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Enclave Games in 2016, and plans for 2017

The year 2016 is already over, so let’s see how it went. Was it bad? Better than 2015? Good? See for yourself.

Bad things

Firefox OS died, or rather was killed by its maker even though at the beginning of the year there was still hope. Projects such as Enclave Games on Panasonic TVs, Firefox OS gamedev book or DeviceLab were instantly and brutally cancelled.

I twisted my ankle at the Front-Trends party, and it recently started to hurt again which doesn’t feel well. I know it’s not actually gamedev related, but still a bad thing. On the other hand (or the same leg) I finally started working out at the gym around February, with a month-long break because of the injury in May, so it’s not THAT bad.

The Gamedev.js Weekly newsletter is growing very, very slowly - it’s because I put all my effort on delivering the content every Friday, but spent literally no time on promoting or advertising it.

Meh (ok-ish) things

The js13kGames competition this year didn’t break the record of the number of submitted entries fifth time in a row. The new backend, awaited for so many years, is still not there. But the competition itself is still popular, the games submitted very good - there’s even a success story of the winning one, Evil Glitch.

I did travel a lot less than in the previous year, but still visited Singapore, London, Reykjavik, Berlin, Munich, and did a lot of events in Warsaw. This meant more time with my family which welcomed my daughter in March.

I’ve created a few games during game jams (Ritual Duel at Global Game Jam, Shape Attack at Ludum Dare 35), but not reached the number I was expecting to. They are not perfect, but I wanted to have anything finished and released to the public after the jam ended.

Good things

I’ve written two series or articles for MDN: about 3D games on the Web and control mechanisms. Only two, but still better than nothing - plus those sum up to 10 large articles, so I’d say it’s ok.

I worked with AirConsole on promoting their competition across my communities at the beginning of the year. At the end of it I teamed up with BLUR to promote their app and help showcase indie HTML5 games in 2017. Being a recognizable person in the community is starting to pay off.

I also starred in a movie.

I’ve finally released Wizard Quest, after 4 years of struggle. It’s interesting that I started giving a talk about it and that resulted in my best presentation topic ever. The slide deck is full of memes and animating gifs, yet it delivers a tweetable lessons you can learn and share. I received a lot of positive feedback about it, so I’m gonna polish the presentation a bit in the future.

The article I wrote about the current state of HTML5 game development in 2016 was very well received.

I gave a virtual talk in India. Well, I actually just recorded a video the day before that was then showed to the participants, but the first version sounds way more impressive.

jsconfis-glacier1

I made a cool Scooby-Doo game for an even cooler client. Taking the job was a big surprise for me given my previous experience when most of the Polish agencies I worked with wanted to screw me over, hard. This time everything went smooth and without any single problem - kudos to The Digitals.

The Gamedev.js events were reactivated by the end of the year with two workshops in Warsaw - 2017 will bring a meetup, and more workshops.

Plans for 2017

Continue to write for MDN, make some games, organize a few Gamedev.js events, start an online shop with js13kGames t-shirts and other swag, reanimate Open HTML5 Games, update the Enclave Games website. Grow the already existing portfolio of gamedev related projects and enjoy doing so.