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.

Why Halfbrick?

I thought some of you might be wondering why we partnered with Halfbrick as opposed to any other company, like Chillingo for example. There are quite a few reasons, but foremost among them were:

• I’ve been friends with the guys at Halfbrick since I greenlit their first XBLA title many years ago, and I trusted them to be good partners.
• Halfbrick has massive reach thanks to Fruit Ninja (and now Jetpack Joyride as well.) They can cross promote a game to millions of people.
• Halfbrick’s QA team is as battle-hardened as they come. We had trouble with unexpected OS-compatibility issues with the previous mobile version of Steambirds, and I wanted to avoid a recurrence of that if at all possible.
• Halfbrick’s games are polished to a brilliant shine. We wanted their help doing the same to Steambirds.
• We weren’t looking for a publisher. We’re perfectly capable of publishing and promoting our own games. We were looking for a partner. And I definitely think that we looked in the right place.

Our arrangement is atypical. Spry Fox is technically the publisher of the game, though if there was a way to have registered ourselves as “co-publishers”, I would gladly have done it (hopefully iTunes and Android Market will accommodate arrangements like this in the future.) We co-designed the game. We share the game’s cross promotional space and revenues. We are truly partners in this effort.

The competition

When we first started working with Halfbrick on SB:S at the beginning of this year, we knew we might have some competitors lurking in the shadows. Steambirds had already inspired a number of similar games on the Web, and it was only a matter of time before a strong alternative appeared on mobile devices. As many of you know, that indeed ended up happening just a few weeks ago.

There’s been some public discussion about whether “Crimson: Steam Pirates” is a clone of Steambirds or not. I think it’s pretty clear at first glance that Crimson was heavily inspired by Steambirds. Nobody appears to be disputing that. But its also fair to say that Crimson isn’t a total ripoff. It has some interesting new ideas in it and a different narrative style. I think Steambirds is a better game of course, but then, I’m biased. :-)

I’ve tried to keep my mind on what matters: our fans and potential fans. People just want the best possible game, and we’ve tried our best to give it to them. Steambirds: Survival offers hundreds of hours of tight, well-balanced gameplay to anyone who will give it a chance. It isn’t perfect, but it is a damned good game and it is going to get better with every (frequent) update. And it’s totally free, as opposed to “try/buy.” I can’t wait to see how people react to it.

Looking forward

The more successful we become, the more competitors we are going to attract. All we can do is keep making original games and keep trying to be smart about marketing and distributing them. Hopefully over time we’ll build a loyal fanbase that recognizes and reflects who we are and what we do. That’s ultimately what is going to make Spry Fox successful. Danc and I want to make people happy, and we want our fans to feel like they have a real connection to our company. That’s what matters most; everything else is noise.

And speaking of: if you’re a fan of Steambirds, of Spry Fox or this blog, I’d be very grateful if you’d help us out by telling all your friends to download Steambirds: Survival! Tweet it, Facebook it, Google+ it, email it. We can use all the help we can get. :-)

And as always, if you’ve read this far, thank you! (I’m always flattered that anybody does.)

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.

Additionally, we thought that if Triple Town failed to make traction on Facebook for whatever the reason, it wouldn’t be hard to reskin and release the game on Flash portals. Those platforms have historically been our bread and butter, and we generally feel more comfortable with a project if we think it can eventually find a home in the Flash portal ecosystem.

Of course, the game needed a revenue model. Fortunately, Triple Town is an extremely deep puzzle game once you really wrap your head around it. An expert player can stretch a single game out for hundreds of turns… and that depth creates plenty of opportunities to sell virtual items that might appeal to players. Play the game for a while and you’ll discover how surprisingly tempting it is to purchase that final tree you desperately need to complete your magnificent plans… plans that you’ve been working towards for the past 100 turns!

But, as with most good f2p games, we don’t force you to buy the tree and many skilled players will probably learn how to succeed without doing so in 98% of situations… and in the other 2% of situations, they’ll have earned enough virtual currency to buy what they need for free. Is it possible we’re leaving money on the table? Yes. But we’d rather err on the side of leaving money on the table, rather than send a message that this game is for paying customers only.

We also decided to experiment with limiting the number of turns a player can take for free during any given time period. This is something that most social games do (i.e. limited energy in CityVille, for example) but most puzzles games on Facebook do not do this. It might work for Triple Town; it might not. We’ll find out during the beta. The questions for us are first and foremost: does limiting free play hurt retention? If so, is the revenue generated from selling more turns enough to outweight the downsides? Once we have the answers to those questions, we’ll re-evaluate our design.

I look forward to telling you more about our plans for Triple Town in the weeks to come. We intend to build a whole world around this concept; the current incarnation of the game is just the first step towards that goal. While we work our way towards that grand vision, please do check out the current build and let me know what you think!

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. ;-)

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.

Game studios of this sort have been attempted in the past, but the most prominent attempts have focused on larger, more expensive projects, which plays against the strengths of the distributed model. More importantly, previous studios appear to have been fixated on the debatable benefits of “outsourcing,” as opposed to building true partnerships with outside individuals and firms who are treated as integral to the creative process and who share in the profit. We believe that by building small, tightly-knit teams, we can make this work.

Most importantly, we have no interest in becoming yet another middleman in the increasingly crowded digital publishing space. When Daniel is involved in a project, he plays a major role in every aspect of a game’s design, including building the UI, architecting the major gameplay loops, fine tuning the balance and directing the art production if not creating the art himself. When I am involved in a project, I am deeply involved in the design (particularly with an eye towards monetization systems), the in-game writing, and of course, all aspects of the business including marketing and distribution. We are not publishers. We are co-creators.

Spry Fox is focused primarily on emerging opportunities in the digital game market. For now, this means two things: web-based free-to-play games for various demographics, and downloadable titles for emerging platforms. Our reasons for focusing on these two things are straightforward:

• There are strategic benefits to focusing on under-served markets,
• As noted earlier, our development model likely works best with smaller teams, and
• We don’t enjoy waiting two+ years to discover whether our game will resonate with fans or not.

Some of you might wonder if developing “web-based free-to-play games” qualifies as targeting an under-served market. This is the subject of a longer post, but in brief, I’d argue that there is no opportunity more compelling at this moment in time. The ratio of quality content to potential consumers is vastly out of whack on the Web relative to the console ecosystem or the iPhone app market. Despite the fact that 99% of all Internet-enabled PCs have Flash installed, boasting an audience more than 10x the size of even the most popular game console, you can literally count on one hand the number of really good Flash-based F2P games in any particular genre. That’s our kind of market.

Because our teams are (and will continue to be) relatively small, we need to focus on design methodologies that deliver the greatest amount of bang for the buck. That means user-generated content, procedurally generated content, and multiplayer mechanics that don’t require a constant influx of expensive content. So that’s exactly what we’ve started doing.

• We’re building on Daniel’s previous work with Andy Moore to create a bigger, more engaging, multiplayer version of Steambirds that will fully capitalize on that IP’s potential (with an intermediate version in the meanwhile).
• We’re working with Andre Spierings to evolve the impossibly cute Bunni into the fully social experience we’ve always known it could be.
• And we have two downloadable games and one exceedingly unusual flash MMOG in the works, but unfortunately we can’t share any more information about those projects at this time.

All that said, my consulting firm, Fuzbi, is not going anywhere. Both Daniel and I will continue to do targeted consulting on just about anything (console games, f2p games, serious games, etc), and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Fuzbi team grew further in the future.

I can’t wait to share more with you all soon. Thanks for reading this post and for all your comments and encouragement in the past. And if you think you’d like to work with Spry Fox (or Fuzbi), don’t hesitate to drop me a line. We’re more than a little busy right now, but the future is always just around the corner. :-)

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.

Much of the available data about vitamin D presents a paradox that confuses many people. Vitamin D can be toxic in extremely high doses, so people are afraid to consume too much. On the other hand, if you investigate dosage limits, you’ll learn that just 30 minutes of full body sun exposure (at the right time of day) will cause the average person to synthesize 10,000 IU of vitamin D — 25 times the daily recommended minimum — which suggests that it’s pretty darn hard to overdose on vitamin D, but which also might make you think you don’t need supplements if you get any sun whatsoever. Unfortunately, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, most indoor office workers would probably still benefit from approximately 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D supplements per day (2.5x to 5x the daily recommended minimum.) At least, that’s what the experts say.

So, a few months ago, I started taking 2,000 IU regularly. Then, a few weeks ago, I visited my doctor and asked for a vitamin D blood test. The outcome? My vitamin D level was “slightly low.” I don’t even want to know what it looked like before I began taking supplements.

The ironic thing about me writing this post is that I’m a pretty serious skeptic when it comes to supplements of any kind. And for good reason: most studies have demonstrated little-to-no benefit from the vast majority of popular supplements. In fact, some well-regarded physicians have gone so far as to say that every supplement except vitamin D is a complete waste of money. A more balanced take on supplements can be found in this fantastic diagram, which visually depicts the varying levels of research supporting any given supplement. You’ll notice that very few supplements other than vitamin D and omega 3 make the cynic’s cut. My own physician heartily recommends both those supplements, and none other.

The bottom line is that, as of now, there’s enough evidence to support vitamin D supplementation for most indoor office workers. Of course, given the pretty dismal track record of even our most prestigious healthcare research institutions, I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now new studies dispute the benefits of supplementation. But I’ll take my chances (and heck, maybe I’ll even buy one of those UVB reptile sun lamps… it might help improve my mood during the long, dark Seattle winter!)

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.

Candidate Q and A:

1. What do you see as the biggest challenge facing game developers today? What should the IGDA’s role be in addressing that challenge?

The current business environment is arguably the most complex environment ever faced by game developers. Major new platforms — from web-based portals to new hardware devices — are launching on a regular basis. Platform policies, such as Facebook’s guidelines for developers or Xbox Live Arcade’s portfolio guidance to indies, are changing constantly. Business models are being turned on their heads by the advent of F2P gaming. Globalization has sharply increased competition in the market and introduced new business and legal challenges to developers. These factors, when taken as a whole, represent enormous opportunities and threats that have proven troublesome for even the largest publishers, much less small independent developers. An indie with a little cash in the bank and not much access to helpful information or contacts would be forgiven for feeling completely overwhelmed.

The IGDA needs to help developers grapple with these challenges. It needs to make business information and advice available to members, especially as vertically-integrated (and oftentimes secretive) digital platforms become increasingly important channels. It needs to improve the networking opportunities available to members. And it should advocate against business practices that have a negative impact on industry creativity and which are harmful to independent developers, such as gameplay patents.

2. How do you expect to contribute to the IGDA Board? What qualifications or skills do you possess that will enhance your contributions?

If elected, I will focus on increasing the tangible value of IGDA membership. For example, 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.

As the former worldwide portfolio manager of Xbox LIVE Arcade, and as a consultant with several independent game developers as clients, I have a reasonable amount of insight into the challenges faced by developers and publishers of all sizes. That insight should prove helpful in guiding my contributions to the IGDA, specifically with an eye towards better arming developers to deal with the challenges of modern development. As an MBA, I believe that I have useful knowledge to share with the IGDA community, and I plan to work with other MBAs in the organization to disseminate that knowledge as effectively as possible.

3. How much time do you expect to volunteer to the IGDA? How will you manage this commitment?

My interest in being on the IGDA board is serious. I’ve asked some of the current board members to help me understand their time commitment to the organization, and it appears that on average, current board members contribute approximately three to five hours of their time per month to communications (i.e. phone calls and emails) and somewhere between an additional five to fifteen hours for personal projects, attendance at local events, etc. Lastly, board members attend three in-person meetings annually, one of which occurs at GDC and one of which occurs at the Leadership Forum. I’m fully prepared to commit this amount of time. Furthermore, I expect that meeting my own goals for the IGDA may occasionally require spikes in my involvement, as may the occasional unexpected opportunity or crisis, and I am prepared for that as well. Fortunately, I’m self-employed and fully in control of my own schedule, which permits me a certain level of flexibility. Working on IGDA projects, taking calls, attending meetings, and otherwise contributing at key times (day or night) is not a problem.

4. As an IGDA board member, you’re often asked to get things done on a short timeframe and tight budget. What do you think a reasonable expectation of a board member’s contribution is? How will you accomplish your goals as a board member?

Speaking as a consultant and entrepreneur: being asked to tackle projects or issues on short notice, with or without a tight budget, is nothing new. So the short answer is that I’ll do what I can with what I’ve got, given the circumstances. However, the longer answer is this: if board members are often being asked to get things done on short notice, then perhaps the board isn’t being managed appropriately. The IGDA board should be like any well-managed game development studio — it should be able to avoid repeated or excessive periods of crunch time. If elected, I’ll push myself and the rest of my fellow board members to plan effectively, to distribute workload responsibly, and to stick to our plans unless remarkable circumstances really justify deviation. Like every development studio (or functional household, for that matter), we’ll need to prioritize our goals and allocate our budget to the things that really matter… precisely so that we don’t find ourselves constantly operating under an overly tight budget.

I should add that I believe any board member will be more effective when they are willing to leverage their personal and professional networks on behalf of the IGDA. As an individual, there’s only so much that anyone can do; the organization needs board members who have experts to turn to when they need help with a project, when they’re attempting to recruit speakers for events, etc. Fortunately, I have a reasonably comprehensive network and am more than willing to leverage it on the IGDA’s behalf.

Again, please vote here.