New Game: SUPÉR MATADOR 3
Jan 31st
This weekend, I participated in the Global Game Jam at the SCAD Atlanta / Georgia Tech site. We were tasked with making a game that included the themes of “deception” and “rain, plains, or Spain.” 48 hours later, we made SUPÉR MATADOR 3.
Click the image to go to the GGJ site and play!
I was responsible for game design and audio. My team won first place!
The contest also had “achievements” we could get by sticking to certain constraints. We were rewarded for having no text, using less than 16 colors, and being playable in a browser. Check it out and let me know what you think!
What I Played: 2009 Edition
Jan 13th
For all the time I spent working, I still managed to play a lot of games in 2009. I’m late on the decons, but in the meantime I’ve put together a list of (almost) every game I played this year with a couple thoughts on things that stuck out to me about each of them. More >
Only at U(sic)GA Rejects
Dec 1st
Rivalry week is past, and UGA played the better game and won. Hats off to them.
We turned “Only at Tech” into “Only at U(sic)GA” as a way to poke fun at our rival prior to the game. We had hundreds of hilarious stories submitted by Tech students, but some folks from UGA also used the site to express their displeasure. Here are some of the funnier hate posts that we rejected: More >
Only at Tech hits the Technique
Nov 19th
The Technique, Georgia Tech’s student newspaper, has an article on Only at Tech in the Focus section this week. Check it out!
There are a few typos (and some misquotes – I promise my grammar isn’t that bad) but it’s full of praise for the website and the way it has been embraced by the Georgia Tech community. We’re rolling out some major updates to the site on Saturday – can’t say what just yet, but hopefully it will give Tech students yet another reason to visit.
Only at Tech – The First Day
Nov 4th
Today’s website launch went better than any of us could have imagined. We launched the site around 12:15 EST. Below are some general stats about the site’s traffic for those who are interested. Assuming 90%+ of our traffic came from Georgia Tech students, it’s somewhat revealing…
Hits: 383,691
Page Views: 281,952
Unique Visitors: 8,770
Average Page Views per Visitor: 32.15
Fans on Facebook: 1258
Bandwidth Used: 8.96 GB
The page view ratio is extremely high. That means people are getting onto the site and staying to read pages upon pages of content. Great news for us!
And some graphs:
Site Activity by Hour of Day
In typical Tech fashion, the website’s popularity was highest from 11 to midnight. Will with 12AM-1AM slot be even better? It looks like we still haven’t peaked.
Top Referring Sites
Behold the power of Facebook! We didn’t do any advertising for the site other than mentioning it in front of our CS class.
Most Used Browsers
Georgia Tech is probably the only place where Google Chrome users outnumber IE 6, 7, and 8 users combined. The “Others” category was dominated by Blackberry and Opera, but there were also a few hacking tools in there from people who tried (unsuccessfully) to hack the site. At one point, someone did run a script that voted for their post every 30 seconds to raise it to the top of the ratings.
Most Used Operating Systems
Windows Vista narrowly edged out Windows XP for the title of “most used OS.” There were roughly half as many iPhone users as Windows 7 users, and three times as many Mac OS X users as Windows 7 users. To break one Tech stereotype, only 182 people accessed the site from Linux, and 11 poor users were still running Windows 98.
New Website – “Only at Tech”
Nov 4th
Announcing “Only at Tech,” a website for Georgia Tech students to share their stories of love and hate about their school. I’m the website’s designer. It’s very comparable to websites like FMyLife or Texts from Last Night. Check it out!
Update: The site’s launch went better than we could have ever imagined. We’ve had over 200 submissions and over 400 people add us as fans on Facebook in a period of seven hours. Keep spreading the word!
Tearing Down the Goalposts
Oct 19th
1680×1050
Game Deconstruction: FarmVille
Oct 8th
“FarmVille? That stupid Facebook game that clutters my news feed all the time with random messages about lost pigs and ugly ducklings? Really?”
When I decided I was going to do these deconstructions, Facebook games were the last thing on my mind. This time last month, I had never even played a Facebook game. I thought the very concept of Facebook games was backwards – I have Steam to play games on my computer, after all. Facebook should be strictly for staying in touch with friends. But after hearing that FarmVille has over 11 million active users on a daily basis – even more than World of Warcraft - I figured that there must be something about the game that the average Facebook user finds attractive. And in always trying to expand my knowledge of games, I finally gave in and started playing. More >
Game Deconstruction: ‘Splosion Man
Sep 4th
Here’s a concept I picked up from my room mates over the summer who interned at Pandemic Studios. Every week, one member of the team would pick a game and give a presentation on its strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot to be learned about design by paying attention to the details that many players may overlook at first glance.
As a personal experiment, I’m challenging myself to do one “game decon” every month for the next year. It’s one way I think I can work to make myself a better designer while providing some interesting reading material. I’ll try to not just pick “good” games, but this week I’ll start with one of my recent favorites… More >
Fall is Here!
Sep 1st
I haven’t updated the blog since coming back from LA. Quick recap of the past three weeks:
- Finished an awesome internship that confirmed my slight hunch that game design is something I could be happy doing for a very long time
- Started my junior year at Georgia Tech
- Resumed work on the unannounced Indiecisive project
- Resumed work on a freelance website design project
This week is particularly awesome because it’s the start of the college football season! I’ve organized a block for most of my friends and I to get great seats to every home game, and we’ve got a state-of-the-art home theater system ready to go for away games courtesy of a friend who couldn’t fit his 60″ television in his room. It’s also a great TV for gaming, be it rocking out, shooting Nazis, or knocking down towers.
I’ve updated the “Games” section with a bit of what I worked on this summer. I made some levels for Boom Blox Bash Party that you can check out over the next few months as EA releases them as free DLC online. I’ll probably make more in the future, but you’ll find those under the username “IndiecisiveLink” as opposed to the official EA release list. Also updated my resume with some information about the other projects I got to be a part of, but I can’t go into much detail about them. I’m excited to see how the team iterates on the work we did this summer, and I’ll be sure to point it out when I finally can!
Finally, I updated the Audiball page to highlight some extraordinary praise the game recently received from MTV Multiplayer. Honestly, I don’t think the game is worthy of all that praise. So in response, Ian and I are working on making it worthy! We’ll be releasing a free update to the game later this month over Xbox Live to give it improved graphics, increased accessibility, remastered music, and a few more surprises. I’ll be sure to post an update here when it goes up. Take a sneak peek at the new boxart while you’re on the game’s page.
That about covers it…my life is eat, sleep, game with a little bit of class and football in between and I wouldn’t want it any other way. To Hell with Georgia!
