I had a little rock climbing mishap on Thursday night–the end result being a severely sprained (if not broken–I’ll know more at the orthopedist on Tuesday) left ankle. On the down side, that means I’m an invalid. On the plus side, that means I’m pretty much chained to the computer for the next 6 weeks or so.
I posted Filler a week ago on Kongregate. Some time on Saturday, it hit the main page of Digg and stayed there for most of the day. Now, a week later, 340,000 people have played it on Kongregate and 122,000 have played it on various smaller portals and blogs around the net. Because Kongregate asked for a week of exclusivity, I spent most of the week watching the comments and trying to patch any fixes as necessary. As a sponsor, I have to say I’m really impressed with Kongregate (not that I have anything to compare it to). The ability to post bug fixes and watch user feedback is fantastic from a developer’s point of view. The fact that their badge system acts as a funnel of eyeballs surely didn’t hurt my Digg chances, so in many ways it’s because of them so many other portals have contacted me for sitelocked versions.
Over the next week or so, Filler should be popping up on plenty of other portals. I have to say I’ve been pretty thrilled with the reception it’s gotten so far. It’s interesting that–from a developer’s point of view, at least–this industry is cyclical. I’m a part-time developer for a couple of months and then a part-time salesman for the next couple of months. I’m already getting the itch to do my next one, but there’s still a lot of money to be made off of this one.