#rlic

[rlic]

Meet the Robots: Red Spinston

If you didn't like Spinston, you're really not going to like the red version. If Spinston is Darth Vader, this boss is the Emperor. Sightings of this stronger and more powerful version are rare. The good news is that you'll have plenty of time to perfect your galaxy saving skills as this villain doesn't surface until you've mastered quite a few planets on your path. 

[dragonarmyapps]

Robots Love Ice Cream on Android as reviewed by Harry Georgiou of Pureapp. 

If you haven't already, be sure to download the latest update from Google Play Store. You'll notice a sweet new weapon in the store! 

[burtonposey]

Begin it all again

Whelp, Robots Love Ice Cream has been out for a little over a month. It's been something that has been hard for me to really internalize for many reasons. It's been very well received with, I think, over 90% 5-star ratings on the iTunes App Store. I hope that I can someday share all of the reasons with whoever stumbles across this blog. For now we'll just get the ball rolling and start at square one ;).

So a few weeks ago I was told by my employer, Dragon Army, that I was going to be moved from full-time to contract as development for RLIC kinda winds down. This was less than a month after the game I started, worked on for 2.5 calendar years and thousands of unpaid hours before the acquisition and ultimately entrusted to Dragon Army's care to help release, hit the App Store for iOS and Android. In short, this move on their part, to have to part with this thing I helped create, has been very hard to not feel hurt by. It's out of my control how much the game continues to be supported and that's something that I'm just starting to come to terms with.

Just know here and now that I would want to continue to add value to the game and get more content in there if I could. That was a core value of Addo Games that the games we made would have a continual value-add for the player, our customer. I'd envisioned that we'd add things, and people would say, "damn, these guys really care about this and it keeps getting better" and they couldn't help but tell their friends about the games we'd make because they offer so much value for such a low point of entry. In that, I had hoped to make my company known in the mobile games space and then move to other platforms when the opportunities arose.

Robots Love Ice Cream was the closest thing I've known in my life to a child. Becca, my wife, was the first to call it "the game baby" because it had an appetite for our cash and we needed to feed it. I don't say any of this to discount how precious and special having an actual child must be. But I know I've laughed over this game. I've cried so much over this game, unable to see how I can adequately help it grow into something special. I've been mad at it, unable to figure out how, in a cloud of my own doubt, I could solve a difficult problem. I've suffered physically, losing sleep, to tend to it and nurture it, both before and even during my involvement with Dragon Army. It meant a lot to me and this statement in and of itself is a huge understatement.

One thing I have to be real with myself is: It's not like a child, at least I didn't treat it like a child. I sold the game. I let my company get acquired. I certainly wouldn't sell my child if I had one. I think my financial needs, coupled with my frustrations with one of the worst contract experiences I've ever had in the middle of 2013 led me to be primed to be very open to a deal that made life comfortable. I can say with absolute certainty had things not changed and I kept doing what I was doing, the game would be getting better and better, staying on the course I had set for it initially. But would it be done? No, I don't think so. We weren't moving fast enough to be done by now because I never had enough money and had to keep going back into the contract work to pay bills and a little help here and there. I know now that you can't put a price on something you care a lot about. If you can, you can't take that price and still be attached to it, especially if you legally can't control what happens to it.

I surely don't intend to air anything out publicly with my departure, but I do think personally I need to get it out there how I'm feeling and what I'm going through right now. All of this hasn't personally been easy to deal with. I certainly hope whoever comes across this will just see this as someone working through something. I've recently come to learn I keep more than I realized inside, so I'm hoping putting myself out there and voicing it out will really help me get some clarity for myself in this chapter of my life and beyond (and maybe even my past!).

So the title of this post isn't terribly descriptive of what I've said before, but it marks a line in the sand for me. My journey to new things starts here, but first I needed to reflect on my lessons, my very hard lessons, that I've got to learn in the short-term.

[rlic]

Happy Free Comic Book Day everyone!

Like video games, comics transport us to new worlds that we can explore and introduce us to fascinating characters. Comics are created by artists, writers, and so many other folks who help bring this form of entertainment to life - similar to what's needed to create video games!

The stores who bring them to you are so vital to not only comic collectors, but the local economy as well.

Please go out and support your local comic book store by picking up some of the free comics made just for today by the publishers (don't forget to purchase something too to support the shops themselves).