Stuart Spence Blog

Computer scientist and educator. Creator of ChessCraft. Senior computer scientist at Environment Canada.

Sun 24 October 2021

Patronware

Posted by Stuart Spence in ChessCraft   

I like that the full ChessCraft game is free and ad-free, and yet it is monetized. It has been a challenge describing this monetization strategy succinctly. I wish there were a word for it. In this post I'll explore how words like "donationware", "freemium", and "nagware" aren't a good fit …

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Sat 18 May 2019

Centennial? Centeninstallial?

Posted by Stuart Spence in ChessCraft   

100 installs banner

Today ChessCraft passed 100 active installs! That is, 100 people decided to install ChessCraft and (most importantly) did not decide to uninstall it. So that's quite nice. This makes ChessCraft the most popular game I've ever made. Except if we count Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 multiplayer maps I made …

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Thu 21 July 2016

Enjoy the Innocence of Pokemon Go While It Lasts

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

This is an incredible century to witness the births of technologies. The past couple weeks I've been observing the world's first augmented reality global hit. Enjoy the innocence while it lasts! In this post I'm going to talk about aspects of Pokemon Go that aren't being talked about much:

  • Businesses …

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