Club penguin sold

[phreax]

No no, you have to make it more obvious in order for Disney to notice it...how about the Dickie Duck Club!!! I see a lot of ducks, only with big ears and red pants...oh, and here's the catch...we'll make them goofy! It's a sure thing...

[mr_malee]

Walt would never do such things.

Man is he gonna flip when he finds out his company payed 350 mil for a penguin

[webgeek]

You guys wouldn't believe how many companies we have talked to in the last few months about making a site to compete with Club Penguin and Webkinz. Most are looking to develop internally and outsource the hard bits. Maybe a little extra money in this for some FK folks. Expect to see a ton of these multiplayer games crop up in the next six months.

[mr_malee]

can you release E4 soon please

[webgeek]

Ha ha, we're working on it. Come meet us at the Game Developer's Conference (I'm speaking, woot!) in Austin and I might hook you up

[mr_malee]

maybe if you can change that "in" to a "ralia", then sure

[webgeek]

It's a bit of a drive for you, but you should still go

[hooligan2001]

Hey webgeek is electrotank doing any presentations there?

[EvilKris]

$350mil..pah

I got offered that once for The Flying Chicken, but I turned em down. I'm holding out for the real money.

Seriously though, I think to make the big bucks in Flash, you've got to think outside the box. Just making simple 2 minutes-a-pop games isn't going to line anyones pocket in a substancial way. Just my 2c.

[webgeek]

Hey webgeek is electrotank doing any presentations there?

At GDC I'm co-presenting a session on the pitfalls of online game development with Michael Bayne of Puzzle Pirates' fame. I will also be doing a technical showcase on ES at Flash Forward in Boston and probably something like that at Flash on the Beach in England. As for early next year, we are planning on having some presence at Flash in the Can in Toronto and Flash Forward in Seattle(?).

If you attend a Flash conference in the next year or so, the odds are pretty good that if we are not there, you will at least get a goodie bag insert or some such from Electrotank. If you come to any of the conferences I mentioned, you can play at our new booth. We have a 75" inch screen in it along with several computers networked for games. It rocks

[lesli_felix]

....and probably something like that at Flash on the Beach in England.

Might actully make that one.

[phreax]

Nice webgeek! I saw your partial client list and didn't see Club Penguin there...from some previous posts I thought they might have used ElectroServer!? If that's so I reckon you get quite some offers from people wanting to make the same *LOL*

I'm looking forward to ES 4 and what you'll make of it! I have a small prototype of a small socket game and I wanted to have a look at ES to make it full fledged but thought I'd wait for your next release

[Cimmerian]

It is SmartFox based
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/products/showcase.php

[webgeek]

Yeah, Club Penguin was originally written using ElectroServer and switched to SmartFox at a later date. I won't go into why they switched to SmartFox other then to say that it had nothing to do with technical merit, bugs, pricing, etc. Most of the animosity between Electrotank and SmartFox came from that situation. It is also why we don't list many of our ElectroServer clients on our site anymore.

With that said, ElectroServer still runs some of the largest Flash systems on the web including WebKinz from Ganz (the plush toy manufacturer - they have hundreds of thousands of concurrent players) and some huge upcoming projects from companies you will all recognize but I can't say... yet

[phreax]

Well, didn't want to step in it and I must applaud you for that diplomatic answer I'm looking forward to seeing what you and the partnering companies are up to

[lapo73]

It is SmartFox based
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/

Yep, that's the largest SmartFoxServer app ever deployed and probably one of the largest multiuser app based on a Flash client.
I can't go too much into the tech details because I know that the Club Penguin guys are pretty jealous about the tech solution but they have been squeezing the SFS server side framework pretty wildly

I won't go into why they switched to SmartFox other then to say that it had nothing to do with technical merit, bugs, pricing, etc

so... no technical merits, no price, no bugs... then it must have been our unique hair-style that made the difference

Lapo

[hooligan2001]

Just noticed that club penguin was running smartfox as the socket server, so just stopped by to give props to lapo73. Excellent achievement.