Wonderland

Makies FabLab is live...

After many months of development alongside (and you know how difficult that is) Makies going into Selfridges, and ramping up for Xmas delivery, and various in-store apps, and STUFF, we are aliiiiiiive!

And it's just the beginning. We decided a while back that we wanted Makies FabLab to be an iterative, growing thing; something that we would launch early and expand upon on a regular basis.

We did this with our toys - when they went live, they were bone white, weird looking, and £100. It was horrible! But we stuck with it, and iterating with our customers means Makies are looking pretty happy right now.

(Yep, she's 3D printed!)

So here we are... Makies FabLab is a fashion game, targeted at 8-80. It's got a massive focus on creativity: while most fashion dolls are mass produced passive things, we wanted ours to be little individuals, who encourage creative hands-on making.

We've blended Resource Management with Dress Up, so far, to produce a lightly educational clothes-making game: growing materials through to patterning cloth and fulfilling orders. Next steps: player-to-player shops, if that's what our community ask for. Android. More things to create.

Would you help us?

We have fantastic 5* reviews so far on the AppStore, but as you know, absolutely the more the merrier. It's the currency of now, that, and we have a very limited window (presumably!) of being on the launch page under Best New Games (thanks Apple!). 

The game's here: if you're willing, please play, rate, review, share, for great justice heartfelt gratitude. <3

MAKIES is alpha ...

This is why I've been so ridiculously silent around here for so long: on Friday, we put MAKIES into open alpha:

MAKIES is an action doll creator: a player/customer can design their own action doll - features, hair, clothes and everything - & we then 3D print it uniquely to them, build & dress it, and send on to them within 3 weeks of ordering.

There's more to come, too: the avatar will be able to unlock collectibles for the action doll. In the future, the action doll will be able to do the same for the avatar, using clever bits of electronica \o/.

So here we are in May, in open alpha (it's the new closed beta, only scarier :-))

Which means people will see all the string and sellotape, but everyone can also pitch in with suggestions at an early stage, too. During alpha, the doll is £99, including an outfit and taxes.

For beta, we'll have cheaper and more expensive versions available, playing with complexity of tailoring and size of print, etc. Tablet apps, too, and lastly, the all-important full battery of toy safety tests (totally confident on that last one - the doll's already passed a full series, but we still need to do USA and Japan ones too, etc. It just takes time).

3D printing! It's a future! :D

makie.me

 

Work stuff

Some of what we're up to at work got picked up by ARGnet, in a very nice writeup, which is pleasing - thanks ARGnet! In short, gameswise we have two ARGs in development, as well as a visually-exciting flash game, and something super cool for PC at the paperwork stage, too. A general (and early-days) overview of the portfolio of stuff (we're not just doing games, of course) can be found at the Guardian, although I've also been getting some more very nice newer ideas across my desk recently, verrrry nice. It's been a busy few months!

I did a Games and Education panel at BETT yesterday, with Margaret Robertson (the one and only) as chair, and Gobion Rowlands, Derek Robertson, Aleks Krotoski and myself answering her (and the audience's) questions. It was much fun to do, probably because, as Margaret put it, the panel was made up of someone who commissions educational games (me), someone who makes educational games (Gobion), someone who studies educational games (Aleks) and someone who uses educational games to teach with (Derek). Nice gamut. There was a tangible love for games as technology and cultural artifacts that can be used to do great things with, which produces a good, fuzzy-in-the-tummy feeling.

I've also got a giant project about to land in a few weeks, but details on that can wait for now.  Meanwhile, the loo's packed in, the bath's leaking, the Japanese bum-washing toilet seat* that we bought off eBay uses a transformer that's as loud as a generator, and my PC's sound has died again. I can't get to the chocolate ice cream because the washing machine is pulled into the kitchen while the builder attempts to find the water main (we can't find it). It's like home is the yin to my work's yang at the moment. Or something.

Anyway, back to it.

*This is what going to the Tokyo Game Show does to you.

Happy new year!

I'm looking forward to this one...!

Meanwhile, via BB:

/flex!

Festive joymas!

Have a lovely present-giving ceremony! See you on the other side of half an xmas pudding. I really can eat half an xmas pudding, no problem.

Here's someone else who needs a touch of pudding:

xx