Q1 2016

Quick update to everything that is going on currently at Forever Interactive.

Battle Gnomes:
We have brought our story driven MOBA "Battle Gnomes" back online with a new development team. They are currently building out the story line as well as the alpha version of our gameplay. The story will be coming out to fans early so we can get feedback on it before we move it too far along.

Visions of Zosimos:
VoZ is currently building out its MVP (Minimal Viable Product) scheduled for a full release by August. We are currently working on our engagement for this years GenCon conference in Indianapolis, IN. The online storefront is coming along nicely and that should be rolled out to Alpha players in the next week or so. We are also adjusting our core resource system so that the game paces better. We are also adding in a whole new UI/UX to finally polish out our MVP.

Hero Engine:
The true power of this engine lies in its ability to handle continual integration. We were able to dev in real-time with our customers at last years GenCon. This helped us to clean up so many things we didn't even see until our customers showed it to us. We were also to add new content per customer requests during the Conference. As a result of this engagement, we spent a ton of time adding all of our customers suggestions. Hero developers are doing a mountain of work to improve itself over the coming year as well. They have been amazing in helping us charge towards launch. Much kudos to them!

Forever Interactive:
We are cleaning up all of our websites and relaunching our social media campaigns. Look for our IndieGoGo campaign to begin this coming month as it will have a mass amount of founders rewards as we gear towards launch in August.

Q1 2011

Q1 2011 - Welcome back fans! We have ALOT to go over since our post last year. I know the updates here seem VERY infrequent however I now have enough people in place to dedicate more time on community management. Let's get things started!

Forever Interactive has partnered with Idea Fabrik, a German based MMO company, who recently bought out Simutronics and it's Hero Engine technology. This business deal means we now have a clear line to launch VoZ and Infernal World to the public. They offer hosting services and billing services along with it's Hero Blade Engine. This all in one package streamlines our MMO pipelines from conception to market. Not only that it speeds up our development times by use of it's agile cloud based engine allowing us to collaborate in real time across the globe. We look forward to this partnership as the MMO industry is poised to reach 12 billion dollars in revenue by 2015. Forever Interactive has also partnered with indie tool developers, SILO and Daz 3D, to use it's modeling and animation software in developing our games. Both companies are dedicated to fostering partnerships within the indie game development community.

Visions of Zosimos is currently in the process of transferring from Torque 3D to Hero Blade. This transition will take a couple months however it's longevity will be even more secure. We have streamlined the design to make the game more accessible to all. We are updating all our assets to show the true power of Hero. I think you will be pleased with the upgrades we are making. Our plans allow for a more social gaming environment and experience while staying true to our core mechanics. We plan on releasing the game in an Open Alpha state just after Q1 this year. This allow you, the fans, to help grow VoZ to where it needs to be over the years to come. Stay Tuned!!

Battle Gnomes is an action adventure puzzle game using the Unity 3D Engine. It's almost to a gold state in it's development cycle. We plan on entering our demo world to the Kongregate site by February 15th and releasing the full game to the Apple and Droid markets soon thereafter. If we do well on those platforms we will be looking to hit the DLC market after that. 

Community Management now has a full member! Mike Anderson, Dark Trilarian, is our direct link to you the fans. He will be active across all forums and ensuring your greatest feedback on all our titles will make it into our builds. Our fans and our members are our greatest assets and we want both to be at the forefront of our titles. Please go to our main site news page and become fans of our facebook and twitter pages. Lend your voices and we will have fun making great games together!!!

Q1 2010

Ok we had ALOT going on for us since the new year. I am going to recap the news  thus far and add some insight into our future.

First off we built our game "Visions of Zosimos" to an Alpha state which we will be announcing and opening to the public. This Open Alpha testing module will allow us to create great compelling gameplay faster. It also creates a bigger fan based community sooner. We look forward to having you on board. You can sign up at our site http://www.visionsofzosimos.net/ We also sent out a full media blitz from expanding our website to full video of our builds.

We were also featured in the Journal Sentinel for our involvement in the Indie Scene here in Wisconsin and our Completely Virtual Agile Development Method. Our story is here: http://www.jsonline.com/features/technology/84796037.html

We also attended this years Midwest Gaming Classic on an invitation from the IGDA to talk about our role in the Midwest Game Development scene and the Alpha release of VoZ. We met alot of other Indie Dev groups as well as some veterans and garnered alot of great feedback regarding our alpha build with VoZ. Thanks to the IGDA for allowings us the voice to speak to many others like us. Our video is live here: http://vimeo.com/10762614

In April we also submitted our Game Design doc for "Infernal World" to this years PlayExpo at UW Whitewater. We met some very talented individuals and were able to gain some sincere interest within the industry. Well done to all those involved.

In future news we are planning to enter VoZ in a couple Indie Contests then building it to a Beta state by Q4 of this year. We are also now approved for Facebook and iPhone/iPad development and are looking at a few opportunities in this lucrative market. We hope to add some partnerships in the coming months who believe in what we are doing and are trying to accomplish.

We created a fan page on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forever-Interactive-LLC/108050259232723?v=wall Become a Fan!

In closing we will be showcasing more of VoZ and possibly adding a few more projects before the end of the year. We look forward to sharing it with you! /Onward!!

Our Next Iteration!

Finally got this blog linked to our main site. So it seems fitting we add some more news from behind the scenes. First off we decided to take the two projects we were working on and merge them into one. The RPG lost quite a few members and was going to take longer to develop than expected. "Visions of Zosimos" our web based board/card game needed more talent and was entering it's Alpha phase of development so rather than spend months recruiting for 2 projects and training them it made sense just to merge them together. This decision sped up our development milestones for VoZ by being fully staffed with people who already understand the agile virtual model. This led to another decision to create a fighting game using a design doc we already had created and using the assets we created from the RPG we shelved. This team took two weeks to build and will require a shorter dev period with a smaller team of 5-10 ppl. So now we have two projects with smaller dev cycles that are fully staffed and running on all cylinders.

We are now affiliated with the Wisconsin chapter of the IGDA. This is awesome news and further secures our position in the Game Development field here in the Midwest. It also directly mirrors the IGDA in their commitment to enhancing a quality of life for game developers and our Agile Virtual dev method.

In other news, I am helping MATC (Milwaukee) train it's 3rd semester CSG students in using UT3 to create a mod in an Agile Virtual environment. There is a link to this project directly on our site. So far it has been real rewarding seeing how they are embracing this method. There is no doubt they will have something truly amazing to show in their portfolios at the end of the program.

Alot of updates coming this month as we will be doing live Alpha Testing for VoZ. The game is now live on our servers. New fighting game site will be live off our main site showcasing updates and video. We will be delivering some podcasts pertaining to FI build and VoZ development. These next few months promise to be pretty amazing! /onward!

News up until now

Well it certainly has been a long while since my last post but I feel now I can sit back and free up some more of my time to post regularly on my blog and twitter pages. I suppose I should start from the beginning of the year now that we are 6 months in. As of January first we decided to split our team in two and take two seperate approaches to the games we are creating. This required we put Infernal World on hold and focus on two smaller projects. One a web based board/card game using micro-transactions and a single player RPG set in the same IP as Infernal World but before the events leading up it. This approach allows us to get a game into market with very little to no outside funding in a very short amount of time. It also focuses on two huge markets. Web based micro-transactions and RPGs both are huge markets and have very little competition. We feel we have a lot to offer in these areas and can compete very well against the competition. During this transition I have been recruiting heavily to staff each team adequately and it always consumes the most of my time. It is something I feel I have gotten very good at over the years. Now that we are ending our recruiting season I can focus more on my Development resposibilities and have some fun creating games. Currently we are in full-production on both projects and hope to be in a strong Alpha by summers end. Then be at a strong Beta by the end of 2009.

We are also refining our business plan for both projects while improving our Milestones so we can better showcase our teams/projects to Angel Investors, Publishers, and Venture Capitalists. We have also signed on for two major contests coming in 2010 so our teams have something to strive for. The last contest we entered we won so I have no doubt we can do the same. Out of this transition we lost some great members, we lost some bad ones, but in the end I feel we have never been stronger. The tools and pipelines we are currently using have been refined into a well oiled machine that keeps getting better and better. Our teams are very well rounded and SUPER ambitious and so far have not found a hurdle they can't cross. I would like to thank Milwaukee Area Technical College for being such a good partner in our Companys success thus far and allowing us to use their new MOCAP Studio. Thank you to all the schools who see great potential in us and are grateful for the business model we offer their graduates.  The Art Institute across America but mostly the Illinois Intstitute has been especially helpful in both finding recruits and giving their graduates an outlet in this amazing feild. The American Academy of Art has been a great partner as well as Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. The list goes on and on of great schools that are linking amazing recruits to us. I hope to continue to work with them every year! 

Over the next few months our goals are clear. I will be enriching our sites with the amazing media and art that our outstanding members are creating. Building relationships within our chosen industry to develop great games for emerging platforms. Refining our Company to become more efficient and successful than ever before. More than anything else we will be fighting to create something that will be the benchmark of Game Developement for the future. Thanks! /Onward

Post Hero Blade!

Use of the Hero Blade taught us a lot about our pipelines. This is a VERY robust tool and one we loved to use. I would love to get the funding needed to obtain the license for this Engine. It directly plugs into our development methods and virtual studio with ease. It was a lot of fun creating and testing our ability sets for Infernal World. I loved seeing our whole team in there and creating all at the same time. We were able to get a ton accomplished within the short time with it and now have a video on InfernalWorld.net showcasing our final output.Once again thank you Simutronics for this rare and wonderful opportunity.

Post GDC!

Well ALOT has happened since last years GDC. We left with a ton of positive feedback. A great review from MMORPG.COM and some excellent leads for VC. We continued to build for the Multiverse platform but began to outgrow the technology. The feedback we were continually getting from VC was they wanted to see more gameplay. We could not accomplish this with the current iteration of MV so we looked for another engine to showcase our combat. This led us to Simutronics and the Hero Blade. In late July we were given access to their technology for 30days. We traveled to St Louis for 4 days of training and began to build our first zone along with combat using the DnD 4th Edition ruleset.

The Week Before GDC

Here we are a week before GDC and we are scrambling as hard as we can to get the most out of this conference. When I first began this company back in Jan 2006 I had dreamed we would get this far but scared as hell we wouldn't. It's so invigorating to be on the floor with so many other talented people and industry legends showing off our game. I am so proud of our team and what we were able to accomplish so far. That being said we aren't done yet! There is sooo much left to do we have just hit the tip of the iceberg. To better prepare ourselves for the next phase of our growth we have decided to adopt a Development style called Agile & Scrum Development. This will allow us to get as much into the engine as possible faster and under budget. My brother is going for his certification in this method and will be attending a few conferences to ensure we are operating at peak level by April 1st. We can use this method in the Virtual Studio realm we are currently developing under as well as the brick and mortar we are shooting for. So it will be easy to transfer over to both environments. Our next goal will be securing Venture Capital and or Angel Investment. We have been building our Business Plan this last month to be ready for GDC and any contacts we may make there. So far the numbers are quite refreshing and seem within reach for a 50 person team over 3 yrs. GDC is going to be a GREAT opportunity for us and we plan on making the most of it. My next post will be going over the conference and sharing with you my experience. See you then! /onward!!!

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