The GAME.minder Report has arrived

Have you ever been using GAME.minder and thought to yourself, "you know what this experience needs - more audio content!"No?

Just us?

Well anyway, if you like your upcoming gaming news through your earholes vs your eyeholes, we've now got you covered. The GAME.minder Report is a quick weekly wrap up of upcoming gaming news. We'll highlight any important developments in terms of delays and new dates as well as highlight a couple notable games that have just been added to GAME.minder.

If this sounds at all interesting to you, head over to iTunes and check out the inaugural episode and if you have any thoughts, comments, concerns, hopes or dreams, drop us a line.

Post PAX Pics Post (East 2012)

Boy oh boy did we have fun at PAX East this year![gallery orderby="ID"]

What a difference a year makes - PAX East 2011-2012

A year ago, a smaller Handelabra team dipped it's first tentative toe into that whirling current known as PAX East. GAME.minder was just hitting 2.0 and to get the word out, we bought some ad space at the show. Most of the team had never been to a PAX before and, not knowing what to expect, we showed up with a stack of GAME.minder info sheets and a very rough playable prototype of Uncle Slam (née Presidential Pugilism).More than anything we learned one thing - THIS PLACE ROCKS!

Seriously, if you like games at all, and you've never been to PAX, you owe it to yourself to attend. It is such a great atmosphere to celebrate what we all love about playing.

So when PAX Prime rolled around in August, we knew we wanted to make a splash. Uncle Slam was under heavy development and what better way to see what was working and what wasn't than to get it in front of actual players. In addition, GAME.minder was chugging right along so why not keep it going?

I won't rehash the numbers or what we learned about Uncle Slam, but one major lesson learned was this - GAME.minder is much bigger than just an iOS app.

After what felt like the 90th "can I use it on Android" we realized we needed to reach outside our comfort zone to bring the GAME.minder concept to the world outside the walled garden. Enter - GAMEminder.com. We are iterating like crazy right now to bring it as close in functionality to the iOS app as possible and expect to have lots of great stuff to show off at PAX in just a week and a half. If you saw us in Seattle and wished you could use GAME.minder on your Android or Windows phone, the wait is over. Come see us at booth #254, we can't wait to show it to you.

As for Uncle Slam, what started life as a simple, iPad-only, playable prototype with only 2 presidents to choose from and very rough mechanics is now universal and on the app store with more than 15 playable presidents! If you've been enjoying Uncle Slam, come see us at booth #254 to check out some swag and maybe even pose for a photo with Uncle Slam himself.

It's been just over a year and we're packing our bags for PAX again. We hope you're doing the same, and we'll see you there!

Couplett 3 of 3: From the ashes (Approval at last)

(read part 1 and part 2)Rejection.

In our experience, it doesn't happen often but when it does, it's always unexpected. There are lots of developers out there who are riding the edge, whether on the technical end (pushing the edges of what iOS can do) or on the business end (like selling "borderline" things via IAP). We thought there was a possibility we might fall into the first category with Couplett. After all, we started off trying to do something with the camera system that Apple confirmed to us couldn't really be done. We found out that we actually fell into the second category.

The system we devised for rewarding users who spread the word about our app seemed like a pretty good one. You use our app, we give you content to keep using the app. If this was the end of it, we would have been fine. Where the trouble arose was when we also said "but if you want to skip all that, you can just buy tokens and reward yourself". You've done this in games. Lots of games allow you to purchase some sort of intermediate currency that you use in game. You may not spend 99¢ to buy a great sword outright, but you might spend 99¢ to buy 1000 gold and then turn around and spend 500 gold to unlock the sword. As with many things, Apple's guidelines here can be open to interpretation.

By our interpretation, we weren't doing anything different than these myriad games save one - we were not a game.

The concept of "gamification" is floating around a lot these days and the idea of rewarding desired behaviors is seen, for example, at Fitocracy (where you "level up" by completing exercises). We've applied some of these same concepts in GAME.minder. When you are "playing" something, it can add an element of fun that you don't get from simply "using" something.

After carefully considering the situation, we came to two conclusions:

• Apple is wrong
• but that doesn't actually matter

For those not intimately familiar with the App Review process, you do have the option to appeal. While we have never taken this option (our only other rejections were for simple things like mishandled screenshots), we have heard that it can drag on for months. As Couplett was now coming up on 1 year since inception, we decided to simply rework the model of Couplett into a more traditional freemium app where you get to try it out for free, and you buy add ons in-app. While the model of rewards was, in our opinion, an innovative model, the true innovation of Couplett is the 2 camera functionality and it seemed a shame to hold up getting that out there just to quibble over how people could pay.

We spent the month of January pulling apart the token reward system and rebuilding the app to allow for downloadable theme packs. One positive that came out of this change is that the app itself is now under 20 megabytes, allowing it to be downloaded over 3G. This extra time also allowed us to use the app "in the wild" so to speak over the holiday period which led us to another discovery.

As we have covered, it's not possible to have both cameras active at once. This means you only get to frame up the "main" picture, the front facing picture is shot "blind". Now at first, we considered this an ok trade-off but in my personal use over the holiday, I discovered that the front facing cameras aren't aimed exactly how you might think, especially on iPad. This lead to either a lot of "top heavy" front facing photos, or a lot of retakes to make sure things were framed up correctly.

Since we had the time, we took this opportunity to add a brief "check your hair" moment before taking the front facing picture. If you make sure your face is framed in the square, you should be golden to use any theme available without worrying about getting cut off.

We wrapped up the changes, reorganized our in app purchases, submitted and settled in again to wait.

Approved!

On February 8th, Couplett was released to world and we had a bang up first day, peaking at #9 free photo app for both iPhone and iPad!

Couplett 2 of 3: Development and Submission (and Rejection)

(read part 1)As late summer rolled on, we finally began to give Couplett the love it so desperately needed.

Early in development we faced our first big question. We knew we could build the photo taking functionality (we’d already done so with the prototype) and we knew that we could further optimize it. But what to do with these two photos? Through the design process, we came up with two distinct options:

• simple yet limited
• complex yet complicated

When going through the initial design phase of a project, it’s always good to throw as much against the wall as possible to see what might stick. Did we want Couplett to be an app that let you do anything you could possibly think of with two photos or did we want it to be something that let you do a couple things really fast, and really well?

We explored some options, built some prototypes and started to get a feel for what would make for a fun experience. What we settled on eventually was the concept of “Themes”. We took as inspiration what you see in iMovie or iPhoto - A single thing to select that brings with it all the options you would need for the composition. Instead of choosing a mask, a border, a color, a filter, a crop level and whatever else separately, you select a single theme and we design the themes to have all those things preselected for you. We then offer a few simple options (like position and size of the inner picture) and you’re all done.

It was around this time that we found Terrena, a full time graphics guru. What we realized we needed for Couplett was themes that were truly designed, and Brittney was already otherwise occupied with Uncle Slam. It was also around this time that we came up with the model for Couplett - Tokens.

You've seen "tokens", "gold" or "coins" in lots of popular games. You earn them in the game for performing various actions but, more importantly to us, you can skip all that and just buy them. When done correctly, you have something like Jetpack Joyride where you can just skip ahead a bit if you're frustrated. When done poorly, you have a Smurfberry situation.

Our goal was to incentivize the sharing of Coupletts (and hence, the sharing of the app itself). For every sharing action, you would earn tokens. Facebook, Twitter and Flickr sharing would earn more (since you were sharing with a larger audience) and sharing via email slightly less. This would then be the mechanism to unlock new themes, and as with many of the games out there, we would also offer the ability to purchase tokens in bulk if you just wanted the themes and didn't much care about sharing.

Development proceeded at quite a clip once Roben joined the team and there was even some friendly competition with the Uncle Slam team to see who might ship first. Uncle Slam won that contest by about a week but both came together so closely that it made the most sense toe schedule their releases together. December 16th would be the day. We submitted the final build and settled in to wait.

4 days later, we received the email you never want to get-

Your app Couplett has been reviewed, but we are unable to post this version. For details, or to directly contact the App Review team, visit the Resolution Center in iTunes Connect. Do not reply to this email.

Regards,

App Review

Translation: REJECTED.

(read part 3)

Couplett 1 of 3: Conception and Planning (and delays)

Couplett is finally coming out tomorrow, February 8th. For those that are interested, I thought I'd give a little insight into the year-long process that has brought Couplett to the App Store. A whole year, you say? Indeed. So how does such a simple concept take a year to come to fruition? Read on to find out.In January, 2011, I was having lunch with my daughter. We were having one of our favorites, Panera mac and cheese, while taking a break from some errands. I find that my favorite times with my children are when I get to spend time with them individually. My daughter had requested “the mac and cheese restaurant” and I was happy to oblige.

Being the age of cell phone cameras, I was taken by an impulse we all seem to have from time to time, “I want to capture this moment”. So there she was, across the table from me and I began the typical dance:

• Launch camera app
• lean over the table
• extend arm
• realise that I’m not sure the framing
• weigh the option of using the front facing camera despite it’s lower quality...

Wait a second.

Why am I switching cameras? This device has 2 cameras, if I could just drop the phone in between us and use both cameras, that would be so much simpler!

Thus began an App Store search and I found that there wasn’t much available (or my search skills weren’t up to the task). I filed the idea away and set a RE.minder to talk to John about it on Monday.

After relaying the idea, John started playing around with the camera system and we made some interesting discoveries, the most important of which is that, on the iPhone 4, there is no way to have both cameras active at the same time. No matter how we sliced it, the best we could hope for was two images, captured one immediately after the other. We took this prototype with us to WWDC 2011 and confirmed this with Apple. Barring a redesign of the underlying camera system (or a significant change deep within the OS), we could not have both cameras active at once.

Armed with this knowledge, it was time to dive into active development. Oh if only.

After WWDC in June, we were knee deep in the development of Uncle Slam. In addition, we now had a bright and shiny  (if borderline alpha) new iOS version to content with. But as we all know, Apple is never exactly forthcoming with projected release dates. Could Couplett be iOS5 only? Should we shift Uncle Slam's focus to iOS 5? Decisions, decisions.

(read part 2 and part 3)

The ins and outs of Uncle Slam

Uncle Slam has been a concept for more than a year and a half.It all began at WWDC (Worldwide Developer's Conference) 2010 when Pete Parisi (then of Apple, now of fuzzycubesoftware.com) made an off-hand comment in a game development session. He said, simply:

"If you're designing a history-based game starring Abraham Lincoln you probably don't want to render him looking like an anime character with a bazooka. You're going to alienate a large portion.. well maybe that's the greatest idea ever."

Anime? Let's try cartoon-painterly with a mohawk.

Bazooka? Maybe not, but only because we think we can do better.

Look

And so began the journey towards tomorrow, December 16th, 2011 and the official launch of Uncle Slam. But despite the journey having started - what exactly was Uncle Slam to become? We knew we wanted to use all the presidents and it was this idea that led us to the concept of a fighting game. In fairly short order, we settled on the somewhat obtuse name of "Presidential Pugilism" and began prototyping.

The fabulous early art tests from Brittney really began to inform what the game was to become. When you think "fighting game" (at least when I do), the first two that come to mind are Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. But as fun as those games are, the feel of Uncle Slam was to be a bit less severe. For one, Mortal Kombat fights end with the death of your opponent, so codified in the infamous "Fatality". This was clearly out of bounds for our subject matter.

Leaning away from mixed-martial-murder, we settled on "Gentleman's Boxing". This immediately narrowed the fighting itself (no kicks to worry about) and gave us a much more "Presidential" feel. What presidents would want to bare-knuckle box in the streets after all? A chief executive rises above such vulgarity. But one thing we didn't want to lose was the idea of "special moves". Everyone knows Sub-Zero's ice ball and Scorpion's "Get Over Here!" and we felt we wanted something similar. And so each president has a special move based on their history or folklore that can help to change the tide of a match in seconds. (We won't spoil them here as half the fun is seeing them for yourself).

Feel

The other really big challenge was control. Traditional fighting games all use simple button presses and distinct moves like high kick, low kick, high punch, low punch, block, etc. Looking at other fighting games for iOS, almost all of them have attempted to simply bring this idea directly over by using virtual buttons on screen. If you've spent any time at all using a multi-touch device, you know that this new interaction model can provide direct manipulation in a way that simple button presses simply can't, yet most fighting games seem to have taken the easy way out. The problem is that "virtual buttons" don't simply repeat what works with a physical controller, they are usually worse. Without a tactile sense of a button actually being pressed, it can be confusing whether you are doing what you want and your fingers can easily drift off them while playing.

Given this challenge, we decided to throw out and completely rethink the fighting game control model. Punches in Uncle Slam take their power and direction from a swipe gesture. No more high or low punch. No more fast-but-weak or slow-but strong punch. Punch anywhere, in any direction (but if you like the heavy punches, watch your stamina). The same goes for blocking. A drag-and-hold puts you in block mode but now, instead of a simple high or low block, you can directly manipulate your blocking gloves to anywhere you want.

All of this was made possible by building Uncle Slam with Cocos2D and Box2D. By using an easy to use framework with a robust physics engine, this helped us discover the "rock 'em, sock 'em" animation style we settled on. This was another departure from traditional 2D fighting games which are mostly sprite based. Some of our favorite moments while playing Uncle Slam arise from the times the gestural controls and physics-engine conspire to put our fighters in amusing positions. For instance, have you ever seen Richard Nixon standing on George Washington's head? What about Harry Truman giving Howard Taft a big bear-hug? We have, and soon you may too!

But is it hardcore?

You probably remember that we showed off Uncle Slam at PAX back in August. The response to the game was incredibly helpful to us. Who is the perfect Uncle Slam player?

We found that almost everyone who saw the art and heard the concept got an immediate smile on their face. This told us that our concept was a winner. Then people would sit down to play and this is where the opinions began to split. The problem with a huge show like PAX is that your  gameplay must be so simple to pick up and play that it can be hard to convey any depth and this is where we put most of our efforts following the show. How do we make sure we don't lose the simplicity but still have enough depth to keep people playing after the "gee-whiz" factor wears off? This problem was compounded by the fact that many fighting game fans were immediately faced with a complete re-imagining of how a fighting game is controlled.

But you know who got it right away? Gamers in their early teens. Unlike "core" gamers (among which I count myself), these young gamers don't have 20 years of controller-based gaming burned into their consciousness as "the one true way". In the immortal words of Yoda, "You must unlearn what you have learned". For those willing to "go with it" and work with the game, instead of against it, Uncle Slam offers more depth than I initially thought possible and you will really need to master it to beat the higher levels.

All in all, we couldn't be more excited right now. Uncle Slam is less than a day away and we can't wait for you to play it. Please don't hesitate to let us know what you think!

For the "Casual-Hardcore" gamer

A few weeks back, Handelabra sponsored the 5by5 network of podcasts. One show in particular, Hypercritical, is hosted by John Siracusa. If you are not familiar with his work, he's a long-time contributor to Arstechnica and is probably best known for his verbose and prolific writings on Apple and Mac OS X.While discussing GAME.minder, he made an observation that the app was best suited to "Casual-Hardcore" gamers. He defined this as: "You're enough of a gamer to know that a game is coming out ahead of time, and excited enough to be annoyed if you forgot about it but you're not so hardcore that you are constantly playing games."

He followed this up by saying it might be insulting but I really don't think so. In fact, it kinda describes me to a tee and speaks to exactly why we created GAME.minder. The games industry has exploded over the last decade and the fact is, hardcore or casual, it's almost impossible to keep up on every game you might want to play. When you couple this with the fact that the average gamer is 37 years old, it truly does make GAME.minder, as John put it, an "application of its time".

We as gamers, if nothing else, love to play. But most of us are old enough to have jobs, maybe families and myriad other things pulling on our attention. While we may be interested in what are often called "core games", our approach to gaming may fall more into the casual realm. However, the broader category of "casual games" usually means the Bejeweled and Angry Birds fare.

So now, John has given us a new category - the Casual-Hardcore gamer. Does this describe you like it describes us?