Frozen Donkey Company Blog

Poisonville – das neue 3D-Browsergame von Bigpoint.com!

2009-07-30T07:55:00.001-07:00

Poisonville (http://poisonville.com) – Stellt euch eine Stadt in Amerika vor, unzählige Straßen, verwinkelte Gassen – es tobt der Kampf der rivalisierenden Straßengangs. Hier ist alles möglich! Vier Gangs kämpfen um Ruhm, Ehre und Macht. Nachtclubs laden zum Besuch ein, GoGo-Girls entführen ins Rotlichtmilieu, auf den Straßen herrscht der harte Kampf der verfeindeten Gangs. Juweliere werden überfallen, Autoradios geklaut, Hehlerwaren verschifft und lästige Konkurrenz muss beseitigt werden.

Erfüllt spannende Missionen, spielt in Echtzeit mit tausenden anderen Spielern um Ruhm und Ehre. Schnappt euch ein Auto, cruist durch die Straßen, vorbei an brennenden Öltonnen und kämpft um die Vorherrschaft in eurem Revier.

Bigpoint.com opens a portal for external game developers

2009-07-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

Developer lounge offers an interface to integrate external browser games
Bigpoint.com expands its portfolio and takes on the role of publisher
New distribution opportunities for developers of browser games

Bigpoint GmbH, the world’s leading provider of browser-based online games (browser games), is opening its doors to external game providers and developers. With today’s launch of the Bigpoint DevLounge at http://devlounge.bigpoint.com, game developers now have a place where they can go to integrate their browser games on the website http://www.bigpoint.com. Thanks to the introduction of the DevLounge, Bigpoint has positioned itself for the future as a publisher of online games. With over 63 million registered users worldwide, game providers will have new and unique opportunities to distribute their games. The portal Bigpoint.com will develop into the first source for online games and will offer the right game for every target group.

"With the introduction of the DevLounge on our portal, we’re taking a further step in the direction of international expansion," explains Bigpoint founder and CEO Heiko Hubertz. "Bigpoint.com has a large community of gamers with over 63 million registrations and is therefore the perfect place for developers of browser games to professionally distribute and promote their games. From now until the end of the year, the number of games at Bigpoint.com will jump from approximately 30 games to 100 games, therefore providing each target group with the exactly right game. Of course, we’ll continue to develop our own browser games and set new standards in terms of technology."

The Bigpoint Developer Lounge
In the members-only area at http://devlounge.bigpoint.com, game developers are taken step by step through an easily integrated API. The integration process and the subsequent quality control check of each new game ensure that all games fulfill Bigpoint’s high level of standards. Of course, all games will have to follow our company motto: "free to play". Bigpoint browser games offer players hours of free gaming entertainment, but in which users can spend a little pocket change, if they want, on virtual goods to receive time - and therefore game - advantages. With a share of the revenues, developers can also earn money with their games.

At the moment, the offer is only intended for developers of browser games.

Viva Piñata FTW! Or Lets talk again about some interesting Stuff...

2009-04-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

Do you know Viva Piñata?

It's a game from 2006 for the xbox 360. You may think that is just a game for kids. But i take a deeper look at the game design of this game and found a interesting version of startopia / sim city / place another civilazation simulation here with little minigames for some more fun...

Ignore the dancing pinatas around this game and look at the very first quest in this game... You got a little piece of land and have to plow it. Then plant some grass. Now look whats happen on your land... There are the first pinatas that live at your place.

You create a place for your new civilization... Seems like a older post from us called "The people in my village" where we exactly talked about stuff like this.

When you have the first pinatas in your garden you can build some houses for them so they can "make" some offsprings. Create an enviroment to get more people in your town. The "making-process" for these new pinata kids is very cool. It is a minigame where the male pinata have to pass a obstacle course to get to the female pinata.

At the end, except of the minigames for making love, this "Create-an-enviroment-to-get more-people-in-your-town" game is a very nice example for this genre. I think its time for a startopia based browsergame...

The People in my Village Part 2

2009-03-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

Let's have a deeper look at the civilization of my Village. I have some concepts in my mind about a new game with the core idea to get people in a town. It is a little bit like Sim City, startopia or viva pinata. Creating an enviroment for different kind of people / citizens for a place by building different houses and things.

the idea

I need to build a cathouse to get some cats into my base.
I need to build a mousehouse to get some mice.
But the mice will be eaten by cats.

This idea can run with any type of animals, people or even robots. Rise a civilisation. See what happen at your town. Respond to actions of your people. Have a living game. The point is not to build some people or animals, but to build a place for people, creating infrastuctures and more.

The guys of tg nord did something in this way with they "hawaii project" this would be very interesting in the near future.

The People in my Village

2009-03-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

... or why my Village, HQ, camp or whatever needs some citizen.

The main objective of a classical strategy browsergame is to create a HQ which is the center of my own country, planet, spacestation or district. You need to build some Buildings for researche, trade and diplomacy, some barracks for soldiers and a stable or factory for infantry. Let's say a relative big hq has 20 big buildings. Wow your hq is sooo big and powerfull. But here is the thing, it is dead!

Why is it dead?

Because there a 20 big buildings and not even one citizen that works there. Let's have a look at some of the oldschool desktop strategy games like Age of Empires, The Settlers, Sim City or Rollercoaster Tycoon. You could see the success of you strategy by watching you living population. The more people you have in your city, the more success you will get.

It is a direct input for the user. The casual gamer doesn't want to read some numbers in a statistic to get the success level of a strategy, he wants to SEE the effect of his strategy!

Some browsergames have some right beginnings in this section like Ikariam or Tribalwars. For example tribalwars just added a new graphic version of the village view with some flash animated buldings and citizen. At the moment it is just a gimmick, but i really think that this would be the future of the "hq view" in a strategy game. A living Game.

Tribalwars 5.0 Village View:

(c) by Innogames

Drag my Content and drop it wherever you want...

2009-03-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

Oh you use this cool iGoogle thing on the google website? Awesome stuff, you can sort your content boxes with a drag and drop function, it is like a desktop application. I wish I could use something like this on my own website. But i guess this would be impossible...

hmm wait, what?! Impossible?! Not even close!

We worked with some cool jquery stuff in our web dev lab and found a interestic demo at this website and guess what... it works!

Basicly you need 3 Things.

jQuery JS Framework
The Interface Plugin
boxes on your website you want to drag and drop

We just immigrant this technologie to the portal system of our partner project Wheel-of-Games.com and it is just awesome. That is real iGoogle style.

The Force is unleashed!

2009-02-27T01:55:00.000-08:00

Frozen Donkey Software proudly presents, the first and best Star Wars The old Republic fan website in the world wide web:

www.swtor-station.com

Have a look at this wonderful design and browse through the content sections. Frozen Donkey Software uses for this website a content management system called "koobi" and modified some modules for the swtor-station team.

SWToR Station is a partner project of Two Pi Team / Wheel of Games and Frozen Donkey Software.

Back to the Roots?

2009-02-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about browsergame concepts. Ok ignore the 3D Action Shooter of Bigpoint and go to the tradionel strategy browsergame. What do we have in this genre?

5 million versions of a "medieval-create-your-own-villageand-destroy-all-other-players"-game.
6 billion versions of a "space-create-your-own-universe-and-destroy-all-other-players"-game.
Some cool versions of a mix the first and second point in this list.
Some boring "economy-strategy-simulations-build-your-own-company-or-whateva" games

But seriously, what kind of games need the today-browsergame-player? Simple answer, let's look at the past of the "real" computer games. It's 2009 and I still love to play sim city (est. 1993!) or commandos (1998). Everyone who have seen the new GUI of the Innogames "die Stämme", knows that it is possible to create browsergames with high-qualy graphics such as used in the classic pc games. What could be cooler as a simcity 2000 version that could be played by every position / desktop in this world without installing any software? Nothing!

Look at the past of dekstop games and you could see the future of browsergames.

FD Software will be there, too ;)

FIRST!!!! or what is the success of a web project

2009-02-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

The Internet.... A cool place for cool people from cool locations around the world.
Some people of these cool people are a little bit cooler than the others. These extra cool people have made their passion to a workplace. I am talking about people like Ricky van Veen (Founder of collegehumor.com) or Mark Zuckerberg (founder of facebook) which both just wanted to get some extra money for beer and have created website with millions of unique users every month. But what is the success of these projects?

I think the thing about success in the internet is simply one term:

Time

Have the right idea to the right time,
start a project at the right time,
meet the right people at the right time.

That means, if you have a great idea for a web project, first check if somebody else already had have this idea and when is not a new idea check for the current status of the project.
Nobody wants another internet movie database. Nobody wants another twitter. Nobody wants another wikipedia. Because all of these projects have something in common. It is Succuess! Why are these projects successfull? scroll to the top of this post and you can read it.

Ok next thing about that. I have a good idea. I know that i am the first with this idea or the other projects with this theme are so f*cking bad that every user loves to get a alternative project about this idea. The only problem about my new project is one of the time factors. Well i got the idea and i want to start the project at the right time, but still i need to meet the right people for this. People with special skills, people that have great web skills, people that could create websites and everything around this just by wachting a sketch from a slip of paper. People that could feel a website. People like the Staff of Frozen Donkey Software.