So the ASCIIpOrtal launch has come and gone. There are still folks trickling in, and there will probably be folks trickling in for a long while, but the bulk of the traffic has passed and Cymon’s Games is still standing. BoingBoing, RockPaperShotgun, Joystiq, and even the might locust swarms of SlashDot, all did their worst and I was still here for the true believers at Indiegames, TIGSource and Bytejacker. Not to mention the explosion on twitter, for which there are still crackles being heard. I’ve seen it reported in German and Portuguese (lost the links, tho) and I can’t help but wonder if anyone else is talking about me in a language I don’t know.

If I missed someone, I love you all, post links in the comments below so I know who you are.

There were a couple of things about the release that I wanted to mention. In fact I just switched this from a news post to a rant. I think it’ll be justified in the end.

Lessons of the Past

So the first time Cymon’s Games got attacked by the internet it was pretty disastrous. And not just bad for me, but RetroRemakes felt it pretty bad. But I learned and grew from the experience and now Cymon’s Games is self hosted (that’s the growing part) and better laid out (that’s the learning part) with backup plans that I can switch to to decrease the bandwidth in an emergency (also learning). And knowing what just talking about this game would do to the site I made efforts to host the files off site. So all in all that experience prepared me well for this experience and thank goodness.

What I don’t know is how to apply this in the future, or apply it to someone reading this. I mean, will a video of your game test the waters? Maybe. But not accurately. Still, you can take whatever bandwidth you get from demoing your product and multiply it by your file size and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the minimum you can expect, I guess. But the demo’s got to really show the meat of your project, the cool part, the draw. Test the waters and prepare accordingly.

It’s all about the Washingtons

When I made ASCIIpOrtal I didn’t expect to make any money from it, and in that I was not disappointed. There were people who expressed that with the original video getting 40,000 views in the first few days and over 100,000 at this time that surely it was a project worth a dollar or two. So I set up a paypal button to test the “surely it’s worth a buck a download” and even set up T-Shirts. Out of over 10,000 downloads the first 48 hours there were 15 folks who donated and 1 that bought a shirt. That’s it. And I should mention that there have been more downloads since then, but no more donations.

Of the people that donated most of the people who donated were small donations, and that’s great. I frankly would prefer 100 $1 donations than 5 $10 donations. The weightiest donation amused me because I was told afterward by the individual that they had just purchased ODST but ended up ignoring it to play ASCIIpOrtal. And the fact that I had OSX binaries. Made me laugh.

I don’t know if anyone who donated wants their philanthropy made public of if they’d rather be kept private. If you donated and you want folks to know post a comment below.

Now, I’m not trying to guilt anyone into donating, like I said I didn’t expect a lot from this. If you do feel the desire do support me there’s a store button above and a paypal button on the side. But, the fact that there were stunningly few donations doesn’t surprise me.

I won’t be quitting my day job any time soon.

What does surprise me, however, is that according to good adsense my website had 43,580 page impressions in the the past 7 days, and for all those eyes on their marketing I’m getting $5.61. Dog gone. A billboard on the side of the street doesn’t get that many eyes in a day but they’re way more expensive than that. What is the deal? And the click through rate has been pitiful, worse than normal. Is that because everyone has adblockers on? Come on, people. Especially if you’re a part of the slashdot horde you owe it to the sites you’re raping to at least look at their ads, maybe click once in a while.

Note to self, rant more about this later.

But I did make enough to get that drawing tablet I’ve been saving for, so thank everyone. Now I need a new donation goal.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me

I thought this was pretty cool. I never expected that everyone else would agree with me. In fact the number of well wishers and people who express that they love the game way outweighs people who don’t like the game. How awesome is that, and unusual in the traditionally dipwad population of the internet. Thank you, thank you everyone who praised ASCIIpOrtal. It’s for you that I want to keep working on this game.

The naysayers, tho, are useful to. As much as I like the positive the comments, the negative comments show what needs to be worked on. The hard part is keeping up with all the comments, or for that matter finding them.

Once again, there have been a number of really, really cool people who I’ve come in contact with this project and made some new friends. Erin, you must be tired of it, but this all started with you, and quite frankly you are one of my heroes. I like that I’m finally nerdy-cool enough to hang out with folks of your caliber like Dave Gilbert and Tim W., tho Derek Yu still won’t respond to my e-mails. Christoph Hale got my attention and my jaw hit the floor when I checked his resume. Jeep Barnett (check the link) e-mailed to tell me he was stuck on level 9 and offer a few suggestions, as well as his opinion on ladders in FPS games (“I’m against it” -Groucho Marx). He informed me that ASCIIpOrtal has made the rounds at the Valve offices. Mr. Gabe Newell, please consider that my resume.

Oh, and did I mention Kenta Cho tweeted about ASCIIpOrtal? Twice. Don’t understand a word, but who cares. It’s Kenta Cho.

The Road Ahead

Am I done with ASCIIpOrtal? No. I think it’s got lots of room for improvement and lots of potential and I want to see that potential through to the end, tho I’m going to take a little break for a while and focus on school and family, as well as the rest of Cymon’s Games. I’ve still got a game and it’s source a week to put out here. ASCIIpOrtal isn’t the end of Cymon’s Games. It’s just the cherry on the top. The cherry that’s driving quite a bit of traffic. Which is good. Finally I got something that beats Sunday newspaper puzzles.

And I hope ASCIIpOrtal isn’t done for you either. For starters, let’s see some more levels. The ones I make aren’t any fun, I know how to beat them. It’s your levels that are fun to me. I’d like to see a few more easy ones, but the diabolically difficult ones are alright too. ASCIIpOrtal doesn’t need to end after the final countdown. You help it grow and bloom.