Introduction
by Jay Arrera · 07/24/2008 (5:10 pm) · 8 comments
Well, this is probably long overdue, but I figure now is as good as a time as any to introduce myself. I am the VP, Web Applications at Garage Games, and primarily responsible for InstantAction.com. For those of you who have been following the IA press coverage with Josh Williams and Andy Yang, Andy's my boss, and I'm responsible for building what he and Josh dream up.
I joined GG in April, having been a Torque user for about a year. For those of you familiar with InstantAction.com, you'll hopefully understand why I have been negligent in posting a blog. We've been a little busy.
- We've launched into public beta
- We've added 4 games (total of 6) with several more in work.
- Tons of site features (in no particular order):
- Implemented game browser to see online games, and filtering based on party size, connection quality, game, and more.
- Completely new game picker interface (who remembers the pile of boxes?)
- Lots of party management features including, Setting status to Away, Abdicating party host, Report Abuse
- Dedicated servers
- Online store with lots of add-on content including avatars, map packs, marble packs, and tank packs.
- Content management system
- Continuing to re-factor the game integration process and SDK, making it easier for game developers to get their games on IA
- Ability to import contacts from gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and AOL.
- Party URLs
- Community API
- Lots of internal features enabling scalability, reporting, and maintainability of the site
- Increased daily site traffic 6x
- Significantly increased the size of the IA team
I do read the forums, but not on a daily basis (I do have a day job), and love to hear what the community thinks about IA and GG. One of the things that brought me to GG was the active community.
I don't have the obligatory blog post picture to share, but thought I would take a pulse if anyone was paying attention to these blog posts and was interested in hearing more about IA from the inside, and what you wanted to learn more about.
You can find me online at: http://www.instantaction.com, my user name is "AngerManagement"
I joined GG in April, having been a Torque user for about a year. For those of you familiar with InstantAction.com, you'll hopefully understand why I have been negligent in posting a blog. We've been a little busy.
- We've launched into public beta
- We've added 4 games (total of 6) with several more in work.
- Tons of site features (in no particular order):
- Implemented game browser to see online games, and filtering based on party size, connection quality, game, and more.
- Completely new game picker interface (who remembers the pile of boxes?)
- Lots of party management features including, Setting status to Away, Abdicating party host, Report Abuse
- Dedicated servers
- Online store with lots of add-on content including avatars, map packs, marble packs, and tank packs.
- Content management system
- Continuing to re-factor the game integration process and SDK, making it easier for game developers to get their games on IA
- Ability to import contacts from gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and AOL.
- Party URLs
- Community API
- Lots of internal features enabling scalability, reporting, and maintainability of the site
- Increased daily site traffic 6x
- Significantly increased the size of the IA team
I do read the forums, but not on a daily basis (I do have a day job), and love to hear what the community thinks about IA and GG. One of the things that brought me to GG was the active community.
I don't have the obligatory blog post picture to share, but thought I would take a pulse if anyone was paying attention to these blog posts and was interested in hearing more about IA from the inside, and what you wanted to learn more about.
You can find me online at: http://www.instantaction.com, my user name is "AngerManagement"
#2
":)
Otherwise looks good, much better then the beta days,..
TomFeni
07/24/2008 (6:45 pm)
Looks great, I especially like the ads from verizon. So is that to help pay for the site? Or do you have to pay a subscription to get a ad free page..":)
Otherwise looks good, much better then the beta days,..
TomFeni
#3
07/24/2008 (7:27 pm)
Congratz 
#4
07/24/2008 (9:32 pm)
Just wanted to let you guys know that Jay is pretty much made of awesome. He's got tons of project management experience under his belt, and his presence has already made IA development stronger than ever. It's really great to have him aboard, and I hope he has time to chime in here once in a while to give the community feedback on how IA is doing. 
#5
07/24/2008 (9:32 pm)
This is great! Thanks for posting this Jay. GG lurkers here still have a lot of interest in the platform we're building at InstantAction, so I hope we can get updates like this semi-regularly for the wing of GG that works on IA. 
#6
07/24/2008 (11:48 pm)
#7
@Tom Feni:
Advertising is a very controversial topic amongst our users and internally. Of course, we have to find a way to make money with the site (or set up a PayPal account that you can just donate to the cause). We are experimenting with a number of models. Having subscriber's not have to see ads is something that we are considering. It is important for us to make sure that there is always some sort of free component for each game, so that users have a chance to see if a game is even fun for them before they have to plop down coin to play. As a result, there will be some people on the site who play games and never pay for anything. Advertising is a useful way to to get some value from those folks (other than just pwning them on the scoreboards). Of course, the more add-on content (avatars, map packs, skins), and out-right game purchases, the less we have to depend on advertising for revenue. Some day we may find that we don't need ad revenue at all...
07/25/2008 (3:33 pm)
Thanks for the props fellow GG'ers.@Tom Feni:
Advertising is a very controversial topic amongst our users and internally. Of course, we have to find a way to make money with the site (or set up a PayPal account that you can just donate to the cause). We are experimenting with a number of models. Having subscriber's not have to see ads is something that we are considering. It is important for us to make sure that there is always some sort of free component for each game, so that users have a chance to see if a game is even fun for them before they have to plop down coin to play. As a result, there will be some people on the site who play games and never pay for anything. Advertising is a useful way to to get some value from those folks (other than just pwning them on the scoreboards). Of course, the more add-on content (avatars, map packs, skins), and out-right game purchases, the less we have to depend on advertising for revenue. Some day we may find that we don't need ad revenue at all...
Employee Michael Perry
GarageGames
Great work with IA!