Game Jam The Documentary

Darc Productions, has set out to make a documentary about game jams. The folks at Darc have been so blown away by the magic of game jams (like TOJam) they have decided to take their love to the next level.

Watch the trailer:

They’re looking for funding on IndieGoGo, and they only have 10 days to reach their goal – go help them out!

From their IndieGoGo project page:

I always tell people that game jams are like sweat lodges for game developers but, truth be told, the experience is different for every single jammer. I can never truly convey the experience of a game jam with words. It really is a momentous thing that one needs to experience to fully comprehend. My hope is to capture the essence of that experience in this documentary, to open strangers minds to the positivity, creativity & passion of game developers, and reveal what a community can achieve in a single weekend of collaboration.
I could make this film locally and tell the tale of the gaming community in Toronto, but that really isn’t telling the story of game jams. For an accurate portrayal of game jams, jammers around the world need to have their voices heard in this film.



February 20th, 2012 by Adam

An Introduction for Designing for the Web

This is a presentation I gave as an intro to designing for the web. Like all presentations I do, this one is written to be fleshed out verbally so if you’re just reading the slides you’ll be missing a lot.

This is online for some students who missed the presentation.

The presentation goes over how to write for an online audience and design the layout of your site to reflect online patterns. The presentation ends with a look at user flow, in class we mapped out an example user flow that is not covered here. One more thing that isn’t covered is our look at A/B testing.

Designing for the web
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February 17th, 2012 by Adam

The Success of Temple Run as Seen by the Creators

Venture Beat has a great interview with the creators of Temple Run which has become a run away success on the App Store (so punny!). The interview is a good luck into a small company(Imangi Studio) that made a well performing game, like most things, it seems there’s a lot to be said for persevering and learning from failure.

Worth a read if you’re thinking of making a game for any mobile app store.

GB: Temple Run came out in August of last year. Did it take off right away? How did making it Free affect downloads? What do you attribute the current success to?

It definitely took Temple Run a while to gain momentum. When it first came out as a paid app in August, Temple Run got rave reviews from players and critics and went to about the No. 50 Paid App. It was definitely an amazing launch. However, after a couple of weeks in the Top 100, it started sliding down – the normal launch curve. At that point we decided to go free and see if we can (sic) make up the revenue in in-app purchase. It turned out to be a pretty great decision. It went to No. 2 Top Free App when it first went free, and after a few days settled at around No. 100 Top Free App.

Right before we switched it to free in September, we had a couple hundred downloads/day at 99 cents, with some in-app purchase sales. After switching it to free and settling at No. 100 Top Free app, we had about 50,000 daily downloads, and a whole lot more in-app purchases. In fact, revenue went up 10x immediately upon switching to free, so keeping it free was a no brainer.

After that, our daily users kept growing, downloads kept growing, and Temple Run was slowly rising up the charts. It finally hit No. 1 Top Free app on December 28, and has been No. 1 or No. 2 for the past month. At this point, we’re getting around 500,000 downloads/day. Revenue has also increased, with Temple Run becoming the No. 1 Top Grossing app on January 7 and staying at No. 1 or No. 2 ever since.

Read the full interview.



February 16th, 2012 by Adam

How Your Brain Knows Your Location

WHen I saw the title of the talk How your brain tells you where you are by Neil Burgess I thought ‘hey, I wonder how this applies to video games?’. It turns out they use game engines with 3D virtual environments to test how humans figure out where they are. It’s cool how GPS-enabled mobiles work so similarly to the brain’s location system.



February 13th, 2012 by Adam

Introduction to Games for Educators

Yesterday I gave this presentation to the participants of Web.Alive Genesis and people were asking where they could access the slides I made, here they are!

The presentation is an overview of what sorts of games are being played and the variety of styles of games on the market. With that in mind, the next part is looking at how and why games are educational

I tend to keep my slides sparse so people pay attention to what I’m saying rather than reading the screen; my apologies if some points in the presentation aren’t clear as a result.

Web Genesis Presentation
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February 10th, 2012 by Adam
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