Mediaweek highlighted WildTangent in a recent article citing massive profit gains in this downward econonmy.  People have been seeking more free games and entertainment and naturally drawing people to gaming sites.  Naturally, in difficult times, people will be seeking more value for their money.

I think this bodes very well for the indie gaming market because people are more likely to spend more time seeking quality gaming experiences for less money than using the normal channels.  Unfortunately, this also means an increase in piracy, but I believe that with the right pricing strategy, you can serve the market well and still get enough return on investment.

More than ever, it looks like the time is ripe for indies to really reap the whirlwind.  And if enough people find more meaningful experiences through their games, it could mean a whole new era of gaming, game distribution and pricing strategies.

Strike Eagle V 0.8

This certainly has been a week to test my mettle.  All sorts of crazy things have been trying to prevent me from working on the project.

A score has been created and a landing sequence has been added.  Once the score hits 10,000 points, the plane lands.  I will be changing that to just keep score until time runs out and the plane lands.  Players will be scored on how many planes they are able to shoot down in that amount of time.  Stubs were created for the MochiAds leaderboards and I’ve downloaded the API.  This is going to be close.

Next up is creating enemies for the player to shoot.

Being shot at and creating the danger of losing the game.

Updating the briefing to reflect the design changes and controls I’ve created.

Check it out!

The majority of my professional life has been spent in solving operational problems both in private and public industries.  After spending a few weeks developing my own games, I’ve come to the realization how vastly different the design and development approaches are between consulting and game development – even though I am applying the same software development methodologies.

Game development is very nebulous.  The designer has a vision and through research and development you can find the limitations of achieving that vision between the constraints of time, talent and technology.  Often, the designer will find that he has to compromise or alter his vision to meet the constraints of the solution his team can provide.  But in the end, the audience has no knowledge of what that original vision entailed and the final product can be made to appear as if it was completely and fully intended from the start.

In consulting, you find that you run into very concrete business problems that you have to solve.  And just like in game development, you can find the limitations of solving that problem between the constraints of time, talent and technology.  And compromises must be made in perspective of those limitations.  The difficult part is that the audience is fully aware that there was a compromise made and that the completed solution was not what was fully intended from the start.

Another thing is that game development tends to cater to the latest and greatest technologies.  The greater the technology, the better the ability to express the true vision of the designer.  However, consulting is usually dealing with antiquated technology and trying to stretch the uppermost limit of often antiquated technologies.

It is often asked, “Why don’t they upgrade?”  As a young developer, that was my main complaint when dealing with the Government and many of its antiquated systems.  But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I agree with the majority of CFOs and Government procurement agencies.  Why upgrade when the vast majority of users only use Word, Excel and email?  There are very few offices that need even a fraction of improvements that newer operating systems offer, much less improvements in how Word or Excel documents are created.  Then you multiply that by the hundreds and possibly tens of thousands of computers that this organization maintains, catalogs, and services.

There are massive differences between the two industries and in some ways, I’d rather deal with the pain of compromising artistic vision than compromising critical system functionality in a government system.  But nothing beats the feeling of solving a problem and making people’s lives easier and their jobs more fulfilling when you create a system that not only works, but is a joy to use.