Red Bull Games Get A New Home

We all know Red Bull as purveyors of fine energy beverages, owners of an all-conquering F1 team and sponsors of every daredevil/head-case that ever revved a motor bike or fell to Earth from space. Followers of Kempt will also know that Red Bull are hugely into games and have a pretty tasty back catalogue of their own (we've made four of 'em).

Now, with a little help from Kempt, they've brought all their titles together in the Red Bull Games portal, a home to their exclusive content and a destination for gamers across the world.

Built by Kempt (with the sterling assistance of ace freelance talent Paul Davis and Tom Gillett) the site isn't just a games list but features the kind of gamification that really works - possibly because it's on a games site.

The portal is a well-spoken global beast, localised for over 25 territories and 5 languages. It also has an idea what you want, serving platform-specific content in layouts to suit desktop PCs, mobiles and tablets.

You can check out the throughly modern Red Bull Games portal at http://games.redbull.com

Announcing "Ultimate Networking"

Kempt are organising a super wicked Go Kart endurance race at the end of April, for digital agencies in Kent.

We’re asking for submissions of teams of 2 - 4 people to take part in the 90 minute race, to finally answer the question: who is Canterbury’s Ultimate Networker? The winner will also take home the prize of the Ultimate Networking Trophy:

(note the excellent symbology with the router and cables)

Of course, the emphasis isn’t really on “networking” here, more on having fun, inhaling a lot of 4stroke fumes and realising our inner competitive streak is no way near as good as we thought it really was.

Why should i attend this ludicrous event?

Because it’s going to be a lot of fun. And hopefully your boss is going to pay for you to attend. If they don’t then simply invite them along, make sure they beat all the other agencies and then ask for a promotion.

Sounds Good - What are the details?!

Venue: http://www.bayfordkarting.co.uk (nr Sittingbourne, ME10 3RY or http://goo.gl/maps/IUbyy)
Date/Time: 25th of April @ 7:30pm
Team Size: 2-4, min 2 driver changes.
Cost: £140 per team/kart
Prize: Honour/Superb trophy donated by Kempt.
How to reserve your place: We'll be inviting people over the next week or two but alternatively ask the person that sent this to you or get in contact here.

What are Go Karts?

i. Go Karts are miniature cars, that run on excitement and bacon fat (vegetarian options available)
ii. Go Karts are also a small plump fruits found on the sandy soils of the amazon basin. Amazonian warrior women use the husk of the go-kart as a ceremonial head decoration as reward for defeating a bear in on-on-one combat.

Kempt Game Hijacked by Ling Valentine

It's said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and we all enjoy spotting 'influences' in the latest releases.

What you don't often see is a game grabbed by the throat and hacked into an astounding new form by a Chinese car super-saleswoman. That's exactly what happened when Ling Valentine - the car lease phenomenon and Dragons Den-defying marketing one-off - got her hands on our very own Stunt Guy - The Getaway game.

For those not yet up to speed with Ling's unique approach it's well worth checking out her website, lingscars.com, an object lesson in doing it your own way. And that's exactly what she did to our game!

So what happens when a legendary stunt man meets a Chinese typhoon? Predictably enough, total nuclear destruction - check it out: http://j.mp/LINGiOS

BIMA D-Day Schools Challenge

We were fortunate enough to be part of yesterday’s BIMAD-Day schools initiative, a national event aimed at closing the skills gap in the digital industry. Across the country digital agencies attended local schools to mentor a day of digital creativity with the students.

Our welcoming hosts were Chaucer Technology School, here in Kempt’s home town of Canterbury and appropriately enough we were to mentor a class taking up the Mobile Apps challenge with the aim of submitting the results to be judged in this national contest. Right up our street!

After getting over the shock of being back in school (so much has changed, so much is exactly the same!) we settled into our roles of pseudo-supply teachers to a room full of thirty Year 9s - “Year nine, YEAR NINE!!!” became a regular refrain throughout the day! Fortunately the class seemed to respond well to the day and were genuinely engaged.  

Like most schools the suite of computers wasn't the most current but the creative process isn't just about the speed of your processor and the version of your software. The ideas began to fly around the room from the word go, fuelled by a strong understanding of how apps work and a freedom to think up new possibilities. We had ideas from the practical - very useful medical and personal security apps - to the fantastically fanciful - pet translators and open-ended games that tapped into your dreams!

One thing that struck us was how much time was actually spent on the class PCs - just an hour in the afternoon. To us this seemed like a good balance as what makes this industry so exciting isn't the technology itself but what the possibilities it creates. However, we also left the students with a Flash demo app to pull apart and recreate. It's when you understand technology that things get really interesting - it fuels your imagination and turns brilliant ideas into brilliant products. 

Live Development, Crowd-Sourced, Crowd-Funded - World first!

You may have noticed we've been a bit quiet recently? Well, that's because we've been super busy!

As well as working on the update to Kart Fighter and trying to get the BIMA Awards under control (with a lot of help from Bridget) we've been working on a super-secret project which will be fully revealed very shortly indeed (as soon as Apple approve it in Fact!)

Our next game - Bar Fight will be the world’s first live game development on the app-store.

Interested? Grab the press release
Follow Bar Fight Live’s progress on www.stuntguygame.com
Or follow the app's hero, Stunt Guy, and his ramblings on: Twitter and Facebook,

Thanks to everyone that's helping us get the word out now but special thanks to @emilyaturner for re-writing our hugely inappropriate press release for us. Quite exciting as it actually appears to be working! Thanks Emily.

Flash Dead? - 5 million iOS Installs for New KartFighter

Until comparatively recently you'd have been totally forgiven for describing Kempt as a Flash house. Although I'm definitely not a huge Adobe fan* and I acknowledge that the player has a few issues, I'm not ashamed to say that Macromedia (not Adobe) did a brilliant job of creating a revolutionary tool which made rich application/game development truly accessible for the first time and sparked a decade of unprecedented creativity. But... times, and opinions do change my friends...

Increasingly Kempt's success comes not from Flash projects but from what we're doing with iOS/mobile games. Take our recent release for Red Bull: Kart Fighter - World Tour for example: unfortunately I'm limited in terms of what I can reveal outside of this press release but suffice to say that the iOS version alone garnered over 4 million installs in it's first month 500k of which are in the UK and that's without any media support at all - in fact the campaign hasn't really even started yet. Whilst we can still generate significant numbers with Flash games it has to be said that we'd struggle to generate these kinds of numbers in that time period.

Added to this I had a really amazing chat with David Helgason from Unity at GameHorizon last week, he's a really inspiring character and it was fabulous to hear his insight on the landscape, the challenges for Flash and his vision for the future of Unity. Whilst Unity comes at the problem from a very different point of view David speaks eloquently about exactly the same thing that sparked my original passion for Flash - the democracy of game development. I get the feeling that there'll be very exciting things to come for their technology and I very-much look forward to seeing it develop.

So, while people still love flash games and I don't subscribe to slightly naive statements like "Flash will be dead within the year" I do think that the world has changed radically (for the better) for us developers in the last couple of years. We now have the luxury of choice and the benefit of opportunities that we never had before. And I will say that, unless Adobe can find a way to both up their game and improve their developer relations, Flash's days are indeed numbered.

So interested in Kartfighter?

Check out the press release here: http://www.kempt.co.uk/clients/redbull/press/KartFighter-WorldTour-Jun2012.pdf

But more importantly the game here: http://www.kempt.co.uk/site/casestudies/245/

*Lists of the reasons that I dislike Adobe are available on request.

Joanna Lumley Makes Us Taller

Yesterday saw the launch of the Inspiring the Future initiative, a scheme which aims to bring workplace expertise to Britain's school children using a network of volunteers from all sectors and professions.

We were lucky enough to be invited to yesterday's event and went along to Bishop Challoner school in Tower Hamlets as exhibitors, setting up our modest stall in readiness for a morning of careers conversation with the pupils.

Flattered to be involved, what we didn't expect was the arrival of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to kick things off, followed by a stirring speech from Joanna Lumley (http://j.mp/Oi4LzK) that was Churchillian in its power to inspire. You didn't have to be 16 and in full-time education to feel a foot taller after that amazing oratory feat.

We're delighted to be involved in Inspiring the Future as it's a project with aims very close to our hearts. If you're in a position to get involved we'd urge you to do so at the earliest opportunity. Find out more here: http://www.inspiringthefuture.org/