January 2008

Hi, thanks for dropping by. If you are interested in a lively community around mobile casual games why not register to play, score and make friends. Please go to http://www.playyoo.com/common/registration.html

I will attend next week’s Casual Connect in Amsterdam. If you are there and interested in meeting me please send an email to talk @ playyoo dot com or an SMS to +41786300839

Well, there’s a first time for everything, and on Tuesday morning we had our first serious outage. So, what went wrong ? Well, to be absolutely honest, we’re not exactly sure, since an issue with the application server software pulled the rug out from under the feet of our monitoring and logging systems, and hence everything vanished in a puff of bad logic.

But we’ve learnt our lesson, and we’ve now got monitoring systems monitoring the systems which monitor the systems running the monitoring systems, so hopefully we’ve not only got it covered, but we should be able to come up with pre-emptive measures in the future.

We’re not going to promise it won’t happen again. We’re not insane. But hopefully it’s a lot less likely.

We’re very sorry for the loss of service, and especially for anybody who lost work in the Game Creator.

It’s fun, it’s personal, it’s unique (you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s ever received a personalized video or mobile game). Equally as important, it’s free- and just might look like you invested months learning how to code.

Next time you’re wandering aimlessly through shops looking for that “perfect gift”, or about to spend your money on yet another sweater, think about what you could give instead:

• Tap into some sibling rivalry, turning photos of you and your brother into tic tac toe opponents
• Let your husband, or wife, hone their memory with a game of pairs that includes photos of your pets
• Let your friend blow off some steam with a classic whack-a-mole game targeting least favorite politician

Just some ideas- you could even incorporate holiday themes – Valentine’s Day, Christmas… I’m sure you can think of something far more interesting, creative, and personal. Get started with the Playyoo Game Creator and let your creativity fly.

While we don’t necessarily look to analyst reports to drive our every move, I’ll be the first to admit that a little external validation is nice, when a survey or report supports our way of thinking- and reminds us that we really are on the right track. So, I was happy to see that Snack Culture made it to Trend Watching’s list of 8 Important Consumer Trends for 2008.

Quoting Nancy Miller of Wired, Trend Watching described this trend:

“Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips - in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture - and boy, is it tasty (not to mention addictive).”

If “Snack-o-tainment” (as Wired Magazine called it) will thrive in 2008, we’re not surprised. Sure, as a culture, we’re more busy, more rushed, more distracted- but we’re But whether it’s for an hour, or a small sliver of time- we’re all still looking to connect with friends, decompress, challenge ourselves, compete with others, and just have fun.

And here at Playyoo, we pride ourselves on cooking up the perfect game snack: bite-sized games that you can tuck into your pocket (literally). And with Game Creator, you’re now able to create those snacks yourself- whether you just want to try your hand at being a game designer, or want to give a uniquely personal gift to friends and family.

We are happy to report that we released a maintenance patch (v1.0.02), which squashed few bugs. Please check the release notes in our forum.