Heavens Blessings Tiny Zoo

New Music Director added to the Visions team!

Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo has accepted Rick Lane as the new Music Director for the Visions game development team!  Rick began working with sound and lighting in 1976.  Over the many years since he have worked in the studio, theater and motion picture industry with both lighting and sound.  He is a song writer/ composer, plays several instruments but guitar is his main instrument. Rick played music professionally for six years around southern Arizona and has worked as a studio musician for Parr Sound Studios in Corvallis, Montana . He has been a worship leader in various churches in Tucson, Arizona; Salt lake city, Utah; and western Montana for the past 13 years. He is currently working with the artist development department for the Incubator group out of Cheshire , Oregon as one of their new Christian artists.  As the new Music Director for Visions, Rick has made a commitment to see the game development through launch at least.  We are excited to have him as the newest leader on our game development team!

We are still recruiting for other Leadership positions on the development team. Quest Director and Art Director are still open as well.  We are actively seeking to build and strengthen our leadership structure to prepare for the growth of our team to a much larger game development staff.  We are of course still accepting applications for non-management positions as well.

We have filled 3 Director positions on the Visions team. Mark Dynna has been promoted to Programming Team Director, and Tim Wright maintains his position as the Marketing Director.  Other manager level positions still open!  Are you looking for Game Development experience? Apply to our volunteer team today! http://www.visionsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3995#3995

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About the author: Laurene Wells is the Designer and Producer of Visions.  She registered her company Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo in 2003 and lives in Oregon with her husband and four children. Laurene has been leading her volunteer development team for more than 5 years now, they have released the racing game Chariots and are back to working on their flagship project, Visions, a Christian MMORPG. More information about Laurene’s company and game development projects can be found on the http://tinyzoo.com website.

Chariots collector CD up for auction!

Chariots collector item!

CGDC Special Edition CD.

From numbered lot, signed by the Producer. Get it today!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110428451970

Leadership positions open on growing team. Apply now!

We are actively seeking to grow our volunteer game development team.  We are immediately seeking dedicated individuals with the skill and willingness to take on management roles and who will see the project through to completion.  We are seeking to add the following positions to our team:

Programming Team Leader (2)
Programming Team Assistant leaders (up to 6)

Quest Team Leader (2)
Quest Team Assistant leaders (4)

Art Team Leader (1 for 3D, 1 for Animation, 1 for 2D)
Art Team Assistant leaders (6)

Music Team Leader (1)
Music Team Assistant leaders (4)

Worldbuilding (Level design) Team Leader (2)
Worldbuilding Assistant Leaders (4)

Marketing Team Assistant leaders (3)

Administrative Assistants (2)

All positions are volunteer only at this time.  If you are interested in one of these positions please submit an application online:
http://www.visionsdev.com/adminforms/Volunteer-Application.htm

To learn more about our company and our projects please visit our company website:
http://www.tinyzoo.com

Thank you for your support!

God bless you,
-Laurene

New website is LIVE!

We’ve been working behind the scenes for the last few months to update our website. Tonight we pushed the site LIVE!  (Our apologies to anyone who may have experienced any hiccups!  The chariotsgame.com site is still down temporarily, we’re working on it!  Should be up again in the next few hours.)  We hope you like the new look!  All of our websites will be getting some overhaul love so keep coming back for more updates!

And yes, work on Visions is progressing!  We’re excited about the changes that are happening!  We are growing our development team to meet the demands of our advancing project.  We are especially looking for people with leadership experience, but will accept applications for all positions.  We need programmers, artists, writers, musicians, marketing and PR, and worldbuilders.  If you are interested please apply online:

http://www.visionsdev.com/adminforms/Volunteer-Application.htm

If the website seems to be down for maintenance (it is not currently but could be in the near future) please feel free to contact us by email jobs@visionsdev.com or support@tinyzoo.com and we will email you an application.

Theater built in Kourion

Visions development continues with the construction of a theater in Kourion last night!

To see more screenshots from tonight’s worldbuilding expedition, see the album on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120038&id=515014605&l=19742049b2

New Visions screenshots! Kourion harbor

You can see a glimpse of the work I did on the game last night!

I have more screenshots uploaded to facebook if you want to see them there.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120038&id=515014605&l=19742049b2

Thanks for your support!

God bless you,

-Laurene

Vote for HBTZ!

Our company, Heaven’s Blessings Tiny Zoo, is registerred in the StartupNation Home Based Business contest.  Please vote for us!

http://www.startupnation.com/homebased100/contestant/7272/index.php

Thanks for your support!

GameStreamer lists Chariots in their flagship store!

And Chariots is now live in the GameStreamer store! Check it out!

http://games.gamestreamer.net/games/chariots

GameStreamer is a digital distribution store that just launched this month, and we’re in it! The layout is very pretty. Looks great!

-Laurene

CGDC 2009 Special Edition Chariots – limited time!

The clouds have returned to block out the heat! It’s a beautiful day in Oregon. Too bad CGDC had to be during the hottest week in history! And the expo center was in a NON-air-conditioned room to boot!

The result of this however is that we have some CGDC Special Edition numbered lot, autographed Chariots CDs leftover. Numbers 21-50 are available as singles. Numbers 51-60 are packaged together with a special 1-10 lot of Friend Pack 2-CD double-deal boxes!

Hurry and get them while they last!

Chariots Store

Social Marketing for Christian games

One of the topics at CGDC (the Christian Game Developers Conference) this year was on social marketing. Seth Crofton taught us about using social networking to maximize our marketing opportunities for distributing our Christian and family friendly games. He has identified dozens of marketing opportunities in the social network. Some that I am already using are facebook, twitter, myspace, shoutlife, youtube, tangle, community forums, ning, homeschoolblogger, and of course wordpress. Chariots and Visions each have their own pages on Facebook, Chariots and Visions each have their own websites, and they share a community forum on our website. Visions has a ning page too.

There are some nice tools that help us integrate some of these tools too so that they are connected to each other, to improve our effectiveness at reaching our audience. For example, this blog post is being sent via email using a special plugin that is available to wordpress users. There are similar tools for other social networking sites as well. I hope to get some of these other tools implemented as well, so my twitter and facebook can be updated every time I post a blog!

One of the advantages of using social networking as a marketing tool is that it gives us as developers direct access to our customers. We don’t have to go through a 3rd party to rely on sterile reports and charts and diagrams. Our customers can talk directly to us through comments and feedback in a more personal way than ever before. Websites are still the front page for people to find us, but social networking will keep us connected and build relationships. We can make the Christian games, and the family friendly games, but if people don’t know about us, how can they buy our games? Social networking is one method to get the word out that we have exciting new games to play!

http://www.tinyzoo.com