Web Site Update

It’s 3:05 am PST and we just finished the most recent upgrade to the site. As a game programmer ( semi-retired ) web deployment makes me nervous. I don’t get that comfy chair, worn-in baseball glove, feeling that I get from the technology domains that feel more like home to me. Luckily, I’ve been able to calm my nerves with few slices of bacon covered pizza. So far, we made it through the update without any major issues. Thanks a million to those in the associate’s forum who spent their free time beta testing for us when they could have been working on their games:

Special Thanks: Fyodor "bank" Osokin Joseph Euan Michael Hall Tom Spillman Konrad Kiss David Montgomery-Blake Ted Southard Giuseppe De Francesco

Thanks guys!

The site changes will seem relatively small at first glance, so I’ve put this blog together to help point out some of the foundational changes that make this update a bigger one than you might notice at first glance.

One of my tenants is that bad news should be delivered first, so let’s get that out of the way. You have sent us a lot of web related bug reports and changes and we didn’t cover many of them in this update. Our focus on this round is more about updating systemic business related updates. If we don’t fix those systemic issues, they will undermine all other aspects of how we do business. We’ve been doing a lot of this over the past few weeks and we are slowly raising the tide for more positive future changes. Functionality fixes to come, please hang in there.

So let’s dive into the update:

Brand – Last year we announced that we were retiring the GarageGames name for most of our businesses ( the game studio occasionally uses the GG name ). This is bittersweet change for sure. I have a fondness for the name and more so for the ideology behind the name. As do many, many, people for whom the name GarageGames touched. But the reality is that we are a very different company. Some say better; some say worse -but in the end we are definitely different. Switching to the Torque brand is recognition of that change and a new identity that we can use to move forward with on future projects. You will notice a new logo that contains the phrase “By InstantAction” which helps people understand that we are a part of a bigger company with a broader focus. We are three divisions: Tools & Engine, Game Studio, and Platform. You know what this division does, but you may not be aware of the others. The game studio is very busy working on high-end socially driven games and the Platform is building the next generation of services (achievements, e-commerce, etc.) that modern gamers expect.

Studio Licensing – For a long time we have not given the public visibility into the pricing for studio licenses. Studio licenses are seat licenses rather than licenses that are tied to a given individual and in the past we only offered them via direct sales. If you own a studio license, you will notice that you have a new tab in your account named “My Studio”.

Under this tab you can reassign studio licenses to any other individual who has an account on the site. When you assign a license, your studio name will display under their avatar. This is the first of many ideas we’ve discussed to help your studio build its own brand. Expect to see more and more studio services and functionality over the next couple of years. An upgrade from an individual license to a studio licenses is being offered for a promotional price of $25 per upgrade.



EULA – We’ve updated our EULA for all of our engines (third party products are not part of the uber EULA ). Prior to this change we had different EULAs for each product line which made it difficult to manage and difficult for our users to understand. By consolidating we are making the licensing easier on all involved. We are open to your feedback so if you have any questions regarding the changes, feel free to contact us licensing@torquepowered.com.

Product Names – If you’ve been around the company for a while you know that naming products hasn’t always been our strength ( you might remember the TAT incident ). We’ve done a lot better in recent years, but there is still some confusion when we talk about future vs. current products. To solve this problem we are adding a year designation to our product names. A year denotes a major change in the software. For example, the Torque 3D that you know today is now known as Torque 3D 2009. If we made a major change in the software (typically an editor upgrade or major value increase), we would likely update the year to denote the dramatic upgrade ( i.e. Torque 3D 2011 ). Updates will be delivered as service packs. Torque 3D 2011 SP3. That sounds cool. We will be migrating products to this naming convention over the next couple of releases.

Over the next few weeks, we have a series of blogs that we have been waiting to deliver. Keep checking the site for new updates and news related to all of the work we’ve been doing over the past couple of months. Until then, feel free to post any site bugs related to these changes in this thread. Also, we have our web developer monitoring the live chat system in the bottom right hand corner to help you if you get stuck over the next couple of days. There will be bugs, but we will do our best to fix them ASAP.

Thanks everyone!