Online Game Development

Online Games For Girls

My name is Greta “Jade” Krafsig and I’m an independent game developer. My company website and blog is at http://design1online.com (D1O). I graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 2008 with a B.S. in computer science. I was featured as one of the up and coming people in my class. My degree focused on graphics and game development.

Currently I run several database-driven websites that total over 248k members. My most active website has as many as 80 members online at peak times and D1O games receive 1 million+ page views a month. The average player is a 14-15 year old girl who spends as much as 4 hours online a day. Some of my members have been playing for nearly 8 years when I opened my first game in 2001 and follow my games as avidly as any Final Fantasy junkie waiting for the next version to come out (yes I’ll admit I’m included in that group). D1O strives to create games for girls that inspire dreams and ambitions, are fun and entertaining, provide a safe social environment, teach essential life skills, and promote member-driven content in order to further the interest of girls in the video game industry.

I have a Thoroughbred named Erin and I’m and avid horse lover. When I’m not at the barn I’m usually sitting in front of my computer programming or playing video games. One of my online games is the prime example of my passion for horses. The website is called White Oak Stables. It currently has 126k members — as many as 80 people are online at peak times — and is still growing. It’s been featured in three United States newspapers and a few horse magazines in the United Kingdom.

My ultimate goal is to continue working with online games and possibly get a job with a well known gaming company like EA Games. I really like web development and I love gaming so it only seems logical to mix the two. It’s really rewarding knowing that something you put time and effort into can affect people’s daily lives for the good. Many of the players on my online games send me thanks from all over the world for having a safe and fun place to spend their afternoons. It gives them a chance to own the horse they could never afford in real life and meet other horse crazy teens like themselves.

All in all this blog has a ton of information on it about game development. A lot of it covers a multiplayer computer game I’m working on called Plex and a php/mysql fighting game called Pits of Doom. Plex is a game I started my senior year of college as an Independent Study and is steadily working its way towards completion. Pits of Doom is a little open source project I started from the large number of requests I get asking how I make my database driven games. Any code you find here is free for use under the GNU public license and I strongly encourage you to look at it, critique it, and give me feedback! Enjoy.

Jade Krafsig