I'm finding it hard to believe that it is already March. January came and went, February blazed past, and now I am gearing up to put Knaves Online into a limited beta test... The only problem is that the game is only at an alpha state.

Normally this would worry me, but in this case I actually feel pretty good about it. I just nailed down some of the important server-side code for the game, and thanks to GamerSafe and PlayerIO the process of adding achievements and scalable multiplayer are all but done. I feel as if I have all the pieces, I just need to put them together.

But a completed game is only part of the picture. There are still two big hurdles to overcome...

Those two hurdles are the Facebook API and promoting the game. I have managed to track down some help with implementing the Facebook API, but the key problem I am facing is that I don't want to put any of the Facebook code into my SWF file. The reason for this is that Flash is very insecure, and I don't mean that it spends all day worrying about whether it looks fat in those jeans. I mean that Flash is very easy to hack, so I want to keep any easily exploitable code out of it.

Even scarier than the ever-changing Facebook API is the challenge of promoting my game. I have always loved building things more than selling them, so when I saw GamesChart I was immediately intrigued. What GamesChart promises to do is this: a developer adds the API to their game and GamesChart pops up a window that promotes other games. If a player likes the look of one of these games they are taken to a portal. The portals pay to attract players, and the more players they have the more money they can make. It's sort of a win-win-win for players, developers, and publishers. I'm not entirely sure it is the best fit for my game, but I am certainly open to trying it out. The advantage for me is that it could also draw people to play my game, and that's always a good thing.

Of course, I DO have to finish building it first.