Fugu Talk

Latest Blue Mars client has IME support (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) in chat.

HyperBowl is now on the Thousand Apps page. Here’s just a section. Can you locate HyperBowl?

There’s been furor in the past over flag-burning, but to me, the real desecration of the flag occurs when people co-opt it for their own causes. I was recently nauseated by a Facebook campaign against the proposed Muslim worship center in New York, largely by the use of the American Flag as their logo. But I should get over it – the tactic is pretty much a cliche by now.

For example, here is an over-the-top logo for the Huntington Beach Police Officers Association:

A more clever use is on the “about us” page of the Video Game Voters Network:

Nowhere does it explain on that page that the group is founded and run by the ESA, the industry group representing game publishers. That type of omission leads the conspiracy theorist in me (and I didn’t even know I had one) to wonder who was behind the anonymous mass mailings in the IGDA that led to Tim Langdell’s ouster. Anyway, for my civil liberties advocacy, I’ll count on organizations like the ACLU – at least I know who they are.

And liberal groups are not immune, either. MoveOn exercises this tactic (and others normally attributed to Fox News), but with a bit of subtlety here – they have some stars and stripes sneaking in around the borders and background:

It’s an unseemly replacement for discourse. Which flag is bigger, yours or mine?

This is me at work in Blue Mars. I’m the guy in shorts standing around.

Marketing isn’t rocket science, at least the way I’m doing it. For example, occasionally I try the tactic of temporarily making an app free. That definitely attracts attention, since many sites track price changes (google your app 24 hours after making it free and you’ll find a dozen sites linking to it). Yesterday the promotion garnered 8000 downloads.

But I’ve had mixed success in terms of boosting sales (in particular for the full HyperBowl app ) . My theory is that the free app crowd is largely distinct from the paying app crowd. Also, the freeloaders will drag down your ratings. For example, a couple of days ago, I made HyperBowl Rome free. Up til then, it had 3-5 star ratings and now the French are piling on with 1-star reviews. (Although there is one good French review out of the three. And by the way, Japan has also been rough on me overall on my apps, but Germany has been nice and the US is actually in the middle). Here’s the AppViz summary:

Normally, I end the promotion as soon as I get an obnoxious review that really bugs me. But I don’t actually see foreign reviews on the US App Store, and I don’t understand them until I run them through google translate, and then more often than not, it’s entertaining. Like this:

A big stew as we see often unplayable and ugly, without interest unless you like never score any points, as is the case, it is always out of time or if you love smash the screen of your device rubbing to death this game is for you, can even pad three feet below the ankle of dark nebula. TO AVOID!

So I guess I’ll let it run for a little while longer.

Who needs Nurien?