Blog
Bulge UI Demo
From our Kickstarter page, a demo of an early Bulge build:
We’re slowly moving towards a working game!
Nick’s been interviewed at Guns and Dice
Our very own CFO, Nick Karp, has given a lovely and informative interview on Guns, Dice, Butter about his years at SPI and Victory games, the epic games he’s designed and about his time here at Shenandoah.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Pat Ward
Game Designer of the Month!
Well it’s all happening around here. Jeff’s being asked to lecture to college students about game design, Nick’s being interviewed for a podcast, I, erm, nearly finished Stalker: Call of Pripyat and now Eric, our CEO has been nominated Game Designer of the Month over at the Board Game Geek. This is a real honour and over the month he’ll be answering as many questions as possible so feel free to join him.
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Pat Ward
Kickstarter Update and a Message from Mark Herman
Folks,
This is all somewhat belated, but I wanted to put something up on our website about two very exciting events. First, we’ve made our goal on Kickstarter, with only about a third of the campaign done! Donations are currently up to nearly $25,000, and the response from the board and wargaming community has been nothing short of spectacular. What’s particularly encouraging is that a lot of the money has come from many small donations, each one a gamer who wants to see our particular kind of games on the iPad. We always knew you were out there. Now we can prove it, which will make for easier going in the future.
Secondly, legendary game designer Mark Herman, another SPI veteran, has signed on to do the first sequel to Battle of the Bulge on the Battle of El Alamein. This underappreciated …
Form Follows Function – Oh really?
So form follows function .. does it? Really?
Well .. yes .. and no. Partly.
Anyone who’s read my earlier art diary posts will have noticed me mention functionality and its importance in wargame map design, often with a nod towards Redmond Simonsen. Being a regular lurker and one time fist waving contributor to the BGG’s board game art forums I’ve noticed a number of people bandying about the phrase “form follows function” like it was some kind of mantra. A golden rule. A statement of fact. And right now I’m going to terrify the rest of the team by telling you that most of the people throwing that around don’t have the first clue of what they’re talking about.
Let’s be perfectly clear from the start. It’s true. And it’s not true. It’s a partial truth.
Look, in simple terms we’re talking about …
Shenandoah Studio is On Kickstarter!
We are happy to announce that our first game, John Butterfield’s “Battle of the Bulge,” is now a Kickstarter project. The campaign launches on Thursday, April 26th around 5:00 o’clock Eastern time. We are excited to have the opportunity to tell the world about our game and to give so many people the opportunity to be a part of it.
The Goal
Our goal is to raise $20,000 which we use to improve the quality of the game: more and better sound effects and music, enhanced game play, and more play modes. We are confident we will reach this goal – with your help! We have provided a wide variety of rewards and we hope you find a reward that excites you.
Stretch Goals
We have exciting surprise announcements to make too! We have two major surprise announcements that we’ll make during the campaign …
Nothing Except A Battle Lost
I’ve been playing Slitherine’s excellent Battle Academy pretty much nonstop for the past couple days. It’s an excellent simulation of a number of different time periods and matchups during World War II, both actual and hypothetical, although it’s really at the other end of the spectrum from what we’re doing with Bulge. The units in the game are fire teams and individual vehicles rather than brigades and divisions, and predictably the scenarios give you much less of a feel for the overall sweep of the war. You’re not seeing the war from the headquarters map table, you’re seeing it from the tank commander’s hatch and squad leader’s foxhole, and the view is very different. I’ve picked up some dos and don’ts from their user interface and I have some issues with their level design, but this …
Brutal Transparency
As I write this Shenandoah is three days into our first Scrum sprint. No, we haven’t taken up rugby as a hobby- let’s face it, a bunch of wargamers trying to do anything requiring intense physical activity isn’t the best idea in the world, especially since we don’t have “key man” insurance for the company yet. Scrum, for those of you following at home, is a software development methodology that tries to get software delivered something close to on time. (Stop laughing, you in the back) Like pretty much any set of techniques there’s a lot of trimmings, but the core is very simple: at the start of a two or three week “sprint” the team commits to certain tasks, which are going to lead to a working build of the software. Each task has …
Touch Resolution
Nothing like a change in spec to mess with my day. iPad the Next Generation is coming out and in typical “Q” fashion, a snap of the fingers has our interface in two split realities. For those not keeping up, iPad:TNG has 2048—1536 pixels while the previous iterations are 1024×768. 4X pixels in the same surface area is great for super crisp graphics, but what happens to apps using pixel resolution to drive touch interactions like pinch, slide, and swipe?
In general, touch location is returned as a pixel location. As the touch location moves, comparing the previous touch location to the new touch location to determines the delta (change). On iPad2, if a touch moves 1 inch horizontally in portrait mode, the delta is ~105 pixels, on the new iPad it’s ~210 pixels. If an image was set to rotate fully …
David Dunham Joins the Shenandoah Studio
We are happy to announce that David Dunham has joined the Studio as our Lead Developer and development manager. David has a deep background in software development, going back to one of the first outlining programs for the Mac, Acta, which he published in 1986. He later published a new outliner, Opal, which built upon the success of Acta.
David has worked in a number of game companies as a programmer, project lead, and development manager, including GameHouse Studios, Rogue Amoeba, and others. He also worked at Tableau Software where he implemented Tableau Mobile for the iPad.
David has also published an excellent game himself, via his company A# (www.a-sharp.com), called “King of Dragon Pass.”
He published it in 1999 on Windows and Mac to wide acclaim. The game is a turn-based strategy game set in the fantasy world of Glorantha. In September …
Things To Do in St. Vith When You’re Dead
Let’s talk about dead time.
Anybody who’s played a serious board game knows what exactly I’m talking about- heck, anyone who’s played Monopoly does, though you may not know the term. Dead time comes after you’ve bought the last property needed to meld half the board into a dark real-estate empire stretching from St. Charles Place to Marvin Gardens, after you’ve smashed the last German panzer division, and after the last Commie hypersonic bomber in Fortress America has died to Freedom Lasers. (Don’t you dare judge me) Your brilliance is resolved by rolls of the dice and checks against the table, your turn ends…
…and then it’s John’s turn to go. And Jim’s. And Mary’s, just to be gender inclusive. During which time you are allowed to do precisely zip, the warm glow of your devastating strategic moves fading into the background …
Advancing on All Fronts
Each startup company has a personality of its own and a path forward that is unique, we are no exception. It took us the better part of a year to get our portfolio of games signed and our team assembled and now we are moving rapidly. We have more people joining soon – announcements pending! – and more games too. As we grow, our site is needing more and more attention too. If you are a gamer and an experienced WordPress guru, and you would like to help, drop me a note. We are currently looking for consulting help but we would much prefer a hobbyist to step forward.
we don’t have the time to explain to them what a movement allowanc
Along similar lines, we are starting our internationalization release strategy and we have decided we want to enter …
And We’re OFF!
We are pleased to announce that Shenandoah has closed its first round of outside funding the money is in the bank!
This backing from friends and family will get the Studio’s first game into development, enabling us to showcase our approach to bringing turn-based strategy games to the iPad and iPhone, to both the gaming community and to potential investors.
We are grateful to our backers: gamers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who share our vision for the hobby and have the faith and confidence to provide the means to take it to the next step.
The funding team includes myself and our CFO, Nick Karp.
Cheers!
Eric
Eric Lee Smith
Founder & CEO
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Eric Smith
Learning from Our Elders
Over the Christmas holiday we returned to our home city of Liverpool to catch up with relatives and friends. It is always a very important time for us as it is the only time we get to see most of them.
But this Christmas there was an additional chance meeting at a bus stop. My son and I were waiting for a bus to take us into town to spend his Christmas money in the sales and were joined by this nondescript looking old man. It was freezing cold, blowing a gale and raining and he made a comment to us about how he remembered the snow fall when he was de-mobbed and how he’d had to wade through 4 feet of it as he wandered over the farmers fields to get home (it is now a vast, sprawling housing estate).
…
Shenandoah hires a Senior Developer
We are happy to announce that Miguel Nieves has joined the Studio as a Senior Developer.
Miguel graduated from Drexel University in 2005 with a degree in computer science and has spent the last six years working on a variety of games. The games appeared on platforms such as Nin]tendo DS/DSi, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation Portable, Flash, and – most importantly for us – the iPhone and iPad. The most recent game he programmed is called “XenoCube” on iOS and I recommend it to you.
His favorite area of software development is game AI. Miguel is also an accomplished graphic designer and musician: he plays the violin, bass guitar, and Didgeridoo(!).
Welcome on board Miguel!
Cheers,
E
Eric Lee Smith
Founder & CEO
subject: hiring, Shenandoah Studio, welcome
author: Eric Smith
RIP Adam Adamowicz
One of the unsung heroes has left us.
Not many of us can ever hope to match his ability or levels of output but this mans work alone should show you how important, inspirational and influential a good artist and, by all accounts, a wonderful person, can be.
Update: Bethesda have put up a page in his memory.
www.elderscrolls.com
subject: discussion
author: Pat Ward
Nick Karp joins the Shenandoah Studio
Greetings,
This is another late, but still right on time announcement: we are happy to say that Nick Karp has joined the Studio as our CFO.
But of course Nick is also an award-winning game designer. His game “Vietnam” is still highly respected and continues to be played. He designed other games while a member of the game design staff at SPI, where I was also a designer.
Nick joined SPI before I did, before they could actually pay him in cash in fact because he was under age. He published his first game at SPI before he graduated from high school. We became best friends during that time and we even started a company together a few years later, in the mind-1980′s. We upgraded Macintosh computers to 512k of RAM (with soldering guns in hand). The company was called “EON Flashcorp” after …
Pat Ward – Art Director
Greetings,
This introduction is overdue, yet right on time. Shenandoah brought Patrick Ward on as a partner back in November, 2011 to be our Art Director and leader of how we appear visually to the outside world.
Patrick has a rich background in 3-D animation, working for some of the top firms in console gaming. He also knows sound, graphic design, web design, and more. Take a quick look at this video and the others from Pat’s vimeo portfolio.
Pat is also a serious boardgamer, especially of block games from Columbia Games, game which I love personally too.
Plus, he sounds like John Lennon, which is a major plus in our book.
Indeed, Pat graduated from Liverpool University – but after Gerry and Pacemakers – and continues to live outside Liverpool.
Academy games began working with Pat as a freelancer before he joined Shenandoah and the maps …
Conflict of Heroes
I’ve mentioned elsewhere about my involvement with the Conflict of Heroes series by Academy games. Well I’m very pleased to announce that the artwork I did for the reprint of Awakening the Bear has finally seen the light of day. Uwe announced it on Academy’s site and there’s been some talk on the Geek.
I’ve got some more info and shots on my own site, Colour and Noise
It’s always very exciting see your work being published but it’s a very nervous time too. You do your best to ensure everything is perfect, that the client is happy and then send it off to a printer and a process you have precious little control over. There’s only so much you can do to ensure you adhere to the printers specs and colour profiles, comparing earlier print runs (from different printers and different …
Rommel in the Desert – one I made earlier
As much as I love my shiny new iPad, I like block games. It’s the deception and physical chunkiness of the blocks. The ability to pick it up and slam it on the table with a resounding crack knowing your 4 point Panzers are going to annihilate the 1 point infantry he has in that hex. Providing that STILL IS that 1 point infantry ..
So I’ve been slowly amassing them .. slowly as in I have 3. EastFront 2, Quebec 1759 and Rommel in the Desert. Not much of a collection but they stand proud and look like they mean business when they’re on the table. Well, EastFront does and Quebec looks interesting. But Rommel in the Desert is battered (it was a Geek trade for .. and don’t let Eric and John know, .. Ambush).
A …
Turn-based Games Support for iOS 5
In Apple’s presentation yesterday at their developer’s conference, they announced “support for turn-based games at the operating system level for iOS 5.” It was during the “Game Center” portion of the presentation and merited just a brief mention, but it is big news for us and for other game companies. What it means is that there will be a standard way to communicate “it’s your turn now” to your opponent once you’ve finished your turn. I’m sure it will have other features too. Turn-based games have already been huge hits on the iPad/iPhone – think “Words with Friends – but so far each company has had to implement the messaging system themselves; no longer. This is good news.
subject: discussion
author: Eric Smith
The Whizzing Sound…
…that this guy just heard is the sound of the point going straight over his head and missing him by a long mile.
A brief recap: the article, “Of Champions and Cowards”, talks about large organizations and the tendency they have towards paralysis. Part of the article is devoted to discussing the proliferation of decision points that takes place, and I think that portion of it is correct. The more people that have to “sign off” on a change or a new initiative, the less likely it is that you’ll get anything done in the first place. Having internal “champions” for new initiatives with the authority to get things done allows large companies to combine their larger resources with some of the dynamism of small companies, and that’s a Good Thing. So no arguments with the “Champions” part of the article.
Where …
In Praise of Friction: On Realism, Wargames, and Fog
Ever since Charles Roberts inaugurated the modern hobby of wargaming in the 1970s, one of the hallmarks of most game designs has been their emphasis on what I would call historical realism. Designers in days of yore famously spent days or weeks researching extensively detailed orders of battle and troop strengths, leading one gamer friend of mine to comment that for them altering the order of arrival for various regiments on the battlefield constituted a major change. Even today, many wargames with battle-specific scenarios have highly specific setup instructions, reinforcement schedules, and special rules designed to make sure events unfold just as they did in real life. Good examples of this are the Great Battles of the American Civil War series and GMT’s Barbarossa series. A classical wargame is a lot like a scientific experiment, with …
Welcome to The Shenandoah Studio
We are a new game company focusing on publishing “hobby games†on the iPad – including “Euro†games and traditional war games by top designers. We publish non-casual games.
We have recently changed our name and there’s a good story behind it.
We are blogging frequently and you can follow us here (also via RSS) or on FaceBook.
Thanks for stopping by.
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Eric Smith
Shenandoah Interview at iOS Board Games Blog!
Over the past few weeks I’ve had a great conversation with Gabe Alvaro, one of the guys running the iOS Board Games Blog over at BoardGameGeek. Today the resulting interview went live over there, so get ye hence and read! Gabe asked some very interesting questions, and we had a very good discussion about what we hope to do and where the company’s going.
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Jeff Dougherty
A Slice of Life
Eric: “Heidi [one of his two dogs] is pretty oblivious, but Emma [the other] is pretty smart.”
Jeff: “Yeah, except that she thinks I’m an ax murderer.” [Note: This is not an exaggeration. Every time I visit Eric, Emma barks up a storm for half an hour before deciding that I'm safe...this time.]
Eric: “She probably has a reason for that.”
*Pause*
Jeff: “Oh, come on. That was one time! Do I have to hear about it for the rest of my life?”
The industry’s finest, hard at their trade.
subject: discussion
author: Jeff Dougherty
Call for Playtesters
The Shenandoah Studio is looking for playtesters for the board version of our forthcoming iPad game War Patrol. The objective of this round of playtesting is to make sure that the game is fun, engaging, has replay value, and is easy enough for a general gamer audience to learn.
Playtesters will receive a complete playtest kit in either PDF or dead-tree form, whichever they prefer, and will be credited as members of the War Patrol production team for both the iPad version and the physical board game, should one be printed.
If interested, contact Jeff Dougherty or leave a comment below this post. Looking forward to kicking off our first series of playtests!
subject: playtest
author: Jeff Dougherty
On Interface and Design
Great comment over at Fortress Ameritrash, which recently published the press release announcing our existence. From user Sagrilarus:
It’s going to take more than an interesting list of titles. It’s going to take some exceptionally good human/computer interface decisions as well considering the square footage limitations of iPad screen. Pan and zoom isn’t going to work for these games — big picture is important to all but two of the titles they’ve announced. They’re going to need to find innovative ways to provide detail at the hex level while still presenting the big picture. I’m seeing DoW do it very well with Memoir Online, but the map size and level of detail required to be presented in that Memoir is exceptionally small. It’s really a good choice for automation. I play at 1920×1200 and can see the whole board.
They’ve …
Development Underway
The Project Simonsen team is busy analyzing each of our first nine games and estimating the time it will take to implement each game. The publication order is not yet final, but will be announced soon. We are seeing good synergies between the games, with the work put into the first game helping make the second game’s development schedule shorter. We are focusing on shared code libraries for core modules.
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Eric Smith
Shenandoah Studio at Purple Pawn!
I’m excited to see a news item about the us over at Purple Pawn. As somebody with fingers in a lot of gaming pies (board, computer, and pencil-and-paper RPG) I really appreciate their inclusive approach to the hobby. It’s a great way to get all my gaming fixes in one place.
And the good word spreads…
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Jeff Dougherty
Of Mice and Metrics
Joost Van Dreunen has a great post about the use of analytics in today’s game space over at GamesBrief. The titles are a bit ridiculous (am I the only one who read “Tiger Analytics” and couldn’t stop thinking of Charlie Sheen?), but the thought there is good.
To some degree, the arguments he floats as being made against analytics make sense. It doesn’t matter how well you measure your users and marketing channels if your game sucks. On the other hand, as someone with a scientific background I’m often shocked by how little people know about their own products and how they’re performing, and how unmotivated they sometimes are to learn. It’s doing “fine”. Well, how fine? How many downloads? When you launched that ad campaign a month ago, did your sales actually go …
A 9V Battery to the Brain Improves Your Wargaming?
Via Slashdot:
By applying low levels of electrical current to different parts of the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp, University of New Mexico researchers claim to have documented some significant changes in brain activity, which vary depending on the part of the brain targeted. Gamers, take note: in one experiment in which volunteers were recorded while playing a video war game, “those receiving 2 milliamps to the scalp (about one-five-hundredth the amount drawn by a 100-watt light bulb) showed twice as much improvement in the game after a short amount of training as those receiving one-twentieth the amount of current.”
Hmmm. Something tells me I’d better get on this before they ban it at next year’s WBC. Hey, Eric, when we get funded can I have a personal research budget? No reason.
New Gaming News Link!
Neat gaming site that collects news from a lot of places around the Net, called GameTab. Thanks to Dan Verssen for the tip!
We have a new name!
Greetings All,
When I announced Project Simonsen last week, I expected us to operate under that name for several months before formally incorporating. However, recent events have moved a great deal faster than we anticipated and we received legal advice to incorporate as soon as possible. That meant a lot of things, including reams of legal paperwork, but it also meant that I had to pick a new, permanent name for Project Simonsen to incorporate under.
Before I go any further: yes, this means our website URL will be changing in the near future. However, the Simonsen URL at http://www.projectsimonsen.com will remain active, no need to update your bookmarks. As to what the new name and new address is, read on…
My partners and some of our game designers sent in suggestions, but left the final decision up to me. I had to quickly …
On Mario’s Burning Platform, and the Future of Mobile Gaming
The good folks over at Flurry Analytics have a fascinating post up today that I think really points the way forward for video games. Based on some of their data, I’m going to make two major arguments here:
Hand-held game players, a proud lineage that goes all the way back to the Game Boys my generation played with as kids, are going the way of the dinosaur.
Nintendo, the ur-game company of my youth that seemed to be as much an unchanging part of the landscape as the very mountains themselves, is on the way to destruction.
First things first. Flurry, for those of you who don’t know, makes their living by planting bits of code inside developer’s applications that work similarly to a cookie from a website- they tell you, in aggregate form, who’s using your app, how often they use …
Project Simonsen on Twitter
So, I’ve managed to re-integrate our previously ornery Twitter account with this blog, so from now on you’ll be able to receive notifications of our blog posts by following this account. Or, just click the convenient “Follow Me” button now on the right-hand side of your screen!
Stand By For Announcements!
Hi, everyone. No, we’re not dead, we’ve just been busy getting the next phase of Project Simonsen ready to roll. We expect to have a major announcement later this week or early next, along with revealing our mystery “ninth game” for the first portfolio. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel your lips tingle. On second thought, that last one may be a sign of poisoning from eating fugu, so if you experience that you might want to see a doctor.
Watch this space- we expect to have a couple of very exciting things to share over the next couple days. Until then…
subject: Shenandoah Studio
author: Jeff Dougherty
Success, Farming, and Mining
Great post today from Wil Shipley on two approaches to software development, entrepreneurship, and really, life. I especially like his comments at the end about the inherent worthlessness of “ideas”, so make sure you read the whole thing.
subject: discussion
author: Jeff Dougherty
And the quote of the day goes to:
Mr. Pete Belli, for this post on BoardGameGeek.
From Eric’s press release:
What does this mean for BGG users?
Pete:
Time to buy an iPad.
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Pete.
subject: discussion
author: Jeff Dougherty
Simonsen on Consimworld and Facebook!
Greetings! We’re happy to announce that the good folks over at Consimworld have set up a forum for Simonsen under Game Company Support. We plan to check the forum regularly and answer questions there, so consider it another way to contact us and discuss the future of gaming. The forum can be found here, or click on the “Project Simonsen Consimworld Forum” links on our blogroll.
We are also pleased to announce the launch of our Facebook page. For the moment it’s just a way to follow this blog on Facebook, but as we explore the social media space and get to know our users better we hope it will evolve into a place where we can talk about our future plans and get feedback from you, the gamers. If you’re interested, just click the “Find …
Welcome to the Shenandoah Studio Blog!
Welcome to our company blog. In time, we hope that this will be a space for us to discuss our ongoing projects, new developments in the company, and happenings in both the board game and mobile gaming industries. If you’re interested in any of these topics, we’d love a chance to discuss them with you!
Actual content coming soon, we promise. For now, this is just a chance for us to say “Hello, world!” (in programming parlance) and provide any early readers a chance to sound off. Look for the first post in my War Patrol design diary soon, complete with hilariously badly drawn production sketches!
subject: welcome
author: Jeff Dougherty
