Category Archives: Personal Stuff

Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, or you’re just begging to be taken advantage of.

We (Spry Fox) have filed a copyright infringement suit in federal court against 6Waves LOLAPPS in response to their release of Yeti Town, their blatant copy of Triple Town. This was a difficult decision for Danc and I. We are not enthusiastic about the prospect of spending our time in court as opposed to making games. And in general, we believe that only in the most extreme circumstances should a video game developer resort to legal action in order to defend their creative works — the last thing our industry needs is frivolous lawsuits. Unfortunately, it is our opinion that 6waves has behaved in a reprehensible and illegal manner, and we can not, in good conscience, ignore it.

The full legal complaint can be downloaded here. In particular, I will call attention to these issues:

First: Yeti Town, as launched by 6waves, was a nearly perfect copy of Triple Town. We’re not just talking about the game’s basic mechanics here. We’re talking about tons of little details, from the language in the tutorial, to many of our UI elements, to the quantities and prices of every single item in the store (how exactly did 6waves “independently” decide to price 200 turns for 950 coins, or 4 wildcards for 1500 coins each? That’s quite a coincidence!) But don’t take our word for it. Here are just a few quotes taken from the numerous press articles that were published shortly after the release of Yeti Town:

• Gamezebo: “Unfortunately for Yeti Town, the only substantial difference between it and Facebook’s Triple Town is the platform it’s on. Otherwise it’s the exact same game, only this time with snow.”
• InsideSocialGames: “Yeti Town is a matching game nearly identical to Spry Fox’s Triple Town”
• Games.com: “Replace “saplings” with “bushes”, “tents” with “houses” and “yetis” with “bears”. What do you get? Something that would look a lot like independent developer Spry Fox’s Triple Town”

Second: what most people don’t know is that 6waves was in confidential (under NDA) negotiations with us to publish Triple Town at the exact same time that they were actively copying Triple Town. We gave 6waves private access to Triple Town when it was still in closed beta, months before the public was exposed to the game. We believed those negotiations were ongoing, and we continued to give private information to 6waves, until 6waves’ Executive Director of Business Development sent us a message via Facebook on the day Yeti Town was published in which he suddenly broke off negotiations and apologized for the nasty situation. His message can be found in its entirety in the body of our legal complaint.

It’s bad enough to rip off another company. To do so while you are pumping them for private information (first, our game design ideas, and later, after the game was launched on Facebook, our private revenue and retention numbers) is profoundly unethical by any measure.

Despite all this, Danc and I still struggled with the idea of initiating a lawsuit. However, 6waves brought the issue to a head when, rather than openly and honestly discuss their actions, they had the chutzpah to tell Gamasutra that they had developed Yeti Town completely independently, and characterized the legitimate public criticism of their company as simply “part of the natural process” of game development.

We believe that there is nothing “natural” or ethical or legal about 6waves behavior. What they did was wrong. And if they get away with it, it will simply encourage more publishers to prey on independent game developers like us. We refuse to sit back and let that happen.

-Dave & Danc

Steambirds: Survival (SB:S) is now available on iTunes! iPhone/iPod version here. iPad version here. We hit a slight snag with the Android version but you can expect to see it launch very soon as well. :-)

For those of you who haven’t heard, this version of Steambirds is the result of a collaboration between Spry Fox and Halfbrick (aka the guys who made Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride.) We worked together to evolve SB:S, which we originally co-created with Andy, from its humble beginnings into a robust game with 120 missions — 64 available for free at launch — and some cool new features, like a recruiting system that lets you hire additional planes to help you beat more difficult missions.

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I’m pleased to announce the public beta of Triple Town, our original twist on the match-3 genre, which is launching on Facebook and will soon appear on other platforms as well.

Triple Town has always been a very special game for Spry Fox. It was one of our studio’s first titles, and it was good enough to be chosen by Amazon as the first indie game to be released on the Kindle. Triple Town also has the highest user rating of any game we’ve ever released (4.72 out of 5 on Amazon.com based on 158 reviews as of the time of this writing.)

So, when Danc and I started talking about how we might want to dip our toes into the turbulent water that is Facebook, Triple Town seemed like a natural fit. We knew the game was fun. We knew it would appeal to a broad audience. We knew it wouldn’t require a massive development expense because it is a relatively simple game. And we had observed a relatively limited amount of content in what I’ll call “the Bejeweled Blitz genre” on Facebook… a market opportunity that we felt we had a decent chance of capitalizing upon with Triple Town.

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Just a short note to say that I’ve been really enjoying Google+ thus far. It feels like a perfect blend of Facebook and Twitter and enables me to easily take advantage of the things that I like best about both without some of the annoying limitations (character limit, inability to specify target groups, etc). If you’re using it, you can find me at: gplus.to/djedery.

A belated post to help explain why I’ve been so quiet on this blog as of late. :-)

Mama Eve and baby Aria are doing great; the former is glowing and the latter is a champion eater and sleeper! She’s also got awesome hair, like her papa. ;-)

2010 was a very special year for me. From founding Spry Fox (which I would never have had the courage to do without a great business partner like Danc), to releasing our first games, to winning the IndiePub mobile games competition, to finding ourselves at the top of Amazon’s “top rated games” page… it’s been a better ride than I could have hoped for. But all of this pales in comparison to the most important news that I received in 2010: Eve is pregnant with a little girl — our first child — and due to give birth on March 4th. So here’s to a joyous and sleep-deprived 2011!

And, lest I seem ungrateful, I’d like to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your kind comments and encouragement. When I started writing this blog almost five years ago, I never really expected it to become a meaningful part of my life. I’m mildly astonished and grateful that it has done just that.

Happy new year, everyone. :-)

Just a quick note to announce that we’ve launched our second Kindle game, a neat little word puzzle called “Panda Poet.”. It’s a somewhat faster game than Triple Town, and it takes advantage of the Kindle’s keyboard. It also features really cute pandas, which is apparently the killer feature for many players. :-)

This is the fourth game in the word game genre on the Kindle platform (not something we realized would be the case when we first started developing it) so it will be interesting to see if Amazon’s customers still find it appealing. On other platforms in the “uncertain beginnings” phase, customers can definitely exhibit genre burnout.

That said, so far the reviews are good and Panda Poet is rising on the charts. I think the game’s success will depend largely on Amazon’s support of it, word of mouth, and the cuteness factor. We’ll be doing our own marketing, but thus far I’ve found it difficult to reach Kindle users — many of the traditional tactics (like using Google and Facebook advertising, for example) haven’t proven effective. I’ll do a post-mortem on both Triple Town and Panda Poet sometime in the next few months and will go into greater detail at that time.

Since well before I entered this industry, I’ve wanted to make my own games. At first, I thought I’d make exercise games, but that was before the launch of the Wii and well before I had any credibility in this industry, so it didn’t work out. Then I thought I’d make downloadable console games, but in a bizarre twist of fate, I was instead hired by Microsoft to review everyone else’s creative work. Well, they say the third time’s the charm, so I’m pleased to formally announce the birth of Spry Fox, a new kind of game development studio that I’ve co-founded with my good friend, Daniel Cook. The fearless Tom Buscaglia is our general counsel.

What do I mean by “new kind of game development studio?” Put simply: we focus on the business and design aspects of game development. We do not employ developers and we do not outsource. We create games by partnering with other talented individuals whose development abilities we respect, and everyone shares in the profit. In this regard, Spry Fox functions somewhat like a modern movie studio — we form teams around a project that everyone is passionate about, and the team disbands when the project is done (or, in the case of a free-to-play game, when the projects stops generating meaningful revenue). With a bit of luck, a team will gel nicely and may reunite many times (ala a Kevin Smith production), but it isn’t strictly necessary. We work together on what we love, and we part ways when our interests diverge.

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Several months ago, my wife Eve had a blood test and was subsequently informed by her physician that she was “very” deficient in vitamin D (also known as the “sunshine vitamin” because our bodies naturally generate it when exposed to solar UVB rays.) Since we live in Seattle, where it’s perpetually cloudy for approximately three-fourths of the year, Eve’s deficiency wasn’t too surprising. She started taking vitamin D supplements, and I started doing some research on vitamin D in general. I discovered three important things:

• A very large percentage of 1st world residents are vitamin D deficient because we spend so much time indoors (and often use sunscreen when outdoors), and,
• Vitamin D deficiency is linked to a disturbingly wide range of very serious diseases, including cancer, heart disease, autism, osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis, and,
• Because the “daily recommended minimum” intake of vitamin D is 400 IU (the amount found in many multi-vitamins), many people mistakenly believe that a multi-vitamin is a sufficient source of vitamin D even if, like me, you go weeks at a time without significant sun exposure. Even people who get sun exposure before or after work may not be entirely OK; most UVB radiation penetrates the Earth’s atmosphere from approximately 10am to 3pm. The National Institute of Health recommends 5 to 30 minutes of sun exposure between those times at least twice a week, sans sunscreen, to people who wish to self-synthesize the recommended minimum amount of vitamin D.

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I decided to run for the board of the IGDA this year. As part of that process, I was asked to write a “candidate position statement” and answer some questions, all of which I have copied below. (This material is also available on the IGDA website.)

If you are an IGDA member, I would really appreciate your vote. The poll is open now and closes on February 28th.

Candidate Position Statement:

I am running for the IGDA Board because I believe the IGDA is faced with a vital problem: many people in our industry can’t see why they should join or actively participate in the IGDA. It’s easy to understand why. First, our industry’s most prestigious publications and conferences are operated by other organizations. Second, our government lobbying is led primarily by the ESA. And lastly, the tangible benefits of IGDA membership – other than the recent health insurance offering – are unclear to many people. I believe that lack of progress on these fronts will jeopardize the IGDA and undermine its ability to tackle issues its members care about, such as quality of life and credit standards.

We — that is, *all* game developers, not just the large companies that comprise the ESA’s membership — need an organization that represents our interests and enhances the creative and business opportunities available to each of us. But we will never reach that goal without first building an organization whose value to potential members is self-evident. When people can’t see the value in paying $48 bucks for an annual membership, you know something is wrong.

If elected, I will focus on increasing the tangible value of IGDA membership. I’d like to ensure that content from the excellent IGDA Leadership Forum is freely available to all members, not just those who can attend the event. I’d like to enhance the ties between the IGDA and GDC to the extent that it benefits IGDA members. I’d like to grow programs, such as the IGDA’s webinar series, that bring useful business and legal information to IGDA members worldwide. And lastly, I’d like to explore the creation of additional benefits like the IGDA’s new group health plan; for example, a group legal plan.

In my time as portfolio manager of Xbox LIVE Arcade and as a consultant, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many game developers. What has differentiated those that succeed from those that struggle is a combination of skill, luck, access to information, and the ability (and opportunity) to promote themselves. The IGDA can’t give developers luck, but it *can* open their eyes to common stumbling blocks, teach them about business, enhance their networking opportunities and help improve their skills. It can reduce the financial burdens that developers face and arm them with the tools they need to succeed… and increase its own legitimacy in the process.

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