I am pleased to offer you Airport Madness 4 for iPad.  This will be coming to Android devices soon, hopefully.  One thing I’ve learned about mobile game development – make everything huge, especially buttons.  This game doesn’t fit on smaller devices, such as the iPhone, unfortunately.  Airport Madness 4 has a lot of tiny details, and after testing it thoroughly on an iPhone 5, I just couldn’t bring myself to sell that to customers. This game does, however, look stunning on all versions of iPad.  I owe my loyal customers a huge thank you for their continued interest and support over these past six years.  I hope to keep doing this!

Radar Chaos: World Edition will be available in March! Details…

One of the nice things about having a blog is that you can promise all kinds of stuff, and then not deliver.  In my last blog, I promised details of my upcoming mobile game, and then didn’t give any.  Lately, my blog posts have been getting shorter, and my Twitter posts longer.  I wish there was something in between.  Some way that I could communicate with fans, without the commitment of writing an entire blog post, fitted with grabbing images, such as this one (That’s one of me back in June, after releasing Airport Madness 5).

Does anyone here even follow me on Twitter?  I’m making a shift in that direction.  Seems easier, faster.  I’m much more likely to Tweet, than to blog.  You can follow me here on Twitter if you aren’t already.  Tell your friends.

Anyway, back to the point of this blog post.  My upcoming game!  It’s called Backyard Brat.   You are a kid with a remote control helicopter, up to absolutely no good, whatsoever.  Here are a couple of brief video clips:

The game is nearly finished (which means it’ll never get done).  All kidding aside, look for it in the App Stores this December!

Before I start rambling, I’d like to give all of my customers a long overdue thank you for your business, support and feedback.  It is you that keeps me banging away at the keyboard.  I have no plans to ever stop doing so.  I love air traffic control games, almost as much as I enjoy it in real life.

It’s been sort of quiet around here, I will admit.  Summer has been a much needed break for me personally, and I feel rejuvenated from the rest, anxious to get going on the next big thing.  So what is it?  Our game pipeline has a new edition of Radar Chaos, as well as a sixth edition of Airport Madness.  Both of these will be based on real-world airports.  But before either of these come out, I am launching a whacky mobile game.  It’s an idea that I’ve had kicking around in my head ever since releasing Office Jerk over two years ago.  If it does really well, I have a few similar spin-offs to try as well.  If it does not do well, then I roll up my sleeves and get to work on Radar Chaos.

I appreciate the incredible ideas that I receive from everyone.  Suggestions like, “Dude, you should totally make a train control game!” are what keep my creative juices flowing, although I definitely have my work cut out for me already with Radar Chaos, Airport Madness, and mobile game experimentation.

Not much more I can really say just now.  Stay tuned for screenshots and videos of my upcoming mobile game – I might even break my rule and leak the name to you later this week!

There’s a new podcast called Clutch Gaming that discusses a variety of gaming topics, from the newest game releases to the hottest tech gadgets. They are three very funny gentlemen, who make the topic fun with their own brand of irreverent humor.  In their first week, they achieved over 3000 downloads of their podcast on iTunes, and obtained more than 300 followers on Facebook in that same week.   What’s really cool is that one of them is a real-world air traffic controller, like me.  How neat is that?  They stumbled upon me, while searching for air traffic control games for iPad.

Anyway, they were kind enough to ask me to speak on their podcast about my game development experiences. I gave my little talk, and they recorded it.  Please enjoy my sultry voice, questionable game design principles, and repeated use of the word “um”.

Or not. The talk is 20 minutes long. You could probably more enjoyably spend your time doing, say, ANYTHING ELSE.

Enjoy!

Years ago, before I started building games for the web, I had aspirations of becoming a professional website designer. Remember back when people would make websites for themselves? Then they would brag to their friends, “Hey, check out my awesome website. I built it myself. It has pictures and links all over it.”. In 2004, I was busy building crummy websites for others. I was completely self-taught from an extensive personal library of “For Dummies” books, but aside from that knowledge, I really had no idea what I was doing.

Anyone remember our 2008 website header?

A friend once suggested that I not refer to my web design company as “I” or “me”. Rather, he suggested I use the terms “we” and “us”. He didn’t want me to appear as “some dude in a basement with his laptop”, but rather, a large corporation occupying a 26-story building in downtown San Francisco. There is definitely merit to that suggestion. However, with game development things work a bit differently.

I hope you aren’t expecting me to answer emails at 3:25 in the morning.

As an “Indie Game Developer”, I compete with some huge app development companies. It’s become darn near impossible for an indie game to make it into the top ten games on the App Store. If I sell my games under the guise of a large corporation, people expect to have a certain experience. They expect Angry Birds for a buck. Since I charge 10 times that for my air traffic control games, I like people to know what they are getting, and who they are getting it from. I like to use the “I” and “me” words in my blog.

Niche markets like air traffic control games are difficult for large companies to profit from. If a large company builds an air traffic control game that is only going to appeal to 5% of all gamers worldwide, they aren’t going to sell enough copies to cover their costs. I think that’s where indies like me have a huge opportunity. We can keep the costs low. We can pause. We can change our minds, and make split decisions. No meetings required. No focus groups. That kind of agility does not exist in large game development firms.

If I sold my stuff for a buck, I’d go out of business!

Plus, indie games are considered sort of cool. No, it’s not some 99 cent app you are buying, but an air traffic control game, developed by a real-world air traffic controller. It’s unique. Kind of special. Very niche. When I get a complaint from a customer, I like them to know that it’s a human being on the other end – not some large corporation that couldn’t care less about the ten bucks you just spent.

No, I don’t employ anyone to answer phone calls 24/7. It’s just me. I did incorporate last year, to keep things neat and tidy. I’ve never been great when it comes to paperwork, or keeping track of business matters. Honestly, I should have a full-time accountant and bookkeeper following me around, cleaning up after my messes. They could share an office on the 25th floor.

I like to think my customer service is excellent. I do own a mobile device, and can usually answer your emails within a few minutes.

Approach Control is now available in the Apple App Store!  Those of you who have tried our earlier games will recognize this app right away.  In 2008 we published “Radar Game”, which was really a game without a name.  We’ve given this game a name, plus an additional level.  If you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, you can get Approach Control on PC, Mac and Linux here.

And now for the sales pitch I am using in the App Store:

Approach Control is a highly realistic air traffic control simulation, designed by real world air traffic controllers. It uses authentic pilot voices. This app is designed to give aviation enthusiasts a taste of the world’s greatest job. The radar behavior in this app is identical to that of real-world air traffic control radar screens, utilizing a 3-second sweep that air traffic controllers are accustomed to. Much work has been done to make such a complex job fit inside the palm of your hand.

You are the approach controller whose job is to manage arriving passenger jets at various busy airports. Establish arriving aircraft onto ‘final approach’ as safely and efficiently as possible. As in the real world of ATC, you must walk a very fine line between being cautious and being expeditious. A top notch air traffic controller knows how to bring planes in ‘tight’, without breaking the ‘three mile rule’.

Those of you who have played our earlier games may remember one called “Air Traffic Controller“.  This was a very basic radar game, focussing only on vectoring arrivals, the toughest real-world ATC job there is.  When we created this game in 2008, we were well aware of the issue of screen space.  It’s hard to cram an entire air traffic control experience onto a home computer.  A couple of months ago, we began selling Radar Chaos on the iPad App Store, with absolutely no intention of ever putting it onto iPhone, because it’s impossible to play on something so small.

That got us thinking.  Our original “Air Traffic Controller” game was designed with the small-screen concept in mind.  All it needed was some reshaping to work well on an iPhone.  So we did that over Christmas, and even tossed in a fourth level.  When it was given to me for review, I absolutely hated it.  The buttons were impossible to tap.  The planes were difficult to select.  And the heading control wheel was annoying.  Maybe my fingers are too big, I dunno.

So we decided, instead of pushing the control panel off into the corner and making it really small, we would make the panel extra large.  Huge, in fact.  When an aircraft is selected, you get a full-screen control panel.  The drawback is that you can’t see your radar screen very well while making inputs, but it’s a fair tradeoff.

So now we have a bit of a dilemma.  A new iPhone/iPad game that is basically a refactored version of an old flash game.  Do we give it a new name, or call it what it is?  Since it’s name is “already taken” on the iOS app store, it’s getting a new name, “Approach Control”.  This eliminates our dilemma of having to synchronize the two games every time we push out an update.

Look for “Approach Control” on January 15, 2013!

Our highly realistic radar simulation is now available in the App Store!  Now you can take your radar with you on-the-go.  It’s identical to the PC/Mac version, with only minor control interface changes, which make it easier to play without a mouse.

Read more details here…