Joseph Burchett

As I had stated in a previous posted I made, I am the organizer of a game development meetup in the Sacramento area, and well…   It turned out amazingly well!  The whole event was hosted and catered by an a truly awesome Sacramento social gaming company called Klicknation, best known for the creation of Super Hero City on Facebook.  Not everyone in the entire world could be there to see the awesomeness that is Klicknation but luckily lots of media was taken for your viewing pleasure!  First up we have a lovely slide show of all the images taken from the meetup, enjoy

This first video was basically the introduction for everything that was going to happen at the meetup… Sadly the camera was positioned underneath some sort of vent or something, so it was really hard to hear what was going on in the first 15 minutes, sorry about that.  It’s still good stuff, you get to hear the CEO of KlickNation; Mark Otero and his partner discuss the origins of the company and how they got to where they currently are now.

In this next video Mark gives an awesome presentation showing off the features of their new game along with a short demo (amazing stuff!).

Then Aaron Nemoyten the product manager of Superhero City gives a great presentation on Superhero City. He talks about it’s creation, where it’s going and much more!

Then to finish it off the Klicknation crew open up to some Q&A, were they answer a ton of questions.  Sadly due to the distance of the camera and the lighting it’s a bit hard to see and hear what everyone was asking, still great though.

After a long night of Klicknation I very gracefully finished the night off with my presentation on using the Flash platform for mobile game development… Sadly the battery went out on the camera about halfway through my talk, so things had to be cut short. Oh well, at least you get to see me make a fool of myself for the first 25 minutes

Well that was the meetup, all and all id say it turned out to be pretty darn good.  Well Over 70 rsvp’ed and from the looks of it probably 30 or so showed up, which I think is a pretty great turn around.  It was really nice to see all of the game development talent in Sacramento, and hopefully with more of these meetings it will allow for the game development community to really develop and make Sacramento a hot spot for game development like it is in the Bay area.  I mean we are like two hours away from San Fransisco!  So close, yet so far away.

Sorry once again for the audio/video quality, was the first time I actually did video and what not for a meetup…  Next time should be much better

Go to 8bitfeed.com to watch my very first video interview, I discuss ways to get into the Flash based web industry and my thoughts on how to get into the Flash game industry and the game industry in general. Apologies for the odd eye blinking and my constant looking down… I couldn’t wear my glasses because of the glare, I am blind as a Bat without them! Anyways, I hope you all enjoy and find it all very informative.

Also make sure to check out all the other videos, articles and features at 8bitfeed.com, great web site for anything tech related!

http://8bitfeed.com/2009/10/joseph-burchett-interview/

Although the game isn’t really out of beta yet I thought id talk a it about a really nice little flash game that a fellow Flash developer of mine has been working on. The flash game is called Polyn, which can be found at http://playpolyn.com/, it’s a very cute little and very much educational game, where you play as a little bee that pollinates words that you have created by clicking on different letters. But you know… It probably be best to just really break it all down, so lets get right to it!

After playing the game it seems rather clear that the purpose of this game was to help teach a much younger audience how to create words. So assuming that was the purpose I tested the game out on my 9 year old sister, things didn’t go as well as I thought they would. In the opening screen of the game you are presented with three choices for the game difficulty… That was clear enough for her, she just choice easy. But then once she got right into the game she seemed pretty lost into what she had to do.

When the game play begins you are presented with a large list of letters that you have to pick from, you are then suppose to click on a few letters until you create a word. I had to point out to her that this was indeed what you had to do. After she started creating a few more words, she began to enjoy it, but then she encountered a mistake! She was very unclear on how to remove the letter, being there was nothing clearly marked showing how to do so. I then showed her that she had to click on it to remove it, and yeah.

As all of this was happening at the top a small horizontal bar of what looked to be honey was slowly going down, so basically you were being timed to see how many words you could create with in a certain amount of time, which I thought was a nice way to progress the game. After the timer had run out she then put in her name into a score board so she could be compared against others. That was a pretty clever idea to incorporate competition into this sort of game, keeps it fun.

What I would say would probably be the best way to make these types of games very clear is to embed the tutorial into the game play, so that it teaches you how to play as you go. It may be a lot more work and effort, but this way the user doesn’t have to wave through the “how to” (most people won’t, especially with web games they just want to play, not read how to play). The first time I booted up the game the first thing I did was click “easy” and tried to start playing, clueless with in the first few seconds I immediately closed the game. So if you can make your game easier to understand right on start up then you will pull the person in a lot faster and keep their attention.

When I tried to press the “Esc” key to make an option screen pop up nothing happen. Always want to have some sort of option screen. The user needs some way of going back to the main screen, adjusting the quality, or just pausing the game. I wouldn’t say all of these are essential but it would really help to be able to go back to the main screen and change the difficulty.

As for the game play itself, I found it to be pretty fun, very relaxing and simple. Create the words, click the bee and he flies around all happy and eliminates the words I just used, it put a nice little smile on my face like I had just accomplished something. Although I did find it a bit odd when I started putting in words like “we” and it did not recognize it… But when I put in words like “mes” it did, id assume it’s because it’s all still just buggy considering it’s in beta.

The graphics are very colorful, and very appealing! Love the cheerful music to, as soon as the game started up it caught my attention! Not enough flash games have animations, it really makes things stick out! I like how the bee flies around and sparkles follow him when he pollinates the flowers and all that good stuff.

The controls were pretty responsive, and straight forward for this type of game… You just move the mouse over and click on a letter or button on the screen… Nothing really to complex, pretty to the point. Would like to point out a few bugs though… For one when I clicked on the “hard” difficulty every once in a while two bees would just show up and float around. Also after the game is over and you are asked to “pollinate again” clicking that button actually locked up both of my browsers! Latest FireFox and IE8, I am on Vista Home edition… Don’t think that matters, but that was a big one.

All and all id say the game is pretty nice! Needs a bit of work, but for a beta it’s pretty well done. This would defiantly be an excellent game for teaching young people how to create words, it really does have that sort of appeal! Really look forward to playing the final build and seeing what you come up with to further improve this already great game!

I have noticed that over the years my gaming habits have dramatically changed. It could be that perhaps I am getting older and I am more busy that I just don’t have time for such epic and long games anymore… Burning away hours or days playing just one game, and taking in one long intense experience. It seems that I am more into really short games that catch my attention quickly with some sort of unique game mechanic and satisfy my needs with in a couple minutes or hours worth of game play. Perhaps this is why I am enjoying the flash gaming scene so much, it seems that the nature of flash games have always been something quick, appealing and unique. A lot of Flash games get right to the point, it’s like “okay buddy here you go, use this and go!!!”. While a lot of more bigger budget games, although fun tend to feel the need to stretch things way out and fill in the gaps with pointless filler… Making for long agonizing, repetitive, same old game play. They do what works.

I have also come to realize that I am caring less and less about graphics, if you can give me a good story or unique/addictive experience, I am good to go! When I play a lot of the console games it’s all about “how pretty can we make this” and less about “how fun can we make this”. It’s not to say I don’t love good graphics, there are plenty of games that I have played where I would spend hours just exploring and looking around the landscape in amazement… But then really after that I just turn the game off… Because once again the game does nothing more then look so amazing but lack actual fun (with a few exceptions).

Also this huge, HUGE push for multi-player gaming really, really bugs me. I don’t hate other people, but it is seeming that when I game I am wanting for it to be more of a personal experience then a social one. I don’t have time nor do I want to deal with following or giving orders. All I want to do is just sit back relax and have an amazing experience without worrying about anyone else. I really don’t find co-op, or any of that sort fun anymore, it’s just pointless stress I don’t really need, I play a game to relieve stress not to create it.

It’s seeming more and more that if I play a game for the first time if it doesn’t pull me in with something simple and fun with in the first couple of seconds I won’t play the game (thank god for demos!). Really when I think about it I really wish for the type of games that were made back in the 80′s early 90′s… Back in the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis era. Because they were unable to really put so much focus into graphics they focused on what would made the games fun. They even seem to put a lot more focus into story, back then seem like almost every single game tried to have a story of some sort, for better or worse. I have also begin to noticed that I am being drawn more to “experimental” types of games. The type of games that focus entirely not on pushing the limits of the tech, but giving you a completely new and different way to experience a “game”. Anyone else with me on this sort or am I the minority?