Ruby Rocket trailer and more on my previous post
Update: Ruby Rocket is here! Play it on Facebook or Kongregate now 
It's interesting how I've been blogging more since I started doing AS3 development. I guess it just goes to show that I like what I'm doing now. I just hope there are still people out there that read what I write!
In my previous post, I mentioned my two Flash games (one of which has yet to be released) and my departure from Facebook apps. I'm going to follow that up with more on both subjects. First, I recorded a trailer/demo for Ruby Rocket, which you can find on Youtube. Please do take a look at it and let me know what you think. I hope that this video will help to get the word out about my game and hopefully increase my chances of finding an actual sponsor for it. I think it's a fun game and it's definitely very unique for the puzzle genre. Again, if you are involved with any flash portals or such, you can find Ruby Rocket on FlashGameLicense.com.
As for Facebook apps, interestingly enough I spent the majority of today reworking the newsfeed feature on both Survive DX and Pop Answers. I was redesigning them to fit a long-form image model; you can see the progression in this screenshot (newest version is on top, not bottom):
This was quite a task, since the finished result is not a single image, but 5 75×75 images with gaps in between. I don't know why Facebook chose this format for newsfeed posts, but it is simply a reality we deal with as application developers. Needless to say, I spent most of my time cutting the letters apart and adjusting them to get the spacing (sort of) even. I think the finished result looks a lot better, and considering that most of the big apps do their newsfeed posts in this style now, it was a necessary improvement.
As for whether this means I'll still be doing much work on Facebook, the answer is still no. I am convinced that Facebook requires a decent advertising budget these days, and unless I'm working within a large team that has that kind of operating cash to spend, I'm going to stick to smaller ponds. I hate being limited in the things that I can achieve, but I have to be realistic these days because I'm not making a profit. Furthermore, a new feature announced recently affirms my belief that Facebook is not friendly to the little guys any more.
If you haven't heard, there is now a "lite" version of Facebook at lite.facebook.com. It features simplified pages without chat or applications at all (basically, a lot less RIA going on). This means that you can use lite.facebook.com exclusively and never see an app again. While I can understand the interest users might have in that, it really sucks for us developers because viral growth depends on knowing that the eyeballs are going to be on the other end of the screen. With this latest move, Facebook is making it clear that they are doing what they can to bury the app platform… maybe not completely, but enough to make applications a minor blemish as opposed to the dominance they once had. I can't help feeling that Facebook has contributed to the current animosity among users toward apps; they did nothing to prevent or control apps that were abusing the platform and spamming users, and at the same time they did very little to promote or reward developers that were playing by the rules. It has always been the case that staying within the boundaries of Facebook's platform guidelines makes it very hard to be successful on the platform, while applications that explicitly break all the rules run rampant with traffic and $. In a sense, it has always been beyond unfair. Now it seems that Facebook is willing to sweep the whole thing under the rug.
Why am I saying this? Because it needs to be said. I don't expect that my opinion on the matter will change anything, but at least giving my reasons for moving into Flash development and on to other networks and portals helps me sleep a bit better at night. As for my games, I'm still having trouble getting the kind of traffic that I think they deserve, so I would appreciate it if you could try them out and share them with others if you like them. You can play Survive DX on Kongregate, or view the trailer for Ruby Rocket and pass that around.
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