Titan Gaming Inc. Blog

InsideMobile Conference

2009-06-15T21:04:00.001-07:00

I just got accepted to speak at the InsideMobile Conference! The show will be going down August 26 to 27, 2009. It's looking like it's gonna be a great show, especially with yours truly speaking. That and the fact that the 360|Conference team and O'Reilly are putting it on. Tickets are cheaper on a first come, first served basis! So buy your tickets asap at http://insidemobile.eventbrite.com to get the best possible price. See you there and you better go to my session!

PV3D - The Next Generation of Games

2009-01-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

I saw Papervision 3d (PV3d) a few years ago and instantly saw it's potential. Flash a platform that is installed in 98% of all machines with the capability of rendering 3d objects is solidifying its current position in the gaming space.

I'm really excited about the new “gravityOffset” capability in PV3d. Check out this Rolling Sphere in action

Cost of Now

2008-12-04T13:25:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed Seth Godin's blog post about the cost of now.

It's so true one minute to late and the value of your business can change, this is why our team is always developing with a sense of urgency. Thanks Seth!

"The closer you get to the source and moment of information, the more it costs.

If you wanted to be the first person to see Nokia's new phone, you could have flown to Berlin, as Robert Scoble did. Or you could have been the second person by obsessively hitting refresh on his posts. Or you could have been the tenth person by having it show up in your feed later in the day. Or you could wait a week and see it everywhere. Or in a year, get one on eBay for $5...

If you want to know how the stock market did in 2006, you can spend ten seconds and find it in Wikipedia. If you want to know about today, you'll need to invest a few clicks and you'll get the delayed results. Or you could pay a lot of money for a stock market terminal and get the current prices. Or you could even risk prison and get some inside information about what's going to happen before it happens.

More than ever, there's a clear relationship between how new something is and how much it costs to discover that news.

You can check your email twice a day pretty easily. Once every fifteen minutes has a disruption cost. Pinging it with your pocketphone every sixty seconds is an extremely expensive lifestyle/productivity choice.

Sure, go ahead, stay hyper-current, but realize it's not free."

Game Server Upgrade

2008-07-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

We upgraded our web and game servers to quad core this weekend.

The site and game services are running much faster now. We had some issues with the Nameserver DNS pointing to the right IP. We figured it out.

Some History of In-Game Advertising

2008-07-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

In 1933 the world’s first pinball machine with electricity was released. One year later a scoring-mechanism was embedded into the machines that could track the number of balls and points the user achieved. Now people were competing and had a measure of skill, it wasn’t long before companies began exploiting the game, in the 60s and 70s, companies such as Playboy started branding these games. And so the first iteration of in-game advertising was born.

The next stage of in-game advertising would be the biggest advancement in this ad medium since computer graphics provided more real estate and more engaging environments for advertisers. The first computer graphics powered game was an early version of pong made with military devices. In 1978, the game Adventureland by Scott Adams carried in-game advertising for one of his upcoming games called Pirate Adventure. It’s interesting to unravel Adventureland, as it was a text based game. I conjecture that Adams wanted to create a franchise of games and that the strategy was to gain more face-time to promote his upcoming titles. From herein, companies began working out in-game advertising deals with game publishers prior to the game’s release date. In 1992, the ninja game Zool carried some levels that were branded with Chupa Chups. Zool is the story of a ninja that arrives in earth and must cross through six different lands in order to complete the game. Chupa Chups must have seen a good match with the in-game demographics in order to be one of the first companies to market in-game.

The Zool/Chupa Chups static in-game advertisements were in the form of product placement, with clearly visible lollipops scattered on the side-scrolling game. One year later, in 1993, Electronic Arts (EA) had secured sponsorship from Adidas in-game on the outskirts of the field. It wasn’t long before EA had a roster of clients and partners showing up in most of their sport games.

By examining the history of in-game advertising it is evident that Adventureland realized the value in being able to reach out to its own community and increase their brand loyalty. The other note is that for those multiplayer games where Chupa Chups can be scattered its worthwhile of considering the option of tournament software to create new revenue streams by way of sponsors.

Tournaments - MG Online

2008-07-17T14:01:00.001-07:00

Amongst the flurry of E3 2008 news, the one that was the most interesting (but not surprising) was that Metal Gear Solid 4 would be expanding its community and competition features via it's online store.

It makes perfect sense, instead of loosing their community to third parties organizing these events, they can own their community and offer a better experience to the gamer because of more advanced integration.

The update to MGS4 will now include reward points that are gained via site activity or by winning tournaments. These points can then be used to upgrade characters, unlock new features, etc. This point-based economy is an excellent way to revitalize a community and it's a topic we frequently consult on.

The clan rooms will also be added but I do not think they will offer chat and voice as our clan tools do.

I look forward to seeing this update and also in seeing publishers paying more attention to the power of social media and their game.

Tournament & Community Framework

2008-07-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

Check out the new pages on our Community and Tournament Platform

Realpolitik & The Flash Game Developer Network

2008-07-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Realpolitik & The Ideal Flash Game Developer Network
Using Political Science to explain a Game Distribution Network

As a political science major I took away two main camps of thought.

1) Idealism
2) Realpolitik

Idealism was the way the world should work and realpolitik was the way humans cause it to work. The Idealists' belief system is complex but 'usually' holds true across a community regardless of class and standing. On the other end of the spectrum, Realpolitik's belief system is anarchic and volatile to one's class and stature.

Machiavelli - The Embodiment of Power Struggle

When applying realpolitik to any market one can see the inequities more clearly and give light on the solutions to these disjunctures. So lets stay on track - First, look at why cleavages exist between game developers and game publishers - Second, analyze why a better developer and distribution network is in order.

Before I jump into the guts of this argument, let me spill some disclosure. I've never taken a game to market. I've never shopped a game or idea around and thus I don't understand the hardships associated with the task. But I can empathize.

As a developer and designer I see a disjuncture in the market. As an indie developer it's hard to find a publisher to take your game to market. By taking a game to market I suggest a two-fold action 1)stream it to an existing community 2)find a way to monetize it. The process would be nice if the game developer had more bargaining chips. Creating a grassroots community around a single or a few games is difficult, especially when you compare your offerings to that of a miniclip.com - with a large shelf and lots of traffic. There's a current evangelical movement around social gaming and casual games, I see Venture Capital firms and large publishers shifting their attention to casual games.

It's an exciting time to be an Indie developer but lets keep it in perspective using simple market equilibrium.

Yes, it is an exciting time to be an indie game developer because tools such as XNA and other platform SDKs are becoming mainstream, less complex and cheaper. On the other end of the stick, there is going to be a splurge of games hitting the market. More games than the market knows what to do with. The games that will prosper are the exceptionally great games and okay games with exceptional marketing budgets. As the market matures in the social games space, I conjecture that there will be so many 'exceptional' games that only those with large budgets will prosper. This is only one edge of the sword, the other end of the sword is that these tools XNA, Papervision3d, will mature just like any other software lifecycle.

indie games are becoming less indie

I dislike using the word casual/indie because I know these games will become more complex, require more resources to compete and thus blur the word 'indie-game'. It's like the term indie-music 15 years ago, before it used to mean an artist that didn't have access to a multi-million dollar studio. Now it doesn't exist ... since a macbook pro, logic and cubase makes you an artist. Some may argue that the difference between indie and non-indie, is the intent of commercializing the musical tracks or game. But this argument is defunct since a game developer's, whether a greedy Machiavellian or a parochial developer's, intent is to have as many people playing the game as possible. The argument stands that this massive influx of casual games will require a network to distribute games.

In order for this indie-games surge to become sustainable there must be two things 1) a platform in order to link publishers and developers 2) community tools for the games. The platform will allow developers to demo their games and publishers to place bids, contact the developers and buy licenses to the games. The community tools will add value to the games, make them more pervasive, more engaging and create networks around the game.

The platform that will link publishers and developers doesn't need to be very advanced, it need only allow the developers to create a profile, list their current and future games, analytic tracking for the game and allow the publishers to speak about their current offerings. This network could disrupt and create a power shift between the publisher and developer. It is costly for a developer who eats granola and yogurt for dinner to travel halfway around the world to meet with publishers who will likely say no. By creating an incubator for the developer, where income streams can be realized without the support of a full-blown publisher than the developer has bargaining chips that didn't exist before.

I've recently blogged about the importance of community tools and why it is important to create a space for your flash, pc or console game instead of only plugging it into a network where your access to data is limited. At no point do I pretend to deny the importance of the potential reach a social network (myspace, facebook, bebo) can provide your game. My purpose is to explain that there must be a space, a place that the developer (or publisher) owns in order to create a space for recurring face time with new product offerings, brand loyalty and additional revenue streams.

Hopefully, I've explained why the current power structure exists between most developers and major publishers. The paradigm will continue to exist if no platform steps up to the task of creating a horizontal communication web tool so developers can see their options more clearly. Although I believe there are market forces that create a constant struggle between the pursuit and possession of power - it is important to apply idealistic solutions to cause drastic shifts in these kind of power structures. These drastic shifts in power structures force improvements in market transactions, leading to leaner costs of doing business, with the end result of creating better and more engaging games. And that's what this is all about ... creating more valuable games.

The Holy Grail of In-Game or Around-Game Advertising

2008-07-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

As multiplayer becomes more integral to the value of a video game and as story lines continue to become more complex, I conjecture that in-game advertising will not be the holy grail of additional revenue streams for video game publishers, developers and sponsors.

Before you start throwing your heavily branded Coke can my way, I will disclose that I work for a company Titan Gaming Inc. that creates additional revenue streams around video games. I should also mention that by in-game advertising I mean in-game billboards and in-game ads that are not interactive.

I do believe that The Holy Grail for publishers is being able to tap the community that is born around their game in an organized fashion and provide value-added services through a framework that enables this community management. Currently one sees grassroots communities, clans, individuals spending hours, days, and years participating in these communities that encircle one game. What if the publisher or developer could create an official space where these individuals could network, see new product offerings from the publishers and participate in engaging sponsor-driven tournaments that provide a value-add for customers, sponsors?

I will start my argument by looking at the shortcomings of in-game advertising, and then shift my argument to other more pervasive forms of advertising around games, then follow with an analysis of the current community solutions available for publishers and developers.

Coke Machines in Halo 3

When we speak to developers and publishers one of the best ways to convey the shortcomings of in-game advertising industry is to say “You can’t put a coke machine in Halo 3”. As mentioned before, some games are not suitable for in-game ad-placement due to the game’s setting of time and place. It’s hard to conceive of real present-day brands such as Mountain Dew appearing in a clash of alliance versus hordes in World of Warcraft or a Black and Decker hammer in Age of Conan. It’s hard to imagine a publisher or developer feeling comfortable destroying the setting of the game by placing an ad for an extra $2-$3 per game sold.

Nike next to Adidas

The next inherent issue is the lack of real estate space available in-game. When you’re driving to school or work, you will rarely see a Nike and Adidas billboard next to each other. You will however see these ads on television; and the assumption is that they spend money on the television more because of the kind of attention you are placing towards the television as the commercial starts. This differs from the kind of peripheral attention you would place on an ad while you’re driving down the freeway. Better shows that attract more traffic get higher ad rates. Duh. But now let’s draw a comparison between games and television shows. Commercials are extended and often engage the viewer for an extended period of time. An in-game ad placement is often seen as a distraction to the gamer unless it offers a level of interactivity. If I receive a Black and Decker hammer in a Sims game after building 12 successful Sim communities then there is a positive brand association created. There needs to be some level of value associated with virtual sponsored goods in order to draw a positive brand association. The interactivity of video games allows advertisers to be more creative and focus on building a positive brand association and not just a cool banner ad. This strengthens my argument, that in-game ad placement is not the most valuable additional revenue stream for any of the parties (developers, publishers, gamers or sponsors). The real value in-game is creating sponsored goods, worlds, levels to create positive brand associations. So as a gamer, after I’ve played I can say “My favorite level was when I had to save Target from the evil aliens.” This is Target’s dream, to create a positive and interactive association between a brand and a customer.

For the multiplayer games where the sponsored goods or levels aren’t available the next step is what surrounds the game – the community, sponsored tournaments and banners in lobbies. I’ll start with the sponsored tournaments since it’s one of the more complex but rewarding options available for game developers and publishers. We’ve created a tournament system that lets developers and publishers create an additional revenue stream with the following features:

- Prize management and escrow service
- Player schedule and re-schedule
- Game server load balancing
- Demographic targeting
- Analytics

Titan Gaming Inc.’s goal in creating the tournament module was to allow developers to integrate their game into the tournament engine with as few lines of code as possible. The tournament module also had to be as flexible as possible to accommodate any multiplayer console, casual, PC game that has a win, loss logic. There is a complete dispute, scheduling and tournament tree set up that makes it a turn key solution. It’s a valuable tool for developers because they can plug and play the module with the community solution and allow the ecosystem of sponsored events, user-generated content to flourish. Since the Coke machine could not be embedded into Halo 3 we’re creating positive and extended online campaigns with the tournaments. For example, the sponsor might want to give gamers free entry after an ad pre-roll. The monetization of the tournament is all controlled through a backend interface. The approval process is also controlled through the backend using the Titanstrike framework. Have any ideas to improve online tournaments, I’d like to hear about them at diaz*at*titangaminginc.com.

The lobby system is very simple and non-interactive way for developers to gain some extra revenue. Ads would be placed in or around the server browser of a game.
Moving beyond the in-game experience is the possibilities of tapping into the power that occurs when a community is born from a game. Traditionally, publishers and developers simply put out the game and let the communities form on their own with little or no interaction but this is starting to change. From what I’ve seen, the current community solutions for video game publishers follow three fronts. First, online video game communities are built using an open source solution like Joomla or Drupal. Second, the community solution is outsourced to a company like Gamespy. Thirdly, the publisher realizes the value and decides to build their proprietary community solution. Inherently, there are shortcomings to these three options.

Using an open source solution like Joomla, creates a robust environment for gamers but it follows a cookie-cutter approach. Joomla was not meant to be used as a community solution, let alone one with integrated game services. Joomla has great news and user management but falls short when creating a solution that creates a solid bridge from the web to any game.

The next option is probably the most popular one, outsourcing the community solution to a company like Gamespy. The positive aspect of this is that there are plenty of game services with web enabled components, there is an installable re-skinnable component that can be used to create the look and feel of that particular game. However, one of the shortfalls is being able to tap your community and extend your upcoming pipeline to the community. I’ve visited many game communities hosted on Gamespy and I see a gap. The gap is that Gamespy’s advertising interests are not in-line with the game publisher who is outsourcing their community. Gamespy wants to host communities and advertise upcoming pipelines from any company that is willing to meet their rates. A publisher’s goal is to incubate their communities and market upcoming titles to that base. If they have access to their community, the database, traffic, they need to spend far less to create a sale on their next title.

Let’s take a look at the Battlefield Community site. On any given day, you’ll see a different ad underneath the header that demonstrates that it’s the Battlefield community site. Today (July 07,2008) I see an Alone in the Dark Advertisement with an Atari emblem. I know that video game publishers are used to being perceived side by side at retail stores but the online community could be used as an important conduit for upcoming games. Now let’s look at Bungie.net, the makers of Halo 3:

Halo 3 Community Site

No advertisements carrying the competition’s brand, slogan or game. This is a tight-knit community where a Halo 4 ad would be well received and the marketing budget would include the hosting and production fees for the advertisement and not a large premium to reach their community base. I hope by now the benefits of publishers and developers creating and holding onto an official community with full control is clear. The caveat with the Bungie.net (Halo 3 Community Site) is that it's a proprietary solution, its expensive to build around each game and from my knowledge they aren't in a position to white-label it for your game. Nevertheless, giving your customer to an agency that doesn’t share the same goals as your game is a dangerous move.

The Titanstrike framework was designed with flexible APIs on the frontend and integration end in order to be a cost-effective, customizable solution. If you would like to see a demo of what a community and tournament solution would look like around your game, please visit our official site http://www.titangaminginc.com or contact me at diaz@titangaminginc.com

TitanGamingInc.com V1- Live

2008-06-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

We've started posting Version 1 of our new corporate site.

Titan Gaming Inc. - Titanstrike Tools

XBox 360 Elite Custom Paint Job

2008-06-03T07:48:00.001-07:00

Our Next Titanstrike Prize was made with a Lotta' Love

Xbox 360 Elite Custom Paint Job from Francisco Diaz on Vimeo.

There's nothing like receiving an art piece as a prize. This one won't go on the mantle but will suit your TV & Electronic collection quite nicely. It's a hand painted Xbox 360 Elite. I had the pleasure of working with Maritza Torres, an LA-based artist.

The project was in the conceptual stages for about three months. Since I was in India it was hard to execute the project remotely. The planning consisted of; getting a camera, renting three-point tweenie lighting, figuring out a design, finding a great artist and then just sticking to a date. The artsy date was set to June 1st, 2008.

I Google searched "lighting LA" and found a directory with business listings based on categories of production. It was Saturday afternoon and I needed the lights ASAP but first I needed to know what kind of lights I needed. I'm a complete n00b at lighting. I know it's critical for a good shot. Luckily, I came across Patrick Murphy from Crosslight. I started the convo with "Hello, I don't know anything about lighting ...". The conversation ended up being very educational and he was nice enough to open up his shop for Titanstrike. I highly recommend Crosslight.

Three tweenies later meant the stop at Michaels was in order. I picked up:

- Xacto Knife
- White Duct Tape
- Masking Tape
- White Roller Paper
- White Cardboard
- Grey Krylon Primer
- Clear Krylon Primer
- Red, Yellow, Black, Beige Acrylics

I tried paying debit card and Michaels pin number entry on the machines were empty. I ran to the bank, luckily crossing a Circuit City on 4th Street in Santa Monica - so I picked up 6 HDV Tapes. Back to Michaels picked up the goods, drove back to the studio.

Maritza called me about 5 minutes after I got into the studio asking if I needed anything from Michaels. I drove back to Michaels and picked her up.

Back at the studio, we had some iced tea and discussed the shot. I decided to take the intro shot to the Venice Boardwalk and get some interesting people involved in the delivery of the Xbox to the artist. After that shot we went back to the studio and prepared the Xbox for its makeover.

How it was made?

1) XBox 360 Elite sanded with medium then fine grit sandpaper
2) Use warm, moist washcloth to remove debris
3) Cover vents and rear areas with masking tape and trace with Xacto knife for a sharp finish.
4) Use a light spray of Grey Krylon Primer and cover Xbox 360 Evenly.
5) Sketch with a Charcoal Pencil
6) Go wild with acrylics
7) Finish with High Gloss Krylon clear coat

Hope you enjoyed the project half as much as I enjoyed making it!

FAQ regarding bounties

2008-06-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

What are bounties?
Bounties are meant to make playing games more interesting. They are open challenges that you can send to anyone on the site. You set the challenge, and other gamers can accept it. You decide how many points you want to wager on the game and then bring your skills to the match.

Why should I care about Bounties?
You can create or accept bounties with TS points on the line. The bounty system lets you show off your skills by accumulating points. There will be prizes for the users with the most TS points.

What is a Bounty?
A bounty is a user generated challenge that is waiting to be fulfilled. There are three main parts to a bounty: the creation of a bounty, the acceptance of a bounty, the feedback for the bounty.

1. First the creator of the bounty sets the parameters of the challenge - the platform, the game, amount of Titanstrike points on the line, if the bounty should be auto-accepted and whether the bounty is password protected. Our system then holds those points until the game score is successfully reported - then they are transfered to the winner.
2. Second, the user who accepts the bounty must have sufficient points to accept the bounty. Once the bounty is accepted, the two users can use Titanstrike's private messaging, instant messaging or commenting in order to schedule and play the match.
3. Third, once the match has been accepted and played, both players are expected to return to their challenge window in the Account>Messages section in order to provide feedback. Not providing feedback will result in negative loyalty ratings.

Which Games are supported by the Bounty System?
Since match results are manually reported, all games in the My Ownage section are supported by the bounty system. In order to create or accept a bounty on a particular game you must first add the game to your Ownage by clicking on the 'Add Games/Consoles' link on the Site Buttler. If a particular game is not listed and you want to create a challenge for it, please email admin@titanstrike.com.

How do I get TS points?
You can currently receive 1000 TS points by watching a video under the Get Points section. You may recharge your points once a day. The fastest way to get TS points is by winning bounties that have TS points on the line.

What is the Timeline for these Bounties?
If a bounty is left unaccepted then it will expire after a 7 day period and the points in escrow will be returned to the creator of the bounty. Once a bounty is accepted the match must be played and reported within 8 days. When one user reports feedback the user has 24 hours to report the outcome of the match. For example, Deadsy plays Jeskalade and reports the match on Monday at noon, Jeskalade has until Tuesday noon to report the outcome of the match by visiting Account>Messages>Challenges.

Can I Make More than One Bounty at a Time?
Yes, you can make as many bounties as you like as long has you have the TS points to back them.

Why is there an option for Password Protection?
You may choose to password protect a bounty in case you only want to allow a certain player to accept your bounty challenge. You can give them the password by email, instant messaging or private message.
What are Feedback Points?
Feedback points are the number of successful matches a gamer has completed. Each player receives +1 feedback after each match he/she completes where there are no disputes and each player shows up for the game. After each match each player is asked to provide feedback on the opposing player/team. Feedback ranges from -1, to 1 and is based on maturity, sportsmanship and overall attitude. This system will weed out out problem players on the site and ensure a quality experience for everyone. Please make sure you check a player's feedback rating before accepting a bounty.

What does the auto-accept feature do?
When you choose the auto-accept function you don't need to re-confirm the bounty. Any player can accept the challenge and you will be expected to honor it. Please disable the auto-accept function if you want to make sure that your challenger has a positive feedback rating and responds quickly to your messages.

How do you prevent collusion?
Collusion is when one person or a group of people create accounts and play against each other to gather points quicker. We have an anti-collusion system in place to track such groups or users. There is a zero tolerance policy to users who behave this way. Any user found attempting to collude or in any way manipulate the system in any way deemed inappropriate by our staff can and will be permanently banned from Titanstrike.com.

What if there is a Dispute when reporting Match Feedback?
There are bound to be disputes since the results of the bounties will be manually reported. For example, if both players claim a win, we look at the history of both players and make our best judgment on the credibility of both players. All decisions are final. Make sure you take time and energy to keep your feedback strong as it may be taken into consideration when moderating disputes.

TS Dev Party

2008-05-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

Last night the Titanstrike Dev Team got jiggy and had a dinner party.

Since, I arrived in India, I've been wanting to have a dinner with the entire team, outside of the regular office setting. But from missing flights to Bhushan being busy 'partying' (a-hem ... studying) we didn't have the chance to all get together until a couple days before my departure. The great news, is that the dinner did happen and, speaking for myself, I had a good time, good food and even better company.

We went to an Italian Restobar called Zync located in the heart of the city close to the intersection where the Ashoka restaurant lives. We ordered a bunch of appetizers mushroom toast, garlic bread, a few too many plates of brushcetta (it seems like they never stopped coming!) and then we had some thin crust wood oven pizza. We indulged with grilled veggie pizza, margarita pizza and italian sausage and pepperoni pizza.

After dinner the music seemed to get louder and we started dancing. Sorry to all those other couples who planned to have a quiet and romantic evening at the restaurant. The staff at the restaurant was very accommodating and played all the right beats. I'm sure they shared the good times by just watching us break the dancefloor in!

Here are some pictures to commemorate a great night. Thanks to the Titanstrike Dev Team for working extra hard and smart during this important phase of our product. I look forward to having another TS party in the upcoming months but this time we'll have to find a way to get Zishan to stop day dreaming about the database during dinnertime!

Secret Dev

2008-05-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

Working on an awesome ____ tool in Vb, .net and XML. If I told you, I'd have to kill you in-game ... and you don't want to lose to me, haven't played xbox in about a month since I got to India. About two weeks before heading out I picked up an Xbox Elite with COD4, incredible graphics, I can't wait to play GTA 4. Sadly when I get back to Santa Monica on May 19th, I won't be able to call the xbox my own. I'm going to do something neat to it. This is a surprise as well :/

Today, I had Chicken Sasle (sorry if I mispelt it), it's similar to chicken kabobs on rice with a spicy tomato sauce. I ate lunch at the bar and met a fellow from the Punjab state here in India. He was stationed in this city and on-call with a plane filled with television and stage equipment for the Indian Premier League. This is the first installment of the league. It's been a huge success. It lasts 44 days. It's going to rival the British Premier Football League, it's very well produced and heavily sponsored. Back to the fellow - after lunch we ended up playing a game of chess and smoking mint hooka.

This design is calling me from behind this window.

BRB

Flash Media Server Woes

2008-05-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

We use the Flash Media Server 2 (FMS) to provide some of the following functionalities; Shoutbox, Instant Chat, Streaming Video, Strategy Whiteboards.

These features really allow a user to engage a user instantly and we owe it to the FMS server.

but

We purchased the FMS server last April, and as start-up, paying the $4500.00 USD + server expense was a needed but costly move. Recently we've been having a few occasional and random disconnects from users who are connected to our FMS. Let me state the problem in one breath/run-on-sentence: our user authentication is built on such a way that it reads the FMS, to see if a user is logged in, if he doesn't have an FMS connection he gets logged out, if he gets logged out we currently don't have a way to shift him back to the last viewed page since it's a flash site. So after research, it appears that one of the bugs in the FMS 2 server is random disconnects. The logical solution would be to release a patch for the FMS 2 server for this issue, otherwise, it makes it unusable, and annoying for users to be constantly logged out at random intervals.

On the other hand, the error logs don't really produce much information other than "Disconnect 200" which means that is was a 'normal' disconnect but after tracing the user in question's IP, we found that he was kicked from the server.

Are we forced to upgrade to the Flash Interactive Server 3? For an upgrade of $1995.00? I hope not. Here is a solution we're going to try and implement to see if we can crack the FMS 2 bug (or our own disconnect bug). We're going to hit it from three different angles:

1) Don't use the crutch of FMS to keep users logged into the site. So even if the FMS blows, then they can still finish whatever process they were working on. If they want to use the FMS we can always re-initiate a new connection either automatically (see step 3) or ask them to re-connect (easiest to implement).

2) Place a PHP trigger in the sign off button so that we know users actually hit the sign off button. This would be a change from disconnecting them from the FMS server.

3) To 'automatically'* re-initiate an FMS connection we would need to know if the disconnect were actual. If they closed the browser or genuinely hit the sign off button, then we shouldn't waste processes and resources trying to re-initiate the connection. Therefore, we would hold a php IP table of registered users who are logged in, with the screen open and run a validation to see if the disconnect was authentic or a hiccup, if it is a hiccup then the user would receive another FMS connection and the freedom to enjoy the entire feature set of Titanstrike.

* hmmm. Automatic, I should be careful using this word when relating it to our application. It's a paradox though, you want to make things as streamlined as possible (or automatic) for the user as possible, but at the same time this veil of automation takes lots of premeditation and arguably more development time. Nevertheless, it's well worth it only to involve the user when there is an interaction that builds value.

Recent Updates

2008-05-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

New Fixes for May 7th, 2008 on Titanstrike.com

- Fixed color scheme on popout box
- Added Australia to Time Zones
- Added <> character functionality to the shoutbox and instant chat.
- Fixed issue with bounty confirmation emails being sent out even if the acceptor didn't have enough points.
- Increased speed of featured gamers pagination
- Fixed online/offline issue on featured gamers section
- Banned 5 Spammers
- Released bounty system with manual reporting feedback
- Added the TS points floating disc in the performance bar
- Added TS points to alpha hosted games environment

Titanstrike.com Gamer Card

2008-04-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

Photo Gallery feature

2008-02-08T08:34:00.000-08:00

Check out Titanstrike's photo gallery share feature. Click here.

When I'm not ...

2008-02-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

When I'm not helping finding bugs, providing customer support, designing new interfaces, answering the phones and rolling out new enhancements I make clips for Titanstrike on Youtube. Okay, actually, this is one of the first ones I have made but I will continue to create more for Titanstrike.

Since this is one of the first videos I make and the quality can't get much worse, I'm really expecting the quality to improve at the below rate:

Landing Page

2008-02-03T19:46:00.001-08:00

We're working on redesigning the first landing page of Titanstrike so it's more engaging to the user and we still have our sledgehammers swinging at the bugs that are slowing the site down ... this should all (hopefully) be fixed by end of week.

Arghhh .... Yay

2008-01-28T22:26:00.000-08:00

So Yahoo has been bouncing our e-mails because we apparently have too much < html code inside our emails. Users haven't been able to receive confirmation e-mails, notifications that someone has added them as a friend or even that they have received challenges. We finally removed the < html and it seems to be working smoothly .... woot!

EDIT: LOL .. while posting on Blogger I wasn't allowed to post using the html tag < > which explains the lack of closing expression >

2nd UPDATE: Yahoo still giving us a few issues, working on it :)

I want a Webby

2008-01-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Not for the fame or glamour but for the validation that titanstrike is a beautifully designed and executed environment. We'll wait for the launch before submitting to the Webby Awards, if we make it to the voting stage and you believe our site is aesthetically superior, do cast your vote :)

I promise a short acceptance speech.

First Titanstrike.com Video Tutorial

2008-01-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

A tutorial on how to use some of features on, social gaming site, http://www.titanstrike.com.

Launching Soon ...

2008-01-12T19:10:00.001-08:00

We're rolling-out the Titanstrike platform into a public beta this week.

I've been testing out the modules with the dev team and we're pretty confident of the modules' maturity. Confident enough for a public beta roll out.

We've been testing out the clan/team challenge feature internally so we can have 5 versus 5 matches but we won't be rolling that out just yet, we want to see the kind of response we have to the 1v1 matches we have integrated into the system. Our challenge feature lets you schedule games in the future, this should help gamers organize their game-times. The challenge feature was pretty much accidental, we were building a schedule to display our upcoming video game tournaments when we thought ... hmmm gamers should be able to see their upcoming matches on the calendar.

As for game support, we're starting with Valve's highly popular Counterstrike 1.6 game, which is a classic amongst First Person Shooters (FPS). I understand some new age gamers might think this game is out-dated but it is a widely popular and game that revolutionized the multiplayer mode of many FPS games.

If you're anxious for other games, chirp not, we've built the system with an open architecture so we can plug in a variety of genres and games. So if you're not into challenging others over CS 1.6 to start you should still create a gamer profile, join groups on interest, participate in the community and use our flash forums that are more aptly described as organized real-time shout boxes.

By the way you'll even be able to challenge Miss Video Game 2007 Champion "l337Lauren" over the Titanstrike platform. But I'm not responsible if she pwns you in-game, without you even getting a shot on her.

You've been warned and it will show up on your Titanstrike profile that you've been defeated. But don't be ashamed if you lose she is Miss Video Game 2007 after all.