We are very pleased to announce PlayHaven’s first ever sponsored event in conjunction with the Alliance of Indie Mobile Developers (AIMD).

Topic of Discussion: Get ready for the battle – formulate a pre-launch strategy to make your new iPhone game a success!

Location: Cooley Godward & Kronish – 101 California Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111

Date: January 20, 2010

Time: 6:00 – 8:30pm

Cost: FREE!

Sign up here:  http://aimd1.eventbrite.com/

The event brings together the indie mobile developer community and an acclaimed panel of experts from the video game and marketing industry.  With PlayHaven’s launch only 2 months ago, we’ve seen 100 plus mobile developers join and claim their communities.  And with this success, it became clear to us, that there is a need to bring these developers together in a much more global scale.

At the first event, we’ll be meeting with industry experts who will discuss pre-launch and launch strategies for indie mobile game developers-as part of a series of marketing panels that will lead up to the Game Developers Conference.

Some topics we’ll cover are:

• The importance of knowing your customer.
• Building a brand in the early stages of development.
• Successful strategies to create pre-release buzz.
• Starting conversations and managing pre-release communication.
• Getting your game ready to go-to-market.

The panel features Andrew Podolsky, Editor in Chief from Slide To Play and former writer and editor from 1up, Game Revolution, and Ripton; Sean Denny, Senior Consumer Insights Manager from eBay and 10 year video games industry vet who has worked at LucasArts, Gazillion, and PlayFirst; and lastly, Randall Schleuder, co-creator of the award-winning Snails for PocketPC and developer of Flickitty for the iPhone.

About Alliance of Indie Mobile Developers (AIMD):

AIMD is a community of independent mobile game developers dedicated to promote indie mobile games by exchanging tips, knowledge, and industry best practices.  We love indie mobile games and especially love the underdog.  We help developers cultivate their best work, and reach the hearts, minds, and phones of their greatest fans.

Geared, one of our partners who we launched the PlayHaven Community Platform with, has seen some pretty incredible success with building a community.  How did Geared’s fan community go from 0 to 4,500 fans in just two weeks?  Let’s take a look at Geared’s implementation.

Step 1. Build an awesome game.  I gotta give Bryan (the mastermind behind Geared) all the credit here.  Geared is super fun, casual, and fits the iPhone controls perfectly.  You can read some of the player reviews here and here.

Step 2. Bryan claimed Geared’s fan community on PlayHaven to lay the foundation of his new community.  Bryan used to receive a ton of Emails from his fans. Whether they were requests for help or  simple suggestions, hundreds of Emails a day overwhelmed him.

Bryan then begin redirect all his fans to Geared’s community page so they could help each other, and also provide himself a central location to gather feedback from all of his fans.

How Bryan encourages his fans to join his community from his blog

Step 3: Bryan gives his fans super easy access to the community… right from the game!  One of the greatest benefits of PlayHaven’s Community Platform is how simple it is to bring your entire community into the game itself.  There’s no SDK integration required at all.  Our in-game community is essentially a web application that runs inside the app itself by utilizing Apple SDK’s UIWebView class.  Using UIWebView, you can also make the in-game community feel just like part of the game itself, check out how Bryan implemented it in just a few minutes:

With the in-game community implemented, Geared’s fans have instant access to the full blown community.  They can receive news directly from Bryan, ask & answer questions, and access all the strategy guides straight from the game.  And most importantly, the community is becoming more and more vibrant on a daily basis.

At the time of this post, Geared’s fan community has 4,446 fans, and it all happened in two weeks.  Who will be lucky number 4,500??

It’s ironic that even though apps are the reason why the iPhone has been so successful, yet the developers have no way of knowing who their customers really are.  As developers ourselves, we find connecting with our users to be one of the most important things that propel us forward.

This is why we are happy to announce today that we are launching the “PlayHaven Community Platform” for iPhone game developers.

For the first time, iPhone game developers have the opportunity to directly communicate with their fans and establish a passionate fan base.  Having passionate fans is the cornerstone of any successful game, and we want to be a true partner to game developers who are looking to establish a connection with their fans and form the base of a lasting franchise.

We have already pre-populated our database with over 15,000 iPhone games.  If you are an iPhone game developer, all you have to do is “claim” your community, it will only take you 30 seconds:  http://www.playhaven.com/about/developers/

Once we receive your claim request, we will process it within 24 hours.  Some of the biggest iPhone titles have already been using our platform, including Geared, Minigore, I Dig It, The Quest, Mouse House 2, SnowFerno, iSamurai, Bobble Surfer, ZombieSmash!, Transylvania, Genius Defense Force, Gang Street Wars, Tipoli, Influence, Above and Cell War, to name just a few.   Check out how fast the Geared Fan Community and The Quest Fan Community are already growing.

The most exciting part… you can bring your entire community INTO the game within seconds!  There’s absolutely no SDK required. Our in-game app is basically a web application that runs inside the game itself, utilizing the power of “UIWebView”.  Check out some of them in action:

Let me know if you have any questions!  If you are an iPhone game developer, please come claim your community   I look forward to working with you all.

Edit:
We just got covered on TechCrunch:  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/29/playhaven-lets-iphone-developers-create-in-app-and-online-communities/

We have finally released the long-awaited version 2.0 of our editor with many major enhancements as well as numerous other fixes and features to the site. I’d like to briefly in this post go into a little detail about a couple of the new features.

PlayHaven Editor 2.0

New Features include an enhanced table block based off suggestions from our guide writers, enhanced notice blocks, and other revisions to existing blocks. One important thing to note is this version was completely re-written from the ground up to be portable enough to apply it to other types of documents than guides/FAQs. This includes the new Reviews feature, and many more down the line. We’d love feedback on this new editor – post in our forums letting us know how we can make it better!

Reviews

Guides are extremely useful – but that’s only after you have bought the game. What about if you want to know whether or not it’s a good game to buy? We have applied the new editor to allowing everyone now to publish reviews based off their favorite games. Scores will be submitted and averaged on a scale of 5 and later down the line, you guys will also have the option to quick review the games initially and write the full review later.

Forums and Discussion

Our forums has received a significant upgrade as well. While before it was a barebones system, it is now evolving to include many features you might expect in a typical forum. This includes sticky posts, locked posts, moderation, edits, and others. We will be continually adding more features down the line to make it the best gaming forum out there.

I’d like to mention that in order to consolidate all the discussion going around in the site into one place, we have migrated all comments in guides into the forums. We feel that this will not only give you guide more exposure, but more feedback as well from your readers. When someone leaves a comment on your guide, our friendly PlayHaven Bot will create a new topic for you about your guide – you may then at any time ‘claim’ this topic as your own by clicking a link in the thread.

Games and Profile

We have enhanced your individual dashboard pages to more easily manage your guides, reviews, etc. Also, we have semi-revamped the game and platform pages to provide a much better UI experience. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know.

The Future

There are MANY more things to come in the coming weeks. We encourage ya’ll to try out as many of the features as possible and help us though feedback and bug reports. If there’s anything you would like to see, we’d love to hear it as well!

This is a guest post by a friend of PlayHaven, avid gamer Albert Ko, of CheapIrvine.com.

Today my friends at PlayHaven flew from SFO to SNA and hopped over to BlizzCon 2009. I picked them up at 8AM and we waited in line at 8:30AM for nearly an hour along with thousands of people.

I got to speak to the lead designer of Starcraft 2, Dustin Browder:

Dustin Browder of Starcraft fame

One of the main questions that I really wanted to know, being an avid Starcraft Player for over 10 years, was, “When is Starcraft 2 being released?”

According to Dustin, they’re actually trying very hard to release the Starcraft 2 Beta by the end of the year. However, he said that there are no guarantees and it will be done when it is done. Well, that’s Blizzard for ya!

Here are some pictures from the Starcraft II demos they had on display. This game is totally going to kick ass.

Infested Kerrigan

Here is the “Queen of Blades” herself – pretty freaky.

There were a ton of people playing Starcraft II. Just look at how many computers were set up.

Starcraft II Battle Scene

So you’re doing good, you’re running up the body count in your game of choice, demolishing any opposition. You reach the end of the level and are met with the end boss, the staple of videogames everywhere. Everything up to him has been training, and you damn well better know what you’re doing. I, unfortunately, often don’t.

Kusabi (rope ghost) Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly

Fatal Frame is a game with a simple mechanic at its core; take pictures of ghosts until they are dead. I figure ghosts are already dead but apparently Fatal Frame doesn’t care what I think. So halfway through the game you meet Kusabi, a large, rope bound ghost blocking your exit to the rest of the freakin game. I pull my magic ghost killing camera and begin shooting away at him…nothing works. Every time I get close to him I die, and taking pictures of him isn’t damaging him at all.

I couldn't find a picture but I think you get the point

Every day I’d boot up the game and spend hours taking pictures of him like the photoshoot of the damned. I finally broke down and asked a friend of mine about it. She informed me that the key to beating him was…to run past him. That’s right, I had spent almost 2 weeks trying to fight this ghost when all I had to do was run past him.

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I recently came across this blog post on LifeHacker, and I just have to share it with the PlayHaven community.  A DeviantArt member, Orioto, created some amazing high-resolution, you-won’t-believe-your-eyes paintings of classic video games for your desktop — a must-see for any gamer.

Click each image to download the full version, or hit the link at the bottom for the full gallery.

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