Being a bootstrapped project, we have to find ways to make our expenses as small as possible and most everyone knows that AWS should be ridiculously cheap for most startup solutions.

First a little information about the little stack that runs ImGame.

• Apache
• Passenger
• Ruby On Rails 3.1
• MySQL 5

All of this is hosted on a 1GB Stack on Slicehost.  We decided not to run everything on Amazon at the get go, because honestly we weren’t comfortable with it but hope to get everything on it soon.

We did put all of our assets on Amazon S3. We have currently about 3GB worth of box art and are adding new ones constantly to keep up with games that are coming out.

For most startups or smaller dev projects, you’ll be able to use Amazon’s Free Tier offering which is pretty awesome. (Keep in mind this is only active for a year of membership)

Even after the first year (if you’re still standing, congrats!) it’s not a huge price increase.

So we’ve been live for about 4 months now, and our Amazon bill has totalled up to a whopping $6.50.  To be upfront, we’re not having a massive amount of traffic at one time, but we are still doing a rather good bit of pulling from our S3 account. 

The biggest cost was the initial pushing of our images to S3, costing about 5 dollars.  At one point, we had 117,00 requests for images of box art, and that only cost us $0.18.

Obviously the bigger costs are probably incurred on the EC2 side, but we cannot really speak to that, but we hope to have insights onto that sooner than later.

We expect our traffic to greatly increase with the implementation of our mobile-friendly web app but we won’t have to worry about our bills sky rocketing. 

Hello everyone!

We have been on a bit of a hiatus as of late, but have recently got busy with updates.  

1. New method of searching for games should decrease duplicate entries.
2. Allow upload of game without image.
3. Fix for erroneous reporting of not having a pwner.

The biggest news is that we are fully underway on our Web Version of the site.  The best part about this news is that we are designing it with mobile in mind, so we can have non-iOS users check in to games as well.  We are hoping to get native apps as soon as possible, and we know this is a high priority for people.

We hope to submit to the app store at the end of this week.

Keep gaming!

Hello everyone!

We hope everyone is enjoying ImGame.  Just because we released a 1.0 doesnt mean were resting for the holidays.  We will work on a small update for the iOS app over the holiday so we hope to get that out for you guys as soon as iTunes Connect allows submissions again.  

Here is what we will be changing / adding:

1. Fix for inviting friends on Facebook and Twitter
2. Add graphical texture on top and bottom nav bars
3. A few other graphical enhancements
4. Ability to stop tokens from auto-tweeting
5. Fixed an issue with weird checkin timeouts
6. Deleting checkins
7. A few other easter eggs!

We will be looking for an android developer in the coming weeks, if you know of anyone that would be interested, please have them contact us: contact@imga.me

Thanks again everyone, happy holidays and keep gaming!

Here’s the lock screen wallpaper we have on the app store, a few people asked for it!

We are happy to announce that we are out of beta and anyone can now become part of the ImGame network.  We want to thank all of our beta testers for their feedback.  We hope everyone enjoys the app as much as we do. 

This was a passion project born from seeing a need in a space we love. 

So get it now, and start gaming!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imgame/id488273712?mt=8

[ImGame]

Thanks so much to everyone in the beta. We are really hitting some good stuff we wouldn’t have seen without your help.  

FIXED:

• Issue with connecting to facebook on create profile
• Issue with adding photo on create profile
• Issue when trying to add friends
• Issue when checking into a game
• Issue adding game with no image
• Shadow image 1px too high

KNOWN ISSUES:

• Approving friend sometimes does not remove from friend requests
• Activity not refreshing after check-in

Beta Testers..click the link you were provided with to download the new version!

This week is go time. We will be wrapping up the IG Beta on Thurs/Fri, with the intent of releasing to those who signed up early next week (or sooner).

We know (really we know) we are a tad behind schedule, we apologize, but this is done in our spare time so sometimes things get in the way. 

If you have signed up for the Beta, our thanks go out to you. #brofist. If not, DON’T FRET! We will leave it open until October 26th @ 8pm (E.S.T). Would love to get a few more sign-ups for load testing, so tell your friends! Once the Beta closes, we will send out an email with instructions on how we will proceed, and will slowly let users in.

We can’t tell you how appreciative, receptive and thankful we have been to all of your feedback, comments, emails and social support! The initial response has been kind of overwhelming. This is a very exciting time, and we are REALLY excited!

Play on.

REAL TIME COMMENTING - CHECK!

Everyone knows (especially us) that a huge part of gaming is playing with friends. This is the check-in detail screen where users can converse with each other about the specific check-in or trash talk. As you can see in this shot, a couple of alpha users are talking about Battlefield 3 on the PS3.

This is the LIFE essence of ImGame. Connecting gamers consistently to their friends through a device that is always close at hand. A ImGame notification alerts friends that Big Boss is playing Battlefield 3, and his friends (or foes) champion the call. 

The beta is coming soon, and we really are excited to share this with you all.

“you were doomed as soon as you lost the ability to love.” ~ Castlevania

The quick pitch:  ImGame is a new mobile app that allows users to add friends and check into games.  ImGame is creating a new social network for gamers, by gamers, to keep all of your friends in sync with who’s playing what, and when. 

ImGame has the following features:

• See what your friends are playing, at any time. Get a visual history of what you and your friends have been playing, on any console.
• No more “just missing” the gaming session.  Too many times we’ve rushed to get online only to find out your friends just stopped playing.  With push notifications you are notified the second a friend checks in.
• With Pwnerships, the user with the most check ins to a game has bragging rights.  Only you can check in to “de-pwn” them.
• Users can collect tokens by doing various tasks through the ImGame network, checking in to specific games on specific days, checking in with friends, or even on to specific consoles.

Who are we: We are just a few guys who love gaming and saw a huge flaw in the way we played.  All too often we would try and schedule a gaming time and end up missing each other.  It would be 15 minutes after a friend signed off, or I would be watching TV with nothing to do, not knowing that 3 of my friends were playing Gears of War at that exact time.  ImGame remedies that.  If your friend starts to play Gears and checks in, you would get a notification telling you to get to curb stompin!

We are working hard on a beta and hope to launch our beta October 15th.  Slots are limited, so we suggest you sign up on our home page at http://imga.me.

If a picture is worth a thousand words; enjoy this visual - http://imga.me/images/1000.png 

If you would like to know more you can contact us via contact@imga.me

For updates subscribe to our rss, facebook and /or twitter.

Just to let you know, we DO have a roadmap so we figure we would share with you, so you know where not just sitting on our butts playing games (even though we do that as well)!

• Although right now we only have an iOS device in the works, an android version is our top priority after we launch the iOS version.
• We are currently working on a developer API, so that not only 3rd party apps can tap into our network, game developers can as well! We plan on having our entire site run off our own public API.
• While there will be a single area for ads, we are going to be very specific with who can advertise.  It MUST be gaming related, and something the entire team approves of.

If you have any questions, please email us at contact@imga.me