Hello 2010! Every time someone mentions that it’s 2010 to me, I can’t help but thing “2010…but that’s the future!” According to Arthur C. Clarke we were supposed to be sending manned missions to Jupiter by this point. Besides, it just sounds like the future!

At any rate, since it’s the first day back at work after the holidays, I thought I’d take the time to write up a post looking back at 2009 and looking forward to what’s coming up in 2010. I know…big surprise, right? 😉

First, let’s take a look back at what 2009 held for Streaming Colour Studios:

Dapple

In February, I released my first game as Streaming Colour Studios called Dapple for the iPhone and iPod touch. The game has had several updates made to it over the year and I was extremely pleased with how the game turned out. The game was received very positively by the game critic community. It didn’t sell as well as I had hoped it would, but I learned some hard and valuable lessons about the importance of marketing a product. One bit of nice news is that the game continues to sell a few copies a day nearly a year after its initial release, so that makes me happy. After nearly a year of sales, and a lot of perspective, I can honestly say that I think Dapple did well considering it was my first game.

Dapple Lite

In March I released a free version of Dapple that let players play 3 levels of the game and try it out. I believe that it helped sell a lot of copies of Dapple over the months, especially when the price of the game was over $1.99. At $1.99 and below, I question how much the lite version helps. I think at that price point a lot of purchases are impulse buys and having a free version available might actually take sales away from the full version. However, I don’t have enough data available to draw any real conclusions from this; it’s just a hypothesis.

360iDev

In March I gave a talk at the first 360iDev conference in San Jose. I gave a talk on the processes and lessons I learned in creating Dapple. I think the talk was well received. The conference was amazing and was one of the best conferences I have ever attended.

App Treasures

At 360iDev, myself and a few other devs started talking about ways for indie developers to get more noticed and for ways to cross-promote our games. We started looking at what publishers do, but we didn’t like the limitations that working with a publisher can place on you. We decided to form an independent games label called App Treasures. Since its formation, we have grown to include 8 top independent developers and 20 games.

WWDC

I was lucky enough to be able to attend WWDC this year. What an experience that was! I learned an incredible amount in the sessions and I met really amazing people at the parties. My wife and I then spent a week in San Francisco after the conference on vacation. I have to say, San Francisco is probably my favourite city I’ve been to in the U.S.

Mobile Developers and Designers of Toronto

Early in the year I decided that Toronto needed a meet-up for iPhone developers. I set a date and discovered that another local developer, James Eberhardt had had the same idea and called a meeting for the same night! We decided to roll the two meetings together into one bigger group that wasn’t iPhone focused, but rather mobile development focused. While I was in Toronto I really enjoyed being a part of that community.

Guelph

In September my wife and I moved from Toronto to Guelph (a small city about an hour West of Toronto). Since I work out of my home, that meant that the business moved too. I still try to remain in contact with the Toronto dev community, but I’ve been trying to get a south-western Ontario developer meet-up going. The problem is that there are a lot fewer of us outside of Toronto. 🙂

A Chapter

Earlier in the year I was approached by Apress and asked if I’d be willing to write a chapter for one of their new iPhone books. I said I would, and I wrote a chapter called “You Go Squish Now! Debugging on the iPhone” which appeared in their “Advanced iPhone Projects” book. It was fun to write the chapter, and now I can add “author” to my list of credentials. 😉

Monkeys in Space

Finally, at the end of November I released my second game: Monkeys in Space: Escape to Banana Base Alpha. With my second game I tried to learn from a lot of my mistakes made around the Dapple launch and marketing strategy. I also tried to create a game that was much more accessible. I think I succeeded in creating a game that was much more easily played, but still had some depth to it. However, although I learned a lot on the marketing side of things, I still made one critical error: I accidentally released the game on American Thanksgiving. It was an honest mistake; it didn’t even occur to me that that’s what the date was. However, when I started sending out press releases, I started getting back “out of office” replies from review sites. Couple that with the fact that what seemed like 90% of the games on the App Store had a Black Friday sale, and the whole thing derailed my marketing plan.

However, what seemed at first like a failed launch had a turn-around. Good reviews started coming out for the game in the week following Thanksgiving. One of the big turning points was the Touch Arcade review of the game. Getting on the front page of Touch Arcade gave me a two day sales spike akin to being featured on the App Store! Then a week before Christmas, the game showed up in the Games -> What’s Hot lists on app stores around the world. The first week of being featured was great and helped boost the game’s rank in a lot of different countries. Because it wasn’t a front page feature, the boost wasn’t enough to get me into any Top Games or Top Paid Apps lists, but it was still great to see.

So I think it’s safe to say that 2009 ended on a high note for Streaming Colour Studios. 2009 was certainly an exciting year for my company, and for me personally. Running my own business has proven to be an extremely rewarding, and challenging, experience.

What’s coming up for 2010?

360iDev

I missed the second conference in Denver because I was moving, but I’ll be in San Jose in April for the 3rd 360iDev conference, dagnabit! I’ll be giving another talk, and this one might be a little crazy. It’s called “Improv Prototyping” and I’ll be attempting to code a game prototype on stage based on audience suggestions…in one hour. I will also, at the same time, talk about the processes I use in my own games for rapid prototyping. If you can make it to San Jose in April, it’s going to be an incredible conference. 360 Conferences runs an amazing show and their prices are ridiculously low given the quality and quantity of presenters. And if you book soon, the prices are lower than if you book later. So go book a ticket!

Monkeys in Space

I do have some more level updates planned for Monkeys in Space, so stay tuned for more news on that.

More Games

My book of game ideas is bursting at the seams. In 2010 I’m looking at putting out at least 2 more games, and hopefully more. I have a bunch of small game ideas I’d like to build, but I’ve also been thinking about a much bigger game concept that I’d like to get to at some point. We’ll see if 2010 is the right year for that or not. I’ll still be doing iPhone stuff, but I’ve been thinking about taking on another platform or two. We’ll have to see things go.

South-Western Ontario iPhone Dev Meet-Up

I would really like to get a dev meet-up going for Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo, Cambridge, London going. If you’re a local developer and are interested in meeting up once every month or two, please send me an email and let me know: info@streamingcolour.com

It looks like 2010 is going to be another exciting year for me and Streaming Colour Studios. Here’s hoping it’s a great year for us all!

Owen