Archive for July, 2008
Microsites as Ad Filters: Meet Stockmoose 2.0
Posted by SimianLogic in Uncategorized on 07/25/2008
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
When I originally tossed the Stockmoose up a couple of months ago, it was mostly a prototype–one that had taken a single evening to produce, and one that was based on a single request to my artist girlfriend: “Can you draw me a moose with a tie?” Well, now it’s finally back with a new coat of paint, some basic anti-gaming measures, and a few other things to spice it up. The “borrowed” Yahoo stock charts have been replaced with our own proprietary charts, and each stock now has a sort of miniature info card so the choice isn’t based solely on name-recognition. We also created a list of 25 Silicon Valley stocks that most people around here have probably heard of–just to make it a little more engaging. Some of the early results are actually a little surprising. In our SV25, TiVo is actually pretty close to the bottom while Netflix is near the top. Based on what I know of the two, I would’ve actually assumed this to be the opposite of what would happen.
Filler at 6+ Months
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/22/2008
As of earlier this month, Filler has been out for exactly six months–definite long tail territory for a flash game. I did post-mortems at one week and one month, so I thought I’d continue the trend with another look back. I’m a bit of a stat-hound, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the numbers so far, as well as various other comments on the game.
Stats
Total gameplays are now over 9,000,000 (at least on Mochibot enabled versions), though the actual number is surely much higher than that. Roughly 5,000,000 of those gameplays came on licensed versions (AddictingGames being the biggest single contributor) while the other 4,000,000 or so came through ad-supported versions on Kong and the Mochi network. Daily gameplays are down to around 12,000/day but seem fairly stable around that number. Read the rest of this entry »
Google doing human search?
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/14/2008
I always thought of Google as Mr. Algorithm, intent solely on developing programs to automate anything web-related. I was pretty surprised when they announced Lively last week. The implementation had some shortcomings (a browser plugin? for real?), but it does show a little personality. I was even more surprised just now.
We’ve got a couple of casserole dishes that we haven’t used yet, so I did a search for recipes and saw this:
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
Notice the little symbols to the right of the links? Essentially, you can vote up the result or make it poof out of the results altogether (really, just to the bottom of the page). This link has a little more on the “experiment.” It’ll be interesting to see if this thing disappears back into the labs or it actually improves search results.
Hero Fatigue
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/10/2008
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
I finally finished playing Mass Effect a few days ago, and it was everything I expected it to be. Pretty graphics, great dialogue, good characters, fun fight system… all in all, a fantastic game. The one criticism I have of the game isn’t so much about Mass Effect as it is about the state of games in general.
I’m tired of being the epic hero.
Sure you can play the bad guy if you choose the “mean” dialogue options, but whether you’re good or bad, you’re still the epic figure in charge of saving the universe. Really then, my issue is with the “epic” part and not the “hero” part. I get it. Games now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, so anything less than an epic experience seems like too little bang for your buck.
I blame Bioware for being too good at what they do. The dialogue system, the backstory, the universe itself is just too good to only be capable of telling one type of story. The sad thing is that’s all we’re likely to get out of them (until an equally epic sequel hits, that is). I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Star Wars-esque space opera the whole way through, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much more amazing it would be to play a Maltese Falcon or a Seven Samurai or a Die Hard or a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I’m talking story structures, here, not direct adaptation) style game using this same engine.
The engine is already built, so they might as well squeeze as much out of it as possible. Instead of one single epic that takes 30-40 hours to complete, why not build a half-dozen or so 2-5 hour long stories using the same engine and slightly more human storylines? You could call it Mass Effect Tales or something evocative of a short story collection. By doing so, they would bring us one step closer to legitimizing games as a storytelling medium–and for a fraction of the cost!
Boulder Blast
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/08/2008
My newest game launched this time last month on Shockwave. It’s a sort of ballistic match-three game. A boulder sits on a central pedestal, which you can pull back and fire at other boulders on the playing field. Wherever your boulder lands, it wipes out all connected boulders of the same color. Just to spice it up a little, some of the boulders are two-toned (meaning a chain can pass from one color to the neighboring color). There are three “power-boulders” which affect the pieces around them: a magma boulder rotates periodically and destroys all boulders in the same row/column when it’s hit; a bomb boulder destroys all pieces within a certain radius; a “spirit” boulder destroys all pieces of a certain color. By aiming tactically, the player can further grab three more “meta-powerups” that affect the game mechanic: the aim powerup allows the player to eschew the slingshot mechanic and instead simply click on their desired target; the freeze powerup prevents any new boulders from dropping; the match powerup grants you a bonus for successfully targeting a specific color of boulder instead of flinging wildly. The game marks a number of first for me as a game developer: Read the rest of this entry »
Not Dead, Just Been Playing Mass Effect
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/07/2008
Not a lot of activity in the last month, but I think July’s going to be a little crazy. My latest game, Boulder Blast, launched June 10th. I did a whole post-mortem on the game, but I’ve had a few hurdles to jump through before it was cleared by Shockwave’s legal department (nothing nasty–just had to dot my i’s and cross my t’s). I’ll refresh that a little and get that out ASAP. Later this month will mark the 6-month anniversary of Filler’s release, so I thought it would be cool to do another “progress report” post. There are a couple of cool things going on at work that are probably worthy of a post.