Opetopic

Our newest game, CloudAssass.in has just gone into review by Apple and will be launching early next week. We started this game at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon back in May, so we have been looking forward to this for awhile.

Instead of explaining the game to you, check out my demo with TUAW:

This is my first post back on the #idevblogaday roll (thanks again to Miguel for managing this!), and coincidentally today is the end of my month long pledge to donate Opetopic’s proceeds to Japan relief-related organizations.

Summary

For those who didn’t catch the beginning, back in March I came back from a SxSW excursion to the unsettling news of what was going on in Japan. I read that many indie developers were donating their proceeds for a day, or sometimes a week, to various organizations to help with the relief. I wanted to do something similar, but was in the fortunate position to go big. See, just a few months ago I decided to take a break from the indie life and get a real job (at a small tech startup, but real nonetheless). Each month my deposit from Apple is just a nice little bonus, and was a luxury I could do without.

I decided to donate all of Opetopic’s app proceeds for a full four weeks, and split the donations among three different organizations: Doctors Without Borders (50%), UNICEF (25%) and the International Red Cross (25%). Further, I made sure that the donations were never earmarked for only the Japan relief, which forces the funds to be used in the country of Japan, even though the operations may extend to other countries. And as one final move to bolster the effort, I agreed to match all donations out of my own pocket.

Renewed Interest

Four weeks is a long time to keep my interest concentrated on one thing. A really long time for me. But each day brought more news of the developments in Japan and surrounding areas. Weeks after the events we still get new videos showing the destruction of the tsunami surge, and we still do not know the long term effects of the Fukushima fallout. It kind of feels like I should just keep this going…

The Numbers

I didn’t have time to post a weekly summary last week, so this time I have two weeks worth of numbers:

Unfortunately these numbers were a little lower than our first two weeks, but $850 is nothing to sneeze at. With my matching the following donations were made:

• Doctors Without Borders (50%): $850
• UNICEF (25%): $425
• International Red Cross (25%): $425

And combining the previous two weeks of donations (week 1, week 2) we have the following breakdown of donations:

• Doctors Without Borders (50%): $1888
• UNICEF (25%): $944
• International Red Cross (25%): $944
• Total: $3776

Thanks to everyone who helped and retweeted my obsessive self-retweets.

For the Indie Devs

As a side note to the indie devs reading, this series of posts could technically serve as a “numbers post” that is so popular in the indie community. Honestly I am not a big fan of those types of discussions, but for a little more context you should know that the distribution of sales across all of my apps falls somewhere around 2:1 for IsoCards:IsoWords (all languages of IsoWords).

The 2nd week has concluded for my month long pledge to donate Opetopic’s app proceeds to Japan-related relief organizations. The numbers are very consistent with last week’s results, although slightly lower due to the fact that I accidentally counted 8 days in the first week (Sunday to Sunday).

So, we made $490, and with my matching we will be donating $980! The breakdown for my chosen organizations:

• Doctors Without Borders (50%): $490
• UNICEF (25%): $245
• International Red Cross (25%): $245

In total we have donated $2076!

We have two more weeks of this, and I will be pushing a lot harder (prepare to be annoyed if you follow me on Twitter). Also, tell anyone and everyone about this — they get a kickass game for two bucks, and some awesome organizations get a donation.

• IsoWords
• IsoWords Español
• IsoWords Français
• IsoWords Deutsche
• IsoCards

Yesterday, March 27th 2011, marked the end of the first week of my 4 week pledge to donate Opetopic’s proceeds to disaster related relief funds. Thanks to everyone that told a friend and/or retweeted my rampant self-retweets. The outcome was actually pretty good, and I will continue pushing to make all 4 weeks as good as this one. Below you will find a chart for the combined sales of my apps for March 20th to the 27th.

Note that this is after Apple’s 30% cut, so all-in-all we netted $548! And as I promised in my previous post, I have matched this to make a total donation of $1096. The final split among my 3 chosen organizations is (along with links to the donation confirmations):

• Doctors Without Borders (50%) : $548
• UNICEF (25%) : $274
• International Red Cross (25%) : $274

I don’t have a confirmation for IRC yet because my bank actually locked my account for suspected fraudulent activity! I’m sure it will be sorted out soon enough though.

Thanks again to everyone who supported this, and spread the word… we have 3 more weeks!

Update #1: First week’s numbers have been posted!
Update #2: Second week’s numbers have been posted!
Update #3: 3rd and 4th week’s numbers have been posted!

I just got back from a week and a half long trip to Austin for the SxSW Interactive+Music festivals. I had a mind blowing good time, but could really feel the bubble surrounding me when it came to news about the tsunami in Japan. It’s understandable, we have been working ourselves to the point of breakdown leading up to this festival and we were all there to do something great.

Now that I am back in New York I have caught up on the news and the gravity of the situation set in. I’ve already made my donations to a few organizations, as you probably have too. Remember, donate to organizations, not just the disaster relief which unfortunately earmarks money for only Japan instead of the entire relief operation, which will spread across many parts of the world for many years to come.

As I wrote in the postmortem of my indie game development career, the revenue of my apps have transitioned from being a very meager living (pre real job) to just a nice little bonus I get each month (post real job). Well, this bonus is a luxury I can certainly live without.

So, for the next month I will be donating all proceeds of my apps to relief related organizations. I will also match the proceeds from my own pocket to further bolster the effort. Since I only started a real job a few months ago I probably have to cap my matching to something, but let’s just see how things go.

I will also be splitting up the proceeds in 3 ways:

• 50% to Doctors Without Borders i.e. Médecins Sans Frontières i.e. MSF
• 25% to UNICEF
• 25% to the International Red Cross

This breakdown is influenced by the fact that Japan is a very wealthy country with a modern infrastructure. They will get back on their feet very soon. But MSF fills a need that even rich nations need when something this scale hits.

If you found this page from a friend, then hopefully they can vouch for me that I’m a good guy. I just want to help anyway I can. Each week I will post a summary of my sales and make a donation (even though Apple pays me roughly once a month).

So, if you would like to help Japan by just buying a couple of kick ass games, check mine out:

• IsoWords
• IsoWords Español
• IsoWords Français
• IsoWords Deutsche
• IsoCards

Every iPod owner knows that as soon as you unplug your headphones the music stops playing. It’s a nice little detail since it gives you quick access to stopping your music, but it is a pretty obvious thing for the iPod designers to do.

I was just jamming out to my buddy’s music wearing my headphones when I decided to switch over to streaming music to my speakers via AirPlay. When I unplugged my headphones the music continued playing.

An amazing attention to detail.