So it's the end of 2013 and what a year it was! Coding, designing, fixing, swearing, coffee, beer and wine and hard liquor, pulling hair out of our heads and hacking phones and things. Ten months of development and things behind, whew! I thought of whipping up a blogpost about this year, some things that remain with me, the rantings of a hippie indie developer in the backwoods of Finland.
Phase one:
I spent most of the year 2012 coding a collectible card game called Zombiary. Took it to a playable stage last christmas with AI and everything. No graphics or design, just basic html coloured squares and text. But you could play the game. Felt quite burned out with the project in January and it seemed we couldn't get graphics for it at all. There are 88 cards in the basic deck and one graphic artist after another failed us. In hindsight, our expectations were quite high for an indie game, we couldn't accept the kind of stuff that is the norm on CCG's that you can play on kongregate or so, we wanted a gritty pulp horror style line drawn look and it just didn't play out at all. So in Jan, I decided to put Zombiary on hold, booked tickets to fly to Kobe to paint, hang around rock n' roll venues and see what happens.
In Kobe, I met an old coder friend Lukasz who worked together with me when we were doing Four Letter Words for iOS. After the staggering non-success of 4LW Lukasz had to get what one might call a real job (one of those things we all know and love, make crappy nonsense for an insurance company and stuff) that produces a paycheck at the end of the month and stomach ulcers after a year of that.
Luke told me that he's working on a car navigation software project and has acquired good knowledge in GPS related things. Immediately I thought of this little idea we'd been toying with, a GPS based game for mobile. Lukasz was interested to jump in and hack around a bit and in a few weeks we had a proto of 'the new game'.
I quite enjoyed the springtime, prepared for my art show, it was really great to just paint and hang around after a winter of endless days and nights of coding. We got a nice venue and did a shared exhibition with a proper painter, Naoko Ogasawara. I went out to the mountains of Kobe and into the city with the proto of Hoodownr, met interesting people and heard interesting things. And learned a lot about gps error spikes and things. =)
After a few months, it was time to head back to Finland. We cooked up a 'Nightspot at Zubb Um Kabir' event with a few great bands in Kobe at this joint that had broken air conditioning. Man it was hot but all of our friends came and played and we even had poetry reading backed up by a world class jazz pianist making funny sounds from a two-penny plastic keyboard. Total artistic success! Packed my bags to head back to Finland, the land of promise.
Second phase:
Doing my thing in Japan for a long time, Finland felt very attractive place to move on with a project. The government is putting money to games development and encouraging small businesses to grow. Instead of the usual thing of going around finding investment, I was under the impression that the government is helping small companies thru the valley of death to make a proto or something to move on with. So I got talking to Tekes, keksintösäätiö, Finnvera and so on and so forth.
It turned out that they only want to help companies that already have a funding or capital of their own. So if you spent the last 10 years of your life abroad, didn't come back with a bunch of money, the govt is not interested to help you at all. I wasted a lot of time with all of aforementioned institutions, having meaningless conversations without nothing moving on. After a lot of wheeling and dealing, I was accepted as a private enterpreneur (co-op's are a swearword in Finland) to get a bit of money to live and try to find funding that would allow to try Tekes etc. again.
After paying the enterpreneur insurances and things the law requires from a private enterpreneur, you are left with less money than the guy who gets his welfare check every month. It would definitely be better to lie to the government at the end of every month that you are unemployed and keep doing what you're doing. Lesson 1 for indie devs: if you haven't got the capital, lie, fabricate, cheat. That's what everybody else is doing.
I think the problem with the starttiraha (small business encouragement package) is that they came up with that kind of arrangement at the time when the only businesses were inns, hairdressing salons and restaurants. Stuff that immediately creates cash flow. So starttiraha is there to help you to build your business that is already creating money. With a project like ours, that is not the case of course. There is no revenue until the game is finished and selling like hotcakes.
Thru the summer we kept coding and talking about the game. Assembly 2013 had a contest for a free presentation booth for the best project at play Finland (Finnish gamedev group on facebook). We got the booth and went there. We made friends and in general people loved what we were doing. Basim flew in from England to see the crowd and discuss the project. Bazzer is well into the new things in the gaming industry and knows what is going on, he told us that what we are doing is exactly the kind of thing that is the future of gaming. Well encouraged there.
The rest of the summer was more coding and running the first iteration of Camp Hastur. The camp was a very welcome distraction, getting to meet and talk to a number of people, youth workers, sculptors, tattoo artists, actors, people from all walks of life. We arranged Hasturock vol 2, a warehouse rock festivus in this abandoned building on the outskirts of Tornio and had a hell of a time doing it.
Autumn came, our game was selected on the top ten of SITRA's health game compo, Gesundheit. We got to participate at Wärkfest, present a demo of the game to the public, join a workshop and all that jazz. The response to Hoodownr was great. I asked sitra to write us a recommendation letter that would help us to move on with the funding. They said no. Lesson 2 for an indie dev: Nobody will stick out his head for you. It's completely up to you man.
Sitra helped us to get a discount on Slush 2013 tickets though. In we went, obsessively coding to present a playable demo that showed all those things people from the previous tests wanted to see. Time ran out however and we decided not to show a buggy build at all. At slush, we talked to a number of people who were interested in the project. The very first person we met told us basically that being a Co-op is spooky communist hippie shit. Gotta be incorporated. Lesson 3: Don't go about as a co-op. You will be immediately tagged as suspicious communist hippie bums. Sharing is not caring. All the guys with big dicks have the word LLC tattooed on those dicks. Get your tat today.
I think the best part of Slush for us was the shadow event, Sludge. It was arranged at this old insane asylum building by people who really cared about games more than CPR's and business jargon. Those boys had something going there, if they keep doing it, it's going to be what Boozembly is to Assembly. More power to Sludge! Great DJ's too =)
Thinking about it after 10 months of developing and promoting and dealing with all these people I felt that the way to do it is to do it yourself completely. The investors that could seriously contribute to your project want to see the finished game and revenue. It's no different from the shark tank. Some want to scam you for a very small amount of money. Lesson number 4: Don't take it. Money is just money, those guys are just as desperate to find something to invest in as you are to make your game. The deal has to make sense. Give in and you will be seriously fucked later. I mean seriously seriously fucked. If you fuck up with your funding deals early on, getting additional funding later will be almost impossible. This actually happens.
So as a small summa summarum after 10 months: Do it yourself if you can. Even when you cannot, do it anyway. Make it possible. Make friends with your players, make the game fun for them and listen to their feedback. I mean seriously listen. If you are producing the game, listen to your team. Your team is the best thing you've got. Be a person. Exert energy. Have passion. Be open to ideas and influences and the energy of people who are different from you. The game you are making is for the people, not for you or for a corporate machine. Stand by your true values. Your standing or falling depends fully on the connection between your game and the people who play it. That is all.
So at the end of the year, we are at a place where we almost have a fully playable beta. We intend to field test the game and make improvements based on player feedback. Can't wait to hit the road with a bunch of friends with the latest build of Hoodownr to see how it plays and how people will feel. Come 2014, come more kick-ass things from us.
Thanks for following our blog everybody. Hope you've enjoyed, hope to see everybody next year, happy holidays and all that!
keep reaching up!
Sami
Hastur
tiistai 24. joulukuuta 2013
maanantai 16. joulukuuta 2013
Coding Hello!
The past two weeks have gone by in a flash of coding. That's what game programmers do I guess. Code.
We set to build a playable build of Hoodo after Slush. People we met there were only interested to see the finished game and player feedback and stuff before they would discuss any funding. Now That is really helpful. Rule number one, please have a hit game that is making lotsa greenback, then you'll get funded. Right on!
We've had a few alphas for testers this year but the complaint has been the same, unless you actually get to play the game, it's hard to understand what it's all about. Mission: complete the game!
Under the hood, Hoodownr poses a few technically difficult problems. Unlike a mmorpg where you shard and instance groups of players, we don't shard and most certainly don't instance. Everybody who plays the game plays on the same global map. All 10 million of them. Or more. This is where things get a bit tricky.
I've been hacking away on the server side to make the magic happen. The existing code had to be completely rewritten and tested for all kinds of deadly situations that might arise. And on a game like ours, lot's of stuff will arise.
After a few weeks of hard work, everything looks pretty much the same as it did 2 months ago. Well there's the new player status and achievement screens but beside that, things look very alpha. Most discouraging but adding eye candy is the easiest thing.
There's a few bits and pieces still missing but it's close to playable now. We plan to have a few group tests with our friends who are getting new handsets for christmas and see how they feel about the Hoodownr experience.
Still an insane amount of stuff on the bucket list but things do get done one by one. Bugs fixed, issues resolved. Things are moving along.
Looks like the blog entry turned into a progress review and nothing interesting. Hmm. Maybe because it's about the work that goes into a game. Can get very tedious at times but that's how she goes.
One fun thing to write is: Parallella is almost ready. Take a look. They will be shipping boards in the next few days, can't wait to get mine!
Your boringly and uninspiringly and workingly
Sami
Hastur
We set to build a playable build of Hoodo after Slush. People we met there were only interested to see the finished game and player feedback and stuff before they would discuss any funding. Now That is really helpful. Rule number one, please have a hit game that is making lotsa greenback, then you'll get funded. Right on!
We've had a few alphas for testers this year but the complaint has been the same, unless you actually get to play the game, it's hard to understand what it's all about. Mission: complete the game!
Under the hood, Hoodownr poses a few technically difficult problems. Unlike a mmorpg where you shard and instance groups of players, we don't shard and most certainly don't instance. Everybody who plays the game plays on the same global map. All 10 million of them. Or more. This is where things get a bit tricky.
I've been hacking away on the server side to make the magic happen. The existing code had to be completely rewritten and tested for all kinds of deadly situations that might arise. And on a game like ours, lot's of stuff will arise.
After a few weeks of hard work, everything looks pretty much the same as it did 2 months ago. Well there's the new player status and achievement screens but beside that, things look very alpha. Most discouraging but adding eye candy is the easiest thing.
There's a few bits and pieces still missing but it's close to playable now. We plan to have a few group tests with our friends who are getting new handsets for christmas and see how they feel about the Hoodownr experience.
Still an insane amount of stuff on the bucket list but things do get done one by one. Bugs fixed, issues resolved. Things are moving along.
Looks like the blog entry turned into a progress review and nothing interesting. Hmm. Maybe because it's about the work that goes into a game. Can get very tedious at times but that's how she goes.
One fun thing to write is: Parallella is almost ready. Take a look. They will be shipping boards in the next few days, can't wait to get mine!
Your boringly and uninspiringly and workingly
Sami
Hastur
maanantai 9. joulukuuta 2013
exploring cityscape
Let's kick off with a quote from a Rush song called 'the Analog Kid':
'You move me, you move me
with your buildings and your eyes
Autumn woods and winter skies
You move me, you move me
Open sea and city lights
Busy streets and dizzy heights
You call me, you call me'
So what I want to talk right now is how we experience the city. I would think most of us are or have lived or travelled in a City. New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London, La Paz,Osaka.. all these vibrant and exciting places where it's all happening.
Or is it? One can have a very boring old time even in the coolest place of the world. When you live and work in a metropolis, the places you go to work and play easily become a repetition. One acknowledges the possibilities of a metropolis, all it's venues, hiking trails and millions of people but still feels stuck.
When traveling to a city, you might be stuck with a tourist group or if going solo, going from one attraction to another can become very daunting.
I think the problem lies in the way we look at the city. We sort of know what it is. Like a big machine made of sewage drains and bus routes, all those people spinning there trying to run the economics and chase their dreams. Everything in the city is built around and by the people and their dreams. And as people and their dreams are individual, so are the cities and the suburbs and train yards and everything in them.
I've been living in a few cities in Japan and Korea, visited a few in Europe and the states too. I had the luxury of time to stay for a few months at a time, sometimes years, and try and experience the place that I was in.
After spending a while in a place, you've found a few people you meet occasionally or frequently and a few places you hang out occasionally or frequently. Doing what you did when you arrived, that is, exploring new venues and things, sort of fizzles out. Going to new places becomes harder and more bothersome. You land at the spot where you are aware of the possibilities but still sort of stuck. Congratulations, you have landed at your comfort zone. Are we really comfortable now?
Breaking this mold you cast for yourself is one of our key motivations with Hoodownr. We need incentives to go out of our comfort zones and we need to be awarded for doing that. Everybody wants to see more and feel more. I don't think I'm wrong if I say that people, you, me, the man next door, are just waiting for the right cue.
Also we easily become stuck in our social circles. Cues do come from our own circle of friends in the form of trips to the countryside or to an art show but those cues might not come as frequently as we would like them. Hanging out with exactly the same crowd becomes daunting after a while, same faces, same conversations, similar things. Oh if only there was an external wake up and and adventure to boot.
Hoodownr strives to offer an external and casual cue. For yourself and for other people who are playing the game. Adventure can be a tap away after starting the app. Starting off solo and having other people on board while you're exploring happens. When you feel you are in a rut: start hoodownr, just hit play, take a bottle of water with you and head out the door. Take a camera with you. It's all out there for you. Discovery now!
'the focus is sharp in the city'.
Sami
Hastur
'You move me, you move me
with your buildings and your eyes
Autumn woods and winter skies
You move me, you move me
Open sea and city lights
Busy streets and dizzy heights
You call me, you call me'
So what I want to talk right now is how we experience the city. I would think most of us are or have lived or travelled in a City. New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London, La Paz,Osaka.. all these vibrant and exciting places where it's all happening.
Or is it? One can have a very boring old time even in the coolest place of the world. When you live and work in a metropolis, the places you go to work and play easily become a repetition. One acknowledges the possibilities of a metropolis, all it's venues, hiking trails and millions of people but still feels stuck.
When traveling to a city, you might be stuck with a tourist group or if going solo, going from one attraction to another can become very daunting.
I think the problem lies in the way we look at the city. We sort of know what it is. Like a big machine made of sewage drains and bus routes, all those people spinning there trying to run the economics and chase their dreams. Everything in the city is built around and by the people and their dreams. And as people and their dreams are individual, so are the cities and the suburbs and train yards and everything in them.
I've been living in a few cities in Japan and Korea, visited a few in Europe and the states too. I had the luxury of time to stay for a few months at a time, sometimes years, and try and experience the place that I was in.
After spending a while in a place, you've found a few people you meet occasionally or frequently and a few places you hang out occasionally or frequently. Doing what you did when you arrived, that is, exploring new venues and things, sort of fizzles out. Going to new places becomes harder and more bothersome. You land at the spot where you are aware of the possibilities but still sort of stuck. Congratulations, you have landed at your comfort zone. Are we really comfortable now?
Breaking this mold you cast for yourself is one of our key motivations with Hoodownr. We need incentives to go out of our comfort zones and we need to be awarded for doing that. Everybody wants to see more and feel more. I don't think I'm wrong if I say that people, you, me, the man next door, are just waiting for the right cue.
Also we easily become stuck in our social circles. Cues do come from our own circle of friends in the form of trips to the countryside or to an art show but those cues might not come as frequently as we would like them. Hanging out with exactly the same crowd becomes daunting after a while, same faces, same conversations, similar things. Oh if only there was an external wake up and and adventure to boot.
Hoodownr strives to offer an external and casual cue. For yourself and for other people who are playing the game. Adventure can be a tap away after starting the app. Starting off solo and having other people on board while you're exploring happens. When you feel you are in a rut: start hoodownr, just hit play, take a bottle of water with you and head out the door. Take a camera with you. It's all out there for you. Discovery now!
'the focus is sharp in the city'.
Sami
Hastur
 |
| Don't throw stuff over the railing, it's not polite |
maanantai 2. joulukuuta 2013
Stig Bombing
More strange news from the convoluted world of Osuuskunta Hastur.
A few weeks back, we took part in arranging the unveiling of 'the Broken Lantern', a 8 meter tall stainless steel sculpture in the heart of Tornio city. The artists, Teija and Pekka Isorättyä have been hanging around at the camp every now and then and great times were had (evidence further down on older blog entries).
The town of Tornio paid for the costs of the sculpture that celebrates the towns village idiots and HC punk scene. For some reason or other, the town was not interested in creating any kind of unveiling event or artist reception so all us bright minds at Camp Hastur got together and planned and executed an opening ceremony and the reception.
Pia and Merja created the concept that included an opera singer, fire art, lights and performance activity. Teija and Pekka asked one of our friends, Miku (of the assembly 2013 rainbow rug booth hangout support fame) to have the opening speech. Usually someone from the town council has a very boring speech in such occasions but this time around is was our friend who got a bit of limelight. We'll he's in the town council too so it was all legit. =)
As we came back after slush, I got the news that the reception budget had been axed in the council. WTF! If a pro cross-country skier of equal magnitude made his return to the old home town, they'd probably send a limo and have a big party. But for artists, no matter how famous, the town didn'd want to spend a penny. Classic. We felt that this was quite outrageous and decided to arrange the reception ourselves. After all, the statue is about independent culture. I had 2 days to arrange the reception without any money, lights, PA..
With a little help from a friend here and there, we got the keys to and old bank building very near the statue, Miku arranged us a projector and a small PA set and Pia bought heaps of bubbly out of her own pocket. Arranging a party for 50-100 people in two day's notice is not easy I tell you. Especially if you want to throw a classy party. But we pulled it off, miraculously.
The opening went well, the party was groovy and the afterparty even groovier maybe =)
Next day me and Janne crawled to the art museum bazaar to meet up with artists who might have interest in doing an art show at camp Hastur. We met a few people and then there was this Mr. Stig who had some really cool graffiti style paintings. He told us we was not interested at all to come to this god-forsaken town but some of his friends basically forced him to pack his paintings and drive to Tornio.
Long story short, we are planning an art show with Stig PLUS he's doing some kick-o-ass-o graphics for Hoodownr! I'm posting a few samples of his stuff here, take a look. If you need a airplane hangar painted in vivid colors or something like that, contact stig, he's da man for da job!
This week it's still grinding away with hoodo pre beta. So much to do. More blogging later.
Ah btw we got the hoodownr specific website up at hoodownr.com , take a look!
Appreciate your local artist people!
Sami
Hastur
A few weeks back, we took part in arranging the unveiling of 'the Broken Lantern', a 8 meter tall stainless steel sculpture in the heart of Tornio city. The artists, Teija and Pekka Isorättyä have been hanging around at the camp every now and then and great times were had (evidence further down on older blog entries).
The town of Tornio paid for the costs of the sculpture that celebrates the towns village idiots and HC punk scene. For some reason or other, the town was not interested in creating any kind of unveiling event or artist reception so all us bright minds at Camp Hastur got together and planned and executed an opening ceremony and the reception.
Pia and Merja created the concept that included an opera singer, fire art, lights and performance activity. Teija and Pekka asked one of our friends, Miku (of the assembly 2013 rainbow rug booth hangout support fame) to have the opening speech. Usually someone from the town council has a very boring speech in such occasions but this time around is was our friend who got a bit of limelight. We'll he's in the town council too so it was all legit. =)
As we came back after slush, I got the news that the reception budget had been axed in the council. WTF! If a pro cross-country skier of equal magnitude made his return to the old home town, they'd probably send a limo and have a big party. But for artists, no matter how famous, the town didn'd want to spend a penny. Classic. We felt that this was quite outrageous and decided to arrange the reception ourselves. After all, the statue is about independent culture. I had 2 days to arrange the reception without any money, lights, PA..
With a little help from a friend here and there, we got the keys to and old bank building very near the statue, Miku arranged us a projector and a small PA set and Pia bought heaps of bubbly out of her own pocket. Arranging a party for 50-100 people in two day's notice is not easy I tell you. Especially if you want to throw a classy party. But we pulled it off, miraculously.
The opening went well, the party was groovy and the afterparty even groovier maybe =)
Next day me and Janne crawled to the art museum bazaar to meet up with artists who might have interest in doing an art show at camp Hastur. We met a few people and then there was this Mr. Stig who had some really cool graffiti style paintings. He told us we was not interested at all to come to this god-forsaken town but some of his friends basically forced him to pack his paintings and drive to Tornio.
Long story short, we are planning an art show with Stig PLUS he's doing some kick-o-ass-o graphics for Hoodownr! I'm posting a few samples of his stuff here, take a look. If you need a airplane hangar painted in vivid colors or something like that, contact stig, he's da man for da job!
This week it's still grinding away with hoodo pre beta. So much to do. More blogging later.
Ah btw we got the hoodownr specific website up at hoodownr.com , take a look!
Appreciate your local artist people!
Sami
Hastur
torstai 28. marraskuuta 2013
gaming or gaming?
Here's an interesting tidbit I read a few days ago. I'm quoting the text in full from Notzed's blog here:
This suddenly made a lot of sense to me. This past autumn I have followed the game industry events in europe, especially the UK. The trend seems to be that the gambling industry is developing ties with computer game companies. I wondered why those loathsome fuckers are accepted in the gaming events at all but now it's pretty obvious really. The mechanisms of gambling seem to be infiltrating the proper games industry as well.
Cannot say i'm really looking forward to a more complete amalgamation of gambling and gaming. I think that conditioning people to be more accepting towards an industry who's line of business is of basically ripping people off and creating an impression of 'It could be you!'. And the house always wins. What's next, gambling Mario now with crackwhores for kids?
The pay-to-win models work tho. And as a game producer I could reason that we're only supplying a demand. Just like your local meth dealer does. Supply and demand, It's business baby!
I wonder how much the expectation of multi-billion exits affects us startups. If you don't proclaim intentions of making a huge amount of revenue, you are not going to get funded. I think Notzed's observation about companies who are not comfortable with heroin-dealer tactics of ripping people off are accurate. You are left to fight for the scraps.
Our vision is not of pay-to-win or endless IAP's to keep up. The point of Hoodownr is to bring people together. Once purchased, it's yours to enjoy forever. There will be no ads for the most lucrative fields of ad revenue, gambling and pornography. In fact, there will be no ads at all. We feel people get bombed with enough advertisement propaganda already.
In the current state of affairs, I think this is the only sensible way for us and our players. If you're a die hard F2P proponent, think again. Think of all the ad crap that you've been force fed and the gambling-derived business models behind the attractive package. Time to uninstall some software guys.
Sami
Hastur
Is it gaming or gaming?
The other big thing to come to light is the attempt to push the revenue model up significantly higher than the selling-disks model will ever be able to provide.
Here in Australia 'gaming' generally refers not to computer games, but to the computerised gambling industry. An awful lot about the intended revenue models (and mobile/tablet 'free to play games' in general) share a lot with this despicable industry which prays on people psychologically to fleece them of their cash. Even the words being thrown around like 'whales' come from directly that industry.
And gaming is big money compared to the computer game industry.
Unfortunately it seems 'computer games' are going to be headed at least in some part toward this gambling revenue model; anywhere there is this much money to be had it will be sought out actively. Companies that don't embrace it will be fighting for the scraps but hopefully they'll be able to survive and hopefully this is just a passing fad (or gets regulated out of the market).
This suddenly made a lot of sense to me. This past autumn I have followed the game industry events in europe, especially the UK. The trend seems to be that the gambling industry is developing ties with computer game companies. I wondered why those loathsome fuckers are accepted in the gaming events at all but now it's pretty obvious really. The mechanisms of gambling seem to be infiltrating the proper games industry as well.
Cannot say i'm really looking forward to a more complete amalgamation of gambling and gaming. I think that conditioning people to be more accepting towards an industry who's line of business is of basically ripping people off and creating an impression of 'It could be you!'. And the house always wins. What's next, gambling Mario now with crackwhores for kids?
The pay-to-win models work tho. And as a game producer I could reason that we're only supplying a demand. Just like your local meth dealer does. Supply and demand, It's business baby!
I wonder how much the expectation of multi-billion exits affects us startups. If you don't proclaim intentions of making a huge amount of revenue, you are not going to get funded. I think Notzed's observation about companies who are not comfortable with heroin-dealer tactics of ripping people off are accurate. You are left to fight for the scraps.
Our vision is not of pay-to-win or endless IAP's to keep up. The point of Hoodownr is to bring people together. Once purchased, it's yours to enjoy forever. There will be no ads for the most lucrative fields of ad revenue, gambling and pornography. In fact, there will be no ads at all. We feel people get bombed with enough advertisement propaganda already.
In the current state of affairs, I think this is the only sensible way for us and our players. If you're a die hard F2P proponent, think again. Think of all the ad crap that you've been force fed and the gambling-derived business models behind the attractive package. Time to uninstall some software guys.
Sami
Hastur
tiistai 19. marraskuuta 2013
we got slushed!
A few notes about our Slush experience here.. totally tired after the three day trial..
So as usual, when there's an tradeshow or something happening, we hit the high gear with development. This time our goal was to get a gameplay demo of hoodo with most of the key features in. The features we had shown on the video but that we're not ready yet. And what a big piece of the cake it was. Totally burned out with all the development hell and testing, we were really burning the midnight oil for the current build.
Slush organization was really good, they provided a steady stream of emails with hints about how to connect with investors and the like. Studying investor profiles and learning about the investors hobbies and stuff was encouraged. Big plus for all that info so everybody could find the maximum benefit.
We are a small team so instead of studying loads of profiles and things we just skimmed thru the material and looked up people who were doing or funding interesting things. And worked on the build of course. At the venue, Z went to talk to the accelerators and small investor players. We registered late so there was no opportunity to pitch in front of an audience so I just did a lot of cold pitching to interesting people I met wherever. That approach worked out fine and I had a few very nice conversations with people high up the ladder.
Another thing that we noticed once again was the 'show me the playable demo'-thing. Startups and other future game devs, nobody is going to care about your video, be prepared to show your progress thru the demo. We had the party build ready online and prepared to give the link via qr-code and an nfc tag. Tap your phone to the tag, get the build, wham bang thank you mam. I saw nobody else having anything like that. NFC rocks!
All in all the venue was really chaotic and I found it hard to concentrate on the presentations. So many projects and companies all pitching on stage. I felt our direct approach was really good for us for making contacts.
So now there's a lot of following up to be done. We went thru all the business cards and things and made a plan of what to do next. The push for slush was a big step for the game, we've pretty much got all the basic elements of Hoodownr in place for further playetesting. It was really hard work but very encouraging to see how far we got in a very limited amount of time. Still a few bugs and additional features to throw in, I can see the rest of the year flying by really fast.
Well, it's time to get back to the old grindstone. Thanks all who we met and helped along the way - stäy tuned!
Sami
Hastur
So as usual, when there's an tradeshow or something happening, we hit the high gear with development. This time our goal was to get a gameplay demo of hoodo with most of the key features in. The features we had shown on the video but that we're not ready yet. And what a big piece of the cake it was. Totally burned out with all the development hell and testing, we were really burning the midnight oil for the current build.
Slush organization was really good, they provided a steady stream of emails with hints about how to connect with investors and the like. Studying investor profiles and learning about the investors hobbies and stuff was encouraged. Big plus for all that info so everybody could find the maximum benefit.
We are a small team so instead of studying loads of profiles and things we just skimmed thru the material and looked up people who were doing or funding interesting things. And worked on the build of course. At the venue, Z went to talk to the accelerators and small investor players. We registered late so there was no opportunity to pitch in front of an audience so I just did a lot of cold pitching to interesting people I met wherever. That approach worked out fine and I had a few very nice conversations with people high up the ladder.
Another thing that we noticed once again was the 'show me the playable demo'-thing. Startups and other future game devs, nobody is going to care about your video, be prepared to show your progress thru the demo. We had the party build ready online and prepared to give the link via qr-code and an nfc tag. Tap your phone to the tag, get the build, wham bang thank you mam. I saw nobody else having anything like that. NFC rocks!
All in all the venue was really chaotic and I found it hard to concentrate on the presentations. So many projects and companies all pitching on stage. I felt our direct approach was really good for us for making contacts.
So now there's a lot of following up to be done. We went thru all the business cards and things and made a plan of what to do next. The push for slush was a big step for the game, we've pretty much got all the basic elements of Hoodownr in place for further playetesting. It was really hard work but very encouraging to see how far we got in a very limited amount of time. Still a few bugs and additional features to throw in, I can see the rest of the year flying by really fast.
Well, it's time to get back to the old grindstone. Thanks all who we met and helped along the way - stäy tuned!
Sami
Hastur
perjantai 8. marraskuuta 2013
Under the hood
Busy busy bees here hacking away with Hoodownr codebase. We're preparing a build for next weeks Slush 2013, tech company and investor meetup.
The slush build will have most of those fun things our playtesters during assembly2013 and wärkfest asked to have to grok what the game is about. We've also improved the build deployment process so installing it is easier than ever. This time around things should be really straightforward for testers.
On the backend side, we've been botbuilding and discovering all kinds of neat things we can do with the game. Neat things like making it easier and more intuitive. People who have seen the game already were surprised how easy it is to play. Newsflash: It just got even easier.
The backend work also contributes to a good few gameplay elements we're going to incorporate in Hoodownr. It's fun to see the project evolve.
Last night's build didn't work on Froyo anymore due to google policy. What followed was a mad rush to a local theatre production company unofficial headquarters to get the DOCOMO galaxy mk1 (a.k.a the shitphone) properly cracked and reflashed. Where else would you have your phone hacked?
After a few hours of Z and Jonttu trying to break the devices Japanese carrier-locked backbone and me and Merja talking about the situation with play rehearsal spaces here in Tornio, the phone finally yielded and runs Gingerbread now. And the latest build of Hoodownr.
Jonttu was wondering why we would support an old piece of crap like Gingerbread. The answer is obvious of course but it made me remember our four letter words project a few years ago on IOS. The game has a heavy self-organizing cell algo and we decided it should run on iPod mark 1. The algo was heavy even on a current iPod at the time but Dr Lukasz's madskills came into rescue and sure enough, the release is perfectly playable even on that iPod that looks like an early proto of a touch-screen device. If that's not a win I don't know what is.
Professionalism is the thing that is not immediately apparent goes the old Finnish saying. We want to show you more.
A beautiful snowy day in Northern Finland. After a cup of coffee, I'm going out to do a run with the latest build. Forgetting about testing while you're testing means you're doing something right.And that's the plan!
See you at Slush
Sami
The slush build will have most of those fun things our playtesters during assembly2013 and wärkfest asked to have to grok what the game is about. We've also improved the build deployment process so installing it is easier than ever. This time around things should be really straightforward for testers.
On the backend side, we've been botbuilding and discovering all kinds of neat things we can do with the game. Neat things like making it easier and more intuitive. People who have seen the game already were surprised how easy it is to play. Newsflash: It just got even easier.
The backend work also contributes to a good few gameplay elements we're going to incorporate in Hoodownr. It's fun to see the project evolve.
Last night's build didn't work on Froyo anymore due to google policy. What followed was a mad rush to a local theatre production company unofficial headquarters to get the DOCOMO galaxy mk1 (a.k.a the shitphone) properly cracked and reflashed. Where else would you have your phone hacked?
After a few hours of Z and Jonttu trying to break the devices Japanese carrier-locked backbone and me and Merja talking about the situation with play rehearsal spaces here in Tornio, the phone finally yielded and runs Gingerbread now. And the latest build of Hoodownr.
Jonttu was wondering why we would support an old piece of crap like Gingerbread. The answer is obvious of course but it made me remember our four letter words project a few years ago on IOS. The game has a heavy self-organizing cell algo and we decided it should run on iPod mark 1. The algo was heavy even on a current iPod at the time but Dr Lukasz's madskills came into rescue and sure enough, the release is perfectly playable even on that iPod that looks like an early proto of a touch-screen device. If that's not a win I don't know what is.
Professionalism is the thing that is not immediately apparent goes the old Finnish saying. We want to show you more.
A beautiful snowy day in Northern Finland. After a cup of coffee, I'm going out to do a run with the latest build. Forgetting about testing while you're testing means you're doing something right.And that's the plan!
See you at Slush
Sami
tiistai 5. marraskuuta 2013
Camper trailer
Just like Clark Kent works at day and flies at night, things move with Osuuskunta Hastur. Last friday we had an exhibition opening for Jouko Alapartanen, theme being 'art is here'. Jouko popped by a few weeks ago during a portrait painting gig in Ylitornio and mentioned he had a bunch of heavy old paintings stashed away somewhere that could be used for an art show. Things set in motion!
Jouko's paintings are really big and heavy and it was no easy feat to arrange the exhibition. Visiting sculptors Pekka and Teija Isorättyä had a van but no winter tires and that problem had to be solved before any of the art could make it's way to camp hastur. When the paintings came in, we realized just how heavy they were and got into scratching our heads on how to display them without crashing the ceiling down. Welding wire to the rescue.
Again, unexpected things happened. Certain Mr Matti drops in out of the blue and turns out he's a pro building exhibitions and me, Florentino and Mr Matti start shuffling the pieces about. Inspirational 70's disco was played and plenty of bassist jokes were told. Didn't quite break our backs with the stuff but it took three grown men to set things up.
The opening was on friday and Jouko took a coach from Rovaniemi to join us. Well stocked with crisps and bubbly, we sat down to wait the guests to arrive. And arrive they did.
Instead of the usual flowers, the artist received a bottle of swedish blended cognag (such a thing exists in Finland too, a remnant of the wartime when cognag was mixed with vodka, google Jaloviina for more details). Jouko was well happy with the present =)
After all the hard work building the exhibition, the party turned into a total chaos at Isorättyä's workspace where we eventually ended up. Trombones and organ were played amongs the dementic robot sculptures. We made a hell of a racket for at least an hour, got too tired and then it was time to start pretending we're 9 years old and at school, Pekka was the headmaster. Local disco-taxi took us to the next afterparty in sweden (yep we switch countries fluently here). After the disco-taxi things got a bit fuzzy. ahem.
But we had a great time. Probably the craziest party in years. People of software engineering: Hang out with artists every one in a while, it'll do you good!
This week is preparing for slush 2013 amongs other, coding and promotion related things. Hope to see you at Helsinki next week everybody!
Jouko's paintings are really big and heavy and it was no easy feat to arrange the exhibition. Visiting sculptors Pekka and Teija Isorättyä had a van but no winter tires and that problem had to be solved before any of the art could make it's way to camp hastur. When the paintings came in, we realized just how heavy they were and got into scratching our heads on how to display them without crashing the ceiling down. Welding wire to the rescue.
Again, unexpected things happened. Certain Mr Matti drops in out of the blue and turns out he's a pro building exhibitions and me, Florentino and Mr Matti start shuffling the pieces about. Inspirational 70's disco was played and plenty of bassist jokes were told. Didn't quite break our backs with the stuff but it took three grown men to set things up.
The opening was on friday and Jouko took a coach from Rovaniemi to join us. Well stocked with crisps and bubbly, we sat down to wait the guests to arrive. And arrive they did.
Instead of the usual flowers, the artist received a bottle of swedish blended cognag (such a thing exists in Finland too, a remnant of the wartime when cognag was mixed with vodka, google Jaloviina for more details). Jouko was well happy with the present =)
After all the hard work building the exhibition, the party turned into a total chaos at Isorättyä's workspace where we eventually ended up. Trombones and organ were played amongs the dementic robot sculptures. We made a hell of a racket for at least an hour, got too tired and then it was time to start pretending we're 9 years old and at school, Pekka was the headmaster. Local disco-taxi took us to the next afterparty in sweden (yep we switch countries fluently here). After the disco-taxi things got a bit fuzzy. ahem.
But we had a great time. Probably the craziest party in years. People of software engineering: Hang out with artists every one in a while, it'll do you good!
This week is preparing for slush 2013 amongs other, coding and promotion related things. Hope to see you at Helsinki next week everybody!
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| school organ licks! |
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| shamanic drumming by Jyrki |
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| Merja doing the Lappland witch singing |
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| Blow blow Pekka! |
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| auxiliary percussionist Pia passing |
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| Pekka and Teija and a dementic robot |
keskiviikko 30. lokakuuta 2013
Hoodownr - a few Ways to play
In the modern world, playing mobile games tends to be a solitary affair. With this in mind, we decided to take a different approach with Hoodownr. Here are a few ways to enjoy the game:
Discover with your friends
Do a run with a friend or two. Call / skype / message them and ask them to join you for a walk. You can easily share hoodownr runs with friends by scanning their player badges. You don’t have to start the run from the same point; you or your friends can join in at any time! The distance you walk together with your friends accumulates on the global map.
Conquer with your clan
Has somebody taken over your hood on the global map? Hell-bent on acquiring some more liebensraum for your clan to rock the hoodownr clan charts? Then plan a run together with your clan! You can use the built-in clan tool to prepare a nice adventure for everyone. Clans can spread the word on whatever networks they want to plan trips. Facebook groups, blogs, forums or even a real life meeting somewhere. Use the networks that best suit your clan’s needs.
Discover inside an event
Events are generally thought of as bigger gatherings of people. So why not join up together with new people and boot up a run? On an event, players share a similar goal in order to experience a truly tailor-made adventure. Event attendance awards special event badges and achievements. Show the world where you have been and the great things you've been part of!
Discover with a stranger
Clock up those ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ achievements and extra trustpoints by sharing a run with somebody you don’t know. Hoodownr encourages players to go out of their comfort zone and share runs with players not on their buddy lists or in their clan. Hoodownr player badges make it easy to spot other players on the street. Plus you can let other people in the locality know that you’re ready to share a run if you want to. Walking and talking together is a good way to meet new people and encourage further social interaction.
There are a few other ways to enjoy the various social aspects of the game. We’ll write about them in the near future.
Thank you for your continued interest in Hoodownr, please follow us on twitter or facebook for more updates!
Discover with your friends
Do a run with a friend or two. Call / skype / message them and ask them to join you for a walk. You can easily share hoodownr runs with friends by scanning their player badges. You don’t have to start the run from the same point; you or your friends can join in at any time! The distance you walk together with your friends accumulates on the global map.
Conquer with your clan
Has somebody taken over your hood on the global map? Hell-bent on acquiring some more liebensraum for your clan to rock the hoodownr clan charts? Then plan a run together with your clan! You can use the built-in clan tool to prepare a nice adventure for everyone. Clans can spread the word on whatever networks they want to plan trips. Facebook groups, blogs, forums or even a real life meeting somewhere. Use the networks that best suit your clan’s needs.
Discover inside an event
Events are generally thought of as bigger gatherings of people. So why not join up together with new people and boot up a run? On an event, players share a similar goal in order to experience a truly tailor-made adventure. Event attendance awards special event badges and achievements. Show the world where you have been and the great things you've been part of!
Discover with a stranger
Clock up those ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ achievements and extra trustpoints by sharing a run with somebody you don’t know. Hoodownr encourages players to go out of their comfort zone and share runs with players not on their buddy lists or in their clan. Hoodownr player badges make it easy to spot other players on the street. Plus you can let other people in the locality know that you’re ready to share a run if you want to. Walking and talking together is a good way to meet new people and encourage further social interaction.
There are a few other ways to enjoy the various social aspects of the game. We’ll write about them in the near future.
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| Spanking new logo! |
Thank you for your continued interest in Hoodownr, please follow us on twitter or facebook for more updates!
tiistai 22. lokakuuta 2013
intuition, arranging club events and why it all makes sense (hopefully)
Today I read a most interesting article by this guy who's a serial entrepreneur. He gave a 13 point list how to do it right when you're a fledgling startup.
Many of the points are just common sense and can be found on any business guide so I won't go into those ones at all. The one that caught my eyes was indeed Intuition.
The writer said that intuition is all you've got. Your feel of the flow of things, your projections of the future based on your experience, your faith to the yet unseen realities. The shape of things to come.
I remember my first forays into event production from like 10 years ago. All these impressive people were doing events and things and that set me off thinking, I'd like to that too. But I was very shy and felt it's never going to happen unless I find someone who's more talkative and would take care of the things I couldn't. That guy never appeared. And never will.
Why's that? Because people like that are too busy chasing their own dreams, that's why. =)
So there I was (and maybe you, dear reader are now) with all this ideas and plans but it didn't look like it would never work out. Everything is expensive, I'm shy, self-doubt, blah blah blah, the list of excuses kept growing.
At some point I had a moment of clarity. Actually I got quite pissed off about things not going the right way and I set into motion. I had a word with Kasai-san who runs this tiny little bar about having a club event at this place called Booty nearby. Kasai was really excited and said let's do it.
At the time, booty was the classiest joint in Sapporo. Maybe even now, I haven't been there for a few years now (anybody need a bilingual skiing guide in Hokkaido? will work for food and tickets). The advertising was the coolest and some of the DJ's I saw there were really hot shit. So I was a bit nervous to contact them about something I felt was nothing yet. Anyway, off I went.
The proprietor, Sebastian guided me to the back room with all these club posters and the DJ equipment, beer cases and things. We agreed on a rent, the top floor lounge area was too pricey for me so we stuck with the basement floor disco. Cash advance. I walked out with a receipt. That was pretty much all there was. Into the promotion. It was bewildering, I'd just talked to this guy I didn't know at all (and who parties with all the nice chicks in Hokkaido), do I have to talk to more people I don't know now? Gasp.
Next goal was to get some art for the flyer. I wanted to approach Mr Kujiramori who's an established artist. We came to know each other via his restaurant (Talk about pervasive art man, he'd designed the lights, the sculptures, the tableware.. the works) where I spend many afternoons trying to communicate about photography with my then quite broken Japanese.
Talking to Kujiramori-san about doing an inexpensive illustration was no easy feat. The guy eminated sort of an Ernest Hemingway ouvre with his Canoes, freshly picked dead wild flowers and trips to Bimini. Sir, could you possibly design a party poster for us for next to nothing please?
Kujiramori said he'd come up with something. And he did. He painted a curious image of an owl with some of his signature characters beating bongo drums. The title said 'PARTY'. It was the most awesome piece and also the furthest thing from a 'normal' club event poster.
The next thing was finding staff. I had never had anybody working for me ever. Who would like to join in with a broke-ass operation like this? Back to Kasai's bar that had become the unofficial event HQ (with opera singers). Kasai recommended this guy called Silver. We had a chat and silver was happy to join in. Now there was staff! Woo-hoo!
There were many twists and turns with the first event, trouble with printing, sponsors, advertising and so on. At one point I felt like just canceling the whole thing but I didn't. There was a date looming and people interested to have a good time. Pushed on.
And we did have a great event! Booty staff was super friendly, the DJ's were awesome and we actually got a nice crowd despite/because of the strange, strange, strange party flyer =)
The guys threw an afterparty as well (surprise!), a night to remember. Message I got was 'Now you've done something In sapporo. Keep doing more'. More work after just surviving that one!
Looking back at the thing now, I acted fully upon my intuition there. And it worked. In games business, you're presented with all kinds of ideas and suggestions about where to go with your game and your audience. It's easy to get distracted. Who's game are you making eventually? And the guy in the article said: Intuition, baby. I felt more resolved to follow mine.
Last night we had a fun bunch of guys at the camp. They're forming the first roleplaying group at camp Hastur starting tonight. I'm really happy about that. We also talked about having a mini-version of assembly here in northern Finland, one of the guys is very keen to set things in motion. In a way I saw him as the guy who I was all those years ago walking up the stairs of Booty.
When in doubt, do something!
Sami
Hastur
Many of the points are just common sense and can be found on any business guide so I won't go into those ones at all. The one that caught my eyes was indeed Intuition.
The writer said that intuition is all you've got. Your feel of the flow of things, your projections of the future based on your experience, your faith to the yet unseen realities. The shape of things to come.
I remember my first forays into event production from like 10 years ago. All these impressive people were doing events and things and that set me off thinking, I'd like to that too. But I was very shy and felt it's never going to happen unless I find someone who's more talkative and would take care of the things I couldn't. That guy never appeared. And never will.
Why's that? Because people like that are too busy chasing their own dreams, that's why. =)
So there I was (and maybe you, dear reader are now) with all this ideas and plans but it didn't look like it would never work out. Everything is expensive, I'm shy, self-doubt, blah blah blah, the list of excuses kept growing.
At some point I had a moment of clarity. Actually I got quite pissed off about things not going the right way and I set into motion. I had a word with Kasai-san who runs this tiny little bar about having a club event at this place called Booty nearby. Kasai was really excited and said let's do it.
At the time, booty was the classiest joint in Sapporo. Maybe even now, I haven't been there for a few years now (anybody need a bilingual skiing guide in Hokkaido? will work for food and tickets). The advertising was the coolest and some of the DJ's I saw there were really hot shit. So I was a bit nervous to contact them about something I felt was nothing yet. Anyway, off I went.
The proprietor, Sebastian guided me to the back room with all these club posters and the DJ equipment, beer cases and things. We agreed on a rent, the top floor lounge area was too pricey for me so we stuck with the basement floor disco. Cash advance. I walked out with a receipt. That was pretty much all there was. Into the promotion. It was bewildering, I'd just talked to this guy I didn't know at all (and who parties with all the nice chicks in Hokkaido), do I have to talk to more people I don't know now? Gasp.
 |
| club owners can be friendly too =) |
Next goal was to get some art for the flyer. I wanted to approach Mr Kujiramori who's an established artist. We came to know each other via his restaurant (Talk about pervasive art man, he'd designed the lights, the sculptures, the tableware.. the works) where I spend many afternoons trying to communicate about photography with my then quite broken Japanese.
Talking to Kujiramori-san about doing an inexpensive illustration was no easy feat. The guy eminated sort of an Ernest Hemingway ouvre with his Canoes, freshly picked dead wild flowers and trips to Bimini. Sir, could you possibly design a party poster for us for next to nothing please?
 |
| 'the sea is my teacher' |
Kujiramori said he'd come up with something. And he did. He painted a curious image of an owl with some of his signature characters beating bongo drums. The title said 'PARTY'. It was the most awesome piece and also the furthest thing from a 'normal' club event poster.
The next thing was finding staff. I had never had anybody working for me ever. Who would like to join in with a broke-ass operation like this? Back to Kasai's bar that had become the unofficial event HQ (with opera singers). Kasai recommended this guy called Silver. We had a chat and silver was happy to join in. Now there was staff! Woo-hoo!
There were many twists and turns with the first event, trouble with printing, sponsors, advertising and so on. At one point I felt like just canceling the whole thing but I didn't. There was a date looming and people interested to have a good time. Pushed on.
And we did have a great event! Booty staff was super friendly, the DJ's were awesome and we actually got a nice crowd despite/because of the strange, strange, strange party flyer =)
 |
| Observe our sponsor logo, Timmion records! |
The guys threw an afterparty as well (surprise!), a night to remember. Message I got was 'Now you've done something In sapporo. Keep doing more'. More work after just surviving that one!
Looking back at the thing now, I acted fully upon my intuition there. And it worked. In games business, you're presented with all kinds of ideas and suggestions about where to go with your game and your audience. It's easy to get distracted. Who's game are you making eventually? And the guy in the article said: Intuition, baby. I felt more resolved to follow mine.
Last night we had a fun bunch of guys at the camp. They're forming the first roleplaying group at camp Hastur starting tonight. I'm really happy about that. We also talked about having a mini-version of assembly here in northern Finland, one of the guys is very keen to set things in motion. In a way I saw him as the guy who I was all those years ago walking up the stairs of Booty.
When in doubt, do something!
Sami
Hastur
sunnuntai 20. lokakuuta 2013
blog installation 2. Hoodownr in more detail
Hello again! First off, thank you for the continued interest in our game! We got a number of questions about the gameplay itself so we’d like to elaborate Hoodownr’s features in more detail.
your personal map
the global map
Once you’ve gotten a taste for personal discovery, why not have a spin on the global map? The global map shows hoods currently owned by you, your clan and other clans. The idea here is to expand your horizons by taking over uncharted territory, joining areas together and stealing other peoples hoods. Bigger hood wins!
Moving alone grants you a takeover power of “one”. Once you circle an unclaimed hood on the global map it becomes your hood (to the power of one). When somebody else conquers the hood that belongs to you (and you alone), the overlapping area becomes a vacant no man’s land. Please observe this on the animated GIF below.
Going out there with a friend (or two) makes a lot of sense in Hoodownr. Your takeover power is determined by the number of people that are moving together. In the next image, we’ll show you two players: Taro and Kana. They’re going to be taking over Player Barry’s Power One stronghold.
See you next time!
your personal map
The basic objective of the game is to take over “hoods”. On the Hoodownr world map view, you can toggle between two different maps: your personal map and the global map. After elapsing some play time, your personal map could look a bit like this:
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| authentic unrefined footage from our alpha. TCA/TTH? whatta..? |
The personal map shows where you have already been. You can track your individual area coverage and also plan your next run. Try and cover as much of your locality as possible! Your friends can even recommend places to visit and craft personalized adventures for you; all great opportunities to expand your area and discover more!
the global map
Once you’ve gotten a taste for personal discovery, why not have a spin on the global map? The global map shows hoods currently owned by you, your clan and other clans. The idea here is to expand your horizons by taking over uncharted territory, joining areas together and stealing other peoples hoods. Bigger hood wins!
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| Le map Globale. Your territory is green and the reds belong to someone else. |
More intense shades of hoods are difficult to takeover. Get rid of all of that enemy territory on the map! It’s as simple as channeling collective power. Here’s how.
Moving alone grants you a takeover power of “one”. Once you circle an unclaimed hood on the global map it becomes your hood (to the power of one). When somebody else conquers the hood that belongs to you (and you alone), the overlapping area becomes a vacant no man’s land. Please observe this on the animated GIF below.
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| two players competing |
Going out there with a friend (or two) makes a lot of sense in Hoodownr. Your takeover power is determined by the number of people that are moving together. In the next image, we’ll show you two players: Taro and Kana. They’re going to be taking over Player Barry’s Power One stronghold.
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| Teamwork triumphs : Barry is humbled! |
So the basic basic basic idea is to build and defend your hood. Joining a clan and playing the game together with a bunch of people just makes sense!
There are a few other surprises relating to the taking over and retaining of hoods… but more about that stuff later! =)
See you next time!
maanantai 14. lokakuuta 2013
Hoodownr!
Here's a little number we tossed off recently into the Caribbean isles. I mean: here's the intro video for the game we've been working on for quite a few years now. Presenting to you all in glorious Jo-jo the dog-o-vision: Hoodownr.
So how does it work?
- To begin, start the app, login, and click play. Then simply put the phone back into your pocket and start walking. Go out into the wild and return to civilization again. And that's it!
- Form clans with your friends and claim areas together.
- Compete to capture areas with other players and clans.
- Create adventures and challenges for your friends. Like "Hey, bet you’re too scared to capture all the cemeteries in our home town!". Or "Here are three cryptic clues that lead you to some points of interest. It only counts if you take a picture of ‘em!"
Hoodownr is a game that encourages real-world social interactions
We feel that most games today don’t do enough to encourage people to interact in real life.
Our aim is to bring people together to plan,discover and play. Hoodownr is built in a way that incentivizes and rewards social behaviour by leaving your comfort zone. Get out there and find something new and exciting!
We also believe that people need tools to downshift and alleviate the stress that comes with all the digital noise and countless notifications. People need a way to tune out once in a while. With Hoodownr you are primarily interacting with real people in the real world. You now have the opportunity to opt out from social media bombardment (at least for a while).
Hoodownr is a great tool for people who are not into counting calories. You are not running for the sake of running. You are moving to capture areas either with your friends or on your own. There are other exciting features unique to Hoodownr that we’ll reveal over the next few weeks. They will promote exploration, searching and add advanced social functions to the experience.
Hoodownr takes you away from your routines to make discoveries.
THIS IS BIG NEWS
because we are pushing social gaming to the next level with Hoodownr. Our game is designed to take you away from your everyday experiences to put a unique spin on your familiar environment.
The game is scaleable from a series of basic hood-takeover battles, to live-action-roleplaying and psychogeography/deep topography experimentation on the other end. Whether you are a loitering teen skater, young urban drifter, commuting parent or a gnarly space cadet looking to tune in to your surroundings, our game gives you the freedom to do what you want. And our game is called Hoodownr.
Over the next few weeks we will publish frequent updates about the Hoodownr project. Please follow us on our blog and Facebook page at facebook.com/osuuskuntahastur. We’re also on Twitter under @camphastur.
perjantai 11. lokakuuta 2013
WÄRK is my Fest!
Hello all, busy week behind! Last week we headed to Helsinki to attend WÄRKfest. After a day or two of coding and cat-keeping (R.I.P poor pussies), we jumped on a train towards souths to Helsinki that reminds me of a city when I'm really stretching my imagination.
We got invited thru SITRA after participating their Gesundheit-health game competition. Us runners-up (5 companies out of 120+) were invited to hone and improve our ideas and present them to the general public. We decided it's time for another alpha test version and grinded hard to put out a WÄRKfest build of Hoodownr.
We planned a special party-mission called 'Taking of Vallila 1-2-3' and created many things to enable the happening. Towards the end of the week we had a spanking new droid build with all the bells and whistles, had walked 50km in total when testing and preparing for the mission and had no trouble at all falling asleep at night of sheer exhaustion. Healthy!
On saturday we went to the venue, it was very different from Assembly where we got invited in august. Very DIY, hippie, anything-goes type of a situation where the main point I feel was of expression and creation rather than established brand names and the usual work-consume-obey tradeshow thing. I felt we were in the right place.
After some haggling we got a booth to present our wares and distribute alpha builds and to radiate the Osuuskunta Hastur spirit. No rainbow rugs this time but we did find a fluorescent magenta paintpen on the streets and rocked the informational signs in three languages. Situated between the t-shirt booth with a loud man and the BDSM-equipment-out-of-recycled-material booth with a considerably quieter man, we got a lot of attention and people willing to test the game.
On the serious (SITRA) leg of the event we presented our video and concept to an all developer audience. People were impressed with the video and asked contact information of Jo-Jo the Dog films to have them working on their own projects. Cross-promotion galore!
Then there was a workshop with all of the teams. Judging of the icy feeling of the presentation round, I wondered how will the workshop turn out as the 5 companies involved are in direct competition with each other. Will we just sit down silent and talk about the weather?
The workshop worked out just fine. Visitors of the event were invited to join different idea groups and everybody mixed and mingled, idea bubbles were drawn on huge sheets of paper and we got ideas about where to focus in the next coming months. Out of the information we managed to acquire at the workshop, it became apparent that most companies there did not have a clear focus on who to sell to and why would people would buy their product. I felt a bit like Jean-Louis Gassee in mid nineties, promoting hoodowner while everybody else is basically lost at sea or copying each others ideas. Whatever happened to JLG I wonder.
We got a good idea of our focus group. The thing with hoodownr is that it can be done in so many different ways and to so many different audiences. And with the help of our playtesters and everybody who came to our table, we nailed down our focus group. The idea thrown on the table is absolutely brilliant. More about that later.
We learned many things with the new alpha and the playtesting that took place and know our next goal. And we're going for a beta now. It's going to be sweet. The coding backbone is working on the thing as we speak. Hoodo project is kicking into the next level of grooviness, there'll be something really interesting happening at the end of the month.
The trip to Helsinki was great, we met a few friends and managed to talk about arranging visiting exhibitions to Camp Hastur, drink and even chill out a bit. The 13h drive from Hel back to Tornio in the middle of the night was a total killer so the beginning week went by in a haze of tiredness and skyping to England.
We were intervieved by a local newspaper about Camp Hastur yesterday and there's going to be another interview by a bigger paper next week. New people are joining the hoodo project and to Camp Hastur, the invisible numb leg of our co-op.
There's a lot of things to tell, promote and the thing but I'm going to save it for a bit later. Tech meeting tomorrow, gotta give those design docs a bit more LUV.
All the best
Sami
Hastur
We got invited thru SITRA after participating their Gesundheit-health game competition. Us runners-up (5 companies out of 120+) were invited to hone and improve our ideas and present them to the general public. We decided it's time for another alpha test version and grinded hard to put out a WÄRKfest build of Hoodownr.
We planned a special party-mission called 'Taking of Vallila 1-2-3' and created many things to enable the happening. Towards the end of the week we had a spanking new droid build with all the bells and whistles, had walked 50km in total when testing and preparing for the mission and had no trouble at all falling asleep at night of sheer exhaustion. Healthy!
On saturday we went to the venue, it was very different from Assembly where we got invited in august. Very DIY, hippie, anything-goes type of a situation where the main point I feel was of expression and creation rather than established brand names and the usual work-consume-obey tradeshow thing. I felt we were in the right place.
After some haggling we got a booth to present our wares and distribute alpha builds and to radiate the Osuuskunta Hastur spirit. No rainbow rugs this time but we did find a fluorescent magenta paintpen on the streets and rocked the informational signs in three languages. Situated between the t-shirt booth with a loud man and the BDSM-equipment-out-of-recycled-material booth with a considerably quieter man, we got a lot of attention and people willing to test the game.
On the serious (SITRA) leg of the event we presented our video and concept to an all developer audience. People were impressed with the video and asked contact information of Jo-Jo the Dog films to have them working on their own projects. Cross-promotion galore!
Then there was a workshop with all of the teams. Judging of the icy feeling of the presentation round, I wondered how will the workshop turn out as the 5 companies involved are in direct competition with each other. Will we just sit down silent and talk about the weather?
The workshop worked out just fine. Visitors of the event were invited to join different idea groups and everybody mixed and mingled, idea bubbles were drawn on huge sheets of paper and we got ideas about where to focus in the next coming months. Out of the information we managed to acquire at the workshop, it became apparent that most companies there did not have a clear focus on who to sell to and why would people would buy their product. I felt a bit like Jean-Louis Gassee in mid nineties, promoting hoodowner while everybody else is basically lost at sea or copying each others ideas. Whatever happened to JLG I wonder.
We got a good idea of our focus group. The thing with hoodownr is that it can be done in so many different ways and to so many different audiences. And with the help of our playtesters and everybody who came to our table, we nailed down our focus group. The idea thrown on the table is absolutely brilliant. More about that later.
We learned many things with the new alpha and the playtesting that took place and know our next goal. And we're going for a beta now. It's going to be sweet. The coding backbone is working on the thing as we speak. Hoodo project is kicking into the next level of grooviness, there'll be something really interesting happening at the end of the month.
The trip to Helsinki was great, we met a few friends and managed to talk about arranging visiting exhibitions to Camp Hastur, drink and even chill out a bit. The 13h drive from Hel back to Tornio in the middle of the night was a total killer so the beginning week went by in a haze of tiredness and skyping to England.
We were intervieved by a local newspaper about Camp Hastur yesterday and there's going to be another interview by a bigger paper next week. New people are joining the hoodo project and to Camp Hastur, the invisible numb leg of our co-op.
There's a lot of things to tell, promote and the thing but I'm going to save it for a bit later. Tech meeting tomorrow, gotta give those design docs a bit more LUV.
All the best
Sami
Hastur
 |
| Florentino setting up the booth |
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| X marks the spot. Looks like a proper meeting eh? |
 |
| Live painting at wärkfest |
 |
| Some interesting iconography from Rosa Liksom |
lauantai 28. syyskuuta 2013
Welcome to the third space
This week we finally managed to open Camp Hastur (slight return) in Tornio. After hard weeks of renovation and planning, the shop is open for public. Except that it's not really a shop. =)
Messing around with the commercial space here doing events and things the time was ripe for a non-commercial effort, a be-in if you'd like. On thursday, we lugged a part of the vinyl collection and the 1970's pioneer stereo to the office, got some beer and sat down to open the joint. Apart from the usual cast of characters revolving around Hastur, we didn't have any idea who might come in.
Slowly people started flowing in and after a few hours the room was full of students from the local art school who'd come to see the space and the paintings. How very comfortable. Hasturvision (our advertisement use telly) had some problems with the connectors, no matter, lively conversation and being happened. I went out to get some more beer and found these two ladies drinking out on the street in the cold. Asked them to join in and after a lengthy explanation of the nature of our event/space, the came along. And turned out they were art students as well. Might have known. =)
Well the party happened, we got a nice group of people, most of them I've never met before who had heard about our space on the radio or from a friend. It was very nice that people found camp hastur, we were well pleased.
On friday, I set off to spend the night there keeping the doors open and wondering what would happen. The town was really quiet, I noticed not too many people walk the streets there later in the night, the bar district is a bit further away and gets all the night time traffic. Some people passed by but were hesitant to come in. Outside, I bumped to this lady who was taking photographs and invited her in. Turned out that she's involved in a community project to bring life into this town through communal art/whatnot projects. Nice!
We had a long chat about the town, it's people, the art-scene and our space. The lady pointed out that Camp Hastur is what you'd call 'a third place', a freeform communication space. Some really interesting questions were brought up in the conversation. Tornio has never had this kind of space and we're curious about the response.
During the party I noticed that some people were hesitant to stay, asking 'is it really ok for us to hang out in here?'. I think the key question is justification. In a bar/coffee shop setting, one buys the justification of being there by buying a drink or whatever. At camp hastur we're bringing up the possibility to have your own exhibition or an event. I sort of woke up to the fact that some might feel that this approach might feel like you have to have an art show in order to hang out at the camp. Anyways it's much easier to buy a cup of coffee than to build an art show. And where does it leave the people who are interested in car-tuning or hunting?
I guess that the point is sharing. Sharing your energy and inspiration is the justification to hang out. Sharing a beer or coffee. Sharing a moment. That's it. And you can share by just dropping by and saying hello.
On our side of the 'fence', hours when nobody comes over to say hello are boring and wasted in commenting on friend's baby pictures on facebook. People in Tornio, let us not go bored, come and say hello.
Camp Hastur opening times and things are on the facebook Camp Hastur page , please keep an eye on the space, comment and share!
Over and out
Sami
Hastur
Messing around with the commercial space here doing events and things the time was ripe for a non-commercial effort, a be-in if you'd like. On thursday, we lugged a part of the vinyl collection and the 1970's pioneer stereo to the office, got some beer and sat down to open the joint. Apart from the usual cast of characters revolving around Hastur, we didn't have any idea who might come in.
Slowly people started flowing in and after a few hours the room was full of students from the local art school who'd come to see the space and the paintings. How very comfortable. Hasturvision (our advertisement use telly) had some problems with the connectors, no matter, lively conversation and being happened. I went out to get some more beer and found these two ladies drinking out on the street in the cold. Asked them to join in and after a lengthy explanation of the nature of our event/space, the came along. And turned out they were art students as well. Might have known. =)
Well the party happened, we got a nice group of people, most of them I've never met before who had heard about our space on the radio or from a friend. It was very nice that people found camp hastur, we were well pleased.
On friday, I set off to spend the night there keeping the doors open and wondering what would happen. The town was really quiet, I noticed not too many people walk the streets there later in the night, the bar district is a bit further away and gets all the night time traffic. Some people passed by but were hesitant to come in. Outside, I bumped to this lady who was taking photographs and invited her in. Turned out that she's involved in a community project to bring life into this town through communal art/whatnot projects. Nice!
We had a long chat about the town, it's people, the art-scene and our space. The lady pointed out that Camp Hastur is what you'd call 'a third place', a freeform communication space. Some really interesting questions were brought up in the conversation. Tornio has never had this kind of space and we're curious about the response.
During the party I noticed that some people were hesitant to stay, asking 'is it really ok for us to hang out in here?'. I think the key question is justification. In a bar/coffee shop setting, one buys the justification of being there by buying a drink or whatever. At camp hastur we're bringing up the possibility to have your own exhibition or an event. I sort of woke up to the fact that some might feel that this approach might feel like you have to have an art show in order to hang out at the camp. Anyways it's much easier to buy a cup of coffee than to build an art show. And where does it leave the people who are interested in car-tuning or hunting?
I guess that the point is sharing. Sharing your energy and inspiration is the justification to hang out. Sharing a beer or coffee. Sharing a moment. That's it. And you can share by just dropping by and saying hello.
On our side of the 'fence', hours when nobody comes over to say hello are boring and wasted in commenting on friend's baby pictures on facebook. People in Tornio, let us not go bored, come and say hello.
Camp Hastur opening times and things are on the facebook Camp Hastur page , please keep an eye on the space, comment and share!
Over and out
Sami
Hastur
 |
| hanging the singboard |
 |
| tricky |
 |
| the signboard just won't hang straight |
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| something looted from the summer camp |
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| Paintings by Mika Hyvärinen |
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| observe the square shelf for ladies handbags =) |
lauantai 21. syyskuuta 2013
Camp Hastur continued
A bit of a break with blogging here, totally swamped with work again. The past weeks we have been coding various things to help the next playtest. Bring out yer admin panels! Bring out your Ramer-Douglas-Peucker algorithms! Bring out yer dead! And the like.
Due to popular demand we decided to find a way to continue having our Camp Hastur here in Tornio. The kulttuurivoimala project to build a collaborative space for creative people got stuck in the wheels of a giant machine and it looked like us creative folks were left with meetings at random coffee shops and dusty school attics like last year. Also Hastur needs an office space for uninterrupted daytime coding.
So last monday I went to talk to Mr. Wille the local photographer about our space conundrum. Wille has this small shop space next to his own and we came up with an Arrangement. The space was previously used by some dude who presented himself as a temp-staff company office businessman. The dude had left the town with a stack of unpaid bills and the space full of recycle-shop junk (we even found a stove there). Rolling tobacco leftovers everywhere, the occasional hypothermic needles behind the sofa.. Must have been a speedy exit for Mr Gonzales.
The place had big holes in the walls that needed to be filled up. Before Mr Speedy, the space was used for a hairdressers and there was all kinds of pipework that had been dismantled leaving big holes. After one day at the office I talked with Wille again to secure the arrangement+ that we will refer to as the New Arrangement. According to the New Arrangement, Wille supplies for paints and things and we renovate. And so we got a-renovating.
The past four days have been a blur of painting and messing around with fillers and things. And coding while waiting for something to dry. Late last night we finished with the walls and that means today is for stripping all the tape and cleaning up. Too bad it started raining heavily, i'd really like to get rid of all the junk furniture inside the space but it's not going to happen today.
The usual cast of characters came over to help out in one way or another, people offering furniture and light fixtures and 70's audio equipment, I feel many really want to participate in building and running the space. One of our friends is building his exhibition at camp hastur next week and we're getting ready for the Grand Opening thats going to be, well, grand =)
No pictures yet but I'll post some next week. It's all about the creativity and the spaces in between!
sami
hastur
Due to popular demand we decided to find a way to continue having our Camp Hastur here in Tornio. The kulttuurivoimala project to build a collaborative space for creative people got stuck in the wheels of a giant machine and it looked like us creative folks were left with meetings at random coffee shops and dusty school attics like last year. Also Hastur needs an office space for uninterrupted daytime coding.
So last monday I went to talk to Mr. Wille the local photographer about our space conundrum. Wille has this small shop space next to his own and we came up with an Arrangement. The space was previously used by some dude who presented himself as a temp-staff company office businessman. The dude had left the town with a stack of unpaid bills and the space full of recycle-shop junk (we even found a stove there). Rolling tobacco leftovers everywhere, the occasional hypothermic needles behind the sofa.. Must have been a speedy exit for Mr Gonzales.
The place had big holes in the walls that needed to be filled up. Before Mr Speedy, the space was used for a hairdressers and there was all kinds of pipework that had been dismantled leaving big holes. After one day at the office I talked with Wille again to secure the arrangement+ that we will refer to as the New Arrangement. According to the New Arrangement, Wille supplies for paints and things and we renovate. And so we got a-renovating.
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| the Official Office slash Gallery logo! |
The usual cast of characters came over to help out in one way or another, people offering furniture and light fixtures and 70's audio equipment, I feel many really want to participate in building and running the space. One of our friends is building his exhibition at camp hastur next week and we're getting ready for the Grand Opening thats going to be, well, grand =)
No pictures yet but I'll post some next week. It's all about the creativity and the spaces in between!
sami
hastur
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