Social Gaming Network Connections

Social Gaming Network Connections

Finding the idea for an iPhone game is one thing. Making it all work together is another. It can be quite overwhelming and confusing. Which is exactly why I decided to take a more visual approach to connecting these social networking outlets.

It all starts with the iPhone App or Game. I believe every new app should include the basic necessities and viral hooks: Connect to Facebook to brag to your friends and compete on leaderboards, post high scores to Twitter, tell a friend through email, even bump and email if you get that far.

If you post a message on Facebook (or Facebook Pages), it should automatically feed into Twitter. AdMob (now Google) has a great system of sharing similar apps and cross promoting one another. If I am playing a game I like, I will click an ad at the bottom that appeals to me (Tap Tap by Tapulous does a great job of this). Posting on my blog should connect to Facebook, which in turn puts a note on Twitter. The company website is separate from the game website and linked together. LinkedIn takes feeds from your blog. It all works together.

Create a CafePress storefront for print-on-demand t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, environmentally safe grocery bags, calendars, etc. Stores can be created for free or you can upgrade to the premium model with unlimited products for a small fee of $5.95/month. Linking to your store and back creating yet another link in the social networking ring. Of course, as you create movies its wise to post on all the major video sites like YouTube, and Vimeo.

And then there are your “traditional” online advertising campaigns through Press Releases, Google Adsense, and good old fashioned emailing to noteworthy bloggers, news sites, and gamers. A company called Moo has custom “mini cards” for a cheap price ($20 for a 100 pack). These are excellent quality cards with a waxy finish. They are great for in person promotions and starts an interesting conversation to break the ice. You can customize each double-sided card with your app on the front and information how to download it on the back.

If you’d like you site linked here, I’ll start a list below to make connections. Or post a comment/ping back below.

Wildfire Game Labs
Magic Word Party Game on the iPhone – Follow us on Twitter! – Facebook Page

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Tweeters Hockey Club

Logo and Jersey Design

I follow a hockey jersey blog called Icethetics that keeps a constant update on new jerseys and concepts. I had this idea to create a hockey logo based off Twitter called “The Tweeters“. I used the Pittsburgh Penguins vintage jersey to start, tweaking the color to more teal. I also referenced the Penguins logo and made some sketches so the bird looked like Twitter’s logo. Its nothing really new but I had fun creating it in the couple of hours that I put into the design.

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Dominance War IV Storyline:

The two heroes in the third Great War for Dominance foresaw what would happen if Machines were allowed to continue their hostilities, but it was too late. 5 year’s after their sacrifice to end Machines’ disruptive means for war with unstable dimensional travel, the sinister threat they foretold, emerged!

…Reality collapsed.

Everywhere, dimensional tears opened to hellish realms and everywhere, nightmares emerged! In the first wave alone, Machines were struck down with such ferocity that for the first time in any war, Machines had to take a more conservative stance. Norms were clearly outnumbered on all fronts and had to withdraw to their great magically protected cities. It was a new era and everyone soon began to realize, including Machines, that it might very well be the beginning of the end in a new chapter of the Epic Dominance War Series: The Rise of Demons!

But there is still hope. The tears in reality are not normal. Something is keeping the dimensions destabilized. Both machines and norms have the mystical power or technology to correct the crisis, unfortunately, to find the source of the problem and to revert everything back to normal requires a luxury neither Norms nor Machines have… time. With death beating down on their walls, and darkness looming around every bend, the missions are as follows:

Norms:
Your mission, again, armed with a powerful magical weapon, is to protect the cities, lead an assault to other worlds and destroy the mysterious force that is keeping the dimensions destabilized.

Machines:
Your assigned tasks: Protect homeworld, destroy all resistance, terminate the dimensional rifts caused by a yet unknown source, and reclaim your rightful dominance over the entire planetary system.

New Race: Demons!
Your purpose: Destroy every man, woman, bot, alien or child. Leave nothing unscathed!

Topic:
Choose and create a character class from one of three races: Norms, Machines and an all-new class – Demons!

Time period:
Post-apocalyptic futuristic fantasy where magic exists.

Dominance War IV Races: Demons
Demons are a new race in the Dominance War universe. Unleashed by Machine’s dimensional tampering, Demons are the shadows from untold nightmares made real. Pure evil in nature, they only care for chaos, feeding and destruction. Demons cannot manipulate or wield magic, but they do possess a single fusion of power with one of the following elements: Fire/lava or Ice/cold or Death/Darkness.

Demon Prince – Demon Princess
Demon Princes are human sized demons with human-like or alien-like characteristics. If not for a few demon-like body traits (bat wings, horns, tail etc), they could easily pass for a natural intelligent human, alien, elf etc of that kind. Demon Princes, like Demon Lords, can manipulate their inborn fusion of power.

My Dominance War Entry Thread on CG Society:
‘Demon Prince Maluum Ex Nihilo’ – Evil Out of Nothing
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=282&t=744261

Your creation’s budget:

	Up to 10 000 tris max for everything (everything = characters, laser beams, shield effects, glows, other special effects, magical weapon, gear, steed(s), pet(s), twin(s), multiple characters, summoned monsters, personal equipment, etc).
	1 x 2048 Color Map *1 x 2048 Reflection Map *1 x 2048 Specular Map *1 x 2048 Specular Color Map *1 x 2048 Normal Map *1 x 2048 Bump Map *1 x 2048 Opacity(transparency) Map *1 x 2048 Glow map *1 x 2048 Glossiness map *Optional Important – You cannot break your 2048 sheets into smaller sheets.
	2-sided tris are permitted.
	Shaders: All shaders from any game engine or 3d software package on planet earth, is allowed.
	Lighting/rendering: All lighting/rendering solutions from any software package on planet earth, is allowed.

Your Presentation Pedestal’s Budget:
ALL 3d entries must include a pedestal in their Presentation Image. You have unrestricted polygons and textures to create a pedestal with the following guidelines:

	A pedestal is NOT a floor and/or it is NOT a room. It’s a block, pillar, coffin, box, crate, stone slab, etc. Pedestal Examples: Hela by Chang Gun Nam | The Mole by Rémi Monier
	No additional weapons or gear that your character can pick up and use can be put on the pedestal.
	No additional characters, pets, animals, pieces of characters, dead characters, etc, can be put on your pedestal. Only Bones and skulls are fine.

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African Safari Calendar featuring original photography by Andrea Woods and Shawn Woods. A beautiful set of African wildlife from the Serengeti, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, Mount Kilimanjaro and the Masai Tribe.

We visited the beautiful country of Tanzania. It is filled with some of the most exotic tours in the world and the game viewing is amazing. We camped in the middle of the Serengeti surrounded by laughing Hyenas at night, had afternoon tea beside a pride of Lions, and even witnessed a Cheetah hunt down it prey (unfortunately she did not catch the Gazelle this time).

The photos below are high quality and print beautifully.

read more | digg story

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The Wonder-Juice Machine is a brain game of Executive Functions (Logic) that strengthens your deductive and visual skills.

read more | digg story

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New games added every month!

Fit Brains offers a collection of fun, scientifically-based Brain Games that provide a balanced workout across the 5 Major Brain Areas: Memory, Concentration, Language, Visual & Spatial, and Executive Functions (Logic & Reasoning). Each of the games offers multiple activities that target a broad range of mental stimulation.

read more | digg story

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The Outfit – Published by THQ, Developed by Relic Entertainment

The achievement medals for THQ‘s “The Outfit” were created using 3D Studio Max and Adobe Photoshop. This game was Relic Entertainment’s first foray into the video game console world.

The achievements are high resolution models rendered out using the Brazil Renderer from SplutterFish. I was Art Supervisor on the visual appearance of the models, as well as creating the art assets for modeling, texturing, rendering, and post-production work done in Photoshop. I split the duties with another talented artist at Relic Entertainment, Jacob Binkowski, who helped model and texture half the medals. Since “The Outfit” was a fictional World War II game, we could not use the real life medals. For some, we took artistic liberties to keep the essence of the original, and in other cases we came up with a completely original piece. What was cool in the end was that one of our medals was actually created into a real-life medallion give to everyone who worked on the game. In total, it took 3 weeks to create all of the medals between two full-time artists.

Here is the full list of the 41 achievements for The Outfit.

Coming Soon – Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts Achievements

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What a wonderfully, inspiring speech! Visit www.barackobama.com.

Some people have asked why I would post a political statement?

Well, that’s another story I am not about to get into on my blog. I’ll leave that to the politicians. What I did like was how powerful and inspiring this speech was. It was history in the making and he delivered a message that I would compare to John F. Kennedy and even Martin Luther King. But again, that’s a story I am not about to debate.

Let’s move on to Barack Obama’s website. I have been following Barack’s career since about 2006 before he was even on the scene running for President. He was promoting his book “The Audacity of Hope“. For a long time he has been using the Internet and his blog as a way to reach out to the public without spending a whole lot of money (let’s face it, the web is cheap). He is the first politician I know to fully utilize the web to send his message and took viral marketing to a new level.

Since his presidential campaign, his website has been given a major upgrade. It is beautiful! The colors are vibrant and clean. It gives a hopeful message. The entire site fits well together from his images in the top banner to the icon set on the people page. The mixed blue on blue gradients are subtle, yet attractive and I have always been a fan of white on white with the Apple style of reflective icons.

He also led the way with my.barackobama.com, a tool on his website used to connect people, organize events, and respond to the media creating an experience of inclusion and accessibility.

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Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (PC)

Expansion Pack to the highest rated RTS game of all time.

I was the Art Supervisor for the Characters team on Opposing Fronts. It was a fun project and great opportunity to work on the expansion to such a highly rated video game. The standards were set very high and with most of the original team moving on, we had a challenge ahead of us.

The Heroes Team (character artists) was filled with 4 people; Melanie Caron, Kristian Bourdage, Stephen McDonald, myself, and Cheol Joo Lee on concept art.

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Welcome to my new blog! I have decided, after much deliberation, to switch to a blog format. This will allow me to update my website a lot more often. I also plan on writing some industry-related articles, and post links to information that interests me.

Thanks for visiting!
- Shawn

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