Matt

  • Creating a Resource Management Game on iOS

    Over the last week I’ve been trying to reverse engineer some of the hit games on iOS like DragonVale, Pocket Planes, Tiny Tower, Simpsons Tap Out and Paradise Cove. These have been historically some of the most profitable games on the App Store. They are complex resource management type games and I want to create…

  • Getting ready for Winter

    Winter seems to have struck early here in Calgary. It’s left me with a bit of a conundrum for getting to work.  All of the transit options in this city suck including driving your own car. The buses are never on time, and always delayed or late The C-Train doesn’t get me to the office, and gets…

  • A New Game Project

    It’s been a while since I’ve worked on an iOS game.  After the disappointing sales from Zombie Tap Out I figured that the game section of the App Store was getting a little to difficult to compete in. I’m finally ready now to get back in the game and start working on something new.  The idea for…

  • Gamification of Everything

    Gamification is the process of adding game mechanics to things that are not games. There are really two motivations for the use of gamification.  The first is that people who develop games have learned a lot about what makes a game engaging, fun and addictive and we can take what they’ve learned and apply it…

  • ABT: Always Be Testing

    Sales teams often have the letters ABC plastered somewhere next to their weekly leader boards and top salesman photo. It stands for Always Be Closing and it’s a motto that keeps sales people laser focused on their goals. Marketing teams should have a similar motto: ABT – Always be testing. Lately I’ve had the opportunity…

  • Doing Hard Work

    There are several hard problems in computer science that seem to be getting solved in a real way. Google’s Driverless cars are perhaps the most recent example of computers taking on a challenge assumed by many to be impossible just a few years ago. And they’re doing a good job. In 2015 they will have…

  • Migrating to Amazon RDS

    I’ve been suffering from some scaling issues lately and since my system administration skills are fairly rudementary I decided to opt for Amazons RDS services for providing a MySQL server that is properly built with the appropriate block devices and automatically kept up to date by Amazon. Moving my existing database over to an Amazon…

  • Steady Growth

    I’m finally seeing some steady progress on the iPhone/iPad app side of my business.  It’s been growing for the last few months rather steadily and with the latest updates I’ve further optimized the monetization and am now making a stable cash flow. The goal I had starting out was to make $200/day which would roughly…

  • An Easy VPN on EC2

    I’ve become a little bit more paranoid over the last few weeks about computer security. I used to think I will be fine – why would anyone want to hack my computer and find my personal files. But after a bit of reading I’m more concerned about the far more likely situation of mass spying…

  • First Experience Scaling Web Apps on EC2

    Last week I had a bit of a crisis situation with my apps.  After several mornings of waking up to find the server not responsive and 700+ emails waiting in my inbox something had to be done. When starting out I leaned towards keeping the costs as low as possible.  That meant putting several virtual…