My Game Company - Newsletter

The MGC Times

April 2010 Newsletter

President's Corner

I always hate to start a newsletter off on a bad note, but earlier this week we were notified by Reflexive that GameCenterSolution, their affiliate sales program, will be discontinued on June 30, 2010. This news came as quite a shock to us. As you may know, many of the games in our catalog are sold through GameCenterSolution. We rely on this income to help support us while we are developing new games. I personally liked Reflexive - they're one of the few portals that allow you to install the games you buy on as many computers as you own, and they've always been very friendly to indie developers like us. But after June 30, Reflexive will no longer be selling games.

So we've been having discussions this week on what we're going to do. We have nearly 600 games in our catalog, which we now have to get through someone else. PlayFirst discontinued their affiliate program earlier this year, and Big Fish Games recently changed the terms of their affiliate program in ways that we're not convinced yet are for our benefit.

Additionally, we've also been discussing the fact that during the past year the market has become increasingly hard on game developers. We have fewer and fewer outlets for selling our games. And with portals slashing prices and offering games for $6.99 or less, developers are barely earning enough royalties to survive. Some developers have already gone out of business.

So we've decided that we're going to try to get as many games as we can directly from the developers. This will not only support the developers but also provide some big advantages to you:

You can install on as many computers as you own. Many developers, especially indies like us, do not hardware-lock our games or restrict what computers you can install it on.
You always get the full game. With the aforementioned price wars, some developers aren't giving portals the full game anymore. For example, when you buy Zuma's Revenge from Reflexive or Big Fish, you're only getting the Adventure mode - you're not getting the full game with all of the other game modes.
You always have access to the latest version. Once a portal like Big Fish publishes a game, they don't usually upgrade it. But when you buy direct from the developer, you almost always have access to the latest version of the game (with new features, new content, bug fixes, etc).

The side effect of this transition is that some game prices will be going up.

So if you want one of the games in our catalog at the lower price, you may want to think about purchasing it soon. Just remember that if you purchase it through Reflexive, you won't have support for the game after June 30.

As we work out affiliate deals with individual developers, we'll add their download links and buy links (with their prices) to our pages.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this transition. Feel free to e-mail us to express your concerns or opinions, or post your comments in our forum. Your feedback is important to us!

- Troy Hepfner

Dirk Dashing 2 Production Update - With Screenshots!

We've made some good progress this month on Dirk Dashing 2, and we have some exclusive screenshots for you!

First, we're in the process of adding lighting effects to the game. We've been experimenting with different ways of lighting the game scenery. OpenGL lighting models were designed with 3D scenes in mind, but Dirk Dashing is a 2D game. We do some things to our artwork to make it look pseudo-3D, but it is really 2D. For example, the sidewalk looks like it is on a different plane than the fence, but it really isn't. This is an illusion provided by the artwork design. This has made it challenging for us to implement a lighting model that will work properly and look decent in our game.

As you can see, the lighting adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game. It will also be an important element in some of the puzzles.

Second, we've used our new lighting model to implement weather effects, like lightning flashes. The first part of the game takes place on a stormy night, so this seemed very appropriate. Below you can see a screenshot that we grabbed during one particular lightning flash. Eventually we would also like to see some rain falling.

By the way, with this screenshot you can see some of the new artwork for the city backgrounds.

Over the next month, we'll be adding more features to the game engine and wrapping up the rest of the artwork that we need for the first level.

March's Top 10 Sellers

Here are the most popular games from last month, most of which we already make available directly from developers! So thank you for supporting both us and them!