[Edit: links to the Apple iOS Version and Android Google Play Versions for ease]
KingdomGame, the Story of One Game
It was 11 years ago that the original iPhone was released, heralding the new age of real smart phones that allowed you to do everything you could on a computer in your pocket...
... back then I was a young (and definitely slimmer) web programmer and I saw an opportunity to create a game that would work on the built-in web browser, Safari. Bare in mind, there was no "responsive" framework for this sort of thing, people hadn't created an @media (or other) CSS query type (in fact, they only really started to be supported from 2012 onward)... and so I had to handcraft the game to work on the iPhone. On a massive plus side there were no other mobile devices out there so there was only one screen size to work with!
So I sat down and started to work on the first version of KingdomGame (more on that in a moment) - using the knowledge from my day job (web programming, corporate like systems) to build a real time game that would go on to last 9 years.
After a few days my lady at the time said "I don't know why you bother with these side project, Paul, you always get half way there and give up." So I thought "Right, this time I will complete it..."
So, two weeks of evenings and weekend tinkering later, the first version of KingdomGame was ready and I submitted it to the WebApp Store (note, there was no pure "App Store" at the time, that didn't come along til mid 2008) and went to bed.
Here's what it looked like then:
Pretty ugly, eh?! But it was cool to create something so small then.
Waking up in the morning I was surprised to not only see that:
- The game had a lot of new kingdoms (players)
.. but..
- Apple had made it the number one featured spot on the web app store homepage and everyone with an iPhone was getting to see the game.
I took the day off work and had to work out how to scale the game significantly from a _very_ cheap MySQL DB set up to something that could handle 50,000 players (that's right, it grew QUICKLY). Turns out I just needed to spend a bit of money...
... on that front, I didn't actually monetize the game until the middle of 2008, I had only built it as a concept piece .. sure, there were some google ads (which were pretty good for money at the time) which paid for the servers everywhere, but it wasn't a life changing amount of money and it's worth noting that I'm still working full time in the corporate cog.
So the game continued to grow, more players/kingdoms were created, more worlds were added... and then I started to create expansions for the original game - colonies, so you could invade other worlds via naval attacks... different types of resources that were only available in certain worlds that had to be traded or fought for and also a massive skill system.
Version 2 of the game, a little nicer - but still not what we'd call pretty. But it was 2008!
People continued to play and play - we even had an official meet up in New York City courtesy of one of the players organizing a hotel that would set aside some space for us to meet.
The game continued for nine years and I finally decided to shut it down in January last year (2017). I felt it had run it's course, the 150,000 players that were once playing had dwindled through the years as other games game out and had taken their fancy.
That's when it started... daily messages from old players saying things like "are you going to bring KingdomGame back there's nothing like it" or "I was only taking a short break before coming back.." or "PLEASE BRING IT BACK!!".
So, in September 2017 I relented and, instead of just bringing back the old version, decided that it warranted a rewrite to more a more modern interface, using cloud hosting (Azure in this case)... and also getting rid of a few of my quirky game play mechanics because the were, quite frankly, awful for game longevity (you could lose everything you'd worked for in a matter of minutes if the populace of the server banded together... although I'm told that was part of the fun - risk/reward/politics (the meta game) were what made KG great!) I enlisted the help of a friend, Robert Curran, to help out with the second version in an effort to speed things along a bit faster - we split the responsibility for the front end/app dev and the database/backend mechanics/gameplay.
In December / January 2018 a small beta opened for some of the old (LOUD) players and we started to test the game mechanics and changes (along with the interface). Changing some of the items that didn't work and balancing the game so no one could have a run-away success and enabling people to bounce back from damaging assaults if needed (limiting the issues with area). This was, again, all web based - responsive this time - so was being played via KingdomGame.net
Then work started on the app version(s), that would enable players from both people from the Apple App Store and the Android based Google Play Store to experience the game.
It took longer than expected... there are some quirky bits with the way the payment systems work... and getting something in Xamarin to work in a properly nice way on both Android and iOS was hair wrenchingly annoying. And don't mention the notifications system. We tested and tested the app with the beta players making sure it all worked, adding in new functionality to make things work better...
And here's the newest version - more modern, nice looking (well, at least I think so! :))
Anyway, finally the App was ready, and we submitted it to the App Stores and with (I'm told the usual) too'ing and fro'ing from the Apple review team the app is now live and can be played here:
- Android's Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kingdomgame.kingdomgame
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A big shout out to Robert Curran, my co-developer for KingdomGame2!
