School’s in Session

The brainpower at CloudKid, we humbly say, is quite impressive. Between our artists, programmers, and producers, there isn’t a program, technique, or task that can’t be mastered. Nevertheless, we are always yearnin’ for some learnin’. Which is why the past few Wednesday evenings, the office has been abuzz with activity. Yep, CloudKid Academy – the name we’ve given our internal education forum – has officially launched!

We created CloudKid Academy to fill a void that we felt had been cramping our style. As the days, weeks, months (and now even years!) fly by, it’s all too easy to get into a routine. In that routine, sometimes it’s difficult to hone skills that don’t pertain to your specific job, and you might grow rusty with other skills you once used all the time. And, while we’re big supporters of online courses and local night classes, we also understand the challenge of fitting them into busy schedules.

CloudKid Academy is our prescription for an unfed thirst for knowledge. Every other week, CKA hosts skill-share sessions highlighting a specific artistic concept, program, or technical skill. And because every CloudKid has so much to offer, the sessions are taught by us, for us. So far, skill-shares have been a big hit. We’re a huge proponent of continuing education, and what better way to support our artists than by facilitating growth under our own roof? In time, we’re going to spread the love even further… check back in the future for CKA updates and insider tips on tools, ideas, and other expertise that’s being passed around the studio!

CloudKidHQ

Back to the Drawing Board

A few months ago, we wrote a post about family-focused social gaming, which has reinvented the classic “family game night” by creating a way for long-distance family members to have fun together. This sense of connectivity – no matter what the distance – is an idea that inspires us and, these days, entertains us like no other. If you’re like us, you’ve probably been spending way too much time recently hunched over your iPhone playing Draw Something, a multiplayer game from OMGPOP (which, by the way, was just bought by Zynga for no small sum). Draw Something, like online family gaming, brings people together through an interactive, back-and-forth style format. And, we must say, it is positively addicting!

What has really drawn our attention though is the fact that Draw Something takes a very simple game mechanic – essentially, Pictionary – and turns it into an app. It’s a straightforward idea, but is one that has produced brilliant results. They’ve turned a timeless game, once played around the coffee table à la family game night, into an awesome app you can play anywhere, with anyone, at any time.  By leveraging benefits unique to virtual play — such as an asynchronous nature of gameplay and the ability to have multiple games going on at once (much like Words with Friends) — a simple concept is transformed into an amazingly viral app. As game developers, we at CloudKid tend to think a lot about game mechanics and social connectivity, and we love the idea of web games and apps that get people in dialogue with each other. We regard the social component of game design as a huge imperative, and the success of Draw Something makes it clear that traditional game mechanics with an interactive twist are on the rise.

Which makes us think… At CloudKid, we recently had our very own family game night, with such classics as Dixit and Bananagrams bringing out our competitive sides. Dixit has already jumped onboard and created an iOS app, and we wouldn’t be surprised if other gaming companies soon follow suit and venture into the virtual world. Who knows,  maybe our next family game night will inspire us to build a new social app!

Kids Media Social Gaming

Snacka Stacka Comin’ Atcha

Amid all the new website hoopla, we forgot to mention that our latest game, Snacker Stacker, launched on the Lunch Lab site earlier this month.  A nod to a couple of our favorite classics (think Dr. Mario and Tetris), the game mixes in some signature Fizzy flair to an awesomely addictive game mechanic.  Players can chose to help Fizzy deliver colorful foods to hungry customers in marathon, timed, or even 2 player modes.

We recently play-tested this game (with real kids!) and they couldn’t wait to play again.  We have to admit, we’re with them — this game has been a huge hit internally at CKHQ and with our adult friends and family.  So check it out when you have the chance, but be warned that you and/or your kids may get hooked!

If you do catch the Snacker Stacker bug, you can also check out the game’s project gallery on our new site for more information and in-process production photos.

Happy stacking (and snacking) to you all!

 

Production

New iPad Stirs Up Questions

Yup, it’s coming! The new iPad (don’t call it the iPad3 – Apple is not having that) hits stores Friday, March 16th, and if this launch is anything like the last one, expect a crazy long line and an onslaught of chatter in the blogosphere. Though people are a bit miffed about the non-numerical name, updated features like a 3.1 million pixel display, 4G network capabilities, and an A5X processor (awesome for designing and gaming), have Apple fans salivating. That’s us.

This is all well and good, but what caught our attention amidst all the iPad buzz was this article in the Huffington Post.  Educational psychologist and consultant, Lori Day, shares her perspective on the possible downsides of technology-driven education. She’s not a full-time technology detractor, but she’s skeptical, and as much as we love our gizmos and gadgets here at CloudKid, we think that a healthy dose of skepticism is good every once in a while.

Day brings up some particularly provocative questions about the decrease of human-to-human interaction in the classroom, the loss of critical literacy and math skills, and the digital divide. Of particular concern is how constant upgrades and product launches create a veritable arms race for technology in the classroom, and poor, urban districts that already have crippling budget constraints fall even farther behind.

Read the rest of this entry »

Children's Media Kids Media News

Something’s different…

Notice anything different around here? Yup, that’s right… you’re looking at our brand spankin’ new blog page. Over the past month, CloudKid brains and brawn have been working like crazy in our computer lab and… voila! We are proud to present to you the new CloudKid website!

Now, now. There’s no need to get all nervous. Even though we’re suddenly really, really, really ridiculously good looking, we’re still the same old CloudKid at heart. Don’t believe us? Take a look and see for yourself! We’ve taken all the content from the old site, snazzed it up, and added tons more fun stuff. Seriously, so fun.

One of the reasons we went the extra mile with the new site is to attract talented folks.  The better the artists and programmers we work with are, the better CloudKid will be.  And since Boston is a pretty small town, we’re hoping the new site will help attract the best talent from our area and beyond.

Let us know what you think – we love feedback! You could even be like this lady and make your very own YouTube video about it.

CloudKidHQ Development

CloudKid Mural

Earlier this winter, CloudKid friend and collaborator Brian Butler flew up from the sunny beaches of Miami to add some warmth to the CloudKid HQ. We asked Brian to paint a variety of odd, yet welcoming characters in the studio’s entryway, and, as always, he exceeded our expectations.  It’s hard to pick which character is our favorite, so we’ll let you decide for yourself.  Image courtesy of the artist.  

CloudKidHQ

Prioritizing Play

If we had a nickel for every time a visitor to CloudKid’s HQ mentioned the amazing amount of toys we have… well, we’d have a lot of nickels.  While we love seeing the excitement on people’s faces as they marvel at the sheer volume of gizmos and gadgets around our office, our toys are for much more than show.  Despite being an office full of “adults,” we think it is vitally important to take time out to play each and every day.  Whether it’s subtly swapping Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head’s parts or jamming together as an inner-office “Rock Band” during lunch, we prioritize play in our company culture.

While we’re all for playing to “unwind” and “stay young at heart,” we also realize the benefits of play go beyond fun cliches.  We recently came across this article on the power of play, which alludes to a plethora of research that supports the importance of incorporating play into everyday lives — even for adults.  In fact, according to the work of Dr. Stuart Brown,  “playfulness amplifies our capacity to innovate and to adapt to changing circumstances.”  We highly recommend checking out some of this research, and more importantly, to start incorporating play into your own workday.  Warning: you may start to enjoy being at work more than being at home!

CloudKidHQ

Lunch Lab Hits One Million

Exciting news at CloudKid – over the past month, we had one million unique visitors to the Fizzy’s Lunch Lab site!  It’s the first time we’ve reached this milestone, and we’re pretty sure that the awesome new season of Lunch Lab had a lot to do with it! Thanks to everyone who’s been checking out Fizzy’s latest adventures, and stay tuned for more fresh material in the coming months. CloudKid forecast: next up, two million!

Production

Lunch Lab Season 3 Official Launch

CloudKid HQ is abuzz with excitement over today’s official launch of Lunch Lab Season 3!  As we mentioned back in December, this season was unique, as we focussed on making upgrades to the site to make the experience more personalized for kids.  From the Custom Kitchen and Build a Bot creators to the magnets, leader boards, and login system, we hope these upgrades have been improving Lunch Labbers’ experiences with the content.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a new season without some new videos and games!  Along with our production partners, Hero 4 Hire Creative, we’re so excited for today’s content launch.  In addition to Season 3’s first webisode, “Hook Line and Stinker”, the new game “Sully’s Delivery Day” launched today on the site.  We’re really pumped about this game, in which players will have to help Sully navigate the body to make vital deliveries. The whole CloudKid team worked extremely hard on this game, and we really hope you all enjoy it!

Please take a minute to check out (and play!) the new content.  And don’t forget to check back over the next few weeks for more webisodes, and for the March launch of our addictively awesome game, Snacker Stacker (don’t say we didn’t warn you!).

Production

Why Flash Isn’t Dead

These days, there’s no short-supply of opinions extolling the demise of Adobe’s Flash. Last month, Adobe announced that they would stop putting efforts into continuing the Flash player for mobile devices. This isn’t terribly surprising for those following Adobe’s efforts. They haven’t proved that the mobile Flash player is stable or ready for wide-spread adoption. For performance-critical or multimedia-rich applications on mobile hardware, there’s an enormous performance cost of running applications through a browser plugin or virtual machine. The hardware offered today on mobile devices is still far from the capabilities of even a low-end desktop computer.

The nature of content in the Flash Player has been shifting over the last few years, even before Steve Jobs was openly critical about it, or before the iPhone or iPad. The things that you should do with Flash are becoming a smaller subset of things you can do with Flash. Rich application development, video streaming, and website creating are much better done these days as browser-native. As the JavaScript, CSS and HTML implementation in browsers has improved, the need for Flash to do certain things has decreased.

Flash’s long-term future as a distribution platform through a browser plugin (what’s referred to here as the “Player”) is dying a slow death, at best. The success of Apple’s App Store has underscored a shift towards device-native mobile apps downloaded through a marketplace as opposed to content delivered through web browser open-standards. However, in all this chatter about Flash, there are some overlooked aspects that, we believe, are important in understanding the future of this technology and why it isn’t going to disappear.

Flash Platform vs. HTML5

While Apple, Google and Adobe have agreed to support the HTML5 specification, the W3C which maintains and publishes the specifications for web standards has only released the Work Draft of HTML5, which was started back in 2004 (by comparison the first iPhone was released in 2007). Standards take a long time to create and an even longer time to adopt. As a developer who implements these standards, it often requires lots of programming hacks, workarounds and platform-agnostic libraries (e.g., jQuery) to compensate for the browser and platform fragmentation.

The landscape for HTML5 has gotten even more complicated than the days of Netscape versus Internet Explorer and HTML4. Not only are there more browsers, but the platform landscape is now a diversity of hardware, audio & video codecs, as well as different javascript capabilities. Asking “why do I want to build a house on mud?” is not dissimilar from asking and “why would I want to create a game with HTML5?”.

Flash’s Identity Crisis: Solved!

In the wake of Adobe ditching the mobile Flash effort, the coverage tended to overlook that Adobe was going to concentrate their efforts on native app publishing (Android and iOS) using Flash. We believe this marks an important shift from Flash as a publishing platform (via the Flash Player) to Flash as a publishing tool (via the authoring environment). The strength of Flash is largely attributed to Flash as an authoring tool. It’s one of the reasons why Microsoft’s Silverlight hasn’t enjoyed such wide-spread adoption. Even with significant blows to the Flash player, the authoring tool is still great for animation, storyboarding, and rapid prototyping. It’s still the best authoring environment available for creative people to create multimedia-rich experiences with very little programming knowledge.

Adobe has been working over the last several years on a compiler which builds Flash content to native iOS apps (formerly called iPhonePackager). In recent years, this functionality has been replaced with ADT (AIR Developer Tool) and iOS publishing in Flash CS5+, which allows the same functionality using a model built for publishing AIR Desktop applications. The tools are still in development but have already shown a lot of promise. Building content for multiple platforms in one authoring environment is the holy grail of device-native development, and Flash now has the best opportunity to make a go at it.

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