Tag Archives: gaming

Project Darkstar Game Server Risk Benefit Analysis

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Charlie B

I am in the late functional Design stages of an Indy MMO, and the early technical design stages (Secret for the time being), so a couple of weeks ago when I was searching for a very inexpensive, scalable, smart solution to the ‘server problem’ all MMO’s face, I found Darkstar and a couple other MMO backend products. Darkstar is an Open Source server platform developed by Sun Labs, specifically created for massively multiplayer game creation. It has a long list of useful features, and allows the development team to build application logic directly on top of it while handling all the low level server tasks which are traditionally the most difficult – concurrent data access, user connection level loading, multi-node scaling, and persistence across server crashes or shutdowns.

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Indy Game Economics 101

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Charlie B

I recently entered the Indy gaming market, a crowded market if ever there was one. I liken being an Indy game designer / programmer to being a first cut author, except without an entire publishing industry looking for hot talent. Imagine being an author and getting your first book put on Amazon for download, or included in an online store along with millions of other titles, many of which have name brand recognition, thousands or millions of dollars in marketing spend backing them, or a lower price point (free). Your book is new, it touches universal themes, the writing is solid, and the characters alive. Still, it is useless unless people see it and buy it. How is such an author to make enough to feed the family?

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Posted in Bootstrapping as Method, Flash, Startup Challenges | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment