My Selected Projects » ZapSpot Games
Project Summary
ZapSpot was a startup software company devoted to creating fun and easy-to-play computer games that were completely free via advertising and product sponsorships. It developed a software distribution platform that was very similar to Macromedia's Central product though it predated it by nearly five years in the market.
ZapSpot's proprietary game engine was highly abstracted from the host OS (in this case Windows) and featured various capabilities that made it easy to build a wide variety of games quickly. In fact, each ZapSpot game title was planned, designed, coded, and tested in just two weeks using a very small team that usually involved a single game designer, graphic artist, programmer, and play tester who were all working on several titles in parallel. In addition, each ZapSpot game typically weighed-in under 900KB, which enabled them to be easily shared with friends via email using dial-up Internet connections and contributed greatly to their viral popularity. Nearly 20 years after the company folded, people still remember and play them!
During its short lifespan, ZapSpot accumulated some very impressive stats:
- The company's 20 game titles were downloaded in excess of 3.3 million times.
- The company's games averaged an 84% positive rating on CNET's Download.com website.
- The company's games were played regularly by over 500,000 people in 122 different countries.
- The company's games averaged over 120 minutes of engagement per user per month.
Status
Sadly, ZapSpot folded in late 2000 / early 2001 due to the dot com crash.
My Contributions (as Creative Lead / Program Manager)
- Led the team that designed and planned each game release (three Program Managers).
- Designed the user interface for the platform's "Shell" component (the game launcher and management environment).
- Designed the artwork and animation for 9 of the 20 released game titles and art directed the rest.
- Designed the company's web site.
- Designed various in-game ad banners and custom e-commerce modules for selected advertising partners.
NOTE: If you can find and run these games, typing "credits" at the title screen will show you the names of all of the people who were involved in making them.