My presentation is embedded below for your consumption. Your feedback is very much appreciated <3

In this brief presentation I will talk about how Social Media is different from traditional marketing, and also look at some examples of Social Media utilisation from India.

This is a very exciting opportunity for me as SRCC has been a consistent leader of commerce education in the continent for the last decade and more, and also because I will be returning back to my college after a gap of 4 years. Totally looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, the presentation is embedded below for your consumption. What do you think?

We figured that the happy occasions of Holidays will be a good opportunity to make a lot of announcements. First things first, We are moving our workplace to a bigger and better haven from Mayur Vihar to Noida. The new place is as crazy as we are and we will soon have more pictures and videos to share as we move in.

Then of course, is an update on Zap the Knight. Since, we announced ZTK in October, we have gone really quite on it. For a simple reason – there was not much too say. There were some really troublesome issues with getting into the Apple Developer Program and a weird bug with the tech stack we had deployed for Android. Scary thing is they are still being resolved. But the good news is that we were able to take out some time and build ZTK for Windows Phone 7. Yes! The game will now come out for all the three smartphone platforms. And this break also proved successful in adding some fun elements to the game, which make Zap all the more awesome. So, when are we releasing it? Very soon! The moment we resolve some logistical issues. Promise! Meanwhile, keep following ZTK on Facebook for news, updates and surprises.

If you have been following our activities on the social web very keenly, chances are you have already seen some references about a Facebook game we are working on flying here and there. Today, we think, is the perfect moment to announce Social Corporations. Social Corporations is a social business board game – think of social monopoly. But, we are making some real nice innovations on our Facebook integration end. The game will feature elements that you have never seen on Facebook. Heck! We are writing a complete new pipeline just to make that happen. SC is a very exciting game, as far as we can tell, and it is very difficult for me to keep my mouth shut and wait for the opportune moment when to talk about it. But keep watching out for Social Corporations, it will be fun.

And the last update I have to make today is a series of developer-services we have been working on. In a way they were required within our games so we wrote them and after we release the games we are working on, we will be making these services more generic and developer friendly and releasing them. In house, we refer to all these as TrivialTech and for now they are three – Trivial Engine, Trivial Analytics and Trivial Sense. Trivial Engine is a game development framework written in C++ and it will make prototyping new game ideas and upscaling them for cross-platform deployments very easy. Trivial Analytics is a scoring, monitoring, analysis and reporting subsystem that would help developers really leverage social. Trivial Sense is a social semantics engine that helps in making sense of all social data and develop insightful apps. More about these services will soon come out. Keep checking our Facebook and Twitter channels and keep following this website for updates.

Phew! That feels good. Being able to tell you all this. You can very well imagine now the ride the last 6 months have been for Hashstash.  Indeed. We wanted a fun way to tell you about this ride and Yadu (our Basement Cat, Ninja Neko and Guru) went on and made a pack of some real fun wallpapers that clearly exhibit the various emotions of our game development life. When working on a game, the developer goes through all of these emotions – the elations and the depressions, the rejections and the love. Everything. Its an integral part of our game development life cycle. It an integral part of our lives and every single day.

You can find these wallpapers for download below and on our Facebook album. Feel free to share them – all these wallpapers are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike license.

Here’s wishing you a prosperous new year and blessed initiatives.

Have fun.

The game is a casual mobile game in advanced stages of playtesting on the iOS and developer alpha on the Android. We will soon come up with more details about when and how we will release the game. Until then, enjoy the wallpaper below and share the love on Facebook.

Zap the Knight, Wallpaper. Click to Download.

NID Bangalore is organizing one such TEDx event called TEDxNIDBangalore. This year’s theme of TEDxNIDBangalore is related to three ideas that are redefining India – Modernity, Change, Masses. They will be showcasing compelling and fresh ideas, tools and technology that have brought positive change to the masses, spanning across boundaries, balancing tradition and modernity.

We are proud to partner with TEDxNIDBangalore and help them share Ideas worth spreading.
More on their website.

What we have decided now is a two-fold open source policy, subject to circumstances.

Every game that we release will be released as an open source project, two years from its date of publishing. All code will be released under the GPL 3 license and all game art and resources will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, Share-Alike license.

We understand that’s a huge promise, and here is how we want to reaffirm it to you: A game is a complex piece of software that builds upon a number of components. Whatever component is ours to claim, ones that we own and can open source, will be released as mentioned above. All third party stuff will remain as their owners choose to; sadly, we cant influence that.

Over time as we mature and understand the game development process better and understand our community better, we will keep revising this – our open source policy.

While that in itself is very inspiring, we have another ace up our sleeves! It so happens, every time we are approaching a game release, we think of a sales target, one that will satiate our greed for money sufficiently (Honestly, we will do that for the first time in the weeks to come).

We solemnly swear, the day we reach the sales target for a game, we will release it as open source (assuming the two year period is not complete yet, otherwise it will already be open source).

We are not really sure about how all of this will work out. The two year period, sales targets, open source licenses; each topic is an immense debate in itself. We don’t know how this exercise will turn out to be. But we are willing to take our chances and see how it works out for us and our community. Kudos!

Here are excerpts about what I had to share:

I will just make some corrections to what I am quoted about:

• First of all we are Hashstash.
• In 2 years, we would love to be a notable gaming company in India. Within 5 years the biggest gaming company in India. And in a span of 10 years, the Google of gaming. Somehow the article got that timeline a little skewed.
• We are working on three games right now: One is an extremely casual mobile game, one psychological thriller, another based on mythical figure influencing world culture. We will in time work on games with Indian characters but with a global appeal.

What should you have?

A passion for games. You should live, breathe, eat, drink games. You should not be able to complete a valid sentence in English without a couple of game references.

You should also have a fair understanding of the English language; should be proficient in written and spoken English.

You should be active on some social networks and gaming communities. Yes, we need to see that happen.

You should be able to create order out of chaos and can work in an environment that changes daily.

What would you do?

You mean other than have fun? You’ll sell your soul to us and in return work with gaming communities and empower indie developers (including us) in promoting their games, making some money, and staying alive.

Engage in social media marketing for all Hashstash initiatives and maybe we’ll share some of our hash with you (Just kidding, we love to smoke all our hash in front of newbies and not share).

In process, you might be able to play some part in our game development process too. Yeah, sure! We know you are awesome, just don’t touch the code, ok?

Where would this all happen?

Why of course the Internet. But just because it happens on the Internet doesn’t mean that its not real. It is. Extremely real. We’ll pinch you if you fall asleep. Promise!

You will spend a considerable time at our premises in East Delhi, so be prepared for that.

How to Apply?

Send an email to kinshuk at hashstash dot in. Include the following:

• Subject of the email must have “[Intern]”, without the quotes obviously
• Your cover letter (if you have one)
• Your Linked In resume (you are supposed to make one)
• Your gamertags
• Links to your profiles on some social networks
• Answers to the following questions:
• What would have happened if Mario couldn’t save the princess?
• What if Tim was not the monster?
• What came first: the chicken or the egg?

More?

To stay updated with what we are doing as Hashstash and our future career opportunities, please do subscribe to our general notifications list.

Bless us and wish us best.
Team Hashstash