A couple posts back, I mentioned that my “We Are Bugs!” entry for the Mix 10k Challenge, was actually my 3rd attempt. 

I thought some might be interested to see what didn’t make the cut.  I call this game (actually it’s more of a prototype for a game), “Keep Away”.  Once you play, you will understand why the name.

I think Keep Away has a unique game-play mechanic that would do well as a more fleshed out game. I really think a multi-player version could be a lot of fun.

I posted the game to my site, so take a look and let me know what you think. Click the image below to try the game

-Jeff Weber

Six days ago, I posted about a simple idea to entice people to install the Silverlight plug-in so they could play the games I create.

The idea was to simply show a You-Tube video of game-play footage to everyone who comes to the Diver game page and does not already have Silverlight installed.  If Silverlight is already installed they see nothing but the game.

So, how is this working out?

I don’t have a way to tell how many of the people that watched the video were enticed enough to go ahead with the Silverlight install, however, thanks to You-Tube video stats, I CAN tell how many people came to Diver page without Silverlight installed and at least watched the game-play video.

Here is a screenshot of the You-Tube stats for my Diver video as of 8:18 pm on Sunday, Jan 18 2009.  Just 6 days after I modified my site to show the You-Tube video to those without Silverlight installed.

The top URL, the one with 779 clicks, is the video on the Diver game page.  As I said earlier, this video only shows up for those that do not have Silverlight installed.

Point? Well I think I can assume that of these 779 people a certain percentage were enticed to install Silverlight based on the game-play footage where they would not have done so without the video.

As I said earlier, I have know way of knowing what that percentage is without adding more metrics to my site, but I’m confident it’s more than zero.

For those interested, my page views for Diver over that same period were 7,966.

-Jeff

We Are Bugs! is my entry into the Mix 10k Challenge. 

My goal was to make a game that was dynamic and interesting to play.  While the 10kb limit was,  well… limiting, I'm pleased with how the game came out.

We Are Bugs! as entered, is actually the 3rd iteration of my attempts.  My first iteration, which I will post in a later blog-post, was 100% complete and ready to be submitted before I had second thoughts and went back to the drawing board.

There just wasn't enough happening on the screen. The game consisted of only 4 bugs: 2 parents, a baby, and an enemy. 

The game-play of the 1st iteration involved passing the baby back and forth between the parents as the enemy tried to "eat" the baby bug. All in all, the game was fun but didn't feel like much more than you would expect of a 10kb game.

I quickly did another iteration of the same concept, trying to inject more stuff into the game, but in the end the second iteration was not much different from the first.

Laying in bed the night after developing the 2nd iteration of the game, I stumbled upon the idea for the version of We Are Bugs! that was actually submitted.  I think you will see the "Snake" game had some influence on the idea.

I have no idea how the game will be received by the community and/or judges, but I'm happy with it and had fun developing it.  Once the contest is over, I plan to revisit this game and flesh it out with more detail: sound, levels, enemies... etc.

If you want to show your support, head on over to the entry page and vote for it.

Note:  If you do vote, please don't “click-bomb” the other entries down without good reason.  Seems that has been a problem on the contest site.

-Jeff

I don’t have any hard numbers but judging by some comments left on forums some people are not willing to install the Silverlight plug-in in order to play my game, Diver.  How dare them! :-)

In fact, I imagine there are quite a few people who pass on my game because they don’t want to install Silverlight for one reason or another.  Maybe they are Microsoft haters, maybe they are sick of plug-ins in general, or maybe the just aren’t familiar with Silverlight and are worried it’s not safe.

Well, today, I came up with a simple idea to help combat this problem.

I use the ASP Silverlight control for this, but it should work with the html object tag as well. 

What did I do?  Well, rather than tell you, why don’t I just show you.

Here is what it used to look like when you went to play Diver and didn’t have Silverlight installed.

And here is what it looks like now.

Yep, I simply added an embedded You Tube video of Diver game-play. The install link and You Tube video will only show for those that don’t have Silverlight installed.  I think this will convince many people that are on the fence to go ahead and install Silverlight. 

I will be using this idea for all my games, but I think it would work for any application that can be made to look “sexy” in a video clip.

For those interested, here is the actual video:

-Jeff

Diver got a small write up on the Play This Thing website.  Just thought I’d share.