Echo....echo...echo..eko....o...

Greetings everyone!
its been a little while since i updated you guys on the workings of my life as an indie dev so i figured why not do it right now?! i mean i could press submit and send the game i've been working on 8-14 hours a day on for the last 3 months off to iTunes for review.... but the bit of my brain that controls the fear of rejection says lets hold off as LONG AS POSSIBLE!!

so here we go.  First off i suck at twitter. this is something i've talked about before but its something i continually struggle with.  people can be very fickle when it comes to twitter(sorry to all you twitter fiends out there but its true). posted something that doesn't immediately please or catch their eye? UNFOLLOW!  post something to close to a previous post? UNFOLLOW! its the most stressful form of social media because its based entirely on you having something interesting to say. had a pretty uneventful few days? well that means you fail at life and you've lost 4 followers... HA! that'll teach you not to post a picture of that delicious steak you had last night at the Cheesecake Factory!!

Other than that i've mostly been trying to get Run Frosty Run out in front of people so when it launches more people will know to be on the look out for it. The people over at Digital Tutors wrote an article on it which was awesome! all off those guys have been amazingly helpful and constantly supportive of not just me but all the Oklahoma Dev's. (They are based out of OK. they aren't just playing favorites..)then there was the article on Ok Game Dev's site that they did on us! pretty excited about that as well! we actually partnered with them and did some giveaways.  over all the people from Oklahoma have been incredibly helpful and supportive of other game dev's. i was also featured on a different websites weekly indie games article. I'm not entirely sure how i feel about that one. don't get me wrong it was great to get stuff out in front of people but at the same time the article left a bad taste in my mouth. i can't say for sure what it was about it but it almost felt condescending i guess when the talked about Run Frosty Run. i know its not going to be winning any awards but i am proud of the game. its far more complicated than anything else i've worked on (even tho it looks really simple it has a lot going on behind the scenes )and i think it came together really well. this of course could simply be because i've spent 3 months of my life on it and i've grown attached, the game could very possibly be the worst game ever released and playing it might cause you to never want to play another video game again..but fingers crossed thats not the case... daddy needs a jet ski!

The third and final thing thats been on my mind lately is how i want WSS to grow. the dream for me is a 5-7 person indie team. thats enough to share the workload but not enough to get bogged down with conflicting opinions and financial issues. heres the rub, Oklahoma is not a state know for being an indie developer spawn point. thats not to say we don't have several very talented studios and even more talented game developers working by themselves. it simply means its not always easy to find people to work with. i've tried working with several different people and i feel like some people have a lottery sensibility about it. dreaming about what they'd do with the winnings but never going and picking up a ticket. (by this i don't mean that they think oh i'm gonna be a game dev and be rich...i mean they like the idea of being a game dev but not putting in the actual work). To be completely fair it is difficult to balance a full time job + Family + Schooling + game dev. i only work Part time and its still a lot of late nights and long days and i have nothing but the upmost respect for every single person i've worked with so far. they have all been incredibly talented and WSS would be better with than without them.
so thats about it... i guess i need to stop slacking and just click that submit button for Run Frosty Run. Thanks for giving me a few minutes to distract myself. i'll of course let you all know as soon as i figure out if its been approved or not and if your dying for more information about the final bits of Run Frosty Run head on over to our other blog ( HERE ) and check it out!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!
-Mike

After this is all said and done... I'm taking a nap...

Hello everyone! sorry for the HUGE delay in updates on how things have been going over at Winter Stories Studio, LLC.  so here we go!

First off Run Frosty Run is insanely close to launching! like hopefully i'll submit it to iTunes within the next few days.  right now i'm just finishing up coding in app purchases and posting highscores and Snowman Selfies to Facebook. (See our other blog if your hungry for a more detailed update on Run Frosty Run   http://wssdeveloperdiary.blogspot.com  )


now for a quick update on date on the advertising front. i've found a couple sites that have really affordable indie game advertising prices. and i think I'm going to use those instead of chart boost. heres why.

Chartboost has a MINIMUM $100 per day advertising fee and they said expect that to go over by about 10% . this means (at $0.50 per install that 100 could get me at most 200 installs. now if this was a paid game that wouldn't be so bad but I'm assuming not everyone is going to buy any in app purchases.  maybe 10% of those people will. so for 100 bucks i predict i'd make about 20 bucks...

now these online advertising places i've found have told me that have between 50K - 80K unique IP visitors a month. and for 100 dollars i can have an add displayed on there site for a full month. thats a lot more face time and potential sells. so i think for sure I'm gonna go that route.

i've also been continuing to hit up the online forums and such. as well as Twitter. I hit 71 followers today... and then immediately dropped down to 70...twitter is a fickle fickle friend.... but still my followers are slowly growing and my game is getting a bit more attention. More attention like this!! ( http://okgamedev.com/2014/06/winter-stories-studio-releases-run-frosty-run-trailer-also-giveaway-promo-for-other-games/  ) one of my friends i met at the Oklahoma Game Developers Meetup is a guy named Zachary. Zach runs this website called Ok Game Dev. and he basically post reviews / previews for games developed in Oklahoma. (theres a lot More than you would think.) anyway he posted an article above showing of my new trailer (which is not great but I'm not a video guy... ) and we've also teamed up to give away several codes for our older games.  Other than that theres a pretty big something something coming up for us but I'm not sure i can talk about it yet. i'll post on twitter and Facebook as soon as I'm able to. (what everyone likes it when batmans all mysterious....why not me? I'm kinda like bat man...with more fat, less muscle and no crime fighting skills...)  anyway thats what i've been up to.

Fingers crossed next week i'll be able to tell you guys all about sending the game to iTunes and (hopefully) Android.'
as always thanks for stopping by and please leave me a comment below and if you haven't yet liked us on Facebook or followed us on Twitter please do so.

well...this makes things harder....

SO this blog will be part info part rant... so please forgive me in advance...

Today i read an article talking about how Apple is now rejecting apps that offer incentives for watching ads, clicking ads and /or sharing to Facebook. ALSO advertising for apps that are not your own is another no-no now.  as with most things there are good things and bad things about this. But unfortunately the bad things far out way the good, at least from a developer stand point.

THE GOOD!  :-)

•  Apps like candy crush that force you to flood both your friends and your Facebook with invites and gifts and lives and all that stuff are effectively going to die. * so your Facebook wall will once again become your own. This will also prevent apps (Again Like Candy Crush) from preventing your from progressing through the game unless you use Facebook integration. 

THE BAD!!! :-(

• As a developer one of the HARDEST things we face is getting our apps out in front of people and then convincing them to get the app(Yep thats harder than programming,modeling, concept art-ing, the whole lot of it.). Facebook integration is awesome because we don't have to pay for advertising. When your a small indie company money is ALWAYS an issue. lots of us don't have money to pay for ads, or commercials. encouraging people to invite friends to the game (when not done in a harassing way) is a GREAT way to encourage growth in a game.

• Another way outside of Facebook integration that developers can encourage growth is to cross advertise with other developers. (i'll put an ad for your game in mine if you do the same. ) This again helps with the burden of advertising by allowing developers to work together and help each other out. This is now dead.

• now for the big one Ads. when you download a free game and you see an ad pop up. thats not just for funnies or to annoy you into buying the ad free version. its how as a developer we make money off free games. every time you click on an ad we get a little bit of money (with me on chart boost i make $0.04) and when you download that app we make a little more ($0.50) granted the ads can be annoying but all in all its a good ecosystem. we (developers )still make money you(the players) don't have to spend a dime. NOW there are without a doubt games that abuse ads making them appear way to often in a desperate attempt to make more money.  I'm not entirely sure where this lands with this update.

All this being said i understand the logic behind apples decision. they don't make money off free games (unless you do micro transactions...) & obviously they want to make money.  but people don't like to pay for games (Pull Free! is at 1.63K downloads while Pull! Paid is at about 214) this puts us (developers ) in an awkward situation. we NEED to be profitable to continue making games. finding the right balance between pleasing the players and pleasing the bill collectors is difficult and as a developer i feel Apples Change in these areas is going to make it even more difficult resulting in lots of great indie studios closing their doors...

Summer is coming!!!

Hey everyone! sorry its been so long since i updated this blog. i've been trying to do a weekly developers blog and a lot of times i don't have enough to say to justify updating two blogs a week! but i figured i'd stop by and let you know how things are going and whats going on over here at WSS.

so last week we did a big reveal week on Facebook. we revealed some characters, some videos and the names. (if you'd like more details head over to our Facebook or check out our developers diary blog  i don't want you guys to have to read the same ol same twice!)

so that blogs got more to do with the game design bits of what we are doing here. i thought this one i might go into a little bit of details about the other side of stuff. 

FIRST OFF Facebook. Facebook is not our strong suit. we've been rocking the Facebook page for about a year now, maybe more. and we've reached 70ish likes. while thats better than none its not nearly the numbers we'd like to have. we've also done some Facebook advertising which reached about 8,000 people and cost us about 20 bucks. while that might SOUND great in reality Facebook counts you "reaching" someone as your tiny little ad being displayed on their Facebook page while they look at what the really care about (which is to day who took a food snapshot from that favorite restaurant of yours and if that girl(or boy) you are hardcore crushing on has changed her (or his) relationship status to "its complicated".) In the real world it got us 41 photo clicks, 3 post likes, 1 comment (a truly moving comment of "Skeet Skeet Skeet....") and 1 share. so not NEARLY as awesome as 8000 people. so now we have to decide is Facebook advertising worth the money. IF we knew for a fact that every person who clicked on the photo went and bought a game then maybe. after all thats 41 bucks. but we don't. so as of right now the "Is It Worth it" question is hard to answer, right now i'd go with a medium-rare Maybe. 

SECOND! twitter. everything i've read so far about how to get your indie company out in front of people talked about the same general things. Facebook, Blog, Website and Twitter.

Check, check, check and...checkish.  i've made the Facebook, obviously i've made the blog(if i hadnt you wouldn't currently be on the edge of your seat.) and i've made the website(altho is REALLY needs to be updated). i've also made a twitter. BUT twitter is hard for me. i never know what to say. Facebook isn't to hard because i can be as long or as short as i want to be. twitter says i can ONLY be so long. suddenly every character is a precious commodity. do i use & or and. 2, two,to,or too.  AND #! what if i miss use a HASHTAG!!! my children to this day still call me old because i said "Or Not" instead of "Or Nah" (something i still am not sure i understand )and while my children are diabolical geniuses the internet makes them look like kittens! i don't want my company to be forever known as that company who thought the Hashtag was the number sign!...sorry that got away from me there.. 

THIRD! i've been told by a fellow game designer (whose way more successful than me, so I'm not going to give you his blog info because you'll never read my blog again...and i need you...) that how he gets his games out in front of people is he follows really popular online game bloggers, and every time they post something he leaves a comment. this way he builds up a relationship with the blogger and when it comes time to release his game he strikes! asking if this blogger(who now considers him a friend) will review his game. thus reaching this HUGE audience that someone else has already done the work of tracking down and collecting... this is on my todo list...

FORTH AND FINALLY!! Profits and sells. Pull Skeet Shooting Free has sold about 1.5k copies, not to shabby but also not great by any means. i make money through this one via ads. i'm currently using Chartboost but not sure I'm gonna stay that way and heres why. first its incredibly invasive.  it pops up with an ad that takes up the full screen. something people are not a big fan of and secondly i've currently made about 35 dollars from advertising with chartboost. (which if you do the math thats about 2 pennies per copy sold. )now I'm not saying this is their fault at all! simply that I'm not having much luck with their service. i've heard tales of people who make TONS of money of Chartboost. I'm just not one of them. from Pull! Skeet Shooting (Paid) and both copies of The Pale One I pulled in about 250 this month. Not bad but also not good. ESPECIALLY since about 200 of that came within the first few days and now its dropped to the point of me making about 1-7 dollars a day. which is awful. NOW I'm also not paying for any in game advertising service like chart boost (i get paid to show other peoples ad's i don't pay to have my ads shown in theirs) which is something you HAVE to do to make sure your game stays out in front of people(When you first launch your game it appears on all kinds of new games charts and such so people can find your app quickly and easily without knowing that they wanted it. but once that app leaves that list only people who are looking for your game or games like it can find your game ). but i simply can't afford the 100 a day price tag.  we've got plans in place to keep this new game out in front of people for much longer. but more on that later. i think i've rambled on long enough. 

As Always please leave us a comment below and let us know how you think we are doing or even suggestions on how to get our game out there in front of more people or questions on how we do what we do. If you haven't yet please stop by our Facebook page and send us a like.

Thanks

Apples vs Androids. The (not so ) Surprising results, Next...

Hey guys just stopping in for a real quick Update on all things Winter Stories Studio, LLC. Pull! Skeet Shooting and The Pale One HD are now both available on iTunes! i got a little nervous when they sent me an email saying the pale one needed a bit longer to be reviewed but it all working out. AND I'm very happy to say that the few days they've been up on the apple store the apps have already earned more than their Android counterparts. (Apple for the win.) Not by much but still, baby steps. This friday i think I'm gonna give Facebook advertising another try and see if we can scrape together a few more sells.

Other than that we've just been busy working on our newest game project tying to get that up and running as soon as possible. aside from the mind numbing issues i ran into with it so far I'm really pleased with how its coming together. i like the look of it.  the plan is to upload a video next week showing of a bit of the prototyping process we used and some early gameplay footage of the game itself. if however your itching for some more information on the new game (Title hopefully coming soon) stop by our Developers Diary blog  to  get the low down, 411 and or the happy hap.

as always thanks for stopping by, please send us some love in the comments below and if you haven't already be sure to send us a like on Facebook.

-Mike

Winter is Coming....

Hey everybody,

Been a fairly productive last couple of days. i sent off  PULL! and ThePale One to apple to try and get those bad boys approved. hopefully i'll know with in the next few days if those make it or not. i've got to admit the process to submit an app to apple is a bit of a pain. downloading certificates and using Keylogs and all kinds of crazy steps. compared to Android Apple is a HUGE pain in the butt! 

Oh well its all done with (for now). Next I'm on to a new game project. don't have a whole lot to announce on it at the moment other than this new Facebook banner!

This week i'll be starting a developers diary blog that me and my good buddy David will be updating as we progress through the development of this new game! we'll be giving you guys updates on the game progress as well as insights into how we are making this particular game. theres a chance we might do a couple "Making Of " videos that we will release towards the launch day, but we haven't really made up our minds yet on that part.

as always thanks so much for all your continued support! i'll be back soon with some more updates and hopefully a few more tidbits about our next Project!

The Difference Between Mouse Clicks and Touches, Robots and Fruit….

alright! long time no update but i've been busy working away. last week i FINALLY got the pale one to work for mobile devices. which was a huge chore, and heres why,

Unlike Apple phones which are all made to certain specs (all iPhone 4's are the same W/ the exception of storage space) the Android operating system is open source, this means anyone who makes a phone can use Android. which is great for them BUT unfortunately this leads to a massive range in the quality of phones. anyone can throw together a cheap phone with terrible parts and plastic screens that break if you breath to heavy in their direction SO its harder to sure the games made for android are One Size Fits All.  so to slightly counter this and give people with higher quality phones or people playing on tablets i created an HD version of that pale one with higher resolution textures, enhanced game assets (the models that make up the game levels, things like trashcans, mailboxes, and so on) i also added more game objects into the level because the stronger systems can handle more objects being rendered at a time.

Theres just a few screen shots to show mostly the texture resolutions upgrades, Also you can see a bit of the extra detail i was able to put on the trashcan, its a smoother cylinder with a more detailed lid. its the little things in life!

so this week my goal(hopefully an attainable goal) is to touch up the code for The Pale One and Pull! and get those moved over and out on IOS!  hopefully the biggest thing i'll have to fix is that Android lets me use if (Input.getMouseButtonDown(0)) as an alternative to telling it to look for touches. this is nice because i can easily test the games in unity using my trusty mouse. UNFORTUNATELY  IOS says that not allowed i must use touches! assuming thats all i really have to fix it shouldn't take any time at all to get these games switched over and get em' out there to everyone with an iPhone/ipad with a hunger for skeet shooters or moister games!

have a wonderful week guys and an awesome april fools!

and Don Draper makes this look easy….

So this week is going to be all about the advertisement! out of all of game development this seems to be the most difficult part. once you've got your game out there is tends to just disappear amid all the other 30000 apps launched that same day. because of this i've been focusing a lot on trying to get my name out into the world. heres what i've messed with so far.

the very first thing i did once i'd decided on a company name was to make a website. so i headed over to Wix.com and made a free website. then i uploaded some screen shots, some bios, and any and all information people could possibly want about my company. I'm not entirely sure how much if any attention this has brought my way because i don't have any kind of visited counter of anything like that.

The 2nd thing i did was a created a Facebook page. AGAIN i uploaded and and all information i felt people would want to know about my budding company, screenshots of titles i've been working on or that are currently available and so on. 

3rd i added one of my games to Kongregate. this took a bit of work because Kongregate will only allow you to upload unity games 20MB or smaller, this of course means i had to cut down the level size, and texture resolution and eliminate all Bump maps to get it to fit. all and all tho i feel like it still looks pretty good.  

4th I started giving away the FULL version, complete with the full map, high res textures and those BEAUTIFUL Bump Maps, of the game on Kongregate for free to anyone who liked my Facebook page and sent me a message. i posted about that on my Facebook and then added a screen in the Kongregate page that informed people of this (IMO) awesome deal. one click for a free game?

for a while there i just left it at that updating my Facebook page one to two time a week. until i got "Pull! Skeet Shooting" out on android. then i started trying to push for more. i made a trailer on youtube, started this lovely blog you are reading here and started pushing word of mouth. and NOW i'm getting into the T-shirt Business! 

I'm Print up some shirts for anyone who wants one. i had to do quite a bit of shopping around but i found a shop that would do them for a great deal! I'm going to sell them at about $15 for this first Group of orders. Now i know that this isn't going to bring in a crazy amount of business BUT currently I'm at the point where every single  sell is a huge deal.  

So how well is this all working out for me? to be completely honest its going kind of meh…. but its something i anticipated. everyone in the world wasn't going to just wake up one morning knowing my companies name and having all of my games downloaded onto there various smartphones and computers. Now hopefully one day N00bile indie developers will be like "did you hear about that lucky *Expletive*  who owns winter Stories Studio? He just bought solid gold rims for his jet ski because he's just that filthy rich." but thats just me… i like to keep things realistic, ya know?

P.S if you guys are interested in order a t-shirt send me an email ( WinterStories.Studio@gmail.com) or send me a message on Facebook. Hopefully i will be ordering the shirts this monday (3-24-14).

The Price is WRONG Bob Barker....

So today i uploaded a new APK (APK is the file type you build your game to so you can upload it onto the Google play store) for the Pull! Skeet Shooting Free game. i did i little bit of updating, first i lowered the price of the targets so people can have a bit more of that instant gratification we love so much.Then i fixed it so the ads don't appear on the target select screen. the delay of the ad seemed to make it pop up about the time you went to click a target. this was NOT an intentional thing i did and was worried it people would feel it was a dastardly trick to get people to buy more apps and give me millions in ad money! now don't get me wrong I'm just as dastardly as the next fellow but i certainly don't want people to know that!

 Next I'm going to work on updating the paid version so the prices are the same as the free version. that should only take a few minutes. just a quick update to a bit of coding and changing a bit o' 3d text then upload that APK to Google and wait about 7 hours for it to be live! 

AND FINALLY! i've almost finished making The Pale One ready for android devices! i believe i fixed the issue with my joysticks from last week. and now all i need to do is a bit of optimization. the game currently runs fine on my tablet but has a less than desirable frame rate on the my old terrible android phone. so gonna fix that hopefully pretty quick. 

OH! and i stepped on a nail yesterday....that sucked...

Holy Delayed updates Batman!!

Hey Guys and Gal!
Sorry for the delay in updates! its been a pretty busy few weeks for me, unfortunately not a crazy productive few weeks as far as game development goes.  i did finally manage to make it up to the city to attend the Oklahoma Game Developers meeting. which was a blast. if you live in Oklahoma and you are into game development at all you should try and make one of their meetings. i believe they have them the last thursday of every month.

one of the cool things about this meeting was it was held in the Digital Tutors building. which if you don't know what digital tutors is you are missing out my friend. they do really great video tutorials on everything from adobe photoshop, maya, ads max, After Effects even Unity 3D. incredibly helpful tutorials on that site so you should check it out if you get some time. all the guys who work there turned out to be really friendly and oddly enough most of them are from Oklahoma, which if your like me you wouldn't really assume the good ol OK state would have a large computer modeling, graphic design community but hey, at least we'd be wrong together!

the real reason i haven't gotten to much done so far as game development progress is i've stumbled onto an issue I'm having trouble resolving. basically I'm working on a game for mobile that uses two joysticks to control a First Person player. the issue I'm running into is that while the joysticks placement is correct on my testing tablet(a Nexus 7) when i play it on my phone the joysticks are oversized and i can only see one on the screen. i believe i know whats causing the issue, its a resolution problem. the joystick knows its 100 X 100 Pixels but on my phone with a much lower resolution 100 pixels take up more screen real-estate . same with the offset for the second joystick it thinks it needs to be 1000 pixels in (an example i don't remember the exact pixel inset off the top of my head.)  but while 1000 pixels works great for a tablet it doesn't work so well for a phone.


i had a similar issue with the UI ( User Interface) my GUI's wouldn't scale based on screen size. now i figured this issue out. basically i figured out the resolution i was testing the screen on because it was the perfect sized, i then did a quick bit of code that found out what the screen size was for the device you are currently using then made the GUI's take up the same percent of the screen that they did on the test screen.( i can supply a more detailed explanation if anyone is interested. send me a comment below) unfortunately this doesn't apply to well to the joysticks. HOPEFULLY i'll have some good news next week on this front. anyway friends family and both my fans thanks for stopping in for an update. i'll talk to you all real soon.

Samwise we are barely out of Hobbiton...

So this last week has been pretty eventful. i uploaded my game to the Amazon store so i can hit that Kindle-Fire-Owners-Who-Are-Looking-For-A-Skeet-Shooting-Game market. i'm confident that its a PRETTY big market...surely?

Also I created a free version of Pull and slapped that bad boy up on the Google Play Store.
( Available Here!!! ) I'm sure that second bit sounds easy BUT it was actually more difficult than it sounds. Being as its a free game i decided to add in some advertisements. After a bit of online window shopping a decided to go with ChartBoost.  Basically how it works is after a player finishes a skeet shooting level an ad will pop up for a free game. if the player clicks the ad i make  4 big ones!!! (by big ones I of course mean pennies...) if someone then installs the app from the add i make 50 big ones!!!(Yes, still talking in pennies here) which doesn't really seem like much and honestly its not, But if someone downloads at least 2 free apps that pop up in the free version I make what I would for the paid and it doesn't cost them anything. Win Win if you ask me.  I'll let you guys know how the whole Chartboost,  free game with ads thing works out  me.

Then i did some much needed App icon upgrading.

Original Icon

Updated Icon

Updated Free Icon

Its not a massive improvement but I feel like it gives the icon a little bit more life, which hopefully will lead to more interested parties.. 

I've got big plans for this week so hopefully next monday(or sooner!) I'll have some big news to announce.  Anyway Guys and Gals I'm going to hop of here and get back to work! Thanks for stopping by and for all of your continued support!

This might take a while.....

Hello random internet dwellers!

Being as this is my first post on my very first blog, ( A momentous occasion I'm sure you'll agree) i felt i should give you all some of my Developer backstory. 

My name is Michael Kolb, i own my own indie game design company called Winter Stories Studio, LLC. my goal in life is pretty simple, i just want the american dream. you know the one I'm talking about. The one where i'm filthy rich and the only exercise i get is when i go swimming in my giant vault filled with money all scrooge McDuck style.

  I published my very first game on July 13, 2013 to a little site called Kongregate. it's called " The Pale One" and it launched to some amazing reviews. Trolovtricky was quoted "nicev game" while kilspeed111  raved "all i gets a white screen." still all in all 3.3 stars is not to bad for a first game. and did I mention the MONEY!!!! Since "The Pale One" launched I have made over $0.75 from ad revenue!!! I know right?! Here I come 1%!!!

so not exactly a " i should quit my day job" success, but you bet your life when they mail me that 75 cent check I'm taking that bad boy to the bank with a smile on my face...

More recently i launched my second game onto the Google Play Store. This one is called "Pull! Skeet Shooting"  its a pretty simple tap to shoot game with unlockable levels and targets. 

Right now I'm proud to announce it's sitting at a 5 star rating!!! 

Right now I'm slightly less proud but feel morally inclined to tell you  its only sold 4 copies and the only two reviews are from my girl friend and my best friend. 

Looks like this might take a while...