http://finance.yahoo.com/news/kabam-acquires-china-balanced-worlds-143300256.html

In April of 2010 I was asked to consult on a gem of a game called High Noon. Created by the Happylatte guys in Beijing, this was an iPhone, free-to-play, MMO game set in the Wild West. High Noon had some very addictive game features that peaked my interest quickly, things like; holstering your “rifle” (or iPhone!), a skill based bounty system, and it was free to play to play.

I was asked to come into this project during the final months of development to share some of my online gaming and free to play expertise with the team. During my time there I worked with them on the general game design, creating a content roadmap, setting the item pricing, UI flow, while keeping the goal of our near launch date in site.

Great project and I really couldn’t say enough about what a pleasure it was to do, my hats off to the guys over at Happylatte for their success on this game.

Some of the games more notable achievements include:
• Achieved the top 10 grossing iPhone game of 2010 in over 60+ countries according to Apple Rewind 2010.
• Top 10 game in 50+ countries.
• Top 100 game in 80+ countries.
• Over 12,000+ 5-star reviews.

Really looking forward to see the next games these guys come out with. You can see a few snippets and images of the game in my portfolio. Or you can download the game for free on your iTouch or iPhone device here.

I’ve joined forces with the boys over at Balanced Worlds to create a top-secret gaming project for a world-class, USA-based global publisher. The stakeholders of the company, Christopher Pfeiffer, Maxim Garber, John Wu, and myself are now working in stealth with our team of rockstars to bring quality games to you, for free.

Each one of us is using our own super-power to bring to you this top-of-the-line, triple-A quality, F2P game from the snowy capital of the Middle Kingdom, Beijing.

The line up on the four of us:

Directing our Creative Team is Christopher Pfeiffer, formerly Director of Gameplay at Insomniac Studios. Chris has 15+ years plus of experience in the gaming industry and has worked on titles such as the Descent, Red Faction, Ratchet and Clank, and Resistance: Fall of Man series, among others.

Spearheading all of our technology, including Balanced Worlds’ proprietary game framework, scalable backend, and tools chain known as the Equilibrium Engine, is Maxim Garber. Formerly the Lead Programmer at Insomniac Games, he has also worked on world-class titles such as the Ratchet and Clank series, Resistance: Fall of Man, Spy Hunter 2, and NHL FaceOff.

John Wu is currently using his award-winning art direction expertise to create the incredibly vivid world and characters that drive the story of our game. John has worked on big-budget AAA titles such as: The God of War series, fl0wer, fl0w, Fat Princess, Little Big Planet, Calling All Cars!, Warhawk Omega Dawn, Resistance: Fall of Man, the Ratchet and Clank series, and many others.

And then, of course, there’s me myself, Alexander Rivan Ronalds! With my expertise in the online free-to-play space through my work at café.com and Warrior Epic, I’ll be heading up all Production efforts for the entire company while wearing my Executive Producer hat. Since the ship of Warrior Epic, the last F2P MMO that I worked on back in May of 2009, I’ve worked on a couple of gaming projects under the auspices of my online gaming consulting company, Argine Consulting. Over the last year I’ve worked on games from all sides of the gaming industry, including IPhone games, Facebook games, and 3D games, and now I’m happy to make my return to triple-A games with my partners at Balanced Worlds.

Our team is also filling out very nicely, with all key members already working away here in Beijing. Without giving away too many details, we already have an extremely talented Lead Designer with 7 years of experience, who has worked on games such as the Age of the Empires series and the Halo series. We’ve also brought in a backend programmer with over 20 years of experience, who’s worked on classics such as the Ultima series and a Zynga veteran.

Anyways, stay tuned folks! More information and updates here as they come available.

For the most part, the Korean developers were far more focused on downloadable content. The whole “web game” phenomena that is here in China game development doesn’t to be nearly as powerful in Korea. I’m assuming this is because of how fast the Korean internet is, people simply don’t mind downloading a gigabyte of data to play a pet game. China on the other hand is all about the web games and removing all barriers to entry to get the players playing.

Another thing interesting fact is that there was a much higher portion of Korean developers focusing on MMOs for Children under 15. These games were all free to play, downloadable client games with virtual goods economies.

All in the all, the conference went well. The KOCCA guys did a great job at organizing the event and I’ll be back next year for sure. I’ll also hopefully be making another trip to Korea soon to meet more developers!

Photo’s coming to the gallery right after this post!

The Beijinger has uploaded their photos of the event here.

I’ll also be uploading some photos to my gallery later this week.