Ada Chen Rekhi

PAX 2009: Designing Indie Games With a Team of One

I spent the past weekend at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. It was a fantastic, packed event and definitely felt more like a gamer convention than a developer convention. The gamer enthusiasm ran the gamut from complex D&D games featuring 20-sided dice, card games like Magic, to XBLA games and hardcore console games. This year, PAX was huge with an estimated count of 75,000 attendees. Designing indie games with a team of one One of the most interesting talks I attended was “Designing indie games with a team of one” given by Michael Todd, the creator of several cool games and… Read More »PAX 2009: Designing Indie Games With a Team of One

Google Stops the Dance Music

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has discontinued Google Dance, their annual search geek party at Search Engine Strategies. I attended Google Dance back in 2007 and was blown away by the scale of the free food, beer and events that Google organized for the search community. While Google cites “cost-cutting efforts” as a reason for ending the dance, I interpret this as a sign that search marketing has grown up. The dance was started back in 2002 when search marketing as a discipline was in its infancy. In its emergence, Google Dance was a brilliant marketing tactic to… Read More »Google Stops the Dance Music

Video and Notes from Casual Connect 2009: Emerging Revenue Channels for Flash Games, Social…

In addition to my observations from Casual Connect, I spoke at the conference about emerging revenue channels within Flash games. I’ve linked the slides here. Earlier last week, I also joined the Leadership Development Forum to lead a roundtable on “Social Networking and Branded Games” with Vicky Tamaru of Plexipixel. Hosted WordPress doesn’t let me embed the video but you can watch the roundtable summary here on Ustream. Thanks to Deborah from GarageGames for an eloquent recap!

Casual Connect 2009 Recap and Observations

I just wrapped up the week at Casual Connect in Seattle. Overall, a great conference and big kudos to Jessica Tams and the Casual Games Association team for putting it on and growing the attendance to new highs in a difficult economy. 🙂 I’m not planning to spend too much time summarizing the content, though there’s some great overviews of the content out there already — Gamezebo has some nice roundups and there are some good summaries of sessions like how Corpse Craft turned RTS Casual and Jim and Greg from Kongregate on Fatal Flaws in Flash Game Design and Development. Instead, here’s… Read More »Casual Connect 2009 Recap and Observations

The World of Flash Games

We just wrapped up Flash Gaming Summit on Sunday and it was a packed event with lots of interesting discussions and thoughts come out of it. There was a good mix of games-related companies, game portals and independent developers. I thought the most interesting conversations came discussion around Flash games intersecting with multi-player, virtual MMOs and social games. As games increase in quality, richer multi-player experiences enable them to increase the engagement beyond the majority short-form content that exists today into content that drives repeatable plays. One interesting stat from the conference was Jim Greer stating that 20% of the… Read More »The World of Flash Games

The Different Dialects of Casual Game Monetization

Games are hot lately and GDC 2009 is just around the corner. When talking about games, most people tend to think about the business of making games in the loose terms of console, casual and mobile. However, the casual games industry is definitely a lot more segmented than that. The conversations become radically different depending on what group you’re speaking with. The basis for why this is stems from the underlying economics of each industry. This can be summed up in one question: How are you monetizing your users? Put a grab bag of casual games people in the online… Read More »The Different Dialects of Casual Game Monetization

Gearing up for Flash Gaming Summit on Sunday

I’ve been busy organizing the Flash Gaming Summit this coming week, which is a one-day conference dedicated exclusively to the Flash game development community. The conference is a mix of speaker sessions and panels, and also features The Mochis, which recognizes the best Flash Games of 2008. Check out this amazing video which Brandon from WeGame made for us to recognize the finalists. We’ve had an amazing response from the Flash games community for this event, and the event sold out last week. Unfortunately if you’re not registered already you’re out of luck, but you can still follow it on… Read More »Gearing up for Flash Gaming Summit on Sunday

Free Ringtones(*) With a Catch

It was heartening to spot the news today that Google has agreed to force search marketers to disclose the subscription fees associated with a lot of the supposedly “free” ringtone ads out there. In a deal with the Florida Attorney General’s office, Google agreed to require search marketers to use copy such as “ad-supported” or “$9.99/month” when they are marketing their free ringtone ads. Basically, free ringtone ads trick unwary consumers into signing up for subscriptions and additional fees in the fine print. Glad to finally see that some regulation emerging for the deceptive ad practices in this space.

Are You Internet Illiterate? Sux 4 U

I recently finished reading Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, a fascinating book about the biological and cognitive development behind the simple act of reading. The initial reason to pick up the book was an equally interesting article read in The Atlantic during a plane trip: ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’. To summarize the ongoing debate, the idea is that Google is ruining our brains. The need to quickly process information bites from Wikipedia and Twitter is driving humanity into a state of ADHD where they simply cannot read an extended book. Why do you need to read a… Read More »Are You Internet Illiterate? Sux 4 U

Apartment searching in SF sucks

We’ve spent the past two weeks trying to find a new home (which, by the way, will end with triumph tomorrow when drop off our signed lease) and the whole process has sucked. Apartment hunting is an antiquated process that hasn’t progressed much beyond moving classifieds online and for free. Many listings don’t do a consistent job of answering common questions and providing reliable information about the property. There’s nothing to guarantee the transaction against scams, and difficult to contact them in order to transact. Landlords have to keep on posting in order to stay relevant, and on the top.… Read More »Apartment searching in SF sucks