Matt Warren

Category: Entrepreneurship

Founder journey, startup lessons, and business strategy

  • Bitcoin

    Bitcoin has been in the news a lot lately and I’ve finally got into the game with a small investment to play with.

    Bitcoin is a new form of currency  which is technically quite ingenius but from an economic standpoint is quite unstable.  It’s basically a digital, anonymous, peer supported replacement of cash.  Each transaction is confirmed by others participating in the bitcoin network so that fraudulent coins are not spent, and money isn’t spent twice.

    The value of each bitcoin has soared over the last 2 months from $30 to over $200 per bitcoin.

    The way new bitcoins are created is through an algorithm called ‘mining’.  It’s designed to grow the number of coins linearly regardless of how much computer power is mining or how many are being used.

    This is ultimately the biggest problem with the currency.  Lack of control over the supply means that the price of it is dependant on demand on currency exchanges.  The price of a bitcoin is skyrocketing because recent news coverage has created an exponential increase in people wanting to buy some while the supply of new coins can’t meet that demand.

    Markets are fickle things, especially when untrained non-sophisticated traders are working the markets.  Quick emotional reactions will at some point result in a crash.

    If you were using bitcoins right now to do business you’d be having massive deflation effects.  The value of the bitcoins you have would be going up and therefore anything with a fixed price is becoming more expensive in hard currency.  If you were paying your employees in bitcoin then over the last 2 months your business expenses would have increased by 7x.

    In Canada the Bank of Canada’s main job is to manage inflation.  Steady inflation is what allows us take loans and expect to be able to pay them off, to hire workers at a set wage, to set product prices and have them maintain the same price day to day.  The controls over inflation don’t exist in bitcoin so the risk is quite high.

    I’m not sure where it will go in the future.  Will bitcoins hit $1000 each?  it’s possible. $10,000? maybe.  It will for sure be a bumpy road though.

  • Successful Game Launch

    mzl.jwnecmma.175x175-75Colum’s and my work on the release of Air Barons has found tremendous success!  This is a re-skin of UFO Invader with rendered 3d model graphics of WWII era planes done by the talented Colum Furey.

    The initial response to the game has surpassed all expectations and it has been earning a very respectable income from advertisements in it’s first week.

    The strategy of trying to release 20+ new games this year is somewhat validated even at this early stage.  And if this success can be matched by the next few releases then it will not take long to significantly increase both of our disposable incomes to put towards a pair of Maserati’s.

     

  • UFO Invader Fun Facts

    Since launching the game in September 2011.

    27,049 Users have played started the game 107,276 times.

    They’ve played 501,609 games.  Purchased 3,103 continues, and 4,719 upgrades.

    Players have spent real money 468 times to buy in the game currency.

    The average length of time someone plays the game for is 5.8 minutes.

    34% of players are in the USA.

    24% of players are in China.

  • UFO Invader Update Coming

    main menu mockup

    The first game I did for iPhone was released back in 2011. Seems like eons ago. The game hasn’t been updated, or promoted since that initial release and yet there are still an average of 100 people playing it every day.

    I’m working with Colum on a strategy to launch a bunch of new games over the next several months starting with an update to the code for UFO Invader.

    The new update will include many of the things I’ve learned in the last 15 months from selling my apps on the store. It should be able to improve monetization, make the game more fun, and I’ll be adding a bunch of new upgrades to the game so that players have new things to collect and buy with the in game currency.

    Much of the weekend was spent just getting the app to compile again. Now that it’s running again on my iPad there’s a lot of graphics work to do to get the app working with all the retina devices that have come out since it was originally released.

    I’m excited to see how this game update does and then to move on to creating a bunch of new games in the coming months to hopefully re-launch the Halotis brand.

  • Foot X-Ray

    It’s long overdue but I finally accepted that I can’t fix my bum ankle problem without seeing someone about it. It’s an old injury from doing a half-marathon on not enough training. I went to see a foot specialist in late December and got a referral to get an x-ray done on my foot. It’s the first time I’ve seen a doctor for anything in over a decade and the first time I’ve had to go to a hospital (for the x-ray) since I was a kid.

    The followup is next week and I’m curious to find out what might be going on under the skin. Hopefully something can be done.

  • App Business Milestone

    With the recent addition of a new advertising platform for my apps the last few days have tipped the business passed a small milestone of having a $50 day. Even though it’s just a seasonal spike from all the advertising prices raising due to the holidays it’s still nice.

    Across all my apps there are now roughly 250,000+ sessions per month (# of times the app gets started)

  • A Productive Christmas Break?

    There’s just so much work to be done that I’m really going to have to strive for a very productive month of programming.

    I need to update all my apps for the new year and hopefully launch a few new ones.

    To that end I’m planning on taking some more time off work over the next couple weeks and months to push through some coding projects.

    In the pipeline now are one new website, a redesign of another website, update 7 of my iPhone Apps with improvements aimed at increasing retention and ad revenue, and making a lot of progress on my big social game.

    The social game is what has been on my mind the most and I have very high hopes that it is going to be amazing when finished. I expect I will have to hire some artists in March to help bring a level of polish I haven’t yet been able to achieve on my own.

    Will it be possible to have a productive Christmas break or will there be too many distractions?

  • Progress on New Game

    So the new game is going to be called Tycho City. It’s based on building a lunar base and battling other bases for the moon’s valuable resources. There’s a mix of two styles of gameplay the first is the simulation of the moon base with building and upgrading mines and energy collectors. The second is a defence game where you attack other bases by landing your troops/robots and taking on their defences.

    Unlike my previous games this time I’m taking some good advice and modeling other successful games. Rather than try to invent something brand new I am going to try to put my spin on a popular and profitable game concept.

    One thing about this type of game is just how much data there is to manage.

    This game will be heavily dependant on web servers to deliver almost everything. All of the costs, upgrade paths, graphics, assets, music, rules, build times, and store menus will be defined and controlled from my web backend. It will allow us to dynamically update and tweak the game play to optimize things after it’s released and keep it fresh with new content. But it’s a lot of Data. And that’s just on the static side of things. The server will also keep and save the game state of every player’s game in real-time.

    Organizing all of this information in a way that is going to be easy to understand and work with is not easy. But it’s a fun challenge.

    This game is going to take several more months to finish. But it’s going to be my best chance of getting a major hit.

  • Virility

    Having a game that naturally promotes itself is a challenge. The old techniques of tweeting your score or sharing the app on facebook are not enough to make something popular or have it go viral. The mechanic to make something go viral has to be much more deeply integrated.

    The virility of games like Draw Something was astounding, but it was also a natural extension of the type of gameplay. In order to play you needed to get your friends in the game. It’s growth was astounding because of that.

    I started to dissect another popular game recently called Clash Of Clans made by SuperCell which takes things to a new level. The live in game chat and team gameplay create a fascinating dynamic that works extremely well on a mobile device.

    It’s clear that the bar has been raised. Creating a top game now requires a complex server side backend, a massive amount of content, depth of gameplay which can attract new players but keep existing ones playing for a long time and a polished high quality look.

    Thinking now about creating a great game to be released in 6 months is a real challenge. How much more complexity will be expected by then?

    The added complexity of making a game naturally viral rather than tacking on twitter and facebook buttons is hard. It requires thought about how to change the game mechanics to work these things into the core of the game. Making games that are inherently social will be a fun challenge for game designers. A challenge I’m looking forward to.

  • 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 a significant number of cars on the road. The economics and convenience of self-driving cars is so compelling that is shouldn’t take long for the technology to make it into consumer’s hands. By 2040 few people will have a drivers license.

    Computers are increasingly taking on even more of the hard work done by humans. This effect has been blamed for the slower than expected recovery in jobs from the recession — companies are making money, they are buying equipment, but they are not hiring at the same rates seen in historical recoveries.

    In the tech industry we have the job of developing these difficult solutions. Better robots, faster searching, more accurate voice recognition, more convenient payment methods etc. For the foreseeable future there is plenty of hard work to be done.

    Something is happening right now in the PC industry which will be echoed in a few years in all of these technology areas. Giant powerful home PCs are becoming irrelevant. The fast computer you bought 4 years ago is still perfectly adequate today for getting what you need done. There’s little need then for more ram, more cores, or more drive space. The technology has become “good enough” and as a result innovation has stalled out as customers have dried up.

    Expand that “good enough” concept to other technologies… phones, robots, cars etc. and things may become grim as demand for replacing usable products for something better diminishes.

    It is the reason why I think it is more important now than ever to work even harder to get yourself ahead. Produce something new, create an impact, and try to create your legacy for this world. With each passing day technology gets better at what you do to make a living. I’m working hard to make sure I’m financially and personally secure by the time the computers catch up.

    It’s going to be hard.