Category: Entrepreneurship

With the launch of the new design for this site we have also taken a new tack on the strategy going forward for future development of products and features.  The backend services that currently have been built for Halotis iOS Apps will be re-built so that others can benefit from the work done.  Where appropriate the source code will be open sourced and in other cases Halotis will launch and run some web services so that you don’t have to deal with the servers and infrastructure required to run them yourself.

The new direction will aim us at creating services that enable real social integration for mobile games. Creating a social game requires more than just slapping a share my score button, it needs to be tightly integrated into the core experience.  This is achieved through team building, communication tools, interactions that players can have on each others’ game state. Halotis will be creating a series of simple to integrate services to power this kind of social gameplay.  We want all games to be better.

Halotis is in the process of a pivot. We’re re-writing all of the software developed for the backend of our mobile apps so that they can be opened up for anyone to use. We will be offering a host of BaaS style applications to make mobile development easier, more social and hopefully raise the bar for what individual developers can accomplish.

Imagine individual developers able to launch in game chat features like that in Clash of Clans. Or provide social networks to tie players together.  We have tools for monitoring analytics, and providing game config files dynamically, for pushing ads and sending notifications.

It will take some time, but progress is being made to launch a host of services.

We’re excited for this change and to see where things go in the future.

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.

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.

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?