Jungle Rangers was a project that I put together for the folks at Focus Education. Their goal was to create a game that would make the exercises that neuro psychologists use more fun and entertaining. The core of our cognitive work centered on Working Memory and Sustained Attention.

Working memory (WM) refers to the process of temporary (short-term) storage and management of information. While similar to the idea of ‘short-term memory’, WM typically conveys an additional emphasis on the active manipulation of the information being held in mind. Similar to RAM memory in a computer (versus hard drive memory), this type of memory is important as it is felt to be important in activities such as guiding goal-directed thoughts or behaviors. WM is typically considered a ‘limited capacity’ specialized subsystem, distinct from actual perception, and with specific capacity for both visual and auditory information. Research models and studies point to the importance of WM for several cognitive abilities including logical reasoning and problem-solving. Some researchers have suggested that WM is a bit like the ‘gas’ for the cognitive ‘engine’ required for many abilities. Research studies have found it to be crucial for school readiness and academic achievement (such as aspects of reading comprehension & mathematics). Likewise, many developmental and acquired disorders are associated with lower WM ability. Research suggests that improvements can be made in WM with specific cognitive exercises aiming to increase this important capacity. The ‘span tasks’ in Jungle Rangers provides such exercises to enhance WM. Improvements in WM have been related to increases in a number of abilities, including intellectual ability.

Sustained attention is considered a primary element or component in current neuropsychological models of attention. Most people can easily relate to sustained attention as part of their everyday experience. For example, instructions from a parent or teacher to ‘pay attention’ are essentially efforts to get a child to sustain their attention to the task at hand. Sustained attention is influenced many things. First it requires some elementary processes of sensory selective attention, ability to remember the reason you are attending, and a level mental control. Selective attention depends on a relatively stable attentional capacity, enabling adequate focus over time. Attention training is based on the finding that attentional abilities can be improved by activating attention through a stimulus drill approach. The repeated stimulation of attentional systems via graded attention exercises appears to facilitate changes in attention capacity. Most attention training programs assume that aspects of cognition can be isolated and discretely targeted with training exercises including functions related to sustaining attention over time (vigilance), shifting attention, speed of processing, and screening out distractions. The CPT tasks in Jungle Rangers are exercises designed to increase your child’s capacity to attend for greater and greater durations of time, to be less distracted by irrelevant information, and increase their reaction time and accuracy of response. The exercises are designed to require higher levels of attention, and to keep this high level of attention sustained for longer and longer periods of time during the game. Better performance is indicated by longer sustained durations of game play at higher accuracy rates.

– Focus Educations’ Jungle Ranger curriculum definitions

I assembled a team in Burbank, CA. The project took just under 6 Months to complete. My team and I were able to bring the project in under budget and early which made our client very happy.

It’s a single player MAC or WINDOW PC game. Like many of my projects, I wore a few hats. Primarily, I was the producer and lead engineer.

The team was made up of the following:

• Producer/Engineer
• Associate Producer/QA Manager
• 2 Animators
• Engineer
• Composer
• Audio Engineer
• Neuro Psychologist
• Neuro Psychologist Assistant
• QA Tester
• 2 VO Actors
• Writer

Looking back, we could have done well to have a third engineer… I say that because there were features that we gave up for the sake of speed. However, we were able to create an incredibly rich experience at a fraction of what our competition proposed. We even managed to fit about 22 minutes of animation into the game!

It was an Agile project and it couldn’t have gone smoother. The client loved the fact that they were playing demos within the first month of production.

I expect the packaged product to be available in early 2012.

Me on the set of the iFocus informercial shoot.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leading-brain-researcher-endorses-new-ifocus-computer-game-proven-to-improve-kids-mental-function-and-attention-span-138807874.html

The story of my involvement with DIMG-Playdom is a fun one. I explain it as fun because I had no idea that I was going to work for DIMG!

I originally interviewed with Howard Marks, Acclaim’s CEO. This was prior to the soon to be acquisition of Acclaim Games by Playdom. I was not made aware that that acquisition was in the works.

At the time that I received Howard’s call, I was working as a consultant for a few start-ups as well as putting the polishing touches on an intro Agile lecture that I had been formulating and planned on shopping around town.

Howard explained that they were in dire need for AS3 talent and asked if I would be interested in rolling up my sleeves to take part in a revolutionary project that would change the face of social network games. Howard is prolific and the project that he described didn’t fail to interest me.

I love programming! But, I hadn’t been solely a developer since, well, 2003? Howard painted the picture that the opportunity to lead a team was just around the corner. All I had to do was help them cross the goal line with their current project.

I’ll admit that I had to take some time to deliberate. I was never opposed to development. In fact, I’ve kept active as a programmer the entirety of my professional life. But this role was exclusively development, no contract negotiation, no business development, no marketing scheming, no traveling…

I’ve never been one to limit myself. This turns out to be a gift because I was more than comfortable to hang up my producer hat, dust off my polymorphic ticker, and code baby code!

Besides, I didn’t have experience working directly on Facebook and saw this as a perfect opportunity to do so.

Let’s fast forward a bit here… I took the role. As fate would have it, the existing team was not yet an agile shop so I was awarded the joy of introducing the practice. Major score! It was so much fun to help mold the production pipeline.

Acclaim was eventually acquired by Playdom and then, just as quickly, Playdom was acquired by Disney. What I’ve learned… deals can get done quickly when the right folks are motivated.

This story doesn’t have an amazing ending unfortunately. Because shortly after the Disney acquisition, our studio was closed to save costs. It seems that Playdom was not quite the money making venture that Disney had anticipated.

What stinks is that we were so close to the goal line. The game was in beta and was called Kogamu.

Our beta was reviewed favorably on Inside Social Games:

Inside Social Games December 14th, 2010

Here’s another article… The press was interested… that’s for sure.

All in all, Kogamu was a great experience. We had a solid team. I do wish that our title would have had a fighting chance.

MyMiniPeeps is a BBMMO utilizing Unity 3D. I took a founding role with Masher Media by helping them with direction and facilitation. I had two main roles. First as the producer and, second, as game designer for the project. Wearing multiple hats is one of the perks of working at a start-up.

At Masher, we had developers working all around the world. It was definitely an exercise in maintaining one’s zen-like qualities. Teams in multiple timezones can supercharge production but, if mismanaged, can also be your Achilles’ heel. I can say, without a doubt, that we were up to the challenge.

Masher received funding in early 2009. We didn’t have enough runway to complete everything on the board all at once so we had to stagger our releases for the biggest wow factor. We also had to be smart about where and who we chose to tackle each aspect of each release.

Our concept art was handled in California. While, our 3d models were constructed in China. We had engineers in China but we also contracted to Mexico, Oregon, Chicago and Los Angeles. MyMiniPeeps was a 24/7 production.

I created all of our RFPs and Game Design Documents. Seriously, the project was a ton of fun.

Though we built the prototype, the project never really took flight. It always seemed that the, needed, next round of funding was just around the corner. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before technology and the market allow someone with a similar business model to have a runaway success. But, it wasn’t in the cards for this project.

My award winning language learning platform GogoLingo! As the Exec Producer, I developed the creative roadmap to teach language to 3-7 year olds by utilizing browser-based video games. My biggest success was in synergizing pedagogic practice with classical game theory.

I ran due diligence to sort out appropriate overseas developers to keep costs at a minimum. The net result was that we hired key on shore talent which ensured the quality of the product and was less expensive than the majority of the RFP responses that we received.

GogoLingo was the brainchild of a truly brilliant Stanford grad named Afsoun Yazdian. We first met informally on the project at a coffee shop. There was a bit of magic in that meeting. I think we both could tell. Yazdian’s goal was to unite the world via communication. “To make our children global citizens”, she said. I was more than happy to sign on to that challenge.

Yazdian had a small war chest that she had raised via angel investors. She and I worked hand in hand to stretch every cent of that budget to develop, what would end up being, an award winning online game and a complementary musical album.

In 2012, we got some great news. Rosetta Stone was in the market for a product just like ours. We sold the company to them and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.

As Platinum Studio’s VP of Digital Publishing, I managed all of their digital initiatives. Of note, I introduced the acquisition of Wowio.com which is a fantastic online book distribution platform and is still thriving today.

I also managed the worlds largest user generated online comic book portal, www.drunkduck.com.

Platinum hired me at a time when resources were really tight. They had gone from 60 employees down to 20 over the course of a year. Without a war chest, I felt like I had my hands tied. I ended up making more cuts to my small team to keep costs down but, at the end of the day, Platinum realized that it was over extended and out of cash.

I’m glad to say that they’re still around, albiet with a much smaller staff, and focused on film which was always their bread and butter.

The founders and existing team are all amazing people and truly love what they do. Loving what you do has always been very important to me in my personal career. I wish them all the best.

Kabillion is an Emmy award winning Comcast VOD & Broadband initiative that I brought from inception to completion. It was no small undertaking either. Our stakeholders wanted the world and we gave it to them.

The project had a few interesting components. The first aspect that caught my eye was the blossoming of the, then, new VOD (or Video On Demand) medium. In 2006, the underlying tech was less than a decade old and was certainly not the predominant. In other words, there was plenty of room to play. As of 2011 however, this tech is ancient history.

On the web, Kabillion offered users the ability to set down roots and invest their time. We gave them a personal avatar, a room to decorate, a virtual economy to muck with and a ton of games and streaming cartoons.

Kabillion is on Time Warner and Comcast cable. Its content is updated monthly and is seasonally themed.

Kabillion is still going and profitable!

I was with Neopets from 2000-2005 and worked under the CEO running special projects.

Where do I begin? I view Neopets as my true Alma Mater. 2000 was the end and the new beginning of the internet. It was a wild time to be alive. I remember having passionate conversations with family members about why I didn’t need a fallback plan in case the net dried up. It’s hard to imagine nowadays but that was reality back then.

I was initially hired at Neopets as a video game developer. I was to make casual games in Flash. I would use AS1 as my instrument and, with that instrument, I would eventually generate hundreds of millions of game plays.

It was wasn’t my first attempt but my second title that garnered attention. My first game was actually a flop, lol. After that minor setback, I decided to make a favorite of mine. It was a clone of snake that I had been pretty feverishly playing on my nokia phone. This turned out to be a really good idea. The game was codenamed Meerca Chase which ended up sticking as the permanent title.

It’s funny because it’s remained in the number 1 spot for ten years. However, I must admit that the game has under gone a face lift or two. Not to mention that it’s been ported to AS2 and then later completely rebuilt in AS3.

I continued to build successful titles after that and, simultaneously, branched into audio engineering for our other games. I loved every bit of it.

My big break came when Neopets landed a toy deal with Thinkway Toys. Thinkway wanted to make a line animatronic replicas of our characters that would speak. It seemed simple enough until you realized that our Neopets had never actually said anything aloud. What did a neopet sound like? No one knew. Thinkway sent over a couple of passes at the direction that they thought we should go which only terrified the site’s creators. In Thinkway’s defense, the founders of Neopets were notoriously hard to please. On the flip side of that coin, It was that attention to detail was part of the key to their success.

Needless to say, I was locked in an office with a microphone and some adventurous co-workers to sort it out. And, what do you know, we did. I still have a few of the little buggers around the house. My favorite was a character called a Grarrl. I imagined that it would sound like a gruff barker at a seedy carnival in the 40s. It was hilarious.

I enjoyed project management as a change of pace so I was awarded our next toy license. Hasbro signed on with us to produce a line of dot-matrix games. We developed close to ten different SKUs before we got to one of my favorite projects of all time! The NEOPEN…

I designed the pen that I wanted as a child. This thing had everything that a kid, that thought like me, would ever need. Not only was it a very close kin to the super popular Tamagotchis of yesteryear but it also had storage for phone numbers, a note pad (vocabulary lists or scan tron answers *wink wink*), mini games and a host of other entertainment. Did I mention that it had an ergonomically inspired grip?

Pictures nor my description are capable of doing justice for the joy that that project brought me. I was having a blast and learning mind numbing gobs about the toy industry, packaging, legality, marketing, planograms, the list of career-building useful experiences goes on and on. It’s the sort of thing that young professionals would happily get in debt over and yet I was being paid to do it.

‘adup’teyshun, inc. (ADUP) was a company that I founded and sold to Mike Young Productions, LLC (now MoonScoop, LLC) in 2006. They had become my primary client and, eventually, it seemed only natural to join forces.

ADUP was a boutique advergaming studio that focused on entertainment clientele. I got the idea to start the business while witnessing the bloated budgets that Neopets’ advertisers waved about. We at Neopets were the best that there were in those days so I was pretty sure that this would lead to a huge win.

I developed my own framework as to how to approach each project. Each project that we took on had to satisfy an ample level of customer affinity, customer awareness & revenue potential.

Though ADUP is long gone, you can still check out our old website here.

I consulted with this company for many years as both a developer and as a designer. In fact, the Urbaniacs were one of my first clients at Adupteyshun. Among my contributions, I programmed one of their most popular games. It was called Wedgie Toss and involved slinging someone by their undergarments across a city.

Working with start-ups is exhilarating. A successful start-up will have more energy than they know what to do with. Urbaniacs was one such group. We would spend hours pondering best practices, marketing concepts, game mechanics and generally having a good time. It was work but, like all of life’s best events, it was rewarding.

Urbaniacs went on to some success. They were acquired by a development firm by the name of Brandissimo (most notable for their part in the NFLRush game).

MrTiki was a BBMMO that I produced from 2005-2008. It featured a rich plot and loads of social components built atop a collaboration of LAMP and Flash. It was a labor of love filled with late nights, hardy laughs, painful arguments, technical break-throughs, personal growth, and amazingly talented and passionate people.

The early days of pre-production were centered on the narrative of what would be a three year adventure. As I recall, one of the founders, Dylan Squires, and I would daydream about what would make the most humorous and fantastic lore. These brainstorming sessions produced character concepts such as Fisheye and his Norach, Mr. Woo, break-dancing Ninjas and host of other such whimsy. It was due to those conversations that we ended up breaking ground in 05.I especially loved Fisheye. He was modeled after the Greek mythological Charon. The best part about building your own content is that anything goes. It starts out as an inside joke or playful poke at a team member and then, the next thing you know, it’s a functional part of project. It’s a freedom that can’t be explained. It simply needs to be experienced.

I had purchased the URL www.mrtiki.com long before any such ideas germinated. In truth, I had no idea what I was going to do with the damn thing. I actually just liked the simplicity of the domain, seemed easy to remember. I figured that I’d probably end up selling some sort of island themed merchandise. Squires and I worked across from each other at adupteyshun. I remember spouting off to him about the brilliant new url that I had purchased. It was he that recommended that, “we create a game out of it.” That was all it took.

We were lucky enough to know and have a friendship with the insanely talented composer Dov Solomon. After very little coaxing, Mr. Solomon agreed to contribute to our passion project and, on the subject of Fisheye, composed this solemn piece to accompany a story about the legend. Give it a listen…

Solomon would go on to produce original music for all sorts of tiki projects. His music would find its way into our mini games, podcasts and maps. His contributions were hugely valuable to the tiki experience.

As side projects go, tiki was constructed in off hours and crammed into already bustling weekends. The power of will that a ragtag team can incubate is remarkable. In our time we developed a fully functional virtual economy equipped with an auction system, trade system, gifting, messaging system, multiplayer server, encrypted scoring, and the list goes on.

Our look and feel was spearheaded by the unique talent of Ms. Nicolette Davenport. Nicolette’s pen defined the games watercolor storybook charm. She was the third member of the core founding team.

We built tiki with virtual pets in mind. Our players (owners) could battle their pets against one another. They could feed and care for their pet, we called them spirits. One of the fun ideas that we implemented was that the spirits were hatched via a physical totem and, if an owner was careful, the spirit would turn back into its totem state. However, a player could simply purchase a potion when this would occur to rectify the situation.

The concept arose because I thought it would be amazing if, when a player looked into their real-world yard, they would be able to find tiki totems. Our totems were everyday earthly items. Things like rocks and sticks. These are items that I played with in my youth anyway. It was only fitting to incorporate them in tiki.

I wore many hats for the project, as a producer is expected. Business development, project management, game designer, audio engineer, voice actor, writer, psychiatrist (only half kidding) those are but a few. However, my technical background always found me back in action as a programmer. I programmed all of our initial client side applications. It was stressful to try and keep all of those plates spinning but rewarding all the same.

One of the best additions to our team came in the form of Wee. That’s not a typo. Wee was our friend and fellow AS3 developer that lived in Singapore. Adupteyshun had been outsourcing work to him from time to time so we always kept in contact. I don’t recall how the subject of him working on tiki came up but I’m glad it did because he took on the lion share of client development from that point forward. Wee was a rockstar. He would knock out a game in a week. He had as much free time as the rest of us, none, and yet he managed to find a way to add more and more to our project.

Our team worked diligently for many years in a heroic effort to share new creative ideas with our audience. A very talented writer by the name of Kinh Nuygen even ended up joining our ranks and wrote a beautiful story with our characters. I think it was something to the tune of 25 chapters.

Though we all had dreams of grandeur for our baby, fate dealt a crushing blow to tiki in 2009. The harddrive that had spun so strong for the four years of tiki’s life gave out and was not salvageable. Unfortunately, this was also case for the comradeship of the team members. For the most part, our midnight warrior team parted ways but, regardless of the conclusion, it was a journey that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.