Small in Brasil

Thinking about the little game prototypes I have knocked up, and the why of that has led me ambling across the internet. So it was a bit of a surprise to see SCMIV turn up at a Brazilian site redistributing freeware. What surprised me was that it has 719 downloads. So at least it gets played a bit.It only has 92 plays on YoYo, but I might BabelFish the Brazilian commentary and see what makes it attractive. [Edit: Ouch -- the grabled translation I got seems to indicate that whoever posted really really didn't like this -- from the black and white design to the deferred control. Go figure.] I know it gets some traffic on a Czech site (mentioned somehwere below), but I have no idea, in this age of Web 2.0 and hyperbole about numbers of hits and downloads etc. if that is good or bad, or indicative of the grazing of web content that is endemic. Is it good (perhaps) to have wasted the time and computing resources of 800+ internet persons?

Meanwhile, almost no one will touch Flight of the Snowman. I wonder why? The core of the game was knocked up in a few hours over couple of days (to show the students just how rapid prototyping can be. Since then I have added a fair amount of gloss and playability, but it just doesn't seem to attract anyone. Oh well, it is all a mystery.

And in my ambling I came across the Experimental Gameplay Project site, which seems like a fantastic idea. Just need to work out whether I should join in. Some very interesting ideas, and the same focus on something different that I kid myself I am trying to explore.

Mind you, I was in a staff development event early in the week dealing with IP issues (the upshot of which seemed to be that we should all cling like limpets to any idea rather than allow distribution without gain), and I begin to wonder if the university would approve of chucking my work out into the ether in this way anyway.