Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category
Two Years
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
I was just talking to someone about when I started Streaming Colour and suddenly realized that today is my two year anniversary since embarking on this indie adventure! It has been an exciting two years with lots of highs and lows, but one thing has remained clear: I have the best job in the world. I love making games, and I love that I’m alive during a time when that is possible to do as “work”.
Thank you to everyone who bought one of my games over the last two years; you’re awesome. And a big thank you to the indie iPhone and indie games community for all the inspiration and support. I’m honoured to be part of this community, and I look forward to being a part of it for years to come.
Owen
Launch Week Summary
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
What an exciting week last week was! LandFormer finally launched, I was lucky enough to get some great press, Apple featured the game, then on Friday Gizmodo mentioned the game in their “This Week’s Best Apps” article! You can read all the latest reviews of the game on the Press page.
I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better launch for the game. Thanks again to everyone who tweeted about it, who emailed their friends and told them to get it, who left a review in the store, or who posted about it on their blog. I appreciate all the help. Once again I am reminded of how awesome the indie community is, and how supportive developers are of each other.
Between the press and the Apple feature, LandFormer made it all the way up to the #122 Free App in the App Store over the weekend. This far exceeded my expectations for the game. In Canada, the game made it all the way up to the #57 Free App.
I’ve been absolutely thrilled with the reception so far, and I’m starting work this week on the first update to the game. I’ll also be starting work on some requested level packs and themes soon. Lots of people have been asking about an iPad version of the game. At this point, it’s definitely something I’m looking at seriously.
In other news, Southern Ontario is in the grips of a ridiculous heat wave this week. The forecast is calling for a high of 33C (91F) in Guelph today with a humidex (i.e. a “feels like” temperature) of about 44C (111F). I’m starting to wish I had air conditioning. I’m thinking I might try to find refuge in a cooled coffee shop this afternoon …
Oh, and one more thing: I missed posting to the blog yesterday, so I’ve been ousted from iDevBlogADay for the time being. I’m still going to keep the sidebar links active, as I want to continue to support the effort. I’ve been added to the end of the waiting list, so I’ll be back eventually.
Owen
My First GDC
Friday, March 19th, 2010

I returned home from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) nearly a week ago, but I feel like it has taken me this long to be able to recover from the late nights, the jetlag, the cold I caught, and put things into perspective. I thought I’d share a summary of my experience there, for those who are thinking of maybe going next year.
Executive Summary: SO AWESOME!!!
GDC is held every year in San Francisco. I’ve been in the games industry for over 6 years now, but this was my first time at the conference, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I managed to get an All Access Pass to the conference, so I was there for the summits and tutorials, as well as the main conference.
Let me back up a little and talk about my reasoning for going, as that will help you understand why the conference was so valuable to me. At the beginning of the year I started thinking about what conferences I wanted to attend. 360iDev was a must-attend for me, so I booked that first. However, I was torn between attending WWDC (Apple’s big annual conference) or GDC. I attended WWDC last year and it was great. But this year I felt like what I really needed was general game design inspiration, and less Apple-specific technical inspiration. With that in mind, I chose GDC. My goal for the conference was to focus mainly on game design sessions and take in a few technical and business sessions.
So, I arrived in San Francisco Monday, March 8th, the day before the Summits started. I managed to meet up with a bunch of iPhone devs I know from Toronto, other conferences, or Twitter. We had a few beers and tried to adjust to west coast time. It was a good way to ease myself into the week.
Tuesday and Wednesday were the Summit & Tutorial days at GDC. There were two summits I was interested in: the iPhone Summit, and the Independent Games Summit (IGS). I think I spent about 60% of my time at the IGS and about 40% at the iPhone Summit. I saw some great technical iPhone talks by Noel Llopis from SnappyTouch and Phil Hassey from Galcon. I also saw some great IGS talks that ranged in topic from managing an independent game studio’s creative process, to how to better design indie games. I saw a session by Ron Carmel from 2D Boy, several awesome sessions by the people at thatgamecompany (Flower is one of my favourite games), and a terrific session by Randy Smith from Tiger Style (among so many others!). By the end of the Summits, my head was already spinning with inspiration. The IGS design talks in particular were extremely motivating for me. Getting a chance to meet and hear amazing indie game designers/developers talk about their processes was fantastic. It started me thinking about a lot of things as they relate to my own processes. More on that later…

A tiny segment of the massive GDC Expo

The IGF Awards
Thursday through Saturday were the main conference, expo, and Independent Games Festival Awards. I sat in session after amazing session listening to industry leaders in game design, technical development, and business talk about their processes. I saw Peter Molyneux talk, Sid Meier talk, and even Will Wright talk. I saw a moving and inspirational talk by Brenda Brathwaite on her exploration into board games with serious themes. I saw a head-ache inducing (in a good way!) talk on PixelJunk Shooter’s real-time fluid dynamics system that made me really miss doing PS3 SPU programming. I saw an in-depth and honest look a the successes and problems encountered by Naughty Dog’s attempts to create an active cinematic experience for Uncharted 2. I was blown away by the quality of the content, and I was left reeling by how the talks started forcing me to think about the direction I want to take with my own games.

There were huge crowds in the halls between sessions!
But of course, the sessions are only part of GDC. The other part comes from meetings and parties. I was able to set up a few meetings with iPhone press to show them my new game. That was really great to be able to demo the game in person. I think it was extremely valuable. Then each night there were countless parties happening. Each party was a great chance to meet people in person who I’ve only communicated with on twitter or via email. It was a chance to discuss iPhone development with other people going through the same thing as me. It was a chance to discuss game design in general with other game designers and developers. It was a chance to have fun with people who share in the same daily challenges that I do.

Will Wright giving his presentation!
For me, I got out of GDC exactly what I wanted: design inspiration, new friends, new business connections and a wealth of knowledge. But perhaps most importantly, GDC helped me to put me back on track with where I want to take my games. When I decided to go indie in 2008, it was because I wanted to make the games that I was compelled to make. What I’ve noticed is that I’ve been making more and more design decisions lately based on what I think will sell well. This isn’t how I want to make games. I want to make the games that I have to make, not that I think I should make because I think it might make some money, even though the idea doesn’t excite me. Granted, I would love to be able to make the games that I feel compelled to make and have them also become a financial success. And obviously I can’t ignore the fact that I’m running a business. But GDC helped to remind me of what I want my priorities to be, and that, to me, is the most important part of having gone.
Owen
GDC, 360iDev, and More
Friday, February 19th, 2010
It has been quite a while since my last post. I would have been posting, but I’ve been doing some contract work, so I haven’t had a lot of my own news to talk about. I’ve also been doing my year-end bookkeeping, and as exciting as that is, I’m not sure anyone wants to read about my adventures in recording business receipts from 2009.
However, over the last few days I’ve been returning to my own projects and getting back into the swing of things. As you might recall, I took part (remotely) in September’s 360iDev Game Jam night and created a prototype for a puzzle game idea I had. I’m happy to report that I’ve been developing that idea further and it’s coming along nicely. The game now looks very different from the screenshot I posted on Touch Arcade, by the way. As for a preliminary look at what the game is becoming, I might have something to show early next week, so keep an eye out for that!
Yesterday I decided to rewrite the rendering part of my engine to take advantage of a bunch of optimizations I had been putting off making. It turns out that the changes I made over the last day reduced my render time by about 40%! That means that I can render nearly double the sprites on the screen without dropping my framerate. This is great news, and I’m looking at porting the changes back into Monkeys in Space at some point to help out with that game’s performance.
In other news, I thought I’d mention that I’ve decided to attend two conferences this spring: the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March and 360iDev in April. I’m looking forward to both conferences, but I’m especially excited about GDC as I’ve been in the games industry for over 6 years now, but I’ve never gone to GDC! I’m really excited to get a chance to finally go and see what all the fuss is about. I’m also looking forward to attending sessions on game design that are more broad than just iPhone games.
That being said, I’m also happy to be attending 360iDev again. It will be great to see the iPhone developers I speak with every day on twitter in person again. Last year I had a fantastic time at the conference and I expect no less this time. I’ll also be speaking at 360iDev. For my presentation I will attempt to create an iPhone game prototype in 80 minutes based on audience suggestions. While doing that, I’ll be highlighting some of my best practices for rapid prototyping. If you’re attending the conference, I hope you’ll check it out. If you’re not attending the conference, why not? Check out this amazing schedule of speakers. And if you’re thinking about it, go register!
Owen
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