Another major milestone has been reached in my academic situation; I’ve officially finished my last required class at Full Sail University. Aside from wrapping up class work and working at Helios Interactive Inc., I’ve been trying to squeeze in time for a couple of personal projects. Oh and then there is my poor thesis; It has gotten very little love this month.

I was also able to combine some of my thesis research into re-playability with research I’m doing at work for multi-player games. This week I focused on researching games ranging from text based to full 3D, all playable directly on browsers mind you. The thing that I’m finding is that most of the games I come across appear to have small niche markets and fans. Some of the mafia-type clones are registering up to 1500 daily unique users. Yet their fan base doesn’t seem to grow much beyond that. The games I mention are smaller independent productions and are not on Facebook. Games on Facebook are beasts unto themselves; since they tap into an existing network of potential gamers.

Although we are trying to tap into the Fb jungle ourselves, we are not there yet. We do have an awesome looking, and fun to play, racing game on the site now. Truck-Off is a multi-player game that can also be played over multiple platforms; PC client, web browsers, in Facebook, and something called a Mac. We are working overtime at Helios trying to get another game into Fb, and if all goes well we should succeed before the year is out. Fast iterative development, engage!

Most of this past week I’ve been transitioning back into the mind-set of a full time employee, but luckily I’ve had to do research. Sometimes this research involves the difficult task of downloading, installing, and playing games. Life can be pretty rough sometimes, seriously! Especially when my laptop is running with only 2gigs of free space; I’m going to have to clean this up soon.


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Labels: Helios Interactive

These past three weeks have been a test of time management and balancing acts between my internship at Helios Interactive Inc. and my classes at the university. Not too much to report on the weekly happenings at Helios, in fact I've spent most of my time in class. I do have to put in my time with the internship, so to that end I've been mostly working from home in the evenings.

I did however, manage to include my work into my classwork. We have been tasked with creating a 30 second trailer for a game or related software product. This being a marketing class makes it essential to be able to distill information quickly and effectively. With that in mind, I produced a short advertisement for our GameCore 3d game development software.

The video is brief and to the point. Well, three points to be exact. I'm attempting to convey three main points about GameCore in this video clip;
1. Easy to use
2. You can create 3d games
3. Cross platform multiplayer




Now back to my time sheets, because they won't fill themselves out and I must report...

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What a long week this has been. School has definitely been keeping me busy. Part of my class work revolves around the research and production of a media marketing kit. Most of my class mates will be creating kits for their Final Project games in an effort to promote them. Since I am not participating in Final Project, I’ll have to be creative in how I approach this project.

I ended up getting approval from my boss at Helios Interactive Inc. to use GameCore and games made with it, in order to fulfill my requirements for class. Susan was very flexible with me and allowed me to create marketing materials related to Helios’ products. It seems like a win-win situation to me!

In some parts of the internet technology world, developers are planning strategies to take advantage of social communities. Game designers and developers are also in this group, hoping to reach ever growing markets. At Helios we have been promoting the cross-platform capabilities of our GameCore game engine. I have had the exclusive opportunity to watch this game engine grow and adapt. I have also been able to contribute in a small way to its advancement.

Our hard working programmers have been at it, along with our artists, to develop a playable game tech-demo for a proposal. As part of the deliverable requirements we planned on having the game playable online through our Web3D browser plug-in. Web3D, coming soon, is part of our initiative to reach more gamers through browser based gaming. To that end our programmers have been updating the plug-in and making it easier to install. Through the use of browser extensions we can now install the plug-in with minimal user effort.

Part of my involvement in this project has been related to Quality Assurance testing. Aside from being able to play around with our game tech-demo, I've been downloading, installing, testing, and qualifying the user experience on multiple browsers and on different operating systems. I always get a kick out of watching the differences that occur in performance; IE8, Firefox, and Chrome. I still prefer IE8 and Chrome, sorry Mozilla. Reporting bugs, issues, and the user experience has been very eye opening. In the past I've done similar work when designing and deploying interactive Flash and Shockwave projects, but the complexities involved in rendering a game engine on a browser pale to something like Flash. A 3d game engine mind you. It has been a challenge; and I'm glad to report that the Web3D plug-in is not only improved, but appears to be a very viable means of distributing GameCore games online.

Next week I'll be much more focused on school work, but as always I'll be working on Helios projects and staying in touch with the team through the internets. Thank goodness for Skype, GoogleDocs, and online collaboration.

On a weird side note, I just realized that today is 9/11 and it so happens to be my 11th week on the internship experience. I’m not a numbers person, but this made me go “hmn”…


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Until just a couple of months ago I really wanted to upgrade my Old School cell phone, from a Samsung flip phone to a Samsung Epic 4g. However, when I attended GDC this year I saw a preview for the Zune-like interface on Windows Phone 7. I was quite excited over it. Recently I've seen some pretty cool videos of some of these Windows Phone 7 marvels in action. Although, at this point I would just consider them gaming devices with net access. After all the only reason I need a web-enabled-portable-device, is so that it can do everything my current phone can't do.

All of which got me thinking more about games and game design.
In the video below, a LG Windows Phone 7 is shown to be running a game in which two characters traverse through a 3d puzzle (ilomilo). The effect shown, tilting the phone and changing the environment's perspective, is very impressive. It got my mind revving on overdrive with game design ideas. I can already visualize some excellent game play mechanics in my head.

Now I'm torn between getting an Android phone or tapping into Windows Phone 7 and their access to Xbox Live. We're talking prime territory there people, fertile Xbox grounds! Developing on Windows Phone 7 may be pretty sweet. I don't know how much longer I can hold out. Microsoft, you better hurry up and get this on Sprint. On another note, next time I'm going to PAX.

View ilomilo game play footage:
You may have to let the video play and buffer, see it at 06:25

Video is property of Tested.com | The host Norm, is on point. | Thanks guys!

Reference link

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I'm back in the swing of academia for the next three weeks. My final on-campus class is a Marketing Media and Relations class being taught by the world renowned Prof. Susan Gold. I'm really looking forward to her lectures and labs. Hopefully I can integrate some of my class work and assignments into promoting Helios and its products.

With a condensed and packed schedule at Full Sail University, I was able to create presentations for MetaJets and GameCore; two of our products. Press releases have a very strict format, which must be adhered to in order to get them published by media outlets. After completing a few press releases, I created templates for official use by Helios. Some of my other internship related duties are more mundane and routine; like maintaining documentation and updating spread sheets.

I’m sure that this may be similar to the experience that my peers are going through in Final Project. Apart from putting out fires and maintaining documentation, it seems that they have their hands full with managing different troublesome personalities on their teams. This is one thing that I don’t have to worry about. Our guys are all professional and for the most part are very self managed. This is to be expected since they have the advantage of years of experience working together.

Overall this week in my internship has been low key as I’ve been more focused on class. Next week should pick up as I will be creating marketing materials.


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When it comes to game design and relating to larger audiences, some games are better than others. Zynga games come to mind only because they reach a wide audience of people. These types of games incorporate game design basics such as achievement systems, customization options, and rewards. It seems logical to think that as time goes by and more people will be influenced by games. Game designer Jesse Schell has already alluded to this with examples of gaming in everyday products.

Airlines are taking game design and some game-play mechanics, and incorporating them into their rewards programs. Corporations like Walmart create board games for training purposes. So it seems clear that we will see a growing type of cross pollination that will affect the design of future services and products. This concept jumped out at me when American Express sent me a digital invite to a new credit card.

This is probably one of the stranger things I've seen in a while. The American Express ZYNC is not that new, but recently they've been marketing it more aggressively. It seems that the gimmick, or benefit, of this card is the ability to customize the rewards you can earn. Taking a page out of game design, they've essentially created a system in which you can choose which types of perks you would like to earn points for. Things like shopping, travel, food, and others. The idea is that you purchase and apply perk specific packs and apply them to your card. The whole idea makes me think of upgrading your card with power-ups.

It is a cool concept, using game design ideas in a credit card. If only they took it a few steps further and granted you free perks for reaching higher levels. For example, if your card had a restaurant pack at level 1, you could earn points per dollar spent. However, if you reached a certain amount, you could level up and earn more points per dollar spent. I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before these game design concepts work their way into more products. After all, more and more people play games everyday and are becoming accustomed to the gaming systems and how they operate.

It'll be interesting to see how long this card lasts. I'm not sure I'd get one, but it sure does seem appealing. Good luck Amex, I support the effort.


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Labels: game design