No sir. Do not pass go, do not collect $50,000. However! All is not lost! I am still eligible for a the $10k “Developers Choice” award, which means you, you developers! Visit GameTreeDeveloper.com and cast your vote (For Smiles HD). 😀...
The latest in the world of Mike, I might win something again. I’m less than an hour away from finding out if it’s true, so here’s me killing minutes as I wait....
From Monday, Gianfranco (whom I abbreviate as GB) was concerned that some of the guys might have been fear-mongering after a recent set of very sad sad videos. That catapulted me in to a rant about… well… yeah, it’s actually that way. Indie truths a-plenty. The first begins on the subject of “big games are extremely risky”, despite doing one myself right now. I had some upload issues with the prior video, which lead me to watching my video a few more times, and expanding on the subject of indies and failures....
Hello there! I figured now was a good time to talk about a project I’ve been involved with for the past couple months now. Something we like to call, the Indie Indie Conversation. The conversation is a YouTube channel shared amongst a group of indie game developers where we talk about what we do, the challenges, and the lifestyle of creating games independently for a living. I’ve personally failed many attempts at starting a regular video log here on my blog, and in retrospect that may have been the uncomfortable feeling of “talking to a wall”....
Yes, you read that right. It is ending. For real. June 23rd is the 3 year anniversary of Smiles (as in, starting the game). I have finished every single port of the game that I had planned on doing (except console ports, both I decided to abort); Some are still in submission or need of final packaging. Days away now. Today is June 15th, a whole week away from the anniversary....
Hey, well that didn’t work. Smiles for WP7 after a couple weeks. Note, that’s cumulative… which means total overall Or according to my data: 9 trial downloads, and 1 sale since. There was some twitter talking, some retweets by fellow devs, but there’s practically no noticeable spike. Ah well, so much for that. On to bigger better things....
Hi. I just received a 2nd e-mail informing me my “Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace developer account” yearly membership needs to be renewed. That costs $99 USD, and I think I paid $129 CAD. I made this game (Smiles), and I paid a friend to work with me to port it to Windows Phone 7: It was available on launch day for Windows Phone 7. Looks like a pretty well made game, right?...
The exact timing is a little off, but I today just renewed my business license. Yes, 5 years ago July I left my job as Technical Director at Big Blue Bubble (now one of Canada’s largest game studios … you’re welcome ;)). Here’s what I had to say. All systems are go! July 29th, 2005 – 10:34 PM Amazing. Today was my official last day at Big Blue Bubble. BBB was a great place to work, but I’m a too ambitious for my own good....
Alright, time to get back in to the routine. It’s been two weeks since the last post. Last week became an impromptu holiday for me — I am a Canadian living in Canada, but I deal mostly with US companies, so American Thanksgiving seemed safe. The week prior was busy though. I sent off the initial version of Smiles HD for the Mac App Store. It still sits in the approval queue, but I’m there....
For whatever reason, I was inspired to start playing with logo designs. There’s no new decisions to be seen here in this post, just some ideas I’m playing with (and rejecting). I actually used to make my own typography and font designs, one such example is this: You can see more examples of prior logos here. For the past 5 years I’ve been using this: I don’t know if I’ve ever really liked it, but it was good enough....