NinjaBee games now on Amazon!

(So, this should have been a quick and easy post with a link to our Amazon page, but it's turned into a rambling paragraph on the coolness of this service and all else in between. You decide if you want to read the whole thing. If you don't, I don't blame you. Here's the link to the NinjaBee Amazon page, and the XBLA Amazon page. If you do read the whole thing, leave a comment so I can know how cool you are :))

Wow, this is pretty cool. Now you can buy all of our Xbox LIVE Arcade games (and most other Arcade games) on Amazon.com! This is exceptionally sweet because you can use real money and you can gift the game to anyone via email. In my opinion, this makes it tons easier for anyone to buy a game.

For instance, let's say grandma wants to buy some games for her grandkids. Before they were on Amazon, she had to own a console (well, the grandkids' console, really) and buy Microsoft Points so she could pay for the games and then she had to figure out how to download them to the console. Things got a bit easier thanks to the NXE updates, when granny could buy the games online, but only if she knew the account and password of her grandkids' accounts to use the online marketplace and buy the games, where she still had to convert her real money into Microsoft Points (which she probably didn't understand and definitely wouldn't use again). Now, however, she simply goes to Amazon.com, types in the game she wants to buy, enters her payment information, and it spits out a code she then sends via email to her grandkids by pushing the "Send as a Gift" button once she's purchased the game. The grateful (and probably shocked) grandkids then enter the code into their Xbox 360 and Voila! They have the game!

Here's what our NinjaBee page looks like on Amazon.com:


I bought a copy of A Kingdom for Keflings yesterday to try it out and it's incredibly easy; no extra hoops to fly through, only the normal Amazon procedure. In fact, it was so easy, I accidentally purchased a copy--I only wanted to go through the steps up to the purchase page, but there were so few steps I over-estimated and ended up buying a copy. Have you tried it yet? What are your thoughts?

Random, Fun, Interesting Links

Here are some cool and extremely random links to things that have popped up over the last week or so that relate (in some form or another) to NinjaBee . Enjoy!

Random Link #1: NinjaBee has a public profile and a great relationship with Gathering of Gamers, a social networking site for gamers. A few NinjaBees appeared on their GOGCast (a community podcast) season finale a few weeks ago and talked about A Kingdom for Keflings, life at NinjaBee and a few other interesting things. The podcast is pretty long, so if you just want to hear the NinjaBee stuff, it starts about 12 1/2 min. into the show. There's also a special audio clip right at the end, about 1 hour and 20 mins. into the show...:)


Random Link #2: Here's a cool YouTube video of a guy who covers XBLA songs. This rocks!




Random Link #3: Jeremy Throckmorton, one of our designers, was interviewed by Genesis Device, a cool gaming website. Check out his interview here. Here's a fun snippet from the interview (that just happens to go with the above video!):

Genesis Device: Where did the music for Kingdom come from? It's completely addictive!

Jeremy Throckmorton: Eric Nunamaker is a long time friend of ours, and a very talented composer we contract for many of our projects. We decided on a style and feel for Keflings and presented it to him. He is really, really good at making music to match our odd requests and abstract concepts. The soundtrack to Keflings is a testament to that.


Random Link #4: Michelle, the cool girl who made the A Kingdom for Keflings web comic has made a Doritos Dash of Destruction one as well.

Can You Spot the Differences?

About a year and a half ago we did a Game in a Day, and from it the idea for A Kingdom for Keflings was born. NinjaBee will be doing another Game in a Day starting Thursday evening and all day Friday (okay, so it'll be a Game in a Day and a Few Hours) and I'll be blogging and twittering all about it. So in light of that, I thought I'd show off the initial pitch trailer and concept document for A Kingdom for Keflings. In order to keep this post shorter than 1 million words, I'll show you the trailer today and the pitch doc tomorrow. This part below was written by The Fox (Our art director Brent).

Part 1:

The first stage in game development is forming a rough concept. Before getting into all of the details everyone involved needs to understand the basic premise of the game. There are many methods of formulating and presenting a game idea. NinjaBee’s approach has been to create a “pitch document”. This document can be used to pitch the game internally or even used to evaluate the interest of a potential publisher.

We have two simple guidelines that we follow when we are creating these pitch documents:

• Keep it short. (Usually just a couple of pages).
If you can’t explain your game in a couple of pages it may be a bad design or it may need some more time in the oven. Also, executives won’t bother to read a lengthy design document unless you first catch their attention with a short pitch.

• Define the look and feel of the game
It is surprising how important art can be to illustrate an idea. No matter how much anyone says they can look past place holder art, they can’t. The best thing to include is a mock-up of what a screen shot may look like.

In addition to a good pitch document (which you will see in tomorrow's post), we like to create a trailer. When pitching a game, most publishers will ask for a working demo. However, we have found that a trailer is actually better than a demo of the game. For one thing, it would take months to create the effects/features in a demo that we can fake in a week in a trailer. Also, people are more easily convinced after seeing a good movie that shows what the game can do than a demo that crashes every two minutes or a boring bullet list of features.

And with that, here's the trailer that we pitched to Microsoft. As you can see, a LOT has changed...(for example, the working title was My Kingdom)

Back From the Dead!

That's right, after a long hiatus of 2 years and a few months, this blog has been brought back from the dead for your viewing and reading pleasure. We hope to post a lot more frequently, so make sure to check back soon. So for today, some good news:

A Kingdom for Keflings has been officially announced!

Finally we're allowed to talk about when it's releasing (Nov. 19), how much it will cost (800 MS Points) and what it's rated (E), not to mention the fact that it's the FIRST Xbox 360 game to launch with in-game, playable Avatars! We're pretty happy about this, can you tell? :)

Anyway, that was just a shameless plug for our game because, well, we're excited. Check back again soon for some more posts that may or may not be shameless plugs for our other games as well! ;)