zaphod

I didn't get any special plates, I probably already look like a douchebag driving a Porsche, don't need to exacerbate the fact!

Thanks guys! Yes NimbleBit is doing pretty good

No, it's just the base model Carerra.

2013 911

Just got a crazy beefy new gaming rig and started playing Skyrim. It looks amazing and loads like lightning compared to playing it on the PS3. Unfortunately, it loves to randomly lock up my computer every 5-30 minutes of play. Pretty frustrating. Every other game performs perfectly and the temps / memory on my computer all test out ok. Hopefully 1.4 will fix this for me, I haven't had a chance to try out the beta patch on steam yet.

Nothing Zynga is doing is illegal and we aren't heartbroken, angry or feeling victimized. We just couldn't pass up an opportunity to poke fun at Zynga.

Saw this on dribbler and made me think of this thread. http://dribbble.com/shots/231428--P-for ... r&offset=5

Carve button FTW. Btw I made the original cube graphic and I'm very hurt you are replacing it

This a million times.

Thats a pretty retarded lesson to take away from it.

We buckled and are going this year after all. Look for the dudes in the NimbleBit jackets!

That is my fiance, we are getting married next year! She was sold separately, though I did ask how much I could get to trade her in.

My xmas bonus 2011 Buick LaCrosse CXS

You know you could just go independent and make you own fate and work from anywhere in the world you want, moving as often (or not) as you'd like!

It is definitely difficult enough to cull out a huge segment of potential developers. The only online store that you might be able to make the case for being pretty open is XBLIG (or whatever it is called) which is still pretty limited in terms of what you can charge or do with the game system. I think a good standard for "will a lot of crazy and sometimes legendary stuff get made by unknowns for this platform" is wether or not a high-school developer can get a game onto it. Someone without a company, resources, or business sense but with a lot of time and passion. I don't really feel like that fits consoles right now, there are too many hurdles for that type of developer to get something on PSN, XBLA or Wii Ware. There could be an argument that XBLIG is a place for exactly that kind of developer, but I don't know that much about it. I do know though that the PC / Web and Apple App Store are bursting at the seams with those kinds of developers.

You know you are getting old when you start dismissing emerging trends with the phrase "back in the day".

We have been asked to do talks but we are really lazy.

Not planning on it this year unless some unique opportunity pops up. It's too expensive for the amount of content I am actually interested in.

So are they starting to teach economics classes at game development school programs yet?

It takes a lot of discipline and constant design changes to actually keep the development time short, but we kind of see it as a fun challenge. Whenever we are brainstorming ideas for another game, the most important factor is always how we could reduce the concept down enough to be developed in 2 months or less. Also, it is pretty easy to keep it up in the long run because once you get used to releasing games every few months, you start to get really antsy when things start taking longer than that.

Yes, that is not the complication.

It would take a long assed article to really analyze all the stuff we have done and to try and figure out which things specifically were the most effective, but here are some bullet points of stuff off the top of my head: :arrow: The iPad market is still pretty small compared to the iPhone / iPod market, so it is tough to sell a lot of units there. It will grow over time though, especially every holiday season. :arrow: Try to leverage free if you can, it can be a very powerful tool, especially if your game has mass appeal. :arrow: Try to get on TA, the more your game is in the press the more chance Apple will feature you. *edit* Have a video of your game!!! :arrow: Do promotions. :arrow: Listen to feedback and make changes to your game. :arrow: If your game is a niche game, charge a niche price. :arrow: Have a great looking icon. :arrow: Make more than one game, try to gauge what worked well in each one. Experiment. :arrow: Use whatever resources you can to cut down on development time. :arrow: Don't make it perfect, polish it enough for initial release and then see what the reaction is.

I agree that ZG had a lot of untapped potential, unfortunately we were completely tapped out personally just getting it to the point it was at and we didn't have the drive to continue on with the amount of work it would have taken to explore it's full potential. I really want to set it free at some point, I just don't know when that will be exactly due to some other complications. Jumping into any market with the expectation of earning money on the first shot without building up experience in that market is probably a little foolhardy. I feel like that is what we did with Zero Gear on Steam, and I see lots of developers doing the same thing on the App Store. You can't just drop in one fishing line and then give up when you don't come up with a fish in that spot. We have made plenty of games that didn't make much money on the App Store, and have gained enough experience from all of them to have a clearer picture of what works and what doesn't on the App Store as a result. I think the days of a game just expecting to make money because it is on the market and looks nice is slowly coming to an end. There are some places where the supply of games is artificially limited like console retail and XBLA where they only release so many games a year where you can probably still ride that scarcity to steer a certain amount of people towards your product, but I actually relish the challenge of being in a giant sea of other games and having to work our asses off to get them to rise to the top. How many of the people you know making iPhone games simply toss it out there, and then are befuddled when the dollars don't start rolling in? It is a common mistake to think that since you see so many obviously crappy apps going gangbusters on the App Store, that if you just put out something of any quality at all it HAS to just rise to the top on it's own!

I have specific regrets about it, but I don't regret the entire thing. I doubt many people hit the bullseye on the first throw, but hopefully with every added effort you can inch a little closer. So mainly I regret that it took 3 years to get my first throw off .

There was a lot of things that went wrong on ZG in hindsight. We never wanted to do a console game though, in the end it probably would have been better to have made a different scope of game... probably something we had more experience in, and something that didn't rely so heavily on multiplayer and other technical factors we didn't have a lot of control over. But it was definitely a gigantic learning experience, and fun to work on for some parts of it . It gives me more perspective on what I want to do now. The iOS stuff up until recently has provided enough to make a comfortable living, but Pocket Frogs is earning enough to make a comfortable living. *edit* If there is one thing I learned most from making ZG, it is to never build too much on top of assumptions. If you are going to spend 3 years and your life savings on something, make sure it is something you have carnal knowledge of and have done before successfully.