playBlog

Hi folks,

We’ve got another PC/Steam update for y’all today - and we think it’s a pretty good one.  :)  Here’s the quick summary…

New features

• Russian language support! Welcome to our brothers and sisters from Mother Russia!  :)  [Actually, Babo Violent 2 is very popular in Russia, plus Russian-speakers are the 2nd largest language group on Steam!  Welcome to MiBI!  ]
• Babo missions: Season 2 - we’ve got a whole new season of Character Skin missions (10!) and Community Map missions (4+) starting…  now!  We’ll have y’all hopping straight into June! 
• Clan skins - speaking of skin missions, these aren’t just regular skins - they’re “clan” skins.  What does that mean?  It means there’s a section on each of the characters that displays the logo of your particular clan.  So for example, for us members of the Playbrains clan - it proudly displays our Playbrains logo.  Anyway - it’s a super-cool way for members of clan’s to identify themselves in regular games - and will be very fun in clan matches too.  [Note - if you're not a member of a clan, it just displays the regular B*D*I or Scorched logo].
• Rotate your Babo during character selection - to get a good view of your character skin (and clan logo!) just left or right-click on your Babo during character selection!
• Misc fixes - small fix for icons not appearing in boot camp

Other misc updates

• Free week-end is green lit! - our tech + scheduling issues are all resolved, and we’re pleased to announce that the MiBI free week-end is scheduled for April 16-18!  So set your calendars, tell your friends, and put up your servers!  This is a great chance to introduce more people to Madballs madness! 
• Babo Crash! In case you missed it, we’re introducing a new action-oriented puzzle game for Smartphones (iPhones/iPod/iPad/Android) that features your favorite Babo characters!  Check it out at www.playbrains.com/babocrash.
• MiBI PC now has a metacritic - and it’s a respectable 79!  It’s a very good score for a little downloadable game [we know y'all would rank us higher!] - and it’s extra ammunition for when you’re trying to convince your friends to try this crazy game with a strange name! 
• Video contest deadline extended - we’ve extended our video contest until after the free week-end (which was always the intention).  The new deadline is May 3rd, 2010!  You could win $1000 USD - what are you waiting for?  Details here!

Anyway, that’s it folks…  I’m going to be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week - drop me a line if you’re attending!

Paul.

[PS - We don't have the download link for the dedicated server on our website yet - for now, you can download it from here.]

Hi folks,

Just a heads up that we’ve decided to [once again, and hopefully for the last time] extend the time for entries to the video contest.

The reasons are simply the business reality that we’re putting up significant dollars in prizes ($2000 USD), and unfortunately we don’t have enough entries completed yet.

We believe the main reason is that we haven’t had our free week-end yet — which we really had assumed would happened before the contest was over.  [This of course hasn't happened, due to a variety of technical and scheduling issues between us and Valve - all of which I am happy to report are now resolved.]

To be clear - we’re now fully green-lit for our free week-end to happen on April 16th - 18th.

So, back to the video event - what are the changes?

We’re setting the new deadline officially to “Two weeks after our free week-end - specifically end-of-day Monday May 3rd)”  Note that if the free week-end moves, we *will* move the contest deadline to match.

Note - we’re very appreciative of those who’ve already put in the effort to complete their entries - and we appreciate that extending the contest deadline isn’t as great for them (since they need to wait to be judged).  It does, however, allow the ensure that the other entrants have time to complete their entries (including our friends in France who are having power problems trying to complete theirs).

So - to compensate, anyone who has already completed/submitted their video (which by the eBUM status page, are arramus, finderhome, tukamalight and aprone (if he publishes his video - or at least sends to me to see ) ) are…

• being declared interim winners - and being awarded a prize of $50 USD
• and those folks are *still* in the running for the final prizes… [and they're free to continue to edit / improve their videos as well]

Anyway, we hope that folks agree that this is a fair compromise between achieving our contest goals (which are of course to use our limited marketing dollars wisely to help generate buzz for MiBI) and being fair to those entering the contest.

Finally - thank-you very much for those who’ve already entered and/or are hard at work creating videos.  We love your entries, and are sorry that we need to once-again delay the contest.  Hopefully this is the last time!

As always - full details on the contest can be found on the [eBum] site at http://www.bumpatrol.org/index.php?topic=697.0

Paul.

[PS - Arramus, finderhome, tukamalight and aprone - please send me e-mails at paulw@playbrains.com so that we can exchange the info necessary to get you your interim prizes!  Congrats!  ]