Music, Snowballs, and Actual Users

I thought I would make a quick post as I had a few things to talk about.

On Music

First, I gotta give a big shout out to Andrew over and FingerBakery who has been full of a lot of good information.  If you having played his game, download Pokerbot now, and when you play it you will notice that the music is really pretty good in it.  I decided to ask him how he got it or if he made it himself and he gave me a couple of websites including AudioJungle and SoundRangers.

I had no idea that you could purchase stock music to throw in your app.

On Snowballs

There is a really cool designer who goes by Ugmonk who recently left his job to pursue his design business full time.  His images are crisp and sharp and I bought this “Math Problem” T-Shirt a while back.  Any way, he sent out a tweet referencing famous designer Johnny Cupcake’s recent blog entry on the SnowBall Effect.

I’m planning on doing exactly what he talked about; I have been fortunate to make a little money on BarCards and my partner and I are reinvesting all if it to (1) work out some of the bugs, (2) roll out an interactive website (instead of our janky website), and (3) roll out some REALLY awesome features that should make going out on a Friday night a lot of fun.  Stay tuned.

On Actual Users

This past Friday we were fortunate to have San Antonio Express News writer Jason Buch go out to a local bar to play BarCards with  a group of friends and me.  He was able to see first hand and talk with some of the players and people they interacted with at the bar and wrote a story just released in the Express News Business Section.  This is hot off the press!  I am very thankful for both he and his photographer giving up a portion of their Friday night to come check out our creation.

I think one of the reasons that people like playing BarCards is that is touches on something that Clay Shirky has mentioned in his new book, Cognitive Surplus: “Our social media tools aren’t an alternative to real life, they are a part of it” (pg 37).

BarCards is a game that starts on a digital device, but in order to be successful, you must elicit real life action to complete the task.  Even as we make enhancements to make BarCards more of a “digital community,” what will make it truly valuable is when the consumer uses the digital world to coordinate action in the real world.  At least that is my humble hope.