Janko in a Jar

Today I was searching for a domain name for a game related website I am thinking of making… I can tell you … all the good, all the average and almost all of the bad domain names are already taken. I tried more than 100 domains on godaddy.com that I could think of (even obscure ones that I was sure no-one thougth of) and got “is already taken” for all that were at least decent. I have given up for today. My brain in self-ironic attempt squeezed out one last proposal. “Why don’t you make a website name gamebob.com then”… OK I typed it in and…

Can’t wait to see what will be on.

Recently there was a mini-riot towards Gameproducer.NET because he posted quite few posts about Text-Link-Ads with the affiliate link to them. My guess is he earned quite some money that way, yes… but I don’t see anything wrong with that. He doesn’t claim he is virgin Mary or something. I would probably do it too if I had his quantities of visitors.

I signed up with text link ads too after reading his post and what can I say 1 month after it.. Thanks Juuso! I earned you $25 but you earned me $76 in this month alone . And it really is more than AdSense in same time so I am very happy.

There was also other mini riot towards him on indiegamer forums… that by reading his blog newbies can think making a living by making indie games is easier that it really is. With this I partially agree.

I just read latest post of the “Gibbage Gibbage guy” who is probably just looking down at my house right now. Then I went to my statCounter to check my stats myself and what did I see? allmost exactly the same picture of my visitors as he has it?!? Look for yourself. This below is screen of mine, you must use all match-3 skills of your brain to spot that there actually is a difference.. go here to see his pics.

There are all sorts of SEO gurus and stuff levitating around. But from what I saw by simple observation it’s no magic in it… just some common sense that can be pointed out in 4 words.

• links
• titles
• urls
• content

links: yes you want links to your web-pages, more the merier

titles: html title, especially first words are very important… don’t make your whole site have 1 title (as I did for long). Let each page have an appropriate title for it’s contents and try to cover as much ground as possible

urls: use urls to your own good. tell what’s there with them… like http://www.bravekidgames.com/online_flash_games.php

content: make good content… this is no SEO trick. Do you think you will gain anything if you manage to bring tons of people to your page with some SEO tricks which then gives them nothing worthwile and not what they were searching for?

I am writing an online turn-based strategy game in my free time (which I don’t have). So I am trying some strategy games in my free time (which I don’t have, remember). Funny thing is that while I really enjoy writing and planing my strategy game I am too lazy to play almost any of them for long. Especially the real time strategies seem to bore me after 10min (darwinia)… select some units… move them over here… oops too far… move them back a little… they are getting killed in the meantime….quickly scroll the map select some more units to help them… scroll back… click… uh my first unit group is gone already.. huh…

OK, but there seem to be ones that get my brain clicking even after I am having programing php-noodles programming marathon for 4 weeks.

Today I tried Battalion (an online (free) turn based strategy game made in flash) and it was great. My tired brains got in quickly which is not so often at such games and I was kicking butt of the blue enemy in no time.

What I Liked:

• Everything is very very natural and obvious (this is a big rarity IMO)
  
• Game-Play is very visual - not a tons of numbers and math to do to understand
• Game-Play is very visual (again) - even looking at people playing the game is interesting
• I liked the strategy/game-play that it features (quite active)
• Graphics have a Sprite Attack signature all over… in a good way.. and because of all pixels takes that typical “flash look” away.
• Good idea and very well executed

What I didn’t like:

• There were not a lot of people there which is a little like sad because it’s really very nice game… but there were around 9 so still some to play with. Game is running for quite some time so I wonder how things were standing in earlier days (If anyone knows please tell).

What can I say… visit the game and you won’t be sorry. If you see anyone with nick jankoM2 battle me, but as I said I have no free time for at least 1 month, but I am sure to play it some more.

I live in Slovenia. It is small and reasonably nice country that has almost exactly 2000000 people (And we just made 1 one of them this year, yey me and my wife!). As I have been told there is a bunch of cities in the world that have more people than our country. But being small is also about being agile… and with upcoming energy crisis we already started converting our motor-ways to deal with it.

BTW: I will start a simple “travel to Slovenia” website soon (with my wacky sister doing videos and photos) so you will have a chance to find out more interesting facts about us 2MP (MillionPeople), our surroundings and what interesting things you can do around here - especially in eco-turistic (ok and urban-turistic) ways. Bye..

Do you remember the times when you were anxiously pressing on “Get Mail” (or “Send And Recieve” in ms-land) and then your heart allmost broke because of yet another “There are no new messages”. This problem is really gone now because …if you can count one one thing for certain in this world.. you can rely on that you will get at least few spam emails per day. Spamers newer forget you, they never have a headache… maybe they are our most loyal friends and we are just too stupid to understand that…

After all  they all wish us growth in certain areas, tell us about great stock opportunities and search very cheap used downloadable software for us..

No, not Qatfish but the Big Fish. A year or more ago someone on indiegamer forum asked “what games are you waiting to get released the most” and allmost everybody said “next game from PomPom”. Well now you have it, you can get “Bliss Island” under new releases on Big Fish Games.

This post might sound like it’s meant in cynical note but it’s not… I played the game and while I can hear faithfull shmu-pom-ers crying in pain I see nothing wrong with this game. It is different and unique, it is interesting and fun. The only potentially negative comment about it from me could be that it’s seems allmost too experimental in gameplay to have all this polish and high production value. Good Luck PomPom.