Author: Jeff Tunnell
Never Say Never. Back to Making Games!
My last post, dated 3/22/2017 said I was throwing in the towel on a lifetime of game development. I felt that the locked down app stores along with Steam’s virtual monopoly on the PC market made game creation more of a roll of the dice than a business. I had three successful company exits with […]
Throwing in the Towel on a Lifetime Career of Game Development
I got my Apple II in 1981, made my first game in 1982, and started the Computertutor software store in 1983 in my bedroom. Then I met Damon Slye, sold Computertutor, and started Dynamix in 1984. blah, blah, blah. Fast forward 33 years, and it’s been a good run, with three big company exits, close […]
Review of Surface Pro 3 For Game Production
TL; DR: The Surface Pro 3 is a great day to day computer that is working well for me as the producer of Contraption Maker. Although I use the browser for much of my work, it natively runs our game really well, and I LOVE the stylus for drawing up designs.
All Incredible Machine Music In One Place For Marketing
I recently put all of the original Incredible Machine CD music up on Spotkin’s Soundcloud to preserve it for myself and future generations of players that may be interested in that bit of history. I then exposed the Soundcloud content in a blog post on our Contraption Maker site. In addition to saving the music, […]
Contraption Maker Launched on Steam Early Access
After Spotkin’s pivot from mobile games back to the warm arms of PC development last year, it feels so good to get our first game, Contraption Maker, launched on Steam Early Access. We have only been up for a few hours, but our sales have definitely exceeded our expectations. BTW, Steam absolutely kicks both of […]
Announcing Contraption Maker, Spiritual Successor to The Incredible Machine
I am so happy to be working on this game with all of the original team members, plus the incredibly talented crew at Spotkin. For more information check out Contraption Maker site and our devblog. Here are some teaser before you link over:
Nine Things That Could Make the App Stores Better
I have been on a rant lately, but I think this is really important. Instead of complaining about the app stores, I want this post to be a more positive approach of offering ideas that I think could make them better. First of all, I think the app stores are amazing. The original app store […]
Things Spotkin Learned That May Help You In The App Store
Last week I published what turned out to be a popular post, We Can’t Make It Here Anymore, about how discovery problems in the app stores are making life hard for small Indie developers. Like I said in that article, Spotkin was started 16 months ago to make mobile-first games using Free to Play (f2p) […]
We Can’t Make It Here Anymore
Normally I take a pretty upbeat stance about the opportunities in the games business here on this blog, but this one is down a little more than normal. I’ll try not to be too depressing, but as I was getting ready to write this article, the James McMurtry song of the same name kept popping […]