I get asked a lot of questions about what it’s like here at the office. A lot of Flash developers work from their bedrooms toiling late into the night, and the idea of working at an actual office is interesting to some. I decided to answer the most popular questions, or at least the questions I tend to get the most.

Q: Where’s the office located?

We are in warm sunny Southern California. When I say warm and sunny, I seriously mean it. SoCal doesn’t seem to get colder than 40-50 degrees F in the Winter, and it rarely rains here… the weather always seems nice. I miss the rain a bit from Northern California, but the sunshine and actual Spring-like weather is a nice change. We are nearby a shopping center with good food. Disneyland is 15 minutes away. There are a ton of palm trees here and they plant them here as if they are the only thing that will save humanity. The office is in Orange County, or as some people like to call it “the OC.”

Q: Isn’t it hard doing Flash the entire day?

It was at the beginning. What was good was that my first few days at work were shorter days, which allowed the work day to ease from a few hours to the normal eight hours a day. Now it’s no big deal… I rarely feel burned out and there is plenty to do. If I do get burned out by a code that isn’t getting fixed I’ll go play video games for a while, surf the web, or play some Flash games online. It’s definitely different from casual home programming though, but luckily the transition only takes a few days. And no, Luka didn’t program on the XO laptop, as much as I would have liked to imagined that happened.

Q: Do you have a cubicle or a small office?

I don’t really have either. I have a large work area out in the main office area. The main work area is made up of large desks, but there are no big obtrusive walls separating the different work spaces. We have two main office areas… the administrative office / entertainment center, and what I have nicknamed “the bullpen” which is where the Flash devs work. I like my desk because it has a great big window next to it where I can watch the UPS trucks try to back up and turn around in a 20-foot radius.

Q: What do you do there?

Haha, good question. I have a few different responsibilities. I am the head of game development here, so my job includes running local game development here, managing site integration with other sites (for example, Shockwave’s high score system), and making my own games. I also am in charge of making sure the food still tastes good and that the internet still works for all my favorite websites.

Q: What’s the office environment like?

We have a relaxed work environment. I play music at my workspace from my IPod and do my work. If I get hungry or thirsty we have a snack table with good food (I am extremely partial to the rice crackers and Diet Dr. Pepper). We have a great couch that I love sitting on when doing paperwork or when needing a break to play a game or two. We have several consoles, including a Wii, XBox 360, NES, and others. We take trips too, like we have played golf and gone snowboarding on different occasions. We also go to lunch together when microwave soup or sandwiches are not cutting it for the day.

Q: Do you have to wear a shirt and tie?

Nope! We have a casual dress code of slightly less than work-casual. I come in a pair of skate shoes and a button-up shirt or t-shirt. If we go out to some big company dinner we’ll all dress up for the occasion. It’s nice to feel comfortable at work without having some stiff collar to program in. Very much unlike Office Space garb, which came to mind suddenly, and it was the only appropriate picture… I think.

Q: Any downsides to the office?

I can’t really think of any. If I really had to nitpick, rolling out of bed and being at the keyboard already was convenient when I worked from home. I also was a bit frustrated if I accidentally left a file at the office that I needed, but I recently fixed that problem by getting remote desktop working. But really, just having an open area dedicated to work is completely awesome and outweighs all that. To the left is a picture of my old workspace at home. To get into my chair I had to swivel because my chair was backed up into my bed and did not let me roll backwards.

Q: Mac or PC?

We are mixed. I am growing partial to Macs because they just seem to work when you need them to, but I am running Vista at my desk. And while I am at it, I am running a computer that is 2.4 Ghz Dual Core with 2 GB of RAM and Dual 512’s. If you have a preference most likely it can be fulfilled. If I could program an awesome Flash game in MS-DOS then that would probably be okay too.

Q: Do you work with Dan? He’s in the office right?

Yes, he is in the admin office. Yes, he is a real person. No, he does not wear armor to work. He beats me at golf but I beat him at Worms… it all balances out. He’s the boss around here and runs the whole operation of Armor Games. We have been working together since about 2004 when he sponsored my first title, and it’s great to finally have an office where we don’t have to email back and forth and can just walk into the other room to talk. If Dan has an idea it’s also a lot easier to draw out the ideas on a whiteboard then trying to describe it in an email.

Q: Do you really have biometric fingerprint scanners at your office doors?

Yes, we are from the future. You just put your finger on the little piece of glass and it happily chirps at you and lets you in. I once had a blister on my scan finger and it made it hard to get in but overall the system works. For all the times I have locked myself out of a building or car it is truly a lifesaver.

Q: Pics or it didn’t happen.

We have a ton of pictures from our recent job posting if you want to see more!

I think that is about it… if you have any more questions we’ll try to answer them in thread!

I haven’t made a post in a while here on the Blog, though I keep meaning to.

So I have a few things to make note of. First things first I’ve just been informed by Dan that Shift 2 was featured on the Fox program found at the link below. Continuing on the mainstream success of Shift, the UK’s largest PC magazine, PC Zone features an article on the original Shift, as well as featuring it on their Demo Disk. This is all great coverage for us, and its all thanks to our visitors
SHIFT2 ON PC&G

I’ve also recently released IndestructoTank A.E., on the one year anniversary of my first major successful game, IndestructoTank. You may remember it came second in the Armor contest before last, and begun the lad up to me joining this great work team at Armor, and I can vouch for it, if you are considering applying to the post’s advertised on this blog, you won’t regret it.

Speaking of recent releases, my other game, Scoregamites has been met with mostly praise, which I’m glad for, as it’s based on the people at my old university course, and a semi apology for me leaving them in the lurch for their last year :p

And what of the future? When Dan suggested last month that he’d like a kind of game in the same vein as a bowman title. As I’ve been looking for an excuse to resurrect my first game series, Sleepless Knight, by transforming her into a medieval sniper assassin in a sweet stealth type engine. Here’s a screenie

There are a few things bugging me about Console games and I see them slowly seeping into Flash games.  A few game mechanics are making games more difficult and less fun to play, which causes a lot of friction when trying to beat a game for the first time.  I think there are good solutions to these problems, so I hope that they will be fixed for the sake of my sanity.

1)  Games That Hide Health

I have found recently that games are starting to mask how much health you actually have.  Instead of a solid number or a bar of some sort, games use other means of telling you how much health you have.  For example, in Gears of War, the screen starts to turn red and an icon in the middle of the screen starts to appear.  For one, the amount of red pixels on the screen is not a very good indication of how healthy I am.  It’s really hard to judge whether I am nearing death, at death, or just approaching death.  A lot of really brilliant gaming moments are when I am rushing into a battle with close to nil health, and being able to survive it… but without a health bar, how do I know what to do?  Should I hide and heal, or go at it?  Will it be a few bullets or one to get killed?  I need to know!  It’s hard to judge a red screen and say, “hey, I count 20 red pixels so I must be near death!”.  I want health bars please.  Or quite possibly, have both the red screen and a health bar?

2)  Auto-Camera Only

It’s convenient, but a camera is not always going to be at the right angle for doing things in a Third-Person game.  An example of this is Super Mario Galaxy… the camera is pretty darn good, but sometimes it’s not in the proper place.  I find that it becomes frustrating to move around and do things when the camera is point straight at my face.  Super Mario 64 had a really nice camera system, that was both free-moving, POV, or even completely manual.  Hopefully games will realize that I don’t always want the camera whizzing around automatically, and that sometimes I need to be able to see in front of me to move!

3)  AI Friends That Know Better

I find a lot of games have the AI set to know exactly where to go, so your buddies will always run ahead of you in the right direction.  That’s great and all, but I love exploring.  I like the idea of running around and finding areas, taking in the scenery, etc.  I don’t like the idea that the AI are going to run ahead before you even see an enemy, and when you get to the fight half your friends are dead and the enemy is almost completely wiped out.  I think AI should at least have a couple settings (like in Mass Effect) that allow them to at least be set to “Run ahead, see if I care” or “I’ll be the leader”.

4)  Games with Voice Acting… Sometimes.

Games tend to always have voices during cutscenes.  Then there are moments right before levels when the players are talking, and that’s fantastic too.  But then you get mid-level events, and the characters start talking… with text boxes.  It’s suddenly like the game decided that the music was too important and that any dialog would hurt the overture; but quite frankly it just sucks me out of the game and back into reality again.  Games like Viva Pinata clears this issue by having all dialog in-game being voiced, and other games have no voices which works too.  I can handle reading text for an entire game, and games that only have text are fine.  But there is friction in gaming when suddenly the character’s voice is gone, their mouth is moving, but there is now a speech bubble instead.  One or the other is the best way to go.

5)  Games Without a Climax

I’ve been playing this game for 30 hours, and what’s at the end?  Nothing!  The game is banking on you buying the sequel, which sadly has yet to even be finished by the game studio.  But knowing that a sequel will take another year or so, I just feel bad.  I think there can be a better way to do this.  Games really need to be made in the style of Harry Potter: even though each Harry Potter book is part of a large 7-part story, each manages to end on both a cliff-hanger and with a climax.  I feel like games are just leaving me with the cliff-hanger these days, and I wish there would be a bit of closure to my romp through the jungle for the past 30 hours of my life.  I love the mystery of a concealed story but I need some reward or epic battle.  Reward me but make me hunger for more!

So that’s my take, anyone have any other mechanics or styles of gameplay that irk you?

Want to work in a great environment making games?

We are looking to hire flash game developers and an account representative to work closely with our online partners. You can check out this page for more info.

Click Here

Short list of benefits include….
*Competitive Salary
*Bonuses for every game released
*Rev-Share
*Personal and Company Incentives
*401k package
*Health Insurance

Here are some pictures from our office. (Click Here)

Send all resumes and game portfolios to ‘Jobs (at) ArmorGames.com’

I CAN’T STOP PLAYING THE GAME!

Every stage is a hit of finely tuned adrenaline waiting for the ball to pass into victory or slowly fade into the eternal lope like metallic desk balls clicking away in the night.

After much sweat, tears and balls, I got my total score to 54!!

Can anyone beat me?

-Daniel

I recently made a game called Compulse, which you can play at the Armor Games site. This game is about bouncing a ball to the goal as simply as possible… you can drag as a few or as many tiles to help alter the ball’s trajectory.

At the office, we have been playing this game all day, trying to one up each other on different levels. After the recent update to make all the par and pro times a lot harder, I have managed to get a total score of 56, 3 under the proscore for the entire game.

Anyone think they can beat the creator? 56 or less… go for it.

http://armorgames.com/play/1150/compulse

Note: If you are playing with a file that doesn’t say v1.1, your file is old. Refresh the page!