Browsing the archives for the Game Design category

Interviewed for Gamasutra

Gamasutra put up a nice article this morning, about doing what it takes to make games in the industry. I’m featured on page 3 of the article. I think it’s really interesting, reading about just what people have done to make games; all the effort they go through, the sacrifices they make.. A nice read [...]

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SteamBirds gets Business Management

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 [...]

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Protonaut is Up for Bidding

Protonaut has been suffering a slow death. Ever since the first beta, it hasn’t generated a single sale and is suffering from a severe lack of traffic. No traffic means no new levels, which means there’s no reason for traffic to keep coming back… One of those old Chicken-and-the-Egg problems. Of course, since I last [...]

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Value, explained

It seems my last post on The Numbers Behind Steambirds has made a few waves! “[...] A few sponsors have recently been complaining that developers aren’t required to pick the best bid, considering all the terms and conditions. Sometimes developers just pick bids that are clearly worth a lot less, just because they like a [...]

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SteamBirds: By the Numbers

People have been practically begging me for the numbers behind SteamBirds. Now you can stop IMing me every other day :P As an aside, I can’t help but feel that this post is coming way too early. The game launched on March 3rd, which means we’re coming up on the 1 month birthday soon. There [...]

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The History of SteamBirds

I haven’t talked much about SteamBirds on my blog.  Now that things are post-release and over-the-hump, I think it’s about time I discuss the history behind SteamBirds, and some other random thoughts. Numbers post to follow. First up, about the Secrecy; I had often knocked Closed Development practices but hadn’t actually tried them myself. I [...]

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SteamBirds in User Comments

“bad” – dragonboe “Kiss Your A** and hope for the best thats what I did” – LtKillaMonkey “uff” – MexicanJudge “quite fanny” – CIANI “This is idiotic. 4/5″ – Magilvia “Educational! There’s history and trajectory physics.” – NoThln6n3zZ “Also, it’s awesome how everything stops every few seconds while you figure out what to do next, [...]

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SteamBirds in the Media

Since it launched back on March 2nd, SteamBirds has been getting attention from just about all the blogs in my feedreader. Because I’ve already lost track of a few, I thought I’d list a few of the quotes I’ve pulled! The first to mention it was of course Dan Cook @ Lost Garden. I hear [...]

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SteamBirds Sells!

I guess saying “Steambirds Sells” is a bit of a misnomer, but “has been licensed!” doesn’t sound as cool. Last Wednesday SteamBirds went live on ArmorGames.com! Click here to play it. I’ll make a retrospective post with sale details and game performance in a week or two, but right now the game is doing very [...]

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Bayesian Ratings: Your Salvation for User-Generated Content

I’ve been meaning to write this article for about 6 months now, and it’s about time I got it off my chest. I’ll preface this by saying I don’t “know the lingo” of statistics and might get a few phrasings incorrect, but the article should otherwise stand on it’s own. The Problem Protonaut is a [...]

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