While Disney and many heavy hitters shut down anyone trying to remix their creations, it’s awfully refreshing to see George Lucas and his army of lawyers turn a blind eye to the Star Wars mash-ups that appear on what seems to be a daily basis.
Dan Grzeca’s Cat-At is beautiful and awesome and reminded me of how much I really wanted the AT-AT toy when I was a kid and needed to be shared.
TIGJam 3 is coming up in two months and it looks like it’s going to be an awesome time. TIGJam is an annual gathering of indie developers who get together and jam on games for a weekend.
I’m still on the fence about making the trip down from Vancouver, but if you’re anywhere near Nor-Cal and want to spend a weekend jamming on games with a bunch of rad developers – TIGJam is for you.
Ever since I met Terry close to 10 years ago, he’s been experimenting with doing flatland tricks on the street. This video shows some serious technical wizardry in what would best be defined as a ‘mash-up’.
Ray Ardent is up for bidding on flashgamelicense.com and I was given some very good advice from a total stranger. PJ Baron was nice enough to play Ray, and give me some very valuable feedback.
The crew at Flash Game License has been doing some research on the importance of the thumbnail image. It’s that little picture that tempts you to play the game.
Before seeing the results of the research, I believed that a descriptive image would be the best bet – show people what the game looks like.
The research that Flash Game License had done showed that games with a better quality thumbnail image regularly received more money from sponsors, received better editor reviews and were visited much more frequently. The research also showed that ‘screenshot’ thumbnails didn’t perform as well as a dedicated original thumbnail image.
With PJ’s advice and the research from Flash Game License in mind, I set off to redo Ray Ardent’s thumbnail image.
BeforeAfter
I’m really happy with how the reworked thumbnail worked out – I somehow managed to capture the retro/pulp feel that I’m going for with Ray.
Looking at these now, it’s almost silly that I thought that a screenshot would be sufficient. It’s the little things that matter people.