So, one of the things that’s come up again and again among the bunch of us at Self Aware was that Word Ace and Card Ace (coming soon on the iPhone) are really perfect games for people with new kids.

A handful of people we know have had children recently, and while we were beta testing Word Ace, a lot of our testers were nursing moms, who really appreciated a game like Word Ace, where it wasn’t super-frantic, and they could play it with one hand, with friends online at any time of the day.

We’d see people on at 2am for half an hour at a stretch, and know exactly why they were online.

Last week, I had a son. He’s lying on my chest as I type this, and though clearly I’m not a nursing mom, having a game I can play while holding onto the sleeping kid is fantastic.

We’d thought about the convenience of having a game you could play with one hand - but we never expected the specific appeal to new parents. Now that I am one… well, you’ll see me online a lot.
Cheers!

Word Ace shows up in igameradio’s podcast!

Check out a really thorough rundown of the game, about 1/4 of the way through the podcast!

So, in the previous post, I’d mentioned that I hadn’t thought that this would be how a resurgence of independent development would have played out. I’ll gladly admit that any sort of forecasting when it comes to rapidly changing technology is almost always wrong, but I was pretty far off-base.

For the better part of the last ten years, I worked in console game development, on some big-name franchises - and the big names were just getting bigger. Smaller developers would go out of business left and right because every game took more money to make - more people, more time, more hardware, more tools - because everything was trending towards higher-fidelity graphics.

As hardware power continued to increase, from the Playstation to the PS2 to the PS3 (and all its competitors), everything just cost more and more - to the point where I’d figured eventually, we’d simply make our way out of the uncanny valley eventually, and instead of pursuing more and more, re: graphics, we’d finally start to pursue cheaper and cheaper.

That is, rather than the next hardware iteration focusing on more polygons, it would focus on how to make things of a similar fidelity easier and less expensive to make. Maybe it’d be procedural generation of stuff that appears in almost every game, maybe it’d be that 3D artists would create a common “pool” of licensable material (like iStockPhoto) that could be used on any platform at any resolution - or it’d be used whatever its polycount because the hardware would have power to spare.

So, I’d thought that the way things would go would be like this:

• Each generation continues to up the ante
• Development gets more expensive
• Large companies, like EA/Activision eat up any successful smaller dev
• Smaller devs that don’t get eaten die

The idea would be that eventually, the large devs would invest in lowering the cost of development through shared technology, and eventually, when they’d finally made things affordable again, only then would people be able to start smaller, independent studios again.

I’d figured that around the time that technology got cheap enough to enable stuff like this, Live and PSN and WiiWare would finally have reached the point where they could sustain the smaller developers, even if they couldn’t get shelf space at your Wal-Marts or Best Buys.

Of course, my “vision of the future” never broke out of the basic confines of the way the game industry currently works. The “big three” still controlled the hardware, the approval process still worked the same way, and you had the same gatekeepers controlling what gets made and what doesn’t, so the relative number of “slots” available to a developer remained small, and tightly controlled.

Then Apple upended things by having what amounts to a console - a mostly “closed-box” platform where there is a single distributor - the catch is that they’ll distribute almost anything, development overhead is relatively low, because of the hardware, developing on the platform is relatively affordable, the tools are familiar, and cost you almost nothing.

It was like suddenly, someone yanked us back to the early nineties, where you could literally do garage development again. You *could* be id, if you wanted to be. You *could* work with your friends on some crazy idea that no big publisher would touch with a 10-foot pole. You *could* have a success that catches fire by word of mouth (though this is rarer and more difficult with every passing day). This huge opportunity, that I think a lot of developers “my age” had thought they’d missed out on was here again! Maybe for a brief time, but here it is. And no, not everyone’s going to be id - not everyone’s going to make a hojillion dollars overnight, based on a game that just catches fire.

But the opportunity to work with people you love, without having to do what a giant publisher tells you, to follow the ideas you’re passionate about, to take risks, to dream of something that no one’s done before, on technology that literally still feels like the *future*…

Well, hell. I couldn’t be more glad I was totally wrong.

So, Newsweek has an interesting article on the App Store, and the idea that it’s a gold mine, where anyone can become an instant millionaire. It’s an interesting look at the common wisdom of the App Store, and should be a wake up call to anyone who thinks they can throw together an app overnight and strike it rich. To those of us who’ve been through the wringer, there’s nothing in here that’s surprising. It’s tough to make a living making games for the App Store. Some would call it “hard work.” But however much of a backlash Apple gets from people finally getting a realistic look at the landscape, there is one critical thing to remember:

Apple singlehandedly revolutionized game development and distribution with the App Store.

For years, people talked about digital distribution. They said discs would go the way of the dinosaur, and that one day, we’d all get our content through the internet. Companies like Microsoft made great strides toward that goal with services like Live, and with PSN and WiiWare following suit, digital distribution made some serious steps forward. But for all their success, physical media still accounts for the vast majority of their business, and with missteps like the PSP Go, it’s clear that the big players are too bound up by their history with physical media, even if they’re trying to make positive changes toward a digital future.

Companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft owe a large part of their success to their retail partners, and digital distribution, frankly, hurts those partners. Even as they move toward a more media-free future, they’ve got to appease their partners, or the visibility of the hardware necessary to play those digitally-distributed games is going to get damaged substantially.

Not only that, but for their platforms, you need to develop on their hardware, get their approval, and go through a labyrinthine obstacle course of rules and regulations before you get put into a long queue to be doled out when they choose, on a tiny, highly-regulated digital marketplace.

What Apple did, in comparison, was astonishing. They let you develop (provided you have a Mac) on hardware you already had. The fee to develop was small. Getting into Apple’s approval system has (and STILL has - by comparison to every previous platform-holder) a low barrier to entry. A small developer could get a place of high visibility on a very popular, very accessible distribution platform. You could make small, risky games, and distribute them without risking everything you owned. And for a few select titles, money rolled in by the bucketload.

Is it perfect? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Is it a gold rush, where anyone can become an instant millionaire? No. But it is something that was *entirely* new - completely unparalleled in the history of game development - the combination of a closed-platform and open, *accessible* distribution.

Yes, I realize that people may argue that platforms like XNA, Sony’s Yaroze, or even PC development have blazed this trail. XNA bungles it up in distribution (there’s no easy way for people to find good XNA games), Yaroze wasn’t accessible enough (you had to own a Yaroze PSX), and on the PC, there’s never been a single “arbiter of quality” or trusted single method of distribution, both of which (to varying degrees) Apple provides.

Now that we’ve arrived “in the future”, where small-scale development is really facilitated by Apple’s App Store, and we’re seeing valuable competition in the vein of the Pre App Catalog, PSP Minis, the Android App Store, Ovi, etc., it’s easy to forget how revolutionary this all was a year ago.

The fact that it’s not an instant gold mine isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s not as appealing to everyone, but I’d argue that that’s going to prove a positive in the longer-run, as we see fewer low-quality attempts at instant cash-ins, and more people dedicated to really making these platforms fulfill their potential.

We shouldn’t be surprised that this isn’t internet-boom 2.0, and that it’s actual work - risk, blood, sweat and tears. When we went into this, I’m happy to admit that we had stars in our eyes, and that reality’s been a bit of an …adjustment. But with a small team, we’re making games on hardware that 10 years ago would have been absolutely inconceivable in its capability, distributed to millions of users, with an extraordinarily low barrier to entry. Three years ago, I never would have imagined this kind of independent development would be possible. (What I *did* think is probably food for another post…)

So while we may not be instant millionaires, we’ve got Apple to thank in large part for the fact that we’ve got the best jobs in the universe.

prethinking.com has an interview with Seppo up on its site! They also give Word Ace and Card Ace some great press! Check it out here.

“Word Ace, which was released very early on in the App Catalog, is easily the best game out…”

Word Ace gets mentioned in the Giant Bombcast!

“We all have iPhones… the cool stuff on the iPhone is like, Word Ace!”

Pretty awesome.

Pre101 checks out Card Ace:

“App Spotlight

One of today’s new apps that deserves some special attention is Self Aware Games’ Card Ace: Hold ‘Em. Card Ace: Hold ‘Em is a Texas Hold ‘Em game build upon the same technology that powers Word Ace. In fact, your account is shared between the two games. All your friends and money transfers between the two. The game only major differences between the two games (aside from how you play!) is that Card Ace allows more players per table and bidding is done in fixed increments.”

We’re happy to announce the launch of Card Ace, on the Palm Pre!

What is Card Ace? It’s simple - online multiplayer Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, with all the features and polish of Word Ace. In-game chat and picture-based emotes make playing online with your friends a rich social experience. Even better, Card Ace uses the same profile information as Word Ace - so players can quickly jump in, using their same profile, earning more XP, and using the same stock of chips they’ve racked up in Word Ace!

Even better, your Friends List carries over between games - so you can instantly find the people you loved playing Word Ace with, and join them right away in Card Ace!

The best thing? All this costs you absolutely NOTHING. Card Ace costs you $0 to play. This is not a demo, or a “lite” version. This is the full online multiplayer experience for free. Every day you play, you get a free $1,000 chip package. (Additional chips and in-game purchases are coming soon.)

Jump online with your friends for a game of Hold ‘Em - whenever you want, from wherever you are.

Available on the Palm Pre App Catalog Now!

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