On July 19th, 2010, I attended the June/July GamePub event. This was my first time attending a GameCamp event and what I discovered was that Edmonton has a diverse and talented game development scene. The turn out was good, about 20 people, and the room was filled with a good balance of creative types, coders, professionals, indies and students. I took some time to work the room and find out what some people were working on, and was thrilled to see the presentations by Fluik Entertainment, 3DI, and Ian Stubbington. GameCamp was hosted by Logan Foster from Max Gaming.

I have recently become slightly obsessed with Empire Avenue. This is no secret. I find it's a great way to promote Knaves Online: I get to play a game and promote my own game at the same time, it's win-win.

When Empire Avenue (EA) announced they were launching an API I was excited because it let me play the game in my own way, with my own tools. I set out to build a desktop notifier for EA... In fairly short order I had something good, that could become great. If you play Empire Avenue I urge you to try it out and send me some feedback on what you'd like to see added!

This story starts with a game, and ends with a chocolate bar and an adventure.

First off, the game:

Empire Avenue is a strange and addictive phenomenon. A thousand people and organizations have flocked to the site to start buying and selling shares in each other, and it's still just in beta.

When I first started playing with GamerSafe I found it to be a great service. Simple to use, simple to implement, it looked like the perfect way to add achievements and monetize my game. But everything isn't always as it seems. As I delved deeper into the world of Facebook development I realized that my original enthusiasm might have been a bit misguided.