings. At one point it was mentioned that while in film it is said that a writer should ‘show’ and not ‘tell,’ in games a writer should ‘do’ and not ‘tell,’ but that was the extent of artistic discussion.

I stood up for the Q and A at the end and asked about the difference between games with mute protagonists and those with talkative protagonists, citing Half-Life and Uncharted and asking how each writer felt about the different approaches to game writing. This, I thought, was a question they could bite into. Surely one of these guys struggled at one time or another with the contradiction of a game’s protagonist being both a unique character and being played by the player, or at the very least, thought it was interesting, thought something could be done with that. Right? One of the writers reiterated that Uncharted 2 and Half-Life were both great games and simply said sometimes you go the one direction with a mute, and other times you go with the yapper. Nobody else had anything to say. So that was my shot. Oh well.

Anyway, I had a good time, especially talking to some of the writers over cokes. I even met a flash developer by the name of Tamar Curry. Seemed like a cool dude.

This is my second IGDA meeting and I recommend checking them out, especially if you want to meet some local LA game developers. Students and indie devs show up in addition to folks from some of the larger companies, so it’s a good bunch.

-Christopher J. Rock

Mochi Wants To Translate Your Game For The Chinese Market

As a result of our recent acquisition by Shanda Games (one of China’s largest gaming companies), Mochi Media is offering developers the opportunity to localize and translate your game for the China market.  With the help of our parent company we are offering this service at NO COST to the developer community.

Some background on the flash games market in China

The Chinese flash game portal space is dominated by sites such as 4399.com, 7k7k, and 2144.com.  Unfortunately, it is common practice in the Chinese market today to completely block all outbound links in games.  This includes the ability to click through on an ad, the “more games” link, and any other links you may have embedded in your game.  This is clearly a bad situation for flash game developers.

What We’re Doing

Mochi is offering developers free game translation services for the China market.  We see a significant opportunity in the Chinese market.  As you may see from your own Mochi analytics, your games generate lots of plays from Chinese sites, but these sites are largely blocking ads and all outbound links – so there is little, if any value being generated for developers today.  We want to change that by creating localized versions of these games and ensuring that they are not tampered or changed — and ultimately start making money for you as well as establishing your developer brand in China. Our China team is actively negotiating deals with the large portals.  We have recently completed agreements with 4399.com and 2144.com which will ONLY allow games coming from Mochi to retain their ads and outbound links.

Mochi’s Goal

We want your games to function in the same way in China as they do in the United States, and we are leveraging Shanda Games to help make sure this happens.  We want to legitimize the flash games space in China, offering games that have been localized and translated while protecting our developers’ IP and outbound links.  We see a great future in this market for flash games, and we want our developers to have the chance to start getting their games and their brands out there as soon as possible!

What You Get

You will get a FREE translated version of your game that will be distributed on the protected sites that Mochi has agreements with.  Your game will function correctly.  Your links and your ads will function in the same manner that they would for a game played in the U.S. Your games and your brand will get exposure to the Chinese market at a critical time…in Chinese!

What Mochi Is Asking In Return

In order to enforce YOUR rights as an intellectual property owner, we are asking developers to grant Mochi exclusive publishing rights to your translated game solely for the China market.  This gives Mochi the legal standing in China to go after sites and parties who seek to rip off, decompile or block links or ads within your game.  Mochi will enable advertising in your games and you will receive revenue share.

So What’s The Process?

We are expecting a large volume of game submissions for this program, so therefore ask that you please be patient as translation is a manual process.  That said, here is what you can expect in the simplest of terms:

1. You email us with a link to your game stating that you are interested in our translation services.
2. Once we get to your game (as we go through the “queue”), and deem it fit for translation, we will send you a letter of agreement to the terms and conditions of this free service.
3. You respond to the letter saying “Yes, I agree” and include a text file in either .txt or .xls formats with all the text from your game.  Include any images that may have embedded text, etc.
4. Once translation has been completed, we send you a file with the Chinese text that corresponds with the English version you originally sent (we will follow whatever logic system you create so that you know where the text is to be placed in your game).
5. You create a new version of your game, inserting the Chinese text instead of Enlgish.
6. You upload your new game in your developer account, and send us the link so that we can make sure everything looks okay. Do NOT mark your game for distribution until we tell you to do so.
7. Mochi publishes your game!

It’s THAT simple!

In Summary

We are offering to localize / translate your game for the China market at NO COST to you.  You will receive ads revenue and traffic back to your site via your embedded links for the effort.  All we ask in return is that you grant the Mochi China team the exclusive China-specific publishing rights for your game so that we can protect YOUR rights as an intellectual property owner.  You will still retain complete ownership of your game and the publishing rights are for China ONLY.  We are asking for these exclusive publishing rights as it helps us enforce the “allow ads and links” policies with sites who are currently blocking those links.

Ready to submit!?

If you would like to submit your game for translation, please send it to: translation [at] mochimedia.com

Q: What does the Mochi China team need to translate my game(s)?

A: All we need is a text file from you (.txt or .xls preferably), organized in a such a way that when you receive the translated text you will know where to implement the new text into your new version of your game.  How this is logically organized is completely up to you.

Q: What happens after I send Mochi my game text file?

A: After you provide us the txt/xls file of all the text in your game, we will send it to the translation team in China.  They will provide all of the Chinese equivalents of your text in a new file.  You will then replace existing text in your game with the translated text, leaving you the ability to customize and make sure everything fits the way you want it to.

Q: Will the Mochi China team just translate my game and keep my original design and style? They won’t do any changes inside game engine and ads showing engine (number of ads, liveupdate, preloader ad), right?

A: No design changes, JUST text.

Q: WiIl I have any control on this translated version in my Dashboard (for example ‘Chinese translation’ as new active game in my Dashboard panel)? What if they will do something wrong (for example broken link to my website)?

A: You will have FULL control over this version.  No links will break because we will only be supplying you text.  You can still publish your live updates no problem.

Q: How long would it take them to translate my game and publish it?

A: We can’t give you a guaranteed timeline. We ask that you submit your game and you will be placed in the queue for translation.  We’ll contact you if we require any other details or provide new information for you.

Q: I see big traffic numbers from Chinese sites in my dashboard reports, but it generates very little ad revenue compared to the number of ad requests (for example United Kingdom has less ad requests, but generates more than 10 times more money). Does it mean that people in China see ads in my game, but they are not able to click it?

A: Yes, Chinese CPM is generally lower than the English-speaking countries.  But, we estimate it to be 6x better than one year ago which is a good trend.  And, yes Chinese users would be able to see the ads for the games Mochi translates and publishes. Some sites that take games “illegally” block all outbound links so clicking (this includes ads and links to the developer’s site) won’t work.

We also now have a China-based team who is much more prepared to source local advertisers than we are here from the US.  Over the medium to long term, you should expect eCPMs to increase.

Q: What kind of protection would Mochi China team use to protect my game against decompilers?

A: Unfortunately, Flash games will not be able to stop a very dedicated and committed hacker from decompliling your game.  Using services like Mochi Live Updates and SecureSWF will definitely assist in deterring commonplace hackers.

Since you are giving the exclusive publishing rights for your game to Mochi China, they will use their influence in China to get your game removed from sites illegally distributing your game.  They will then supply the legal version, with new text and working links for example, to those sites.

Q: Is this initiative available to all game developers who use ads from Mochi?

A: While we would love to offer this service to any developer who wants to get their game translated and into the Chinese market, it is still a manual process and is not something we can offer everyone.  It is recommended that you submit your game anyway and you will be placed in the queue for translation.  We’ll contact you if we require any other details or provide new information for you.

Q: Are there any examples of games that have already been translated by Mochi China team?

A: No examples yet, we are just starting this program. Be one of the first!

Q: What font should I use after it is translated?

A: MSYH.TTF

Q: My web hosting company blocks most users from China as they say China is a security risk. So I wouldn’t see a great deal of profit from the outbound links anyway – unless I change my hosting company. This seems to be quite a common issue from what I’ve heard. It’s not just the great firewall of China, it’s also many western hosting companies pretty much blocking all Chinese users.

A: We are sure some will get through no matter what but I would think you could work with your host once the new version of the game is live in China. The Flash game space is an up and coming market in China, so putting your signature/mark is very important.  While the traffic to your site may or may not be “important” at this time, having proper copies of your game distributed in China will bring value to your development team name.

Everyone has seen that Chinese sites like 4399 and 7k7k generate huge amounts of gameplays.  The potential is there and that is why Mochi is scaling its China presence.  Additionally, working with legitimate parties like the Mochi China team may help deter flash pirates in China from literally stealing major elements of your game and recompiling it as a new game.  The Mochi China team plans to move aggressively against this kind of behavior for the games it helps translate.

Q: What if the text is embedded in images?

A: Send along .jpeg’s or .gif’s of these and we will handle it (along with the text transcript)

Q: Do you mean that the ecpm in China can increase?

A: The eCPM for China itself should, theoretically, increase (though the overall eCPM will lower).  The bigger picture, and this is up to you if you want to share, is that potentially more games that get spread legally (having links in, ads, etc.) can increase the likelihood that advertisers see the value having their advertisements in games, which could ultimately increase the eCPM for China more so.

Q: How many games can I get translated?

A: As many as you want!

Q: Do I have the right to sell non-exclusive versions of the English versions of the games to any other chinese portals?

A: If you are being paid an UPFRONT amount for that site license, then you should do it.  If it’s just another free deal, then we would advise against it as it would dilute Mochi China’s ability to enforce the IP of the developer.

Q: There are some elements in may game that may be difficult to translate, with numerous levels, etc.  How much can Mochi translate?

A: We will handle these on a case-by-case basis.  Don’t worry if your game seems complicated to translate, we will work with you to find a method of translation that will work.

---

© Colin Cupp for MochiLand, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments

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• Ceasefire by CNCD vs. Fairlight – staggeringly good demo from Assembly 2010 http://youtu.be/vQ2iQQvofCE #
• @mikeysee yeah that one was awesome – brilliant soundtrack! in reply to mikeysee #
• Spent 6 hours in a game design meeting, brain slightly fried. Now to type it all up! #
• Genius Photoshop interface http://flic.kr/p/5D4GwD #
• I'm actually using a Usenet group. This feels very 1995. #
• "Now, it is beginning of a fantastic story!! Let's make a journey to the cave of monsters! Good luck!" #
• @stewartgilray check out Retro Gamer, Issue 80, page 9 #
• AY-RIDERS: "ATARIDERS" new album (Atari chiptune covers) is out http://bit.ly/bsmQDv (via @demoscenepouet) #
• my wife bought me a Kinect and made me an Atari birthday cake.. awesomeness #
• @UntoldEnt isn't the FB DataStore disabled now? hasn't been updated since 2009 in reply to UntoldEnt #

There comes a time each year after about a month of slaving in front of your computer and seeing far too little of the world in general, where you get to announce a new game. Now is that time. I’m officially christening my latest project:

Chaos Invaders is chaotic remake of Space Invaders. I’ve been working hard trying to make a version of Space Invaders that’s ready to take on the ADHD world of flash games.
The game introduces one more core mechanic: collecting fallen Invaders and then using them as ammunition to shoot the rest out of the sky. Each of the 17 waves is pretty unique, with four Boss Invaders, just to shake things up.

Keep in the loop! I’ll be posting the intense techno-rock sound track that’s been hand made with love and awesome by Paul Kopetko within the next few days, followed by a trailer.

Ps. Sam has a game under way as well. No clues just yet, but I am excite.

Here's something that really badly bugs me. I'm sure I've written about it before, but with so many words written here they blur into one.

I was thinking about writing this post the other day, and in a weird twist of synchronicity ( By default that's always slightly weird though I guess ) I popped over to FlashKit games and there was a post summing up exactly the point of this post, the target of my ire.

What drives me insane on any forum are posts like "I'm doing this game for a client... ...how do I make this game ?".

I'm going to make some assumptions. The majority of these questions are for simple games, there's never anything really hard attached to these questions. So these are people who are of a pretty low ability with Flash.
Continuing with my assumptions, these developers know very little about Flash, and have yet managed to persuade a client to go with them. The client is trusting their brand, no matter how large or small, to this developer.
I'm also guessing these developers don't have a great cv. It's quite a stretch that they've got a ton of previous shiny work, but can't do a fairly simplistic game.

Poor cv, lack of knowledge, and yet still won the gig. How could that happen ? It can only be down to the price they quoted ( Or they're excellent at selling themselves, but let me stay on track for now ).

Why does this bug me ? We live in a world economy, what is a poor wage for me is a decent wage for people in other parts of the world. Why should I care if someone has gone in at the cheapest possible price ?

Because it stops the people with real talent, those with the passion to learn and improve, from possibly getting a first foot on the ladder into the industry. If you take a job that you don't know how to do, and hope to just cobble something together using open source ( With no credit for the original author, naturally ) and the good will of forum members, then I've really got no time for you at all.
There's no skill or artistry or creativity or passion to doing that, and for me all those are essential aspects of being a game developer. You're not making a game, you're just shoving bits together in a poor attempt to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I know there's lots of ways to shoot down my "argument" here, we all have to start somewhere, it could be a great artist doing his first bit of coding and needing a head start, a rush job, a favour for a friend, needing to pay the vet bills etc. etc.
I don't really care, that's the beauty of having your own blog, you can be as opinionated as you like ( The comments are there to call me an arsehole if you so wish ). Also I'm making a generalisation here, I think 90% of all these types of forum posts I've ever read support my point, as for the other 10%, I'm hoping you understand and we can still be friends. Not lending money friends, but saying hi in the street ones.

We all have to learn on the job, it's insane to think that everyone should know everything before starting a project, but there's a difference from learning on the job the bits your unsure of, and accepting a job that you have no clue whatsoever how to accomplish.
By doing so you are:
* Producing something crap for your client.
* Putting more crap on the internet. There's enough already.
* Keeping prices artificially low.
* Stopping someone whose taken the time and effort to learn their craft from taking the job.

No one I've grouped into my little pile will ever read this blog, but hopefully next time you see a similar post on a forum instead of doing the good thing and helping them out, maybe think about it twice.

Squize.

With the impending release of my new ebook on getting your game sponsored, I’ve had a lot of people asking me about the release date. With certain aspects of the book still underway, I haven’t been able to give an exact response yet. As a way to keep you updated on my progress, and provide [...]

Hi All!

Featured Game Of The Week

I am happy to announce this week’s Featured Game on MochiGames: “Happy Fun Balloon Time” by 2Games!  This game was chosen because it is well made, challenging, and of course lots of fun. The object is to hop around on balloons, popping them as you go, and finish each time on the golden balloon to advance to the next level.  Check out the game here.

Congrats 2Games!

---

© Colin Cupp for MochiLand, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments

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 Another Friday, another comic! This week, Jared finds a way to rest while still being an ever watchful boss.

Bubble Tanks is one of our most widespread and popular series. So which one’s your favorite?

Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

I guess it’s pretty strange to have a post mortem of something that is not a game, but Bold Pixel Engine, in its first version was a fantastic learning experience, but it had a overwhelming amount of failures also. To sort my thoughts I checked the tag of the engine in our blog and read [...]

As promised, I’ll be sharing some of what I learned here. Today focuses mostly on the play testing/ wrap up phase.

Always Almost Done  I was surprised how long games can be in the “almost done” or polishing phase. You can add a couple features, do some tweaking, and of course, squishing the dreaded bugs.

Playtest, playtest, playtest!  It’s not just for noticing bugs. Feedback from someone who hasn’t been watching the game throughout the development process is very valuable. For one thing, you get to see how someone who doesn’t know all the little tricks and techniques of the game will react. Things that could have been apparent to the designers are not always apparent to the player.

 Knowing When to Listen  Player feedback is valuable, but you can’t please everyone. Sometimes playtesters won’t be in your main target demographic, and sometimes they might not realize what your vision for the game is. On the other hand, something you meant as a challenge might just be too frustrating for most players.

More in later entries.

Armor Games Would like to thank everyone who participated in our Crush the Castle 2 build-off. There were lots of submissions as well as some very creative castles. The castles are now being reviewed and the winners will be notified within the next few weeks.

Looking for a way to hook players on your flash game? Upgrades can be a great way to entice players to delve deeper into the levels of your game, and keep them playing until all the upgrades have been unlocked. In this list, I’m going to give you some ideas for the various types of [...]

Let's get right to the point. If you can see a second square inside the square on the left of the image above, chances are that your monitor is at least not too dark. Though, we haven't talked about colour yet (next time maybe).

If you CAN'T see a second square your monitor might be a bit too dark.

And why should I care?

Let's take the game that belongs to the screen I posted last time, it's dark and that is of course part of the idea. But during playtests some of our friendly testers mentioned that the tiles are to dark to be seen confortably and I was about to tell them to crank up the damn brightness.

They won't do it of course. I wouldn't. But then I'm on a colour calibrated monitor (ok, two of them). So for me all my colours are correct.

I guess I'm going to up the brightness of the tiles a bit then.

nGFX

Making on a bunch of games right now and its taking forever without the internet.
Coal Runner 2, ‘Marshy’, ‘Bean Climb’, ‘Blue Custom 2′, ‘Growth’

The above images is the bean climb game.  I hope it will do good, the protagonist is just a placeholder.  I am hoping to knock some more artwork out in the next couple days for Coal Runner 2 and Bean Climb.

Crossroads from Yuri Arcurs Website I have several motivations to write this blog post. I knew I wanted to call it game design perspectives because it is about game design and perspectives about it but I didn’t really know how to put it. So I decided to put up an image and made a search [...]

Hero Interactive is looking for interns for the Fall 2010, Spring 2011 semesters!

Flash Game Designer/Developer Intern     St. Joseph, MI   (unpaid)

Internship Position

We’re looking for an intern who loves to make games and has experience with Adobe Flash / ActionScript 3 (PHP and MySQL knowledge are a plus).  The internship is all hands-on and the intern will get a solid 30-35 hours of experience each week.  The intern will take an active role in the development of games and participate in the whole process from design to game release.  Depending on their interest, we can also work with them on the business side of flash games.  We will work hard to make sure interns benefit and learn as much as possible during their time with us.  In fact, over 70% of our interns are offered some sort of employment upon the completion of their internships.

That said, this is primarily an unpaid internship.  The intern will be responsible for setting up their living in St. Joseph, Michigan for the semester (no remote internships), however, we would be happy to help with the process.  We will also work with your school program, if desired, to get you school credit for the internship.  You must be a United States citizen to be eligible for our internship program.  Additionally, you must have completed a minimum of 1 year of post-high school education.

About Hero Interactive

Hero Interactive is one of the top flash game developers in the online community, creating such popular titles as Bubble Tanks, StormWinds, StarShine, Pixel, and more. Our focus has always been on game innovation, quality, and fun. With our hearts set on these goals we’ve created and released over 25 of our own IP projects- each a success that we take much pride in. With the help of our valued partners these games have spread out across the world, are hosted on thousands of sites, and have been played millions of times. Most recently, Hero Interactive won the Mochi Award for best shooter game of 2008 at the Flash Gaming Summit 2009 and was a finalist for the best strategy game at the summit in 2010.

To Apply

Send your resume to internships@herointeractive.com.  Applicants with an online portfolio of past work get bonus points.

• First-Person Shooter. Check.
• Post Apocalyptic World. Check.
• RPG Elements. Check.

I had held off from getting an Xbox until Halo 3 came out. There was all the drama with the Red Ring of Death and there were lots of rumors of a new motherboard with less problems, coincidentally around the time of Halo 3′s release. After playing through Halo 3 I ended up getting a Wii and Super Mario Galaxy — mostly using my Xbox for XBLA games ( Braid, Rez, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Banjo Kazooie, etc.) Last Fall I decided to get caught up with Xbox retail games, and borrowed a bunch from Ricky.

Bioshock

Bioshock was high on my list. It was mega-hyped, looked pretty cool, and one of the prettiest games out at the time. There were a lot of demo videos leading up to its release, demonstrating the variety of ways you could interact with the enemies and environment to get through situations. Using electricity to deactivate machines, using fire to make enemies run for water, making the Big Daddies fight on your side, and the like. It looked exciting and I had to see what the game was about since it was one of the best examples of our game technology.

So I played it. And got into it. Maybe too into it. I enjoyed the feeling of being lost in this underwater city in Bioshock but it stressed me the hell out. I got tired of hearing voices in the halls and guys jumping out at me shooting around every corner. After spending a day at work, coming home and playing this aggravating game didn’t make me feel and better. I quit while I was ahead and moved on.

Okay, another game I wanted to play was Fallout 3. It looked cool, I had friends that were Fallout fans and I never played PC games so I never got around to playing it. A friend at Zenimax Online had copies laying around so he sent me one. God bless his heart.

Fallout 3

So I dug Fallout 3. Immersive world. Maybe too immersive… Constantly stressed because you’ll get randomly attacked by gangs and giant creatures while wandering from town to town. And you have no bullets, you can only buy a limited amount in shops at any given time. And you don’t even have much money, you can sell some bottle caps I guess. I get that this is the future, and everything’s scary and resources are limited but why they hell do I want live in this stressful world after I spent a day at work??? Ahhh!!!

Borderlands

My friends got Borderlands and were having a ton of fun online, killing stuff. Now Borderlands was a fun game for me. It had a similar setting to Fallout but it was lively and comedic. It played like Halo. Don’t have to worry too much about ammo and weapons, as they’re freely available. You aren’t even penalized too much for dying — you just respawn at a checkpoint and can buy more items without even leaving the mission. It plays like Halo-meets-Diablo, how can you go wrong? Well, the wrongness this time actually had to do with my internet sucking. My Xbox-wifi adapter sucks and can’t keep a stable connection. Which resulted in my dropping out from the game all of the time or not being able to tell if my shots are connecting when playing online. Without the online play to amplify the enjoyment of the game I started to see what the game for what it was — kinda pointless.

The story is pretty non-existant. And the gameplay is basically shoot stuff to get better weapons to shoot bigger stuff to get bigger weapons. In the time that I played I didn’t see enough diversity in the gameplay to make me feel like I was missing anything if I stopped playing. So I stopped.

And after quitting 3 top-notch cutting edge AAA games I began to wonder why didn’t they keep my interest. I think it has to do with them all being about running around and shooting things. And that’s pretty much it. You might have to find some items along the way but your progress is determined by how well you can run around and shoot. You don’t have to be clever about it. And then there’s the RPG elements. Which I feel are tacked onto the FPS gameplay just to give the illusion that the game has more depth than it really is.

Although I’m not a fan of FPS games, I don’t hate all of them. I love the Halo games for instance. But I love them because they take that they’re a first-person-shooter very seriously. Halo is tactical and your progress depends on your strategy of approaching the enemy. The enemies are aware of their environments and react depending on how you approach them. You can try to ambush and die. Then sneak up and die. Then snipe and die. Then try and run everyone over and maybe you make it to the next checkpoint.

In Halo, you don’t have to wonder if you can afford health or weapon upgrades in a vending machine when you reach an enemy you can’t take down. Nor do you need to count up how many bullets you have remaining between 14 guns, and check how much damage your guns have, and how much weight you’re carrying. You don’t have to fiddle with some skills tree and worry about that headshot only doing 4 damage because your level isn’t quite high enough. Ahhh!!!!

Do you know what game I bought and actually beat?

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I rushed through it and had a lot of fun. In quick sessions. And when I died, I didn’t get stressed. I had more fun overcoming the challenge. And it didn’t have RPG features to needlessly complicate it. And it didn’t take me over 20 hours to finish. And I got to play it with my friends.

Lost Odyssey

Besides Mario, I’ve been hooked on Lost Odyssey, my current obsession. I probably sound like a hypocrite, with the game being an old-school style Japanese RPG that we’ve seen a million times before, but I’m a sucker for these things. It feels like a Final Fantasy game but it breaks enough gameplay conventions that it’s not. It’s difficult and doesn’t have some overly complex skill system. It’s far from perfect but has some great things going for it. I think the gameplay is top-notch and overall I’ve enjoyed it much more than Final Fantasy 10 and 12.

Rage from id

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of The Same Game as id’s Rage is coming soon. While the graphics are off the chain, as usual, it looks to be the familiar FPS RPG hybrid.

• Come and work at Aardman Digital with us! (php developer wanted) http://bit.ly/aKNqz1 #
• if you took all the render data from Avatar and made it an mp3, it would play for 32 years #
• @candystand pointless questions on twitter in reply to candystand #
• some poor sap thinks my gmail address is his.. so far I've got his AT&T statements, internet banking details and an Amazon receipt *sigh* #
• @retrogamer4ever I just wish he'd stop! it makes me feel uneasy in reply to retrogamer4ever #
• @danielalbu tell me about it! I have replied to the AT&T one saying "this isn't me!" so I hope they pass the message on.. but i doubt it in reply to danielalbu #
• @terrypaton1 all MTV Network sites are useless at paying! 90 days+ in some cases in reply to terrypaton1 #
• @danielalbu I'm now paranoid he gets all of MY emails as well! in reply to danielalbu #
• @terrypaton1 yeah I feel your pain.. it's not like they even pay that well in reply to terrypaton1 #
• Time to get my mind back into pitch work.. uber massive FaceBook app gameplay concepts are flowing #
• He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which #
• RT @TheGameCreators: Get ready for a big competition announcement tomorrow (Wednesday 4th) http://bit.ly/9wTa63 #
• UK "Northern Lights" total failure down here.. anyone else? #
• @Chronotron it doesn't? we use it all the time without issue here.. wassup with it? in reply to Chronotron #
• Going through CVs for a PHP dev role, one had a portfolio URL as http://localhost/portfolio/ – erm … #fail #
• See what happens in Bejeweled Blitz when 2 hyper cubes move into each other: http://bit.ly/bdys6A #
• Missing out on the awesome Aardman Friday bacon rolls in order to get this pitch finished.. booyah #
• Beautiful pixel art game demakes http://bit.ly/9YCVGv (I love Bayonetta!) #
• Toxic HummStar Rescue are on the way! http://bit.ly/bxrOdX #
• @cristinas_den congrats are the games up anywhere to see? in reply to cristinas_den #
• STS9 Collab toon – pure undiluted awesomeness http://bit.ly/94YbAi (cheers @stewartgilray ) #
• @OllieClarke great tune isn't it in reply to OllieClarke #
• Someone get me away from 1320records.com, it can't be right to have 28 items in my basket #
• @OllieClarke I agree, I just bought his album (excellent for $10!), it's very demoscene in reply to OllieClarke #
• I'm buying them! Razer's TRON keyboard and mouse http://bit.ly/af2dVb (via @danielalbu) #
• Watching the Assembly 2010 Old Skool demo compo. Some nice C64 fx up atm. #
• @JINX where have the bigger sizes gone?! #fail in reply to JINX #
• @canofpopcom tire her out in reply to canofpopcom #

Around 6 years ago or so, 2004 or something, I started looking around for advice directed at budding game developers. At the time I was mostly looking around to see where and how I should start in on my big game idea that I had rolling around in my head for enough time that I decided to try my hand at making it.

It wasn’t long until I found the famous Sloperama post on ideas. But I didn’t believe it, and I don’t think a lot of new developers do either. But it is true. Sort of…

While Tom has good reason to write something like this intended for game dev tenderfoots, I think this nugget of advice can have a decent negative effect on what more experienced developers decide to work on, or even prototype.

So my post is directed towards developers with a few polished games under their belt. To stay with the Boy Scout ranking system, these developers would be First Class or Star. Not necessarily Eagle Scouts [Miyamoto?], but know how to tie a square-knot no problem. They’re comfortable with the execution of the game idea, working on usability, play-testing and have a general understanding of good and bad design. I’m not saying there’s some sort of ceiling on any of these, but I think there’s a point you reach where you feel like you’re “in your cockpit” [Stolen from Mike] when you’re making whatever it is that you’re making.

I think the reason Tom Sloper wrote that article, and so many other veterans follow with the same advice for designers starting out, is due to the fact that many a first timer looking to promote their game solely based on the idea of it is often touting an idea that doesn’t excite people experienced in game development. That’s not all that surprising, though if you’ve made a few games. Or even one.

I’m not excited by my Big Ideas that started me off on this path in the first place. In fact, a friend asked about “my first love” just last night and he seemed disappointed that I wasn’t excited anymore by the idea, like I had lost something along the way. But I’d argue the opposite, I’ve actually gained something and that’s the ability to understand my limits [temporary] as a developer at this point in time and what that means for the games I want to make.

In the beginning I would let ideas run wild with features, story and content. They were sprawling epics of games that would take decades to create with even a medium sized team, but I didn’t care. I was a teenager in love. Now though, an idea of that scope can’t even get me off the couch because it’s too big to understand really quickly. Not that a large idea can’t be great, but it certainly is much harder to test against and I have less experience with that. That’s just me, though.

As I grow as a developer I temper my taste for the game ideas that we come up with and I think more developers should take notice and give ourselves a little more credit as designers. Our latest game, due out in a week or so, is a product of really hashing out ideas based on an abstract concept and trusting our gut for that Eureka moment. I’m not saying it will be typical but the first time we tried doing the brainstorm-room thing, as more experienced developers, it worked. Though it seemed that throughout the process, the important thing was not to settle on good-enough. We had plenty of decent ideas that could have been decent games, but we weren’t excited about those.

For this session we settled on a word or phrase [parallax scrolling] and used it as a starting point to drive the brainstorm. Just about all of our games are centered around one mechanic that seeds teh rest of the game. If we hold true to that mechanic we feel like the mechanic itself will form into something cool and interesting. Anyway, “parallax” went to “speed”, into a discussion about speed and the feeling of going fast and how awesome that is, into talking about propulsion types and eventually into the final solution which was the Eureka moment. It was incredibly obvious to us both simultaneously that we realized it had to be prototyped immediately. I went into my room and created a mockup while Mike made a control-scheme prototype. And we had it.

A lot of my views on ideas now are driven by the experience, and while it may never happen again and I could be totally wrong, I feel like we need to trust ourselves as developers more often and put a little more faith into our ideas, even if they have burned us in the past with those terribly overblown growing-pain game projects that we all embarked on when wide eyed and green. Find a project that excites you in all areas that need exciting! Scope. Style. Gameplay. Innovation? You can have ‘em all, just hold out for the right one and bounce ideas off each other. It’s not like we have a checklist of things that make for a good or bad game project, it’s just what our tastes have become so we don’t need to check them against some sort of rote list or anything, we just kind of know.

I feel like that’s also one really important facet of settling in on an idea [as opposed to rapid prototyping multiple ideas]. Most often, those early game projects that I spent years translating into worthless design documents were solely from my brain, and that’s a problem! Our brains like to give themselves credit when they come up with something “new” so that colors the idea in a favorable light. If you have another brain around that can’t help but give you “big ups” for an idea it didn’t completely have, then you probably know you’re onto something.

Anyway, just wanted to ramble on that for a bit, something I’ve been thinking about while on some downtime. Also, you should know that there are many ways to generate ideas and prototypes. This is just what worked for us last time and we’ll probably try it again for the next game. I’m all for people coming up with personal ideas as a means of expression [I do that also] or shotgun prototypes or picking random ideas off a dartboard. Whatever works!

Awhile back, (Jared’s birthday) our office had a wonderful gift bestowed upon it. A pair of Nerf swords. With Jared having been on the MSU fencing team, sword fights have become a daily occurrence here. The most vicious of these being between Jared and Brent. Welts have appeared, bruises have lasted weeks, and blood has been drawn. Sometimes Brent wins. Sometimes Jared wins. And sometimes this happens:

Which makes for a perfect segue to my next point…

We’ve decided to do weekly comics for your viewing pleasure! These will be quick comics drawn by KC. Some will be jokes about our games, others will depict (with GREAT accuracy) aspects of our daily lives here at HI. 

And, for comparison, here they are sword fighting in real life. (With Nerf swords.)

As you can see, it gets intense. I’m not going to lie- We’ve had some casualties.

Just a quick picture post, showing the title screen of my first personal game this year. Should be finished in a couple of days.



It's not an overly creative gameplay, but for the sake of it I wrote a minimalistic particle thingy that really makes it a glittering experience to play. Once I've got the sound in it should at least score in the mood department.

nGFX

If you’ve got a problem.

If no-one else can help.

You need Team HummStar.

Sneaky peaks ahoy

So after all the walls of text I just put up, what does this all mean? Let me start by saying that Vortix was not born to be a flash game development studio. It was born to be a game development studio. For the last two years we have focused on flash the same way [...]

Hi,

We are happy to announce that we have kicked off a Featured Game Program that will showcase one game per week the MochiGames home page!

The Mochi Team will be choosing a new game weekly, where the “Featured Game” is added into the top rotator. We don’t have specific criteria for being a “Featured Game”, its just our way of appreciating the good games out there that don’t always get the attention they deserve.

This week’s winner is: “Ghost” by psturgeon.  Great job on a great game!

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© Colin Cupp for MochiLand, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments

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I know some of you have noticed that I’m making blog posts now, so I thought I’d tell you a bit more about myself. I’m Lisa, and I started at Hero as an intern at the beginning of summer. The internship got me the last few credits I needed to graduate from Michigan State, so I’ll be a full-time Hero employee starting next month. In addition to working on games, I’ll be the new community manager here. That means writing blogs, moderating comments, and making witty responses to your comments.

Later this week, I’ll be talking more about my experience as an intern and sharing some of what I’ve learned about the game design process.

Think game trailers are only for console games? Think again. The flash game industry is constantly evolving and you need to use every resource available if you want to get the most cash out of your game. Game trailers can demonstrate the most important aspects of your game to a potential sponsor without the sponsor [...]

My buddy Adam, who has just started teaching interactive media at university in Denmark, emailed me some questions about how to get his students started with publishing their own indie Flash games. These days I can't write anything without making it into a blog post, so here's my getting started guide:

Hi,

At long last, we are very excited to announce the launch of the MochiSocial API!

MochiSocial has been in beta for some time, but is now readily available as another tool in your Mochi Media toolkit. The purpose of this new product is for you to incentivize game play through social interactions. This is a great opportunity to grow your game and your brand virally as well as create better experiences for your players!

Key Highlights Of MochiSocial Include:

• Players can send invites to play your game to THEIR friends on THEIR social networks. A key advantage to MochiSocial here is that this single API supports 4 different social networks! (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and MochiGames). These invites result in higher virality of your game and penetration into networks you might not have been previously able to get into.

• Players can post their game play to their various social streams, such as Twitter and Facebook (”I just played X game” with a link back to that game)

• Players can send “Gifts” to their friends as an incentive to join them in playing your game (and can be rewarded for doing so). Castle Wars 2 is a good example of this, where you can send a “Gift” (invite your friends to play the game) and you each receive 100 “keys”

• Virality- players can post their achievements across their various social graphs, exposing your game to their networks

• Developers can now communicate directly with their players in-game!

• Developers will see “Social Data” show up on your dashboard as metrics that you can follow in your dev accounts.  You won’t be able to access information from other networks (like Facebook or Twitter), but you WILL have access to the data generated while they are playing your game. For example, you will be able to see how many “Gifts” were sent from your game, how many “Fans” you have or how many “Messages” have been posted in your stream.

Some Numbers From The Beta

• Total Messages Sent (aggregate of: Invites, Stream Posts, Leaderboard Posts & Gifts Sent): 472,518
• Total Gifts sent: 663
• Total Gifts awarded: 2,340

So, what does it all mean?  What it means to us is that it works.  There are quite a few factors that go into “why a number is what it is”, and there is always the variable of how MochiSocial is implemented in the game.  That said, one number that is quite interesting is the ratio between “Total Gifts Sent” and “Total Gifts Awarded”.  2,340 gifts were awarded vs. 663 sent.  Even if you factor in the award given to the initiator for sending the gift, it is almost a 2:1 ratio in awards given.  What this means: gifts are posted to social networks where anyone can pick them up and come to the game.  In this case, the average return for every gift sent has been 2 new players.

Remember:

The key values to socializing your games are the ability to go “viral” (the spreading of your game by your players) and getting your players to play with their friends vs playing alone. People who play together, stay (in your game) together.

Other good case studies on how to use MochiSocial include Crazy Go Nuts 2, Bloons Tower Defense 4, Jade Monkey Social, Kingdoms At War.

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I was just chatting to a mate, and "The Game of Life" came up. Not the official one, but the copyright name infringing version we did ( I've obviously held onto the email where the client said we should use that name and that they were fine with it. I don't know if that will stop me from ending up in prison and being a bad mans boyfriend, but I'm hoping so ).

As I was digging out the link to show him I was really disappointed to find that tak are no more. I've worked with Dom on quite a few pitches, and of course GOL, and it's a real shame to see an agency that always produced great work having / choosing to close it's doors.
I consider him a mate and would work with him tomorrow, so we just want to wish everyone there luck with their future endeavors.

Obviously this blog wouldn't be this blog without a healthy streak of self interest. There are two versions of GOL, one is the final one the client got, and one is the version without all the last minute dog shit branding that we were forced to put in that made a lot of hard work look just dreadful.
We really don't know if the client version ever saw the light of day. It was one of those "We need it now!" projects that then gets sat on for months. As far as we know it was just going to be an internal release for employees only. About 10 people may have played it, we really don't know.
The good version, where we didn't have to rip out a lot of the surrounding graphics and resize it and drop a huge ugly gif banner in, was only hosted by Tak ( This is where the self interest comes into it ).

Luckily I kept a copy of the pre-de-flowered version, and we're hosting it ourselves now.

Long old story about nothing really there, I could just have easily tweeted a link.

Speak of which, Game Of Life.

Squize.

Last activity after Sponsoring and Licensing and Collaboration Projects in this Business Model series. Contracts were our last and most revenue generating activity. Our contract works went from small to huge (so huge that none of the bigger projects as yet been released) and from bad to great. Contracts start with a prospect client, someone [...]