Hexxa – Here We Go!

I developed a mobile game a few years ago (2006-7) and have been waiting on the technology and mobile adoption to finally catch up. With estimates by market research firm Parks Associates that the smartphone adoption rates worldwide will quadrupedal by 2014 reaching 1 billion users and recently Nielson reported that Android adoption outpaced iOS (iPhone, Touch, iPad, etc). A study from the Luxury Institute shows that the prominent smartphone audience, the younger affluent don’t like paying for apps any more than the less affluent. They also primary download, news, weather and game applications (I like the latter). Add to that my personal experience with 95% of my friends, colleagues and associates all have smartphones. So what does all that mean? The stars have aligned and the world is ready for my game.

So how does a mobile game developer reach the majority of the smartphone market? Well you have to reach the Android, iPhone and Blackberry audience. The question that so many developers struggle with when starting a project is, do we go native, hybrid or web based. With HTML5 becoming more consistent as a standard (think right around the corner) and more mobile platforms and tools being developed like PhoneGap, JQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, Nitobi Products, jQTouch, Adobe AIR and others, we are at a point where true cross (mobile) platform development is right around the corner. Code once in HTML, CSS & Javascript, encode to multiple platforms… We went through that same struggle and determined that for now we are going to develop native applications (maintaining 3 sets of code), until the HTML5 standards mature some.

I reached out to some innovative business partners and got minimal pre-seed funding, enough to get the game developed and kicked off in time for some events early next year. Eventually we’ll look at getting some Seed or Series A funding.

So you may be asking what the game is, well let me give you a 30,000 foot view: it’s a partially location based game that ties in to peoples desires to achieve goals, compete and cooperate. It can also get people to meet like minded folks and form teams. We have a monetization model built in from the beginning (not a Twitter scenario here), and every company and organization that’s heard about it want’s to be involved (already have some signed up for our launch). We have a Ph.D. specializing in the psychology of learning that’s reviewed the game and can give you all the details as to why it kicks butt. We have done the market research and truly have a niche product that is amazingly simple. Sorry I’m being so vague but until a couple of our patents are filed this is all I can really share.

Needless to say I’m very excited to finally be developing the game, working with a small but great team and very much look forward to getting the private beta launched so we can get feedback and have some fun with our friends!

Would you help us decide which logo to use? #1 or#2?