Matt Warren

Category: Advice

  • The Great App Challenge of 2013

    UFO Invader version 2.0 is submitted to the iTunes App Store for review.  It should be published in about a week.

    That marks the first app for what I’m calling the Great App Challenge of 2013.  The goal is to release 20-25 Apps this year between myself and Colum.  That’s one app every 2 weeks!

    The second game is called Air Barons and should be ready to submit tonight or tomorrow.  It is essentially the same game as UFO Invader except all the art assets have been replaced and we’ve managed to add a few new animations and effects to give the game a bit more life.

    The strategy for the Great App Challenge of 2013 is to iteratively improve the on 3 different game platforms focusing on one key feature to implement for each new game.  No doubt that most of the effort will be going into creating the art assets for all these games but by the end of the year we should have streamlined our production of new games to the point where both myself and Colum have a tremendous amount of experience creating and releasing some fun games.

    When successful,  these games will cross promote each other to build an even bigger audience.  It shouldn’t be hard to have all these games generating a healthy second income for both of us by the end of the year.

    Game #3 is going to be an 8 bit space fighter again based on the UFO Invader code.  It will feature a new tile based parallax background and the layout of coins in the game will be designed rather than randomly generated.   Target completion date for that game is February 20th.

  • Hiking to the inkpots

    20130203-180028.jpg

    We’re spending a night in banff and we went on a 5 hour hike along a river and then into the mountains to some interesting coloured springs.

  • Bone Spur

    So looks like I have a small bone spur on my heel. not a big deal, but glad I know now what to do about it.

    For the next month I’ll be doing a lot of stretches and icing it. Hopefully that will get things back to normal and I can start running more often.

  • New Living Room

    We made some design changes to the living room over the last while. Painted the walls and put up curtains.

    Before:
    IMG_20121215_113354

    After:
    IMG_20121220_180858

  • Tree up

    image

  • Learning from Games

    For the past few weeks I have been playing a lot of games and trying to learn a few things about how to make better ones.

    I’ve been dissecting games like Simpsons Tap Out, Pocket Planes, Skylanders, Paradise Cove and DragonVale. And it’s been very educational. Besides learning about what makes them tick technically I have also put some effort into reverse engineering the game play elements and reducing them to the core game mechanics.

    When coming from a perspective of how to program one of these types of games myself there are a lot of questions that come up. Every small detail requires work to program so it has to be justified.

    One of the surprising things I’ve been learning from playing these games is actually more of a real life lesson. The value of investing revenue producing assets.

    In an effort to get up through the game levels as quickly as possible and unlock everything to learn more about these games I have had to strategize and play them as best as I can. Optimizing cash flow is a big part of these games and it’s been re-affirming a key idea which is just how important it is to have a multitude of ways to make a steady flow of income. It is quite amazing to see how quickly money accumulates.

    My real-life comparison is with the apps that I’ve been making. Each app that I publish is a small asset that I have to invest time into which then will make a small amount back each month. In many ways it’s a lot like building a house or store in these games. The importance of these assets in the game is obvious, real-life is a lot more complex, but I believe the payback is still there.

  • Winter Bike Riding

    So I decided that rather than paying for driving/parking to get to work this winter I am going to bike.

    I picked up a cheap bike from canadian tire last night that should be able to survive the -30 degree temperatures outside and should be sturdy enough to not break down on the 6KM ride each way to the office.

    It’s a fixed gear urban bike with disc brakes. The rims are pretty beefy and it should hold up to a lot of pounding.

     

    It’ll be nice to be back on a casual bike again.  I can start brushing up on all the tricks I learned growing up.

    This is how I plan on getting to work:

     

  • Winterstart Banff Run

    Last night Heather and I went to Banff for a night run.

    It was a pretty enjoyable event that we’ll be sure to do again next year.  The race was packed with 2000 runners all done up with glow sticks and head lamps running in the dark.  To cap it off the after run party was sponsored by Big Rock Brewery with free beer!

  • 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 somewhere else.  The second thing is that as a society we increasingly seek out things that give us positive and continual feedback.  Once the expectation of rewards for your actions has been created, it’s difficult to remove those rewards.  As gamification spreads over more industries those businesses without gamified experiences will potentially suffer.

    Humans are quickly transitioning to a gaming culture.  I grew up in the age of Mario Bros. and the current kids will grow up with a near infinite selection of games on their phone and at home on their big screen.  We are becoming accustomed to the way points systems, leader boards and badges work so that when we see them you don’t need to explain these concepts.  People just get it.

    Games provide a very interesting and addictive feedback mechanism that triggers all the right spots in your brain to keep you engaged and make you feel good.  Bringing that level of engagement to non-games has a lot of potential to get your users more loyal to your product or service.

    I’m finding these ideas intriguing enough to start thinking about how to apply some of these ideas to the things I work on.

    For more information check out this Google Tech Talk: