Where to begin on this great journey...
I was peacefully moving along on Daibaka Max when we discovered that our dog Mia had some kind of problem. She was slow and stiff. We took her into a vet and he said she probably had Lyme disease, and got her going with antibiotics while tests were done. The tests confirmed that she had Lyme, so we were doing the right thing. After about a week of this, though, she wasn't getting better. This past Sunday, she was just so bad, unable to even stand up most of the time, and stumbling and falling over, that we took her to the emergency vet.
They told us that it wasn't Lyme disease. While she presumably does have that based on the blood tests, it's not causing her problems. It was a spinal problem with neurological consequences. If not treated, it would lead to paralysis (and until treated, would be constant pain). Now, most of a week later, she's been living in a box at the animal hospital all alone, and yesterday finally got the surgery she needed to correct that. We don't get to pick her up until Monday (that gives her over a week in a box alone! This is upsetting to me and to her), but we're at least going to visit her soon.
Now I'm not saying dog surgery is
expensive, but I spent quite a while thinking about the concept of Daibaka Dog, let me tell you.
So in the midst of this, and constantly worrying both about the dog and about how we were going to stay alive with no money in the world, Robot Wants Kitty was finally released by the sponsor. I say "finally", but they weren't slow about it. It's just that the bidding process was incredibly long before that. So that became the side adventure - I got to work rereleasing Robot on Hamumu, and putting it up on flash sites.
Side side adventure, when looking to put it up on
Kongregate, I discovered that someone had stolen it off of the
MaxGames website and put it up themselves! Ordinarily, this would be cool, because the idea is to spread the game as far and wide as possible, but on Kongregate, you earn a portion of the ad revenue the game earns, so this guy was flat out robbing me! So there was the battle against him, clicking every contact and report button on Kongregate. I think the winning stroke was when the
community here got involved and clicked those things too. Within about 10 minutes of that, the guy was banned and the game was gone! I put up my own copy, and we return to the side adventure:
Because Robot Wants Kitty got popular! For some reason, people like my game! I got really great comments, and kept updating the game to address the myriad of psychotic complaints (so not
all great comments), resulting of course in new complaints about the updates. Then I noticed the monthly and weekly contests on Kongregate... which Robot Wants Kitty was on top on! If it's the #1 game at the end of this week, I get big bucks! If it's still #1 at the end of the month (a lot less likely), I get crazy bucks bazoom! I still get some good cash if I'm as low as even 9th place for the month, which I think is a good shot. Between those contests, and the ad revenue, and the sponsorship money in the first place, it doesn't feel so much like being broke anymore. It doesn't cover the expenses, but it sure looks like a great way to make some much-needed money.
In the meantime, I was also on jury duty this week. They just make you call in each night to see if you have to come in the following day. My previous bouts of jury duty were just a week of calls like that, and then I was free. This time,
of course, that only lasted a couple of days and then I was in fact called in. So I spent today doing civic duty, which was interesting. I got put on a case, but wriggled out of it with the old "I'm self-employed, so nobody is going to pay for me to miss work" bit. I've always been afraid of the idea of jury duty, but actually being in the courtroom got me really interested. If the judge hadn't said it was going to take until the end of March to finish the case, I would've stuck around.
Yeah, so all that happened. The crazy fun success of Robokitty has me completely revved up to do Robot Wants Puppy (and who knows what else Robot Wants?), and get Space Cruise out there too. I always thought this flash biz was not a good direction, but I'm sure seeing the merits now!
PS - go give me 5 stars on
Kongregate! I need to keep my rating up!
