It's Just Two Spinners Sharing The Night

I finished up the turrets on the Night Spinners last night. I ended up going with a magenta for the Doomweavers, and putting the glow more towards the middle/base. Annoyingly, I painted on my gloss coat which resulted in a yellow/brown tinge getting on them. I'm not sure if it was something in the brush or what but I have to clean up a few parts (it's most noticeable on the white highlights). I'll get to that in a bit and get some grass tufts on there as well, then I have to figure out Falcon turrets.

HCI International 2019

At the end of next July, the HCI (Human Computer Interface) international conference will take place in Orlando, FL.

This conference aims to discuss the intersections between culture, technology, behavior and society. The "games" subject will, surely, be one of the main discussions in the event, and I'll be in HCI presenting my paper "The Strategic Use of Smartphone Features to Create a Gaming Experience of Mystery: The Mind Alone Case".



Below, you can check the abstract of my article that will be published in a book, which will be sold at the conference:

In the present work, we discuss the creative process behind the Brazilian mobile game Mind Alone (Sioux Games, 2018). We start our discussion with a brief overview of mobile media and the Brazilian gaming market, in order to clarify why mobile games are a rich field to explore in this country, and to assess some aspects of the Brazilian gamer audience. After this introduction, we proceed to expound the main features of the game Mind Alone, aiming to finally put forward some ideas about strategic thinking in game design, game writing, and puzzle design, emphasizing the need of multidisciplinary thinking. This article recounts the whole creative process behind Mind Alone, highlighting some main phases: (1) brainstorming, including interviews with the production team at the Sioux company; (2) documentation, analyzing the "high concept template"; (3) production, elucidating the interface between art and coding (and how to merge smartphone features to create the game experience); and (4) beta-testing, comprising guidelines for a qualitative session. With this work, we intend to depict the full development of a mobile game, from brainstorming to publishing and documentation. It is important to highlight, in this context, that the author of this article was the game designer responsible for Mind Alone's mechanics and narrative.

After the conference, in August, I intend to share the PDF file with my complete article and the presentation as well.

For this trip I had the sponsorship of ON e-stadium (a Brazilian eSports arena from São Paulo) and ESPM (the college I work at) IT course.

Wait for news, pics and good content next month.

#GoGamers

Well, Hello There.....

Those of you that have been around from the pre-Kickstarter days remember a time where I was very open in my communications, where my interactions were FAR more timely and personal.

Involving other companies in that flow complicated things on my end quite a bit. I had a few very heated conversations over various issues concerning what could or should be said. For right or wrong, this changed my way of interfacing with all of you, and IMO, not for the better. But such is the reality of having partners… You need to keep that relationship working and healthy, and there are times you will not agree, and times where you cannot discuss what you would like to with your customers. No this is not turning into a 'tell all story' I am simply saying that I miss the days where I felt as if I were part of the community and that I could just let information flow and get feedback from all of you on a kit or a direction or a specific item.

I think it fair to say that WGF and I are not doing much business together, the agreement we had ended when I took distribution over, this changed the responsibility's and payment scheme. We worked out a verbal understanding of how much I would send them for each sale after expenses and we have had very little contact since the transfer, it did not end badly, just faded into me sending commission payments and not much ell's. I will simply leave it at this; I am and will forever be grateful for the opportunity Wai Kee and WGF provided me, having the opportunity to have 30 plastic kits produced was an amazing, frightening and monumental experience. 

Having changed the nature of that relationship allowed me a little more latitude, but still being in the supply chain, I know that, and public statements may have repercussions for my retail and distribution partners… I cannot tease a kit or ask for feedback if I am not planning of following closely with a release. It would not be irresponsible of me to set them up for questions or expectations when they did not have the answers.

I removed myself from distribution at the end of last year and spend the last couple of months mulling over the next steps. (I will go into that more in the next posts)

All the concerns listed above have pushed me further away than I would have liked and help establish a very poor habit of being tight lipped. Hopefully with this message I can start to break the habit I have developed and get closer to the more open flow of ideas and feedback that I and I am sure, you miss.

I will simply say, all excuses or reasoning aside, I am sorry for not being as transparent as I would like or as communicative as you deserve.

I will be posting much more to my blog as I used to and frequenting old haunts like DAKKA for a more open exchange.

To close this message, I will simply say again, that I apologize for not being here, talking with all of you and hope that if you are still interested, that you comment or follow along as I attempt to return to some facsimile of what I was when I started this creative journey.