Barking Signals

In a football sense, I am at the 1- yard line barking signals and the clock is ticking. It has been a long game. Once I cross the goal line, the game really just gets started. From everything I have read the only way to be successful is to create a game that is truly fun to play and gets good word of mouth promotion. First you have to get through the submission process, during that time you have to plant digital seeds.

My rolodex is ready, I have a lot of major players to contact. YouTube promotion and the website will be Tweeted. The missing element is a press release and overall timing of the announcement of Beat the Boss to the correct news outlets. I am exploring different avenues. I reached out to some business folks I know and have gotten some great referrals, I am also checking online. Working with some PR geniuses might be a good move, I can only do so much. I'll meet with Christina Jorgensen at Drizen-Dohs Corporate Communications. They have been publishing my cartoons for a few years but are business communication specialists. This should be interesting.

Completing a free and paid version that works is quite an accomplishment. This is good for promotion as well. Turnover rates are often over 50% from free to paid, so the free version will be my main sales tool. Taking suggestions from users and implementing it in the game will be great for keeping interest. My plan is to update at least every two weeks for the first three months.

My goal is to get a lot people trying the free version. If people like playing the game the upgrades will take care of themselves.

Thousand Pound Gorilla

This project has been rather lengthy, over 6 months. It could have been done in much less time, but creating in the USA and assembling in India has it's challenges. Making a game is hard because in some ways you are never done. There are always things you can do to improve the experience. I don't want to make the game a thousand pound gorilla, but I also don't want to leave something out that is glaring. Sooner or later you have to put your foot down and say that you are done.

I want people to play the game and have fun. A time element adds to the game play, giving you a reason to beat the boss other than just primal anger. The game play gets kind of frantic as time gets close. I believe the element of winning has been included with the satisfaction of beating the crap out of your boss.

Next time CS5 will be used and ActionScript 3 will be the method. The more control I have, the less I am dependent on making changes that programmers consider a problem. I am very curious how hard it will be to create a similar experience using the new tools. My goal is to be able to create interactive iPhone entertainment with maximum control but still work with talented programmers.

iPhone apps in Flash CS5

It is interesting how time moves on. The creation of the Beat the Boss was a cooperative effort between IndiaNic and Mike Browne. I created all the art and assembled it in Flash. Indianic took great efforts to interpret my thought and implement it in the iPhone SDK. They had to literally rip it apart and put it back together. Now that we are almost done, Adobe announces that Flash CS5 will include an output to create for the iPhone directly. It will be out later this year…it is now October.

When The Boss is done it will look like it was created in Flash and everyone will be wondering how we did it so fast. The reality is that it was put together piece by piece. One thing I know for sure is my next app will be created in Flash from the start. My guess the creation time of this same project would be a fraction of the 6 months it took to create The Boss.

As I write this, there are about 75,000 apps and 2 million downloads. A year from now it should be 5 times that amount. The tough part is going to be iTunes. How will people find your apps? It is hard standing out now amongst 75,000, imagine down the road. Another thought is the approval process. It takes minimum 2 weeks now to get approved by Apple now, with rejections this can be months. What will they do when the Flash crowd shows up?

The Boss will come out right on time. Just before the crowd hits after people figure out how to make Flash CS5 work for them. The game is changing, but I have the right skill set to work within the platform. I will adapt with everyone else. But there is more to it than tools. Beat the Boss is an idea that is well thought out and the game play is fun.

My good friend Terumi gave me this Flash action character a number of years ago. She was right, Flash is the answer.