With her very first game release, up-and-coming game designer Sophie Artemigi did the seemingly impossible: she reached the #1 spot on the Top Paid charts on the App Store. What has been the key to Sophie’s success with premium mobile game Hook Up? Designing an “unapologetically bisexual” game that was authentic to Sophie’s experience and captured the eye of App Store curators, paired with some clever TikTok marketing. As an “old”, this was a delightful […]
On the second day of GDC, I presented Escaping the Indie Shame Spiral as part of the Indie Soapbox session at the IGS. I wanted to expand on the information I presented it in the talk and share it beyond those developers who could afford to attend GDC. Defining the Indie Shame Spiral When I left EA after a 4 year stint at the company I had two goals. One was to found a start-up […]
This article was originally published on Kotaku. As another Steam Holiday Sale comes to a close, I have spent roughly $100 to purchase 22 games. In the past 2 months I have picked up 3 Humble Bundles. Not a month ago I spent around $50 on 11 games in the Steam Fall Sale. By the time the next Steam Holiday Sale rolls into town I will be lucky if I have played half of these […]
It’s the Jewish New Year and I’ve taken a brief break from the two week old Enhanced Wars Kickstarter campaign to attend services. I check the time on my phone and see the notification that we have had two new backers. Despite my best intentions, I cannot help but open up my email to check the details. I recognize both names. At that moment, I know that Quarter Spiral is finished. We’ve crawled over the […]
It is rapidly approaching 11 years between my entry into the tech industry interning at Pandemic Studios and founding an indie game development studio to build Enhanced Wars. Although it is still early days in my career, I think I have at least gained a modicum of insight worth sharing. When one of my mentors asked me to speak at the college course I credit for setting me on the path from enthusiast to professional, I […]
You’re good at your job. You’re a leader within your discipline and your job title may or may not say it. You’re one of the more senior members on the team. And one day you are told that you are in charge of other people. These people are probably your friends. You play games with them during lunch and go grab drinks after work on Fridays. Now you’re their boss. Back before I went indie […]
Yesterday morning during the Enhanced Wars stand up we realized something fishy was going on. It was 9am on the west coast and already we had 10x the normal amount of email sign-ups for early access to our game. I have been in charge of outreach efforts on Enhanced Wars as we have built up an early audience in preparation for our Kickstarter campaign, and we were already having one of our best days yet. And I […]
After two years I was forced to hand in my employee badge for Pandemic Studios, a broken man. I was taking 4 vicodin a day to dull the pain of a herniated disc in my lower back. Wrist braces adorned both my arms to help control the repetitive stress injury induced by long days of playing Star Wars: Battlefront and typing. The herniated disc – acquired on a rare crunch time day off as I […]
Click the play button to listen to audio of the talk Slides and audio from the Flash Games Summit 2012 panel I moderated with Andrew Sega, Dan Stradwick and Sean McGee. Inside we discuss the many issues that face Flash games developers in 2012, including funding, distribution, platforms and technology.
On Sunday, I moderated a panel at the 2012 Flash Games Summit on the life of flash developers. I was joined by some of my favorite developers: Andrew Sega (Mytheria/Armor Wars), Dan Stradwick (Monsters’ Den) and Sean McGee (Thing Thing Arena/Endless Zombie Rampage). During the panel, and in discussions throughout the day, feature creep, difficulty finishing games and not knowing when a game was complete were frequent topics. For instance, Dan has been working on […]