11th November, up at 4:30 a.m. to reach Dadar station to catch a bus to Pune for the Nasscom GDC. Just the night before night Krishna and me realized that we would infact have the time and could actually attend the NGDC. At first we thought it’s too last minute but by midnight we decided, lets go for it. So, groggily we met up at 5am outside the station and got on a Shivneri after a 4 hour journey spent in a half asleep state, we reached Pune and head right to the venue, Taj Vivanta and “freshened up” there. EXCEPT! that was NOT the venue! After speaking to a couple of friends we realized that the venue was Hyatt Regency (I still can’t recollect why we were so convinced that the venue was Taj). Feeling like a bunch of idiots we head towards Hyatt and spent 2 days attending sessions and meeting lots of interesting people.

There were some really good sessions this year. I particularly enjoyed Rajat Ojha’s Post Mortem of their upcoming game SNS. It was a simple talk of What they did, How they did it and what did or did not work for them. I wish them luck for the launch and with their new games. Jason Bay’s session on freemium games also had some great insight into the hottest business model in the games indsutry today. Then there were the fellow Indies, Yadu, Kinshuk, Shubhank, Apoorav and the whole bunch. They were lively and passionate with good ideas for the way forward for Indies and game development in general in India (like the BYOG). My personal favorite moments, however, were the heated discussions between Vijay and Yiannis. :)

The NGDC ended quite well with a great meeting with Ian Livingstone. I demoed our upcoming game to him and he seemed to think it had potential (YAY!!!) As you can see, it was very Heart Warming. :)

Today is a beautiful day and it shall be remembered as the day we were visited by the guys from Square Enix.

Mr. Yasuhiro Fukushima and Mr. Shoji Shiromoto visited our office and we talked Games and the Indian Market for hours.They gave us great feedback on Finger Footie, and seemed to quite enjoy It’s Just a Thought.
They also play-tested our upcoming secret project. ** Don’t tell anyone, but I think they liked it ! :D **

After much delay, here are some pics from my visit to Hoplay11. It was a great event with cool developers.

“Hoplay festival 2011 at Alhondiga Bilbao, Spain”

From Hoplay11, posted by Shailesh Prabhu on 10/07/2011 (20 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Yellow Monkey Studios made some waves last month as its latest game, It’s Just a Thought, disseminated among the indie Internet. The team was lauded for its incorporation of social website Facebook into the game. I consider catching Michael Rose’s attention a good litmus test of indie superstar potential. Alliteration aside, indies in India seemed like a good idea to explore, so I decided to hear what Yellow Monkey Studios has to say about the Indian indie scene. Along the way, I discovered how tasty vada pav looks!

Read more here…

After anticipating a long approval time due to the holiday season App rush, we were pleasantly surprised by Apple. Our app was approved in two hours flat after it went into review. As a result, the game is now live here: http://itunes.com/apps/itsjustathought/

Now the wait for a million downloads begins…