So over the weekend, I decided to download ALL of their games to see their progression (the only one I played before this weekend was Tiny Tower). Since it appears they’ve been building iOS games since the early days of the iPhone, there were quite a number of titles to download. Oh, and did I mention they’re all free?

DISCLAIMER: I don’t personally know the guys at NimbleBit (aside from a little bit of stalking on Twitter), and these are entirely my opinions based on my experience with their games and some of what I’ve read in press clippings.

Before I share my opinions on why I think they’ve been successful, I have to say that Sky Burger was probably my favorite title, and my 3 kids really enjoyed that one too. So simple, yet so addictive.

So here’s the meat of what I learned (and I think every indie dev should learn):

Making mobile games as an indie dev company can be a sustainable business model

NimbleBit has been making iOS games for at least 3 years and has no less than 16 titles in the app store. As an indie, can you see yourself staying the course for 3 years minimum? Prior to that, they’ve been building games for desktop.

The jury is still out on whether making games to sell on mobile devices can be profitable for more than a 1 person dev team. With more and more apps moving to free, and with the amount of competition for eyeballs, it’s a dog-eat-dog world in the app store. Obviously NimbleBit has been able to excel in spite of these obstacles. Did they get lucky? Perhaps. But I think that’s only part of it. They made good decisions, particularly in the areas I touch on below.

Building awareness of your brand/company is as important as building the game itself

Most of the indie developers out there are in it to build the next Angry Birds or Tiny Wings. Unfortunately, when you’re competing with half a million other apps, you might as well buy a lottery ticket because those are about the same odds. There are a lot of really good games out there that no one has heard of because they get lost in the sea of apps that is the app store. Everyone says that if your game is great, it will get noticed and it will rise to the top. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. So most developers build a game, experience dismal sales, then call it quits. In fact, according to one study, a whopping 71% of developers only have 1 app in the app store.

NimbleBit has said they don’t just want to sell games to people, but that they want to build a community of “Bitizens.” These are people who buy more than one of their games, and have come to trust their brand as one that builds quality. If you open any of their games, you’ll see that they openly cross promote their titles with (unobtrusive) links inside their games. So with every game that someone downloads, they are invited to try others.

In order to build a brand, you have to build more than 1 good game. Yes, someone like Andreas Illiger (creator of Tiny Wings) is a HUGE EXCEPTION, as pretty much everyone would buy his next game no questions asked if/when he releases one, but he’s probably too busy counting his millions to do that

Want proof of how big this is?

On the day after Tiny Tower was named game of the year by Apple, Pocket frogs went from #756 overall to #35.

Keep it simple

With the exception of possibly Tiny Tower and Pocket Frogs, all of their games are dead simple, and most focus on a SINGLE interaction. Whether it’s a simple tilt interaction or a one button press, the games are easy to pick up and learn, and the interactions are simple enough that no demographic is immediately excluded. It’s outlandish how addicting stacking condiments onto a burger can be.

Tiny Tower and Pocket Frogs are more complex games, but even those are based on a set of simple interactions, there are just more of them going on at the same time.

I had read previously that they chose to build games that could be built within a short period of time to mitigate risk. This is contrary to the mindset nowadays which is that your game has to be perfect in every way, and you need to spend months polishing it in order to succeed. Obviously they’ve been able to have success with their model of keeping it simple.

Build on what you’ve done in the past

Not sure if you’ve noticed by Scoops and Sky Burger look pretty similar to me. Same with some of the things in DizzyPad and Pocket Frogs. Coincidence?

I think most indies strive to build something different with every game they build. Perhaps something can be said about learning from what you’ve built before and then using it in what you build next. Whether you use it again because it was successful, or you drop it because it wasn’t, either way, use every game as a learning experience.

Plus, using recurring themes can work to strengthen your brand.

Freemium can work for some things, but doesn’t work for all things

The freemium model has come under a lot of scrutiny as of late, and has been labeled everything from a savior for app developers to the devil incarnate. Yet NimbleBit is quietly piling up the in-app purchases without doing it in a haphazard way.

Types of in-app purchases they use:

• Virtual currency/items (Tiny Tower/Pocket Frogs) – they allow the purchase of in-game currency with real dollars, but at the same time, you can also earn in-game currency over time by playing the game. So you could have the same experience without spending any additional money if you stay the course.
• Themes (Scoops)
• Game modes (DizzyPad)

What they don’t use:

• Pay to unlock full game features – perhaps the third item above could fall into this category, but in general, they allow you to enjoy the full game experience without paying anything.
• Ads or paying to remove ads

Though it’s hard to say for certain which methods work and which don’t, it’s clear from the numbers that overall, for NimbleBit, it’s a smashing success.

Give back to the community

NimbleBit is sort of like the Robin Hood of the mobile game industry. They take earnings from the likes of EA and Zynga and give to the needy. Ok, maybe this is a stretch, but it was a great story regardless.

=================

So that’s what I’ve learned. All that from a bunch of free games over a weekend. Yeah, I need to get a life.

After many long decades, programmers have finally gone from this:

to this:

We have arrived.

Never before has technology so permeated business, society and personal life as it does today. A large part of that is the hardware advances that have been made, particularly within the past 5 years. However, software is what makes the hardware useful. Think about all of the apps you interact with in a day. The number of websites that you view. And how much time you spend doing it.

As we start 2012, programmers are a hot commodity. I mean, if software is so important and far reaching, then it follows that the people creating the software will be in high demand. The new trend is that large companies are buying up smaller ones for TALENT alone. I’ve been programming for over 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

Unfortunately, there just are not enough programmers out there to meet demand. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.

Within first few days of the year, I’ve read this article:

Could Coding be the Next Mass Profession?

and I’ve also watched the amount of interest in

CodeYear.

Programming as a skill is becoming MAINSTREAM. As a programmer, there are at least 3 ways to respond to this:

1. See it as a fad that will pass as quickly as it started (it won’t)
2. Be threatened that lots of smart people will soon be competing for your job (they may be)
3. Be excited for the opportunity it will bring (it will)

So here’s my take on things:

I think it’s fantastic that programming is a skillset people are looking to gain. Not only people who are looking for a new career, but also the people who already have careers and see technology as a vital piece of their business and are investing their time in it. Every day, I hear experiences of teachers, lawyers, stay at home moms and many others who are learning to code, not to become programmers, but to build something that will help them in their existing careers. WOW.

It validates the importance of what I’m doing as a programmer.

Not only that, more of the general public learning programming concepts means that we can now speak the same language and have at least a basic common understanding when it comes to building software.

More people learning programming as a skill is a win-win. The level of interest in CodeYear is a good thing.

So should everyone be a programmer?

Well, here is the problem as I see it. Back at the turn of the millenium, when the world wide web was relatively new, everyone started to build a website. After all, the tools were cheap (or free), the hosting cost was minimal, and the reach was wide. This was great because you could share your experiences or market your products/skills to anyone on the internet. Unfortunately, it just resulted in a lot of crappy websites because people learned the HTML but none of the other stuff involved in building a useable website. We’ve finally reached a point now where people realize the importance of design and user experience (was the term UX even coined back then?), and the web is a much better place because of it.

I think there is potential for much of the same to happen with individuals who learn programming on the side so they can build their own software/apps. Often, things will be built to a minimum functioning level, and perhaps using tools that provide shortcuts to do so (remember FrontPage?). I’m not saying that anyone who doesn’t code full time isn’t capable of building amazing things. But it’s like me learning about accounting in my spare time, then doing all my own corporate accounting. I’d probably do a decent job, but not to the extent that a professional accountant I trust would. I’d rather just track everything, maybe do some preliminary stuff, then hand it off to my accountant to do the rest.

Everyone should learn programming. Not everyone should be a programmer.

Reply to EVERYONE

Maybe this doesn’t mean a lot coming from a guy who currently only has a little over 400 followers. However, I know a lot of people who just don’t reply to you on Twitter (why? Because I was one of them). I suppose if someone with 10,000 followers doesn’t reply to you, it’s probably because they’re busy, but if someone with 10 followers doesn’t reply, it’s because they’re ignoring you. So I am NOT to be that guy.

So go ahead, test me on this. Tweet me anything. I’m waiting to reply.

NOTE: There is that awkward moment on Twitter when you have a conversation with someone and you’ve both said your peace, but you’re not sure how to end the conversation. Should you reply to their last reply, and if you do, will that make them feel pressured to reply back? I’m not promising that I’ll handle that scenario 100% correctly every time, so when in doubt, if I feel a conversation is finished, I’ll probably leave it be.

Actively search out people and follow

I’ve started to do this more, but it’s something I want to call out that I’ll be doing more actively. I have followed a ton of awesome people these past 3 months that don’t run in the circles I run in. I hope to do more of that, so I’ll take at least 30 minutes each week and hunt down people who tweet great content.

On that topic, please comment suggestions on how to find good people to follow. And I don’t necessarily mean people with tons of followers, just anyone who puts out great content.

Start more conversations and DISAGREEMENTS

In the past I’ve been hesitant to start a conversation with someone based on one of their tweets, largely because I’m not sure I can bring value to the conversation. I think I’m seeing more and more that EVERYONE can bring value to the conversation, they just need to jump in. And heck, if you don’t like me jumping in, you can always block me.

Also, I’m going to try to disagree more. I LOVE agreeing with people. Everyone loves to be agreed with. But I’m going to search out those things I disagree with and instead of ignoring them, I’ll reply.

SHOUT OUT more cool stuff/people

Pretty self-explanatory. There are a lot of cool people doing a lot of cool stuff (besides me), and I’m going to make more effort to shout that stuff out. Whether that’s sharing links, things people have built, or just the person themselves.

SHARE more

This is one of my 3 things to do in 2012. If I learn something small or have a huge epiphany, I’ll share it on Twitter. ‘Nuff said.

————–

I’m also going to try a few other experiments (including running contests, etc) as the year progresses so I’ll post about those as well. In reality, I’m still a Twitter newbie, so I’m trying to feel my way around.

Trying anything different on Twitter this year? Please share in the comments (or on Twitter)!

The problem is where to start? So many areas to grow and improve and so few hours in the day. Chris Brogan has listed his 3 “words” for 2012, so I’m going to follow that lead.

Question

I want this to be the year where I question pretty much everything I do, and why I do it. To go from mindlessly doing tasks because I’ve always done them that way, to making sure that tasks I do are the best way to get things done. To figure out which technologies produce the best results, not just choosing the ones I know and am comfortable with. To make sure I really am doing what I have a passion for, not just what pays the bills (though I do need to balance both).

Ultimately, I want this mindset to change the way I work and do business, and drive the types of projects I work on.

Focus

Are you reading this right now while also doing work, responding to an email, having an IM chat with someone, and reading your Twitter stream all at the same time? Yeah, me too. Technology that is supposed to simplify your work and life seem to make it less simple, or at least provide more distractions. And if you are self-employed, that makes it even more difficult. I know there are lots of people out there who pride themselves in being able to do all of these things at once, and do them well, but I am not one of them. I need to focus on one thing at a time, even if it’s for a short period of time. So I’m going to make an effort to be less distracted.

*Resisting urge to check Twitter while writing…this…post…*

Share

I am where I am now because people have shared, whether it’s a tutorial, a piece of advice, a review, whatever. Unfortunately, I have not always been one to share my own thoughts as freely. Partly it’s because I feel like I don’t have the time to write things down in addition to juggling projects and a family. But I think it’s also a deep seated insecurity which questions what I can contribute and why anyone would want to hear it. That’s something I need to get over.

So even if it’s just me writing these posts to myself, that’s what I aim to do this year. I WILL blog more, almost daily in fact, of things I’ve learned or am learning. At the very least, I can look back on it as a record of my journey this year.

So off we head into 2012, which some people believe is the end of life as we know it. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning…

Personally and professionally speaking, 2011 was a year of growth and stepping outside of my confort zone. Uprooting your wife and children from the only city they’ve ever known and moving to a place where we literally did not know a single person will do that to you.

Having moved down to Southern California from Canada late in 2010, the year started with a new city, new scenery and a new office. To say the months leading up to the start of 2011 were a whirlwind would be an understatement. Yet, it was a chance to start fresh in some ways, which brought a sense of excitement.

Technologies

I’m not sure that I’ve ever experienced a year where I touched as many different technologies and forced myself to learn as many new languages and frameworks as I did this year.

I came off of 2010 working on one of the most technically complex Flash projects I’ve been involved in. We built an AIR application that ran on Mac/PC, and also built a version with a mobile skin for Android. There were several points where we had to ask ourselves if the technology could support the features they needed. But it was the experience of building an app that ran on my Android phone that really excited me. For the past 10 years I’d developed for web and desktop, so it was exciting to see an app I worked on running on a phone. Turns out this was a small taste of what was to come.

However, instead of spending most of my time developing for iOS or Android, it was spent doing projects with the wildly talented team at Archetype for Windows Phone 7 (I always thought it was funny that it was called Windows Phone 7 instead of Windows 7 Phone). Though it has a lot to do in terms of gaining users, the platform itself is solid, and there are a lot of great things about it (panorama metaphor, live tiles, everything is smooth and fluid feeling). Most of all, the tools are great. I had the opportunity to put a lot of time into one very big high profile project, and also touch a few others. The learning curve was steep (though having done some Silverlight work previously provided a little background to build on).

“HTML5″ was also on my radar and I had the opportunity to be involved in a couple of real world projects writing Javascript and learning frameworks like jQuery. Unfortunately, my first big HTML project involved writing a demo that showed new features for a browser that we actually didn’t have access to because it wasn’t publicly available yet. So that involved testing features like 3D CSS transformations in one browser, and SVG graphics in another, and always left me wondering whether it would all work in the targeted browser. To be honest, the last time I did a significant amount of HTML/CSS/Javascript was 10 years ago, and this brought back way too many memories of making sure things working in IE5 and Netscape 4.7 and 6. However, based on my experience and some of the things I’ve seen, we’ve come a long way baby. For the first time in the history of the web, I’m finding myself right clicking content to see whether it’s been made with Flash or HTML because sometimes I just can’t tell.

I also spent some time learning Objective-C, which was a head spinner to begin with. So far, I’ve probably learned enough to be dangerous. 2012 will most certainly see me spending more time with that.

I ended the year by spending time learning Lua and the Corona SDK. Overall it’s super easy to pick up, and I can see a LOT of use for this when building certain types of games. The big benefit for me is that you can publish to both iOS and Android.

One of the proudest professional moments of my year was when a project I worked on for Archetype won a Communication Arts award in the 2011 Interactive Annual.

So over the course of the year, I’ve touched client projects that run on desktop, web, Android, Windows Phone, iPad and tabletop touchscreen. I really do love my job.

Experience

I took several weeks off this past summer in order to travel with the family. We took 2 road trips across the country and put about 8,000 miles on the vehicle. The highlight was watching Atlantis take off from Kennedy Space Center to end the era of the space shuttle. The kids have always been really interested in space travel, so this was literally the opportunity of a lifetime. To watch the shuttle lift off from across the bay in Titusville was something you have to experience to believe, and something we will always remember.

Along the way, we stopped at Houston Space Center, spent time at DisneyWorld, and saw a Star Wars exhibit which made the trip more than worthwhile. I also had the opportunity to finally meet face to face with the team at Tricycle Studios, a really great client I’ve worked with remotely for several years, who are based in Florida. We also drove back up to Edmonton to visit family and friends, which was hard at times, especially for the kids, who have missed that.

We also got to experience the breadth of landscape and weather that was at times frightening, and always awe-inspiring. From winds that nearly blew over the vehicle, to storm where we could literally not see 10 feet in front of us, to 116 degree heat, to incredible rock formations and sand dunes, it was a real blessing to be able to experience all of that.

Though it was by no means all roses this year on a personal level, I wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything.

Conferences

I had the opportunity to attend a couple of conferences this year. Microsoft Build was the unveiling of Windows 8, and it really was like drinking through a firehose. I won’t post it here, but if you want to read more about what I walked away from this with, and what I think about Windows 8, read this post.

I also attended Adobe MAX for the first time this year. While overall a bit of a let down, I really enjoyed meeting people I’d only previously known online. For me, it made me realize that I need to make more of an effort to interact with people online, since I don’t get to spend time with them in person. Since then, my Twitter involvement has increased significantly, and where I used to often ignore people’s tweets to me, now I make sure I respond to everyone who takes the time to reach out.

People

As I mentioned, this year, I met many people in person for the first time that I’d never met face to face. People I’d worked with for years. That was a real privilege. It’s amazing that we live in a world where that is possible.

I’ve also met a lot more people online that I’ve learned from and have helped me grow and challenge myself. I’ve made acquaintances with some very smart people, many much smarter than me. I plan on learning as much as I can from them, and continuing to meet more. Hopefully someone else can learn from me in the same way.

Steve Jobs

The passing of Steve Jobs was not something I anticipated to have any sort of profound impact on me. I’m far from a Jobs/Apple fanboy, though I do use their products and appreciate their quality. I would never use Jobs as a model for how I would want my kids to turn out, as successful as he was.

However, his death resulted in some soul searching on my own part, and questioning whether I was doing what I really loved and had a passion for. For the last 3 months of the year, this is something I’ve been wrestling with, and that I still think about daily. It has also made me appreciate life more, and I’ve tried to really ask myself why I do the things I do.

What Lies Ahead

During this self-evaluation, I made a decision to carve out some time to develop my own IP. I’ve been doing dev work for years, but it’s always been for other clients. While I enjoy the client work and it will still take up a considerable amount of my time, I figured it was time for me to be the client and build something myself. Specifically, what excites me right now is mobile development. So I spent weeks researching the various platforms, development options and app store markets. This was an eye opening experience to say the least.

I’ve spent the past few weeks tweaking ideas and coming up with something I think is worth spending time to build out. So 2012 will be the year that Philter Design Studios breaks out of pure client work and builds something (hopefully more than one thing) that will make a splash.

I’ve really appreciated those in the indie game dev community that have shared their experiences, so I plan on doing the same along the way.

So thanks for everything 2011. 2012, here I come!

Having built a prototype of my Nook game, I wanted to see how it would run on my new Nook Color. Even with the release of the Nook Tablet right around the corner, I decided it would be best to get the Color to use as the lowest common denominator. One bonus of only targeting the Nook for initial release is that I only have to test on 2 devices. Actually, only 1, as I plan on making sure it runs well on the Color, so it won’t have any problems running on the Tablet as well.

Unfortunately, my excitement was tempered by some roadblocks so I wanted to document the steps I took for my own future reference. If it helps other developers, that’s great.

Before I start, I should make it clear that I’m using a Mac, with Flash CS5.5 and AIR 3.1 overlaid. I initially tried this with Flash CS5 using the steps outlined in this blog post, but that turned out to be unsuccessful. If anyone is able to get AIR 3.1 working with Flash CS5, I’d love to hear how you did it.

So here are the steps I took:

1. Overlay Flash CS5.5 with the AIR 3.1 SDK using the steps outlined in this tech note. This link uses the 3.0 SDK, but you can do the exact same steps substituting the 3.1 SDK. IMPORTANT: Pay very close attention to the steps and make sure you use 2.6 where mentioned, even though you are overlaying 3.1. The IDE is hard coded to look for specific directories and files with very specific names.

2. Download and install the Android SDK. IMPORTANT: When you get to the step where you need to download SDK components using the Android SDK Manager, make sure you choose Android 2.3.3 (API 10). That is the version running on Nook.

3. Install the Nook SDK add on. From within the Android SDK Manager menu, choose Tools > Manage Add On Sites. Add this site: http://su.barnesandnoble.com/nook/sdk/addon.xml. A new item will appear in your SDK Manager, and you need to select that, and click Install package.

4. Register your Nook device(s) as a developer device if you haven’t already (I’m assuming you’ve already registered as a Nook developer here). You can go to the Developer Mode page on the Nook dev site and enter your device’s serial number. The serial number on the device can be found under Settings > Device Info > About Your NOOKColor. Once you add the device, you need to click Download Provision.

5. Place the device provision file on your Nook. At this point, you can connect your device to your computer. Take the provision.cmd file that you just downloaded and put it in the root directory of your device.

6. Eject the device.

7. Modify the adb_usb.ini file. When installing the Android SDK, it will have created a directory called /Users/<YourUser>/.android which contains a file called adb_usb.ini. You need to open up that file using a text editor and add a line at the bottom of the file containing: 0×0280. This is required in order for the Android Debug Bridge (adb) to see the device over USB. If you are developing on Windows, there are a couple of extra steps which you can follow here.

8. Reconnect the device.

9. If adb is running you need to kill it. From your terminal, you can use the command

adb kill-server

If you’re not sure where adb is located, it’s in the Android SDK you downloaded, in the “platform-tools” directory.

10. Confirm that adb can see the device properly. Run the following commands from terminal:

adb usb

adb devices

If everything is set up properly, you should see your device’s serial number listed.

11. Eject the Nook in Finder. You’ll notice when the Nook is connected via USB that there is a message displayed on the device that says it is in USB mode. This will continue to display unless you eject the Nook in Finder. Don’t worry, after ejecting, you will be able to deploy your AIR app.

12. Build your apk file. If you’re targeting AIR 2.6 or earlier, you can build the apk from the Flash IDE. The current Nook SDK appears to support AIR 2.6. However, unlike the Android market, you cannot download the latest version of AIR from the Nook app store. So if you want to use AIR 3.0 or newer, along with it’s new features and performance improvements, you have to use the new Captive Runtime feature. This will package the AIR runtime with your apk. This is a fantastic new feature in AIR 3.0, however, be aware that it will add roughly 8 MB of filesize to your app. As of this time, you can’t create an apk with Captive runtime using the Flash IDE or FlashBuilder. You can do it using the command line which will look something like this:

adt -package -target apk-captive-runtime -storetype pkcs12 -keystore <cert> -storepass <pass> MyApp.apk MyApp-app.xml MyApp.swf

where you replace <cert> with the path to the .p12 certificate file and <pass> with the password for the certificate.

13. Deploy to Nook. All that’s left is to deploy your apk to the Nook which you can do with the following command:

adb install MyApp.apk

Additionally, if you want to deploy a new version of your apk, you have to uninstall the currently installed version first, as you will get an error if you don’t. The uninstall command looks like this:

adb uninstall air.MyApp

14. Test on Nook. After deploying your app, you’ll notice that it doesn’t appear in your list of apps (at least it didn’t for me). The easiest way to find it is to do a search for the name of your app. Then you can run it from there.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to successfully debug the app on the device from the Flash IDE. When I try, a dialog appears asking me to type in the hostname or IP address which doesn’t appear to work when I type either. If anyone has been able to get this working, I’d appreciate a note in the comments.