Reclaimate Month 2 Start

What have I been doing?

So last week I was mainly working on polishing up the front end to get it as close as possible to what it will be like in it's final form. And so I can pretty much forget about it from here on in. I'm almost done this. I'll be putting out that version in the next couple days.

The new Grand Plan

So the current plan is to try to get Reclaimate finished by the end of August. The reason for this is I need to be able to determine how a decently made flash game will bring back in ad revenue. And the turnaround time to learn that can spawn about 3 months. Which brings me right to the end of my 6 month time period. (When I still have to make a choice about going on.)



There will still be a 2nd game, but my previous plan has to be scrapped because the scope is obviously too large. I have to be sure what I work on reaches a certain level of quality. I still endeavor to become fast enough to do a game a month. (Even if they are very short) When things are starting out it's important to be fast and flexible.

Why this is Exciting
Recently my old "boss of bosses" the CEO of Electronic Arts, John Riccitiello made a statement:

"Consoles used to be 80% of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40% of the game industry"

When I was at Vancouver Film School in 2006, my instructors kept on trying to tell me that mobile phones would be the next big platform for games. And well, they were right. Again the indy industry is booming. So much so that giant game companies that dominated the market are having trouble, while virtually unknown indy companies are starting to make millions, even Billions in some cases.

Some very exciting times on the horizon.

No matter what happens to me, what I'm doing right now is excellent schooling for the future, and a great place to be right now. It's honestly been a while since you could have ONE single person make games. Now thats possible. But for how long I can't say.

This is great for the people buying games too, because instead of getting used to $60 dollar price tags people are getting more accustomed to $1-3 dollar price tags for smaller games. Or even good free games, that you don't even have to pay!

When the economy is still giving you a pinch it helps a lot to have more of your disposable cash in your pocket.

It's a very exciting time right now!

For this Week

So for this next week I'll be alternating days between cleanup/framework and making the game more fun. (Simply because I found if I work on cleanup or framework for too long it starts boring the heck out of me.)

I have to focus on fun a lot, but there are still a number of features that have to go in. As before I will try to get these in sooner than later. Getting them in helps me determine when the game will be ready. As I said before, it honestly seems that after you have all the features in to make the game "fun" you should only be at the 1/3rd mark. I'm already past the half way mark.

As always I'll do the best I can. This time I'll ensure quality is met first, but I still really have to push this thing to be done

I usually post a list here but I'm still scoping everything out. So I will post something shortly when I'm done.