My Secret Project

For the past month and a half (and why this blog hasn’t been updated in a while), I’ve been working on a bit of a “secret project”. It’s a web game that I’ve been kicking around in my head for quite some time now, and I feel it’s the right time to talk about it now! But first, some background …

As some of you may know, I’m quite happily addicted to Facebook web games such as Mafia Wars, Farmville, and Restaurant City. They’re very similar to the BBS door games I used to play as a kid before the Internet was well-established. Games like Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) , Barren Realms Elite (BRE), and Trade Wars 2002 were incredibly modest compared to the console games of the day, but incredibly addictive. They all worked off a pretty simple idea: you start off in a small little game world, every day you get some “turns”, and you do things with those turns. Additionally, you share this world with other people also playing this game. That’s it! It’s been great to see this formula return to popularity again, thanks to companies like Zynga and Playfish.

These games seem pretty simple, especially to those used to playing more “hardcore” titles such as Halo, Call of Duty, Madden, etc. but there’s no denying their popularity. A recent article from the New York Times about Farmville mentions that over 62 million have signed up to play the game, and 22 million log on daily! I happily count myself as one of them, and I have many friends and co-workers that do just the same.

So yup, I’m making a game in that vein. Not because I want to “get rich quick” or anything, but because I’ve been in love with this type of game ever since playing Trade Wars 2002 as a kid so long ago. In fact, the game I’m making is pretty heavily inspired by TW2002, as well as other titles that I’ve played since then, including Mafia Wars, and even World of Warcraft. I’ve accumulated a lot of interesting game ideas that I just want to try out and see if they stick.

Also, this has been a great opportunity for me to go back to my programming roots. It’s been very refreshing to be back in a “developer mindset”. I still very much love testing, especially since it’s still my day job, but it’s nice being in total control of my own project once again. I’ll probably be using this space to geek out about a lot of “new” things I’ve learned, such as ASP.NET MVC and .NET’s LINQ.

Anyway, watch this space for more information! I’ve been very happy with the progress I’ve made so far, but I do want to make some more additions before I make it public. And this will likely continue to be a work-in-progress (like any good web game!) for a long time …