E3 2011 Awards

Now that E3 is over, there are always awards given to developers for various categories from various sites. UTV Ignition Games, the company that I work for while developing Faxion Online, received an award from Massively. The full article can be read here. Otherwise our award and comments are shamelessly listed below.



Beau Hindman: UTV True Games. They not only showed off Faxion and were ready to discuss how much they were concerned about fixes and future updates, but they seemed to be having fun. I like an accessible developer. I believe in Faxion because it comes from the same place I would if I were a developer. Sure, it needs its fixes, but it's brand new...and what game doesn't need a few patches when it launches? Also, the rest of the games they offered made me smile. Planet Crashers? I must have it, now.

Shawn Schuster: UTV Ignition/UTV True Games. Their first showing at E3 was preceded by months of tongue-in-cheek humor in trailers and advertising campaigns, which simply reminds us that we're playing games to have fun. Their booth was impressive for a first-timer, and they seemed to get some healthy foot traffic. Will Faxion Online prove to be a hit? That I don't know, but the team behind it is still catching our attention.

I'm very excited, this is the first award that any team I have worked on has won since I have moved to the game development community. We have all worked very hard on Faxion and the rest of UTV has been working hard to bring games like Swarm, Planet Crashers, El Shaddai, and Sky Legends to the public. So I want to congratulate both the Faxion Team (myself included I suppose) and the rest of UTV for a great first half of the year and continued success.

Faxion Online Post Release

Well its launched. Faxion Online, the game I have been working on with UTV for the last year has launched. Its fun to play and momentum is building in the community. I am very happy to see this work put forth in front of so many people. It has been really fun working with the Faxion Team and I have learned a lot since starting here a year ago (as of June 2).

I think there is a lot that Faxion still has to do to see it where it should be, and we have a lot of content planned for future patches. That excites me because I am not ready to be done supporting that product and making improvements for the product that I am creating and offering to the public.

On that note though, I am happy to say my second game is released for sale. Possibly looking at doing another side IPhone game in the future. With who is still left to be decided, I guess it just depends where momentum picks up on a new game idea.

I wish that I could highlight here some of the more complex stuff I worked on with the Faxion project but unfortunately you can't really discuss code like art without risking encroaching on copy write laws. For the most part it was tools development for particle systems and full screen effects. I created optimized terrain editing tools and I also wrote and maintain the Login system for the client. Overall I maintain the client in general and work on optimization.

Engines are funny things, there are so many working parts in them that one silly mistake in a single subsystem can impact performance. Also knowing what the tools do and how to best utilize them is really important for a team to understand. Getting a good balance between assets on screen at once and good play performance is a tricky number to maintain in a dynamic environment.

Anyways, I am wandering away from the subject of this post. I want everyone to go try Faxion if they are in to open world pvp and real time character leveling. Its a great game with more stuff coming every patch.

www.faxiononline.com