Being a geek in Venezuela

Yesterday I bought a MacBook on the Apple Store using some of the income generated by this blog. Do you know why I could do this? Because I am a geek, and because I live in Italy.

If I lived in Venezuela, things could have been quite different. This is the story of John Freddy Vega, a blogger and geek from Venezuela.

He runs Cristalab, a blog full of AS3 and PHP tips, just like mine. But it’s not as easy as it seems.

« Any self-respecting geek has certain basic needs, and Venezuelans are no exception: smartphones, laptops, permanent internet connection, access to information and, above all, the ability to purchase a lot of stuff we love although we don’t need it at all.

That’s why Venezuela’s technology case is so curious. We are one of the Countries with highest Blackberry penetration, so much so that RIM (Research In Motion: the Canadian company that developes the BlackBerry smartphone) people were forced to know we’re not an African country, we have crappy but still profitable Internet connections and we can even (in many cases) afford a cable TV. Read more

Are you ready for this?

You should know some hours ago Apple unveiled its new jewel, called iPad.

Besides the innovation and the cool features, the most interesting thing is the iPad compatibility with all existing iPhone applications and obviously the SDK to create dedicated applications, at the full 1024×768 resolution.

With the same iPhone Developer Program account you will access to the SDK, the simulator, and all the tool you need to develop iPad applications and game.

Are you ready for this? The first iPhone developers raised a lot of bucks… what’s your opinion?

Games that Challenge the World Come2Play contest – $8,000 in prizes

Do you want to make something interesting out of the Come2Play multiplayer API tutorial?

Here it is your chance to win up to $5,000!!

Come2Play – Creators of the first white-label social gaming platform and multiplayer game API – are holding a contest, in conjunction with the LinkedIn Flash Game Developers group, for the development of turn based multiplayer games with prizes totaling $8,000.

In a gaming world where new games are launched and disappear just as quickly, multiplayer games with a social infrastructure are a huge hit amongst users; developing a loyal fan base that come back daily to play against each other and their friends.

Come2Play has developed this infrastructure and are inviting game developers to take advantage of it.

Come2Play is revitalizing the formula by allowing for correspondence challenges. With correspondence challenges, a player makes the first move in a game and then sends it to all their friends through email or their favorite social network. Each individual friend can then send back their next move. Each friend who responds starts a new game with the creator of the game. This gaming form provides a huge viral opportunity to game developers looking to expand the reach of their games.

In light of this initiative, Come2Play is launching their latest contest – The Games That Challenge the World Competition. Read more

HiRoads case study: the aftermath

Do you remember Filippo Bodei’s HiRoads case study?

After two months with HiRoads in the wild, Filippo shares with us the result of his project.

« Here we are again after about two monts since HiRoads went live!

Today, the 21st of January, I can count 1203 registered users and 250 roads published on www.hiroads.com
What does it mean? It means an average of 20 new users and 4 new roads per day.
Also a grand total of 1050$ (Mochiads + AdSense + 2 site-locked version) was earned.
But let’s start from the beginning. Read more

Top 40 Countries giving the best MochiAds CPM in 2009

As a new year begins, it’s time to recap what happened during previous year.

During these days, I saw a lot of people publishing MochiAds’s 2009 CPM.

I have to say you must not trust such kind of statistic because CPM may vary a lot according to two variables:

1) The number of impressions

Sometimes you see developers saying “hey, I’m having a $2 eCPM!! wow!!” – This happens probably because they’re having a very few visits and a couple of clicks, raising the estimated CPM. Once (if ever) they’ll reach some thousands plays, the CPM will surely stabilize on a lower value, usually from $0.30 to $0.50.

2) The Country your game is being played in

Since MochiMedia does not sell ads in every single Country of the world, in most Countries your game won’t show relevant ads because there aren’t advertiser willing to show (and pay for showing) their ads to people living in Countries outside their market.

This means a very different CPMs from Country to Country

Top 40 Countries in 2009

The following is a list of top 40 countries that gave me the best CPM during all 2009. I included in the list only countries that gave me at least 100,000 impressions, to avoid misunderstandings explained at point 1 Read more

Placing ads before a game loads with jQuery

When you run a Flash game portal or a Flash game official site, you normally place ads everywhere hoping someone will notice it.

Obviously the most interesting place where to place ads is already taken by the game itself, so we are going to create a javascript preloader that will show an ad for 15 seconds before the game starts loading.

In order to do it, you need jQuery and swfobject

Now let’s suppose the game has to be embedded in a div called the_game, just like I did in my BarBalance official site.

Just create the div this way:

<div id = "the_game">
	<h1>BarBalance game is loading</h1>
	<SCRIPT language="Javascript">
	var cpmstar_rnd=Math.round(Math.random()*999999);
	var cpmstar_pid=10016;
	document.writeln("<SCR"+"IPT language='Javascript' src='http://server.cpmstar.com/view.aspx?poolid="+cpmstar_pid+"&script=1&rnd="+cpmstar_rnd+"'></SCR"+"IPT>");
	</SCRIPT>
</div>

I used some SEO like an h1 tag and relevant content, and a CPMStar because it’s animated and we suppose won’t bore the player during the 15 seconds.

If you don’t have a CPMStar account, feel free to use my code :)

Then the jQuery part:

<script type="text/javascript">
	$(document).ready(function(){
		setTimeout(function(){
			$("#the_game").fadeOut(2000,function(){
				swfobject.embedSWF("barbalance.swf", "the_game", "640", "480", "9.0.0");
			}); 
		},15000);
	}); 
</script>

It’s just a 15000 milliseconds timeout fading out with a callback replacing the existing content with the Flash game.

Look at BarBalance official site to see it working.

I can’t wait to know this ad eCPM… did you already use something similar?

35+ game portals that can give your game at least 100K views

We all know when you released a game, submitting it to game portals is a very important task if you want your game to be popular.

So the question is: where should I submit my game?

You can find a lot of game portals lists around the web, but this one includes only portals able to give at least 100,000 views, according to MochiBot stats.

Having your game on half of the portals listed here should grant you some millions visits. Don’t even bother submitting your game to portals able to give you only a few thousands visits.

Just follow this list and let the game virally spread through minor portals.

More than 1,000,000 views

www.addictinggames.com
www.agame.com
www.mindjolt.com
www.oyunlar1.com

More than 100,000 views

www.7k7k.com
www.andkon.com
www.ejocurigratis.ro
www.fastgames.com
www.flasharcadegamessite.com
www.flashgames.it
www.freeonlinegames.com
www.freeworldgroup.com
www.funnygames.nl
www.gamegarage.co.uk
www.games2girls.com
www.gamesfreak.net
www2.jeux.com
www.jogosjogos.com
www.juegos10.com
www.juegosdiarios.com
www.killsometime.com
www.kongregate.com
www.micoia.net
www.minijuegos.com
www.net-games.biz
www.net-games.co.il
www.newgrounds.com
www.onemorelevel.com
www.oyunskor.com
www.physicsgames.net
www.playedonline.com
www.puffgames.com
www.spele.nl
www.thegamehomepage.com
www.wyspagier.pl
www.xiaoyouxi.cn
www.yougame.com

Happy submission… (did I forget some portals?)

Case study: Vadim Starygin’s total revenue from last two years

If Vadim Starygin does not sould familiar, then you’ll probably know this guy as Badim, the owner of Elite Games and the guy behind Elite Forces series.

Badim allowed me to publish his recap of two years as indie developer and I think you’ll find it very interesting.

Introduction

Two years I have worked as an Indie. Two years fighting for good on behalf of developers, sharing about my earnings and achievements every month. So far I can say this for sure – going off from offices to become an indie was the best decision I’ve made. Another one – sharing my stats with you, my dear colleagues.

Some History

I have released 21 Flash games, 3 iPhone games, launched 1 portal, 1 blog, a forum and a support group. Meanwhile, my personal life has also seen an increase in quality – no crunches, no 16-hour work days. I became a father for a second time. I was able to spend 31 days outside Russia, and two weeks inside Russia =). Read more

Interview with Nick Pearce, the guy behind Shrink it

Do you remember Shrink it? You should, because it’s a very popular game and because it inspired me to write Scaling objects with Box2D – part 1 and 2.

The blog interviewed Nick Pearce from NPGames to share with you some interesting information… Read more

Play BarBalance, my latest game

I would like you to play BarBalance

It’s a Box2D game made for the 60 seconds to fame contest built around Stabilize! concept.

You can follow the various steps during the creation of this game at this post and the links you will find in it (I won’t fill this post with links…)

You probably noticed I created a website for the game.

Once the contest will be over and the winners will be announced on friday december 11, I’ll start making a couple of game versions with a more interesting and complex gameplay (this is quite simple because it’s meant to end in 60 seconds) with some interesting additional features if the game is played on the website.

It’s also a good way to give some credit to all “underground” third party libraries such as Box2D and SWFObject.

So, from now on, every game I’ll make will have its own site.

If you like to buy a lifetime banner for a few bucks, give me a shout… you know I’ll drive some millions people to the site :)

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