HaxeFlixel Presentation Outline

General Assembly (Mid-Presentation: 5-7 mins) HaxeFlixel (Chosen business)

HaxeFlixel (Slide 1)

What is HaxeFlixel? (Slide 2) It is an open-source 2D Game Engine that lets you create cross-platform games easier with

free, open source technology! It provides a place for both beginners and experienced developers to share their journey in

learning how to make games. It has a community of enthusiastic technology driven people from all over the world.

It has four core community members, 2 from the USA, 1 from Russia and 1 from Australia. When I looked at the Analytics it was amazing to see that users from 100+ countries have

visited the website at least once. The top 5 are the US, Russia, UK, Canada and Brazil for the no. of sessions in April so far. The website operates a no. of channels in which to engage & interact within the community. The channels it operates are the website which includes a 14-step video tutorial on how to create a complete game in HaxeFlixel, a wiki, Twitter Page, development chat on Slack, HaxeFlixel organisation on GitHub, it’s blog and the forum. What is Cross-platform in-case anyone asks and need further clarification. Cross-platform = able to be used on different types of computers or with different software packages. So if you use HaxeFlixel you can create games that can be easily published to all sorts of platforms: Windows, Flash, iOS, Android etc. Business Challenges for HaxeFlixel (Slide 3) It is an open source community and does not operate for profit, like a commercial business would. It does however use Patreon: which is a crowdfunding platform allowing supporters to fund

the project with a subscription model.

Currently it has 28 patrons pledging $134 per month total. This helps cover the costs associated with operating a website-such as hosting, as well as

small amounts to core community members who have contributed to HaxeFlixel’s game engine etc.

Caters to a niche target audience, therefore growth is limited to those interested in game development.

It is however a global community so that niche is bigger than say an Australian game development community. One of the key challenges is how do you market an open-source community website such as HaxeFlixel to a truly global audience?

Goals (Slide 4) HaxeFlixel wants to grow its awareness & credibility, by increasing the no. of users and contributors.

Increase the no. of Twitter followers to 2,000 in 3 months’ time. Increase the no. of patrons pledging to 35 in 3 months’ time. This will provide a small

financial incentive/re-imbursement to contributors for their time & skill. Increase the no. of new visitors to the website to 45% of all sessions.

In March it stood at 38.5%-this will prove growth is occurring. Decrease the website’s bounce rate from 43% in March down to 35% in 3 months’ time.

This will help prove that the re-design of the website is working. The goals of HaxeFlixel are like any communities goals.

General Goals of HaxeFlixel

Wants to help users solve code problems through collaboration and the sharing of solutions. This saves time for indie game developers-do you really want to spend hours writing a piece

of code if you don’t need to-someone/s has already & is willing to share it with you for free. Maintaining an active presence in the world of online game development such as keeping up with technological changes & developments within this industry. To be TOM for both beginners and experienced game developers. What is an indie game developer in-case anyone asks for a definition? Independent video games (commonly referred to as indie games) are video games created by individuals or small teams generally without video game publisher financial support. Indie games often focus on innovation and rely on digital distribution. Improve website using SEO & UX Principles (Slide 5) I want to look at a few things: HaxeFlixel’s website is due for a re-vamp, when this occurs in the near future I want to look at specifically improving the SEO of the website which will in-turn also help the UX as well. By just adding some more content-in the form of H2 onto specific pages such as the Demo’s & Showcase page as I don’t think it clearly articulates what they are especially for a beginner to game-development. I also think it might be nice to have captions underneath each

game’s image detailing what it’s called and about, who made it & when it was made-

without you having to click on each game-which you do now to get any information. I also want to add a sitemap, as this will help search engines, (such as Google) and users on

where to find information on the website. As right now it feels a bit dis-jointed when I am looking through the website. I feel it should have an About Page at least to detail clearly

what it is for new visitors and hopefully form a link with the Patreon page to help gain new pledgers. I also think it would benefit from having a Community Page which would clearly

detail how you can interact with the community through it’s various channels.

Twitter (Slide 6) The Twitter Page is extremely active & a lot of that growth is organic as they don’t do promoted tweets (as far as I am aware).

They currently have 1,816 Followers in April and the page has been around for 3 years now. I want to maintain that organic growth and will compose and publish some tweets to see

what effect that has on the no. of followers, likes and re-tweets over the next 3 months.

Imagery: Games & Meme’s (Slide 7)

The Image based tweets I will include is in keeping with previous tweets. I will include images of games made using HaxeFlixel as they are shown on the website,

highlighting favourites, as well as new games. This will help form a direct correlation with the Twitter page and the Website.

Meme’s will be used to inject humour within this niche community. The current audience and the targeted audience will understand & sympathise with the

content as mainstream audiences don’t understand, this will be used every so often. What is Linux? (If anyone asks) Linux is an operating system like Windows.