Committee

Content has moved to Play This Thing! and commerce continues at Manifestogames.com

rockeater — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:57:09 -0500

Manifesto Games launched as a statement of belief in the creative efforts of the independent game community. It has been a slow exploration, but things are beginning to speed up. One change is that Play This Thing! has become a separate site. Even with idealistic commerce, users expressed that critical content should be separate. Other more substantive changes will be occurring shortly.

Just to re-cap on the vision, it was/is that there's a potential for quality independent development out there that wasn't being fostered appropriately. It still isn't, and we are just beginning the project.

Stay tuned...

PeaceMaker receives Mid-East distribution, world peace to follow

RedEl — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:43:50 -0500

Manifesto Games congratulates PeaceMaker and the development team at Impact Games on their recent distribution relationship with the Peres Center for Peace.

PeaceMaker is the award-winning game that allows the player to “play the news, live the conflict” by attempting to bring peace to the Mid-East as either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President. The Peres Center has distributed 75,000 copies through the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz and 10,000 copies through the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds. They will distribute an additional 15,000 copies of PeaceMaker to Palestinian and Israeli high school classrooms in the coming months.

“It has been our hope to put this game in the hands of people who live with the real conflict every day, so they can play as the other side.” Explained Asi Burak, co-founder of ImpactGames. This holiday season, his wish as come true. Those of us in the rest of the world can still download PeaceMaker here at Manifesto Games and have a try at creating a more peaceful world for the coming New Year.

Blackwell Unbound: The final entry

Brown_Morgan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:09:20 -0500

Here are Manifesto Games, we’re surrounded by so many talented writers that I forgot that most people are more happy to be readers that writers, which is OK except that I didn’t get as many ghost stories as I expected. This is the last entry in out Blackwell Unbound competition, but I think you’ll agree that it’s worth the wait. Enjoy it!

Morgan, Promotions Editor at Manifesto Games

===
Ghostly Children
By Christian Schlager

Three years ago I had taken a small measly job in some sleepy run-down town near the Rhine. For the first few months I lived in an even smaller village a few miles down the river.

One evening, after leaving work at dusk, we went for a night out and therefore it was already dark when I got on my bike to drive home. Now that I think of it, it might have been midnight. The bikeway lead across the countryside and soon I had left behind me the somewhat comforting lights and street lamps. I was driving faster than usual, not entirely because I wanted to get home quickly. There was . . . something; an eerie darkness surrounded me. I started to sweat. No moon; only the mist from the river. I felt like jumping out of my skin. The only light provided by the bike's screaming dynamo. It was cold, colder even than a night in October should have been.

I was shivering.

A pair of small bare feet appeared in the tiny circle of lit street in front of me. Without thinking I jerked the bike around to avoid collision and went downhill towards a dark mass, which resolved into underwood. I grazed a tree, hit a fence and went down.

#####

My head was spinning.

What I heard when I regained consciousness turned my blood to ice. Have you ever met a horror that wiped all reason from your mind? A dozen voices, small high-pitched voices, not cheery or even frightened, but utterly abandoned and forlorn and far from sounding remotely human.. How can one describe these voices? Imagine a deep cave, but the cave has no end, it goes on forever, towards a place from where there is no return. And from that distance you hear these voices, but they are not in the distance, but closing in on you from all around.

With a murderous terror paralyzing my every thought I raised my head.

#####

They were . . . children. Despite the voices, despite their translucent appearance and haunted looks . . . children, standing in a circle around me. Through the fog still wrapped around my mind, slowly the realization trickled that they were asking me questions. "Where am I?" asked one of them closest to me. It shook me to my most inner core to hear the girl's innocence and helplessness in her whisper. They all came closer asking and asking, as if they were drawn to the heat my body was emanating. I looked down. I hadn't noticed how the girl touched my arm. She smiled a little, glowed and vanished. It didn't hurt, I wasn’t getting colder, but if anything calm. One after the other came close, touched me and vanished with the same faint smile.

After a while, I was standing alone below the trees, not frightened anymore, but utterly amazed.

Blackwell Unbound: Week #2

Brown_Morgan — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:31:42 -0500

It’s week two of our Blackwell Unbound “Tell Us Your Ghost Story” contest, with two more winners. Remember that if you didn’t win this week, you can try again next week. Blackwell Unbound is still a great game, and the contest is still going on. Just to remind you, this week’s contest will go from 12:01 AM on Thursday until 5 PM next Wednesday, and the first-prize winner will receive both Blackwell Games, the second-prize winner will get a $10 code to use at Manifesto Games. To enter, all you have is e-mail your ghost story to me, Morgan (at) ManifestoGames (dot) com

Thanks for your stories, and here are the winners:

GRAND PRIZE WINNER – WEEK #2
The Final Ghost by Patrick Di Justo
(editor’s note: this is the concluding chapter in Patrick’s account of growing up in a haunted house)

Only one outsider has ever seen our ghost: my friend Darryl, a skeptical Spock-like scientist. One night in 1983, Darryl and I had been doing some astronomical observing on the roof of the house. We had finished for the night and were packing up. Darryl was in the attic, at the bottom of the roof ladder; I was on the roof handing our gear down to him. Darryl said to me, "We got some good observing done. We'll have to come back tomorrow night. Oh, hi, sir."

"'Hi, sir?'" I repeated. "Darryl, who are you talking to?"

"Your grandfather," Darryl replied. "I think it's your grandfather, at least."

"Darryl," I replied, "my grandfather is in his house in the Bronx this week. Who are you talking to?"

Darryl looked up at me and said, quite distinctly, "There's an old man standing at the end of the hallway. I assume he is your grandfather. Isn't he?"

"Darryl," I said, speaking quite distinctly myself, "what is he wearing?"

"A white shirt, dark suspenders, and... uh, he's gone now." Darryl sounded just a tiny bit shaken.

"Darryl," I said sepulchrally, "I think you've seen our ghost."

"Couldn't be," Darryl said automatically. "There's no such thing."

"Darryl," I said, coming down the ladder from the roof, "you saw an old man in a house in which there are no old men. He vanished, but you never heard the attic door open or close, did you? You didn't hear anyone going upstairs or downstairs. You described what this man was wearing, and it fits our ghost's limited wardrobe. Face it: you saw our ghost, Darryl."

"But," Darryl began.

"No buts, Darryl. You saw the ghost. What else could it be?"

"But your grandfather.."

"There is no grandfather, Darryl. There's only a ghost."

We went downstairs and told my mother about the sighting. She questioned Darryl mercilessly and recorded everything in her log book of visitations. Darryl did his best to answer her questions accurately and truthfully, then ran out the door and went home. I'm still friends with Darryl, and to this day he has never again set foot in that house.

That was the last time anyone saw the ghost. Soon afterward, the children started moving out of the house, and the ghost had no more reason to stay.

SECOND PRIZE WINNER – WEEK #2
Hidden Room by D. Moonfire

Greg stared at the back wall of his basement with trepidation. Somewhere behind the rotting paneling and tacky tile was a room. A room that showed up on blueprints but had no doors. He glanced behind him where he had arranged nearly a ton of wood, steel, drywall, and home improvement tools. A couple thousand dollars on a credit card that he couldn't afford, but he needed to do something.

Hefting his crowbar, he stepped forward and slammed the tip hard into the wall. It punched through the paneling and crunched as it pierced the cinder blocks. He grunted and pulled back, straining muscles. Yanking the bar out, he screamed as he slammed it into the wall again, wrenching hard to tear the paneling off the wall. It came down in wet, crumbling flakes but he ignored it, lost in his obsession to tear down the wall and find the hidden room.

Straining, he ignored the burn in his muscles and attacked the wall, tearing hunks of wood and nails and throwing them aside. Dust rose up and choked him, but he continued straining with his efforts to strip away the veneer of the hidden room.

He only took a few minutes to gulp down some energy drink before staring at the wall. The dozen holes that pierced the stone were a challenge, a target to him.

"Leave me, will you?"

Greg slammed his crowbar into the wall. It cracked violently. He bellowed in anger, slamming the metal bar into the bricks. They shattered from the force of his blow. Greg snarled and punched the metal into it again.

"Not enough of man for you!?"

The impact of metal against stone rang out loudly. Shards of concrete cut across his face, leaving scores but he continued to slam the bar repeatedly into the brick until a gaping darkness stood before him.

Panting heavily, he glared into the dark room.

"The shit I have to go through."

The crowbar clanged loudly as it dropped to the ground. Snatching up a high-powered halogen lamp from his pile of brand new supplies. Thumbing the switch, he watched as a remarkable nothing happened. He flipped it again.

"Stupid lamp!"

Then, Greg realized that it wasn't plugged in. Blushing from embarrassment, he jammed the plug into an extension cord and thumbed the switch on. Brilliant light exploded in his eyes and he held it away until the stars faded from his vision.

Breathing heavily, he picked up his crowbar and peered into the sealed room. Instead of hidden treasures or some dark secret, all he spotted was rubble. Piles of dirt and larger piles of concrete. The far edge of the wall glittered wetly from water seeping through the foundation.

"Well, damn it."

The crowbar dropped loudly, the fight dissipating instantly as he looked at a remarkably boring room filled with rubble. He sighed and peered around the room, stabbing the darkness with his lamp.

Behind him, the dust rose up in a thick cloud, moving without wind or guidance. Greg didn't notice as arms and legs formed in the cloud, pieces of rubble and wood rising up to fill out a form of a man. As the shape solidified, an expression of bored malice focused on Greg's back.

Unaware, Greg sighed with disgust.

"Why does this happen to me?"

Swearing under his breath, he sat the lamp down on the rubble and slumped down against the wall. Sweat ran rivulets down the dust on his face.

"Why did she have to leave me?"

He stared down at the brand new halogen lamp. Rage rose up inside him and he lashed out with his foot, kicking the lamp across the room. It exploded against the far wall, plunging the room in utter darkness.

"No one has to deal the crap I have to."

His voice echoed in the room, then a hard voice spoke up.

"Want to bet?"

Greg jumped, his eyes probing the entrance. A man stood in the entrance, blocking it with his body. He felt a prickle of fear dancing down his spine as he stared at the stranger.

"W-Who are you?"

The man shrugged, "Doesn't matter. What matters is that I can top your story."

The man stepped forward, walking away from the entrance. Greg scanned the room, planning. Stone rumbled beyond the entrance and Greg froze as he saw hunks of concrete rolling up the gaping hole.

Speaking in a hard voice, the ghost walked closer, "Let me tell you about a wife who seals you into the back room of your house."

Behind the ghost, the rumble moved on its own, piling up over the entrance to block it. Greg watched as the bricks reformed over the entrance, melting into place as the cracks sealed shut.

Feeling that his last chance for survival rushing up to him, Greg threw himself across the room, scrambling along the rubble. His hand formed a fist as he punched at the ghost. Instead of hitting solid flesh, he only crashed into dust, rock, and wood. His hand smacked wetly against the opposite wall.

"No! No!"

His fingers screamed out in pain as he clawed at the closing opening to the room. He felt the icy concrete sealing into place, forming into place as if he never broke them. In the last few inches of light, he watched as the wooden paneling beyond the wall crawling up into place, replacing his hours of work in seconds.

A hand landed heavily down on his shoulder. The ghost chuckled and spoke into his hear, dust blowing past his earlobe.

"Don't worry, we have all the time in your life. Plenty of time, days at least."

The last of the light faded as the wall repaired itself, powered by the angry will of the ghost. Greg let out a long whimper of fear, shivering from the very depths of his soul.

Blackwell Unbound: the first week's winners

Brown_Morgan — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:57:49 -0400

Hi, I'm Morgan, an editor at Manfesto Games. I've seen a few ghosts (my mom's dead aunt came for a visit and tried to pat my head. It was pretty weird.) so my colleagues thought I was the best judge for this contest. It was really pretty hard -- there were so many great stories that it was hard to pick just two. If you didn't make our winner's list this time, try again this coming week; the contest begins again at midnight tonight and ends next Wednesday after five PM -- I do need a couple of hours to read and re-read them all. Thanks for your stories, and have a Happy Halloween!

GRAND PRIZE WINNER -- WEEK #1
Story by Tom Kim
This happened when I was a senior in high school. I had just returned home from seeing a movie and I noticed that there was an unfamiliar car in the driveway. I parked my car next to it and walked in through the garage door. We lived in a single-story ranch house at the time, and all of the main rooms were arranged linearly. There was a small utility room between the garage and the kitchen where our washer dryer and water softener were kept, and where we removed our shoes before entering the house (I am Asian-American, and it is customary to take off one's shoes before walking inside.)

As I was kicking off my sneakers, I heard a very clear and distinct female voice say "hello." It was slightly inquisitive, and not at all threatening. The speaker sounded like a young woman with a Midwestern accent. The voice was unfamiliar -- it didn't belong to my mother or my sister. The lights were off in the utility room and the kitchen beyond, and I assumed that I had surprised one of my parent's guests who perhaps had gone into the kitchen.

Puzzled, but not frightened, I made my way through the kitchen and dining room which were both empty, and found my parents sitting in the living room across from another Korean couple. All of them asked if I had brought home a friend because all four of them clearly heard the voice, as well. When I told them that I had not, and that I had thought that the voice belonged to one of them, they all got very uncomfortable. No one else was home at the time -- my older brother was off to his first year of college, and my sister was out with her friends.

We all kind of shrugged it off. My parents are quite religious -- conservative Protestants. And culturally, Koreans are quite superstitious to begin with. So I think the entire situation left all of them very unsettled. Rather than discuss it, everyone chose to ignore it. Although I didn't share their religious views or superstitions, the odd occurrence left me a little spooked. I wasn't a hostile skeptic, but if someone told me they were hearing voices, my first instinct at the time would've been to wonder if the person wasn't suffering from schizophrenia. Ironically, I would've been more concerned for my own psychological well-being if it weren't for the fact that all five of us clearly heard the voice.

I went to bed and tried not to make anything of it.

But the following morning was when things got positively strange. I had slept in, and got up around 10:30am. My mother was out running errands and my father was out mowing the lawn. My sister was still asleep in her room. I walked toward the kitchen to find myself something for breakfast. When I got to the living room, I found something quite strange. We had six or seven large pine cones on the fireplace mantle for decoration. These were on the floor arranged in a triangle pointed toward the fireplace.

My parents and I had not told my sister about the voice, and it was extremely out of character for parents to play a prank on me, especially about an incident like this. When I went to pick up the pine cones, something else quite odd happened. They felt like they were literally stuck to the floor. The floor had a low shag carpet, and the carpet filaments were entwined around the bottom of the pine cones. I had to break them to get them up, and use a vacuum to get the bits out of the carpeting.

Nothing else happened the rest of the year before I left for college, but I didn't talk about either of these incidents with my siblings until a few years later. On talking to them, they told me they had several odd experiences of their own. Nothing overtly threatening or scary, but just odd. Like seeing unexplained floating lights in dark rooms. But nothing like the voice or the pine cones.

The property wasn't that old -- I think it was built in the 40's or 50's. The only odd thing I can think of is that the house had been vacant, and on the market for three years before my parents bought it. It was located on several acres of woods in some pretty high property tax real estate. Compared to our neighbors, our house was pretty modest. Still, my understanding was that my parents were able to pick up the home for quite a discount. I think I know why.

That's my ghost story. Not that scary, but to this day, the experiences defy easy explanation.

***************************************************************************************

SECOND PRIZE WINNER -- WEEK #1
Story by M. Idrous Ishaaq

Steve, Eddie and Bob had formed a triangle and were chatting away about the latest horror movies; comparing them and criticizing without mercy; as I pass by Bob suddenly waves his arms around, eyes rolled back, making moaning sounds. Everyone in class laughed, I glared at him and told him to shut it.

Bob spoke in a mocking voice „Ooh! What‚re you going to do? Summon the spirits?!‰

Then he started to shake "I see a light! I see a light!." Soon afterwards he was unconscious, lying on the infirmary bed and I was sent to the principle‚s office.

I was made fun of occasionally and usually I‚d keep it in, but today I was just fed up with it.

***

Let me introduce myself, my name is Idris and I have a thing with spirits. Now, I don‚t mean to go all ŒSixth Sense‚ on you, nor am I saying that I‚ve got the kinks, it‚s just they bother me in my dreams.

My family, or rather the children in my family always had some sort of Œgift‚; it tends to be different for each of us.

Spirits haunt me when I sleep; they sometimes get into my dreams and create this nightmare universe where I become them and re-live a few of their darkest memories; their regrets, conflicts, anything that was bad, often it‚s of the day they died. I would wake up sweating and there‚d be something of their possession in my hand; don‚t ask me, I don‚t know how that‚s possible, but it‚s always there.

My brother Mort has OOBE (out of body experience), it means he can detach his spirit from his physical body, leaving it unconscious. You may think that‚s not much, but it gets annoying when he swoops in and out of our rooms, especially when we don‚t want to be disturbed; then again, it‚d always end up as a race to who can reach his body in time and beat the hell out if it. I notice that every time he does it, his appearance seem to age; maybe it's shortening his life span? ...hooray!

Betty, my sister, has it worse of all; she‚s the one with the eye and the flesh. If you don‚t get what I mean, let me elaborate. Betty has the ability to see ghosts in solid form; she can touch them physically and vice versa. She tells me that it gets confusing sometimes,"You won‚t know who‚s dead or alive."
They talk to her, yes, and she talks back. As a result people think she's schizophrenic. Betty gets bullied a lot obviously; in fact, I think everyone in the family has had their fair share of bullying. Why did I say she had it worse? A lot of the spirits, for some unknown reason, blame my sister for their deaths and they harm her, try to have revenge; maybe they‚re just confused angry spirits, maybe Betty had a previous life, who knows? Because of the bruises and scratches, our parents were arrested (teachers thinking that they had abused us), we were put into the Seven Bells‚ orphanage; it also functions as a boarding school. That's where we‚ve been for the past half year.

There you have it The Isaac children‚all three of us, are considered outcasts by the inhabitants of Seven Bells because of our gift and because of it, we are often ridiculed.

***

Detention isn't so bad, if you‚re lucky the person sitting in for you doesn‚t care what you do, you get to do whatever you want. It's liberating.

I look around the room and as expected, I see Mort and Betty at the back of the class; we have eye contact and a second later we continue with our business. We don‚t talk to each other much, but a peek says enough.

You see, Mort is agonizing on the fact that he didn‚t do anything wrong (or at least he claims not to have). The girls always pick on him, they dub him a peeking Tom, saying he uses his freak powers to go through the girls changing rooms and go invisible so no one can see; but my brother can only go translucent, so it can‚t be true.

My sister looks busy at the moment, probably trying to shut the bickering voices next to her (of course I‚m just guessing here, I can‚t hear or see them).

An hour had past and, getting desperate, I count the number of dents in the walls. I look around again, Mort has his head face down on the tabletop (OOBE I reckon, this time he probably is going to have a peek at the girls).

Betty is missing, I hadn‚t noticed that she left, she probably ran to the toilet, hoping the flush would drain the voices away. I hope she‚s alright.

I look at the clock, its half past five, just a few hours more (detention here lasts till seven in the afternoon). I'm tired and drowsy, but I pinch myself whenever I close my eyes, I haven't blinked since lunch. In the end, I gave in and my head fell with a loud thud; I'm knocked out instantly.

***

I'm running now, but from what? I look around, this place looks familiar, since it's a dream, it looks blurry and slightly distorted. I reach out to a nearby door and enter, panicked as hell. I can make out my voice (well, someone else's voice really).
"! Stop it, please! I didn‚t do anything!"
I can hear more voices, they're coming closer and closer, until . . . .

***

I screamed my lungs out, sweating badly and out of breath. Everyone was staring at me. It happened again, I became a fragment of one of the dead; but this time was a little different, this time it felt familiar.

There was a loud clunk sound, I dropped something. I looked at my feet and there I saw a pencil case and on it was written Betty.

Tell us your ghost story, and you might win both Blackwell Games!

costik — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:11:48 -0400

Imagine that your favorite relative has died and has left you something very special. Now imagine that the something special is the family ghost and only you can see him. That’s The Blackwell Legacy; the Blackwell women can all see Joey but nobody else would believe them. Joey isn’t just any mutigenerational legacy, but he’s a crime-fighting, mystery-solving spirit, and you can solve the mystery in The Blackwell Mystery--and now in Blackwell Unbound, the prequel to the earlier game.

You can also enter our “Have You Seen a Ghost?” contest for a weekly opportunity to win both Blackwell games or a $10 gift certificate for other purchases at Manifesto Games.

About the Contest

Do you know anyone who has seen a ghost or do you know anyone who has? Did you grow up in a house with a legend or are you from Amityville*? Maybe you don’t believe in ghosts at all but you once heard a great story. If you have a tale to tell, creepy or funny, from personal experience, gossip or simply the result of your own vivid imagination, tell us your story. Each week, we’ll give a first prize-winner both games. Each week we’ll give a second place winner a $10 certificate for Manifesto Games.

To enter, send your story to our resident psychic editor, morgan@Manifestogames.com. All stories should be between 150 and 1000 words, and all stories will be chosen at the discretion of Morgan, who claims to be highly psychic and has seen many ghosts**. The winners will be notified by e-mail and will also have their stories posted on Morgan’s blog page.

More Stuff

Stories that are libelous, slanderous, or infringe on the intellectual property rights or right of publicity of others aren't eligible. Employees and associates of Manifesto Games aren't eligible, either. Choice of winners is purely at our discretion.

You retain all rights to your story, but agree to let us post it on our site.

That's it!

Don't Want to Wait?

If you'd really like to player either (or both) games, go ahead and buy them--don't wait until you've found out if your story has won. We'll just refund your purchase if you do.

* A Manifesto staff member really was born in Amityville, which could explain a lot.

** For the record, Morgan is the only member of our staff who claims to see ghosts.

Announcing Play This Thing!

costik — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:53:47 -0400

We just launched a new site, which we invite you to check out. It's called Play This Thing, and it will feature one cool game each day--free games, interactive fiction, mods, and weird stuff like alternative reality and "big urban" games, as well, of course, as independent games.

Why are we doing this, and why is it separate from the Manifesto site?

For a bunch of reasons.

For one thing, when we launched the Manifesto site, we expected it to be a content-and-community site as well as an online retailer. That hasn't turned out as well as we had hoped; "The Word," our pages with reviews and articles about games, never got a lot of traffic--and in any event, reviews there sat a little uneasily on a site that was trying to sell you stuff. It was also not updated frequently enough to draw much repeat traffic--and perhaps was too much inspired by print magazine reviews. Online, where a demo download is a click away, short squibs are perhaps more useful than lengthy reviews--quick reading, and enough to give you a sense of whether it's worth your time to check the game out.

For another, we wanted to celebrate the full range of creativity in games outside the mainstream, including games that we ourselves don't necessarily sell--free games, games from people who haven't signed up to sell here, and so on. Play This Thing lets us do that, without confusing the Manifesto Games mission unduly. Of the five games on the front page at launch, for instance, only two are ones we sell.

When Play This Thing features a game that Manifesto sells, we'll link back here for purchase, of course--but we'll be covering a lot of games we don't sell, too. In essence, we're divvying up responsibilities: Manifesto Games becomes an ecommerce site, while Play This Thing takes care of content and community.

You'll note some changes here; the top menu link to The Word has become one to Play This Thing, and the area on the front page that used to contain the first few paragraphs of the most recent article from The Word is gone (and thank goodness--it's been a long time since we updated The Word, partly because we've been working on getting up Play This Thing, and it was getting pretty stale). And over time, most of our pages devoted to free games will be coming down, since Play This Thing will be a more logical place to feature them. (They never sat comfortably here, in any event.) And while we'll be maintaining the forums here, they'll be simplified a bit.

You'll notice some interesting features on Play This Thing, some of which we'll be integrating back into the Manifesto Games site in future. Play This Thing allows you to rate all games without having to post a review (once logged on)--and also provides Firefly-like recommendations of games you might like, based on how you and others have rated games. It also has an RSS feed for the front page, so you can easily get the new posts there by subscribing.

Hope you like it.

Game Tunnel's Top 100 Indie Games

costik — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:22:34 -0400

Game Tunnel recently posted their Top 100 Games of the last 3 years, and it was interesting going down the list--both because, well, I'd put some games a lot farther down, and some a lot higher up... And in general, I think there's not enough attention paid here to wargames, adventures, turn-based strategy, and 'serious' games, and perhaps too much to fairly pedestrian shooters, arcade game retreads, and rather dull casual games. But interesting nonetheless, since Game Tunnel also focuses on indie games, and it's intriguing to see their somewhat different take on the field--and encouraging to see that almost half of the games in their "top 100" we carry.

#1: Mr Robot

#5: Mexican Motor Mafia

#6: Jets 'n Guns

#8: Outpost Kaloki

#9: Global Defense Network

#11: Wik and the Fable of Souls

#12: Jets 'n Guns Gold

#15: ZSX3: Ninjastarmageddon!

#18: Rocket Bowl

#21: Oasis

#22: DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold

#31: DevastationZone Troopers

#33: Master of Defense

#35: Chocolate Castle

#37: Virtual Villagers 2

#40: War on Folvos

#41: Gumboy: Crazy Adventures

#43: Bullet Candy

#45: The Odyssey: Winds of Athena

#47: Steam Brigade

#48: Aveyond

#50: Flatspace II

#55: Tribal Trouble

#56: Clash 'n Slash

#57: Astral Masters

#64: Gates of Troy

#65: Scavenger

#69: Naked War

#71: Theseus: Return of the Hero

#76: Evil Invasion

#77: PeaceMaker

#80: Taskforce

#85: The Shivah

#86: FastCrawl

#87: Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso

#88: Empires and Dungeons

#89: Clash 'n Slash: Worlds Away

#90: RIP Strikes Back

#94: Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa

#96: Cute Knight: Kishi Kawaii

#98: Cellblock Squadrons

#99: Facade

#100: Trash

These Late Night Coding Blues

costik — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:22:26 -0400

Wow. That was a lot harder than it should have been. Urban Legend's developer has their own unlock system. They sent us a little script to generate unlock codes for their game, and said "use this!".

Sounds simple. How hard can that be? Three days hard, apparently.

Normally what we do is generate a bunch of codes ahead of time, upload them to our server, and dole them out to purchasers one at a time. (If you're logged on, click "my codes" at the top of the page--that'll give you a list of all the unlock codes you've received for games you've purchased). In some cases, developers have their own code generation system which requires a second piece of data, like a user's name. No problem there; we generate a few hundred codes using names like "manifesto1," "manifesto2" and so on, and upload them. But Urban Legend wants a "system id" that's pulled off the user's machine--meaning we can't generate arbitrary codes ahead of time. The user has to supply the system ID, with the code generated afterward.

And we can't just put the generator script online, because then anyone could generate unlock codes without purchase, with makes the whole thing pretty pointless.

So instead we need to have a system whereby users can buy the game, then input their system ID, we check to make sure they've bought it and haven't activated too many times, and then serve their code. And of course, the right thing to do is also ensure that this code shows up under "my codes."

All feasible, of course; that's the beauty of software. If you can spec it, you can build it. It doesn't mean building it is easy, though--not if doing so involves learning the ins and outs of the Drupal forms API (which is quite non-intuitive, and not very well documented), figuring out how long-departed developers decided where to store which bits of vital information in the mySQL database, teach yourself enough SQL to get by, and figure out why it works on the mySQL 5 set-up on your test machine but doesn't under mySQL 4 on the live site.

Probably not worth the time, really, but I like the game, so what the hell. And in any event, the result is sufficiently generalized that if we need to do something similar with other games in future, integration should be a whole lot quicker.

Ah, well, that's what you get with a start-up--functioning as sysadmin, code monkey, customer service manager, -and- CEO. Not to mention accountant, which reminds me... time to write some checks to developers.

Nathan Solomon to join the Manifesto Games team

nathansolo — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:37:02 -0400

Manifesto Games is delighted to announce that Nathan Solomon has joined Manifesto Games. He will serve as President of the company, and his primary focus at Manifesto Games will be on building out e-commerce functionality, business development and investor relations. Nathan, an accomplished strategist, was most recently a Vice-President at EB Games. He comes to Manifesto with a proven track record in the areas of e-commerce, business development and downloadable content.

“Nathan has strengths in areas where we’ve had a need,” said Manifesto CEO Greg Costikyan. “He’s been a friend and valued colleague for many years and an informal advisor to the company since we started. I think that we always had the idea of working with him in some capacity and we’re all very excited that we now have him on board in an official capacity. Nathan has the ideas and abilities to help us reach the next step, and he’s a great complement to the team, both professionally and personally.”

Nathan comes to Manifesto Games with an impressive background. He was Vice-President of Business Development at EB Games; during his tenure, it was the largest specialty retailer of videogames. While at EB, he dealt with customer-facing opportunities involving new technologies, including digital distribution, mobile efforts, and a variety of cross-departmental initiatives. Prior to EB, Nathan held senior roles with national advertising agencies as Executive Producer and Chief Technologist. Nathan also produced and directed commercials and was a fellow of the American Film Institute. He co-founded GameFlood.com, enabling downloads of incremental third-party content into games.

Nathan Solomon said “I’ve known Greg for many years and we’ve always talked about the great potential of indie games; now I’m very pleased to be working with him toward that potential. He has an incredible industry background, enormous developer cred, and it’s an exciting time to be with the company.” He went on to talk about his vision for Manifesto and said “We will be taking functionality and content to the next level over the next few months and Manifesto’s focus on intellectually engaging content has the potential to reach well beyond a core gamer demographic, giving it a unique position.”

Eleanor Lang, who is responsible for marketing and public relations, and Bill Folsom, who is responsible for business development and developer relations, have both been named Vice-President. Both have been with the company since shortly after its inception.

About Manifesto Games: Manifesto Games (www.manifestogames.com) is an innovative publisher and distributor of downloadable computer games, specializing in independently developed titles. Manifesto Games was created to facilitate the new era in which tools of interactive production are democratically available and enable developer and publisher alike to make a living, even a profit, from the production and sale of good games to an audience hungry for originality. Manifesto Games is based in New York.

For more information on Manifesto Games or to speak with Greg or Nathan, contact:

Eleanor Lang
Eleanor (at) manifestogames (dot) com
www.manifestogames.com
O: 212-945-1388