Update 23: New Items

Greetings, MilMonauts,

MilMo has been updated again, so let's get down to business! A new Teleport to Friend feature has been introduced. If you have Telepods, you can use this feature to meet up with people from your friends list! We've also increased all quest rewards a lot. Some medals, however, now yield less gems.

The Swordsman Suit suits most adventurers. So does the haircut "Shockwave".

The mighty Overlord Helm! It's based upon Alice's suggestion from the "make a hat"-contest held at the Forum.
To see the original hat, click here.

Update 23 brings you a whole set of new hairstyles.
Watch out for the Magma Blade. So hot it will make you melt!

The sharp and shiny Storm Blade. Go for the pirate look together with the new Pirate Hat and a fashionable Skull Belt.

Romantic punk. Is there even such a thing?

 Anyway, here's what's new:

• New Teleport-to-Friend feature! 
• All quests have increased gem rewards 
• New, awesome clothes in Cash Shop
• 3 new and cool swords in Cash Shop 
• New quests! 
• New V.E.I.L. quests for members! 
• Faster load times 
• Bug with Epic Sword visuals fixed
• Improved bad word filter 
• Improved GUI for Star Token collection
• The Winterfest event is over

Not bad! Let us know what you think about the new updates. 
We love feedback! Stay tuned for more exciting MilMo updates!

Yours,

Sara

Game Design Student?

How do you end up doing games for a living? For some this might be their biggest dream. For me it was one big coincidence. Unlike some people I know, I haven't been playing games since I was a kid. I didn't grow up with the Nintendo 8-bit. I don't get all nostalgic and dreamy when someone mentions Final Fantasy VII or Monkey Island. Sure, these are great games, but I spent my childhood climbing trees and collecting weird creatures in my basement.

Before I moved to Sweden I lived in the Archipelago of Finland

One Easter I was visiting Oslo, Norway, and my uncle gave me a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved and Red Alert. These two games completely absorbed me for the rest of my stay in Norway, and when I got home to Finland I had to buy Halo. I couldn't get any rest before I knew what happened to Master Chief. A couple of years later, I had started reading the PC Gamer magazine, not only because I was interested in the gaming news and reviews, but because I liked to look at the pictures and dream about what the games would be like. What would it be like designing stuff in the game? What was the story? What monsters would walk the earth in the game world? This was way more interesting to me than playing the actual game. The part I loved was to dream it up, to fantasize and design. The game companies seemed to be hubs of creativity. They had teams of skilled artist, people making up amazing stories and then mixed it all with cool music. Being a creative child, this almost seemed to good to be true. Could you really work with making these immersive products? 

Summer at the Åland Islands is great!

So when it was time for me to go to the University, PC Gamer had an article covering all the computer game educations available in Sweden. Even though I'm from Finland, I googled them up, and finally decided to apply to the University of Skövde (Högskolan i Skövde).

I got in! Then I immediately hit a brick wall. Long story short, the post office lost my confirmation letter to University of Skövde. Suddenly it seemed I had lost my spot at the game design program. This left me with two choices. I could travel to Australia and work for a year (my backup plan), or I could stay and fight for my place at the University. I made non-stop calls for three days in a row. After talking to the post office, the administrators at University of Skövde, the head master and several of teachers, they finally decided I was telling the truth, and so I got in (for real this time)! I was accepted to the computer game development program as an aspiring game designer. What did I know about computers, you ask? Not much at that time. About games? Probably less than you think. I wasn't a gamer. I didn't want to be a consumer of games. I wanted to produce them.

 

During my time at the University of Sköve me and my friends made a game for the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden

 The courses were really hard, I didn't have my own computer and I had moved to a city far, far away from my family. But little by little I started making friends, bought my very first computer and then learned how to upgrade my computer skills. There were like two or three other girls in my class, and about 40 boys. To my surprise eventually I became ”one of the boys”, but that's a topic for a whole different story.

Grown-ups likes trees too!

It might be a big coincidence that I ended up taking computer game development, but there's nothing random about how I was drawn to such a creative industry. By now, I realize how much hard work there's behind a game. It's not just about dreaming or doing all the things you love. Sometimes making games is tough, tiresome work. But the feelings of giving you, the MilMo players, a new update, makes it all worth while! Every time. 

Yours,

Sara

  

P.S Inside info about MilMo? Twitter.com/Saxen8

Sara is the Community Manager at Junebud. She also works with Quality Assurance (QA) and social media. She's got a bachelor's degree in game design, but likes the social part better than tweaking numbers. She usually spends her time moderating the forum, testing the game and planning new events. 

Jogar!

Hello, players. Today I want to talk about all of you, the people who play MilMo. If you've been using MilMo for a while, you've probably noticed that there are more players around these days. If you're a new arrival (the game has grown a lot during this last month), I want to extend a warm welcome. As I write this, MilMo has over 400 000 monthly active users on Facebook, and several more on milmogame.com and on Orkut, the leading social network in Brazil and India.

Reaching out to players is one of our top challenges, believe it or not. To play MilMo you must first know the game is there. The media flow is a competitive place, packed with noise, so getting exposure is either hard or expensive. 

 

MilMo in Portuguese

So let's take a step back and think about these things. Where do you learn about the games you play? Maybe a friend offers you a recommendation. Perhaps you see an ad somewhere on the Internet. It could be you read a review, or regularly browse something like the Featured Games Dashboard on Facebook. Whether you find a game you want to try or not when you do these things is the final link in what can be a long chain of events.

When we first released MilMo in December 2009, we used Google Adwords to create awareness. Perhaps you're one of the people who found out about the game way back then? The nice people who had been with us through Alpha also helped bring in a lot of their friends, of course, but it was great to see so many new users try the game with fresh eyes. Some of our early players made YouTube movies that helped spread the word, and we eventually got some early reviews on different game sites. Much to our surprise, we received nice reviews in Brazil, and in the spring of 2010 we had a huge influx of Brazilian players!

                        If you use Google, this will be old hat

After we released on Facebook in July of 2010, we put resources into Facebook Ads (duh) to see what would happen. The results were pretty good with lots of new people learning about MilMo. We were also helped by the fact that MilMo was a new entry that sorted near the top in our category in the Facebook games directory. That exposure meant that a bunch of players noticed our title. A lot of the Facebook players were people who hadn't played 3D MMOs before, so it's been nice to find that they seem to like it. A lot.

Google's Orkut is huge in Brazil and in India

Recently, we have begun a new round of expansion, which started when we released MilMo BR on Orkut. On the 17th of December 2010 we launched the Orkut version. MilMo BR runs on its own set of servers and is entirely in Portuguese!

MilMo's European servers, that service milmogame and Facebook

The big boost in user numbers on Facebook and milmogame.com also came in December, but was unrelated to the Orkut launch. Since the middle of last month, we've seen MilMo grow from tens of thousand of active users to hundreds of thousands. Though this has put some strain on our servers, it is amazing to see this kind of growth!

There are a lot of considerations when making games, but few are as important as reaching out to your audience. A game without players is like a party without people: a sad thing. Thank you for playing MilMo and populating the ever-expanding MilMoverse. It's going to be a fantastic journey.

All the best,

Ola

Today's post is made by Ola Holmdahl, game designer and CEO at Junebud. Ola's previous career includes teaching game design, doing game design and creating concept art. In a previous life he was a freelance artist and an academic (but not at the same time).