I never quite understood how Colin felt when Fantastic Contraption started getting mega-popular. Sure, I can see the benefits to partnering with a company like inXile Entertainment, but I never quite knew why he didn’t want to just do it himself.
Well, SteamBirds has gotten quite popular, and now I understand exactly why. I’m being inundated by eMails and interview requests. There’s an iPhone port in the works. The game is probably going to end up on the XBox. WiiWare/DS is being considered. I was flatly turned down by companies like inXile and Addicting Games, only to have them all come back and open negotiations again a month later. There’s a constant stream of SiteLock sales to negotiate, and then make up code for.
Then there’s the problems: Bandwidth overruns on the primary host site; music files being too large; bug reports from various sites and logistics problems in updating the game (it’s currently hosted on 1600 different sites). In short: It’s a massive headache.
And SteamBirds is only experiencing a tiny fraction of what Colin went through. I have a pretty vivid idea of what it must have felt like for him.
So, over the last few weeks I’ve been contacting people and negotiating with how the future of SteamBirds will be managed. And I decided on working with SpryFox, a company co-founded by Daniel Cook (one of the sTEAMbirds) and David Edery. David is going to take over most of this mess for me, so I can finally get back to doing what I like best: making games.
The future of SteamBirds is a pretty large project. It’ll require multiplayer servers, bandwidth and hardware management, server-side multiplayer code, business deals, distribution, marketing, payment processing… A zillion things I simply don’t want to deal with. And now I don’t have to. I feel a huge burden has been lifted from me already, and we haven’t really done anything yet! I’m able to travel in peace, as it were.
Back to coding!
Dear Mr. Moore,
I am a middle school teacher at a small K-12 school in Texas. My students raved about your game SteamBirds, and I decided that I needed to check it out. It is fantastic. This 41 year old man loves it as much as his middle school students.
Thank you for designing such a creative strategy based game. I love that it requires them to think about the long range consequences of moves. I discuss the concept of reverse engineering solutions to problems with my students, and your game is a wonderful example.
Thank you for inspiring the next generation by building this elegant and sleekly designed world for them to explore that you created using nothing but your brain.
All my best,
- Gordon Center
I’m hoping for a XBLA release and will look into it.
Maybe a DS game would be cool aswell but XBLA has my pref.
Keep it up.
@Gordon Center: I wish my highschool or middle school computer teachers were half as interested in anything the students could get past the stupid firewalls and blacklists. Last time I was around younger kids, I had heard them talking about setting up a whitelist. Flash games and then hopefully general programming is my career. Your students are lucky. My AP Computer programming teacher had us doing things in java, and while everyone else copied the asteroids game for our final, I was working on a fully featured 2d physics system. He gave me a B because my demo wasn’t really a game, and had no goal.
He apparently has never heard of emergent gameplay or a sandbox. Sometimes I wish I could go back there and yell at him.
Anyway, Andy, you’re an inspiration. Just thought I’d post that.
… not to be weird or anything. <_<