MAKE PEACE, GOWAR!

Do you think to know all about your favourite Game? 
Well surely you already know a lot of stuff but maybe you ignore we are using sophisticated web services such as Amazon to bring GoWar on your mobile device. ;)
8 March our team was invited to a special event about cloud and mobile technologies promoted by Amazon in Digital Accademia. We have been using these technology since the very beginning, we were asked to present GoWar's success case history and to give our point of view on how to get the best from these web services. 
"Cloud technology enabled us to scale our game very quickly bringing war all over the world" told our Ceo Nicola Brisotto during his speech.

Watch the video [italian spoken] if you want to know more about the (dark) tech side of one of the best strategy game of the moment!

Pensi di conoscere tutto sul tuo mobile Game preferito?
Bè sicuramente sai già un bel po' di cose ma forse non sai che GoWar utilizza sofisticati web services come Amazon per portare questo fantastico gioco nel tuo smartphone. ;)
Lo scorso 8 Marzo il nostro team è stato invitato a a partecipare ad un evento speciale sulle tecnologie mobile e cloud presso la Digital Accademia. Perchè? Perchè abbiamo utilizzato sin dall'inizio questi servizi web e la nostra case history (ormai di successo) spiega bene come sia possibile utilizzarli in maniera efficace nei processi di una startup.
"La tecnologia messa a disposizione da Amazon ci ha permesso di scalare la piattaforma di gioco in modo davvero veloce ed agile” ha raccontato il CEO di GoWar Nicola Brisotto durante il suo intervento. 

Per conoscere il lato (dark) tech di uno dei migliori giochi mobile di strategia guarda il video!

Aloha soldiers, how is going with your empires?

Here at GoWar there’s something bigger brewing. We are not talking about new features or bug fixing. Yeah soldiers, we have been working harder and harder for something more ;)

In the latest period many improvements occurred to the game in order to bring you more adrenaline, thrill and excitement...but these are all things you already know. So, let's go to the new stuff!

We thought that was time to create a place where all of you could experience a new way GoWar, a sort of trench where soldiers can hide, chat, confront with others and even study his/her enemy. A place where accelerate and boost war game experience through many forum sections full of tips, tutorials and stories.

We took many of suggestions and insights you gave us in these months to give birth to the first GoWar Community.

If you are looking forward like us to use it don't worry, the community will be launched soon in GoWar website and you can access just using your GoWar login.

Enemy is waiting for you!
Are you brave enough to enter in the war trench with us?

                                     ----------------------------------

Aloha soldati, come procedono le vostre conquiste?

Qui a GoWar c'è qualcosa di grosso che bolle in pentola. Non stiamo parlando di nuove feature di gioco o dei soliti bug che abbiamo risolto. Abbiamo lavorato a qualcosa di molto più grande e importante :)

Nell'ultimo periodo ci sono stati diversi cambiamenti ed aggiustamenti per portarvi sempre più adrenalina, brividi ed entusiamo..ma queste sono cose che già sapete quindi andiamo alle news!

Abbiamo pensato che fosse arrivato il momento di creare un luogo dove tutti noi potessimo vivere GoWar in un nuovo modo, una sorta di trincea di guerra dove i soldati potessero nascondersi, parlare e confrontarsi l'un con l'altro. Uno spazio dove accelerare l'esperienza di gioco attraverso diverse sezioni di forum ricche di storie, trucchi e tutorial.  

Abbiamo preso i molti suggerimenti che ci avete dato in questi mesi per dare così vita alla prima GoWar Community. 
La Community sarà presto lanciata nel sito di GoWar e sarà possibile accedere usando la normale login di gioco. 

Forza soldato, il nemico ti sta aspettando!
Sei abbastanza coraggioso per entrare nella trincea con noi?  

Aloha soldiers, 
as you might know, we've just come back from a wonderful 4-days experience in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress 2012.
These days have been fantastic and therefore we would like to share with you some of the cool stuff we got from here:

> Android presence was dominant in the congress, with many manufacturers' booths, a huge panel at the entrance and 82 different pins available!  

> Both HTC and Samsung have moved to a customized subset of Android Market with their own SDKs to simplify native actions and a set of pen functionalities to take notes draw, sketch, and provide signature identification software. The HTC Flyer and the Samsung Galaxy Note (10M sells forecasted for 2012, 2M so far) are in fact pushing a lot in the pen" direction.. let's see what can come out of that.

> The fact Samsung and HTC have their own app market on top of android can make things more confused to users, maybe. On the other hand, from a developer point of view integrating these SDKs can be an opportunity to jump on a stage with fewer competitors and so there are still many occasions in there. 

> Nokia is also growing. After the partnership with Microsoft, the went from 3 to 13 million downloads per day, and growing. It is definitively a good moment for them, even if the way to the top is still long.  

> Blackberry is quite not there yet, but perspective also seem very interesting. So fingers crossed and we are looking forward to see what this is going to take to.

> Since being able to produce cross platform apps gets more and more crucial, also HTML5 played an important role in the conference. In terms of integration to mobile apps and performances Firefox and Opera made big steps forward but the key still looks like to have an hybrid approach in order to take the most out of both potentialities.

> A huge trend in 2012 will definitively be the NFC integration. Google payments, dynamic contents and more finally seem to have reached a sustainable and usable point. American Eagle Outfitter has already integrated the google wallet payment in their stores and the 

> Apple remains coherent with its attitude and was totally missing from the conference, even though the percentage of apple devices was really impressive.

> In terms of gadgets we tried out the Motorola fitness smart watch.

> Our favourite thing was the Ubuntu for Android.

Finally, many thanks to the @wipjam guys, their events are always very cool and the "no panels, no powerpoints, no tie" philosophy is working a lot. During the Wip Jam we linked with many people and won a HTC Flyer tablet to the Hackathon at HTC by trying out the OpenSense SDK.

Have a look at pictures we took during these fantastic four days on GoWar Facebook profile. 
See you next time…

Aloha soldier, we've come back with big big news!
As we wrote a month ago, in the last period we have been quite busy with improving GoWar in order to bring you a more and more exciting game! Thanks for your great support: from the battlefield the bravest soldiers never stop cheering us on and giving suggestions. Now after 35 days we proudly announce that we made further headway in the direction many of you have reported to us. Here some numbers:

• 14 wallabies. We called in this funny way the users that were jumping all around the world and conquering places they have never been before. With great sorrow we had to erase them. Of course they were great jumpers but not great soldiers, are not they? 
• 61, yes they are. Unfortunately, we had to reset these players because of their unsporting behaviours, that our policy does not allow. They were using more than one account...so bye bye Tom, Mark, Ricky, Kristine, John, Emily... 
• +100 K, ohhh yes. These are zombies territories we collected from the banned users and that are waiting to be conquered. We are just wondering who's gonna be the fastest warrior to occupy them!

Can we say that is a new era for our wonderful game? Yes!
Is there a “GoWarrior Player Manual”? Not yet, but here you have some useful tips for you to conquer world and play fair:
- player has to attack from the real place where he is geolocalized
- use your smartphone or tablet to log in with your account
- activate one account and conquer the world from that

We are always looking for feedback and improvements so if you have any feel free to contact GoWar Team at customer@playgowar.com or through our facebook or twitter official pages.
Enjoy the war, play GoWar!

Alhoa GoWarriors, as part of the improvements constantly released on our game, we have some news about the measures we are taking against cheating. As you know these procedures are manifested in various ways and are certainly a long-standing problem for the ongoing war. We have therefore increased the controls and included closer monitoring about fake geolocation and multi accounting.

In these moments we are putting into practice what we have been doing recently. The GoWar world is made of cheaters and jumpers, and unfortunately we can not prevent people to cheat, but we can definitely slow this process down. Users that have been found to carry out such activities will, as it has been done sometimes before, suspended until further investigation and, eventually, brought back to the initial state in the game. This means, territory and achievements will be reset. As it generally happens in these cases, the idea is that cheaters can get away with it for a while but they won't last.

The work on the game, including these measures against cheating is always on progress, also thanks to your constant feedback and support. Here some example of procedures that are not allowed:

- The use of fake locator tools to geolocalize any user's position anywhere else from his/her real position
- The creation and use of fake users to increment the power of a real one in the game
- The use of a single device for logging in with multiple accounts 

For more info contact us at customer@playgowar.com or through our facebook or twitter official pages.

See Ya, 

The GoWar Team 

Think you know GoWar? THINK AGAIN!
 

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The day has come and the world will never be the same! New update is out now, with new rules and features.

New rules? That’s right! We have been listening to your feedback - and we are glad so much  has come - and introduced new mechanisms to increase the defensibility of a place, redistribute the resources in a more homogeneous way. All that keeping in mind the way to make the game fun for everyone!

In other words, we decided to keep it simple, with a friendly help to new and weak soldiers, and increased difficulties the more you get to the top of the chart! We also introduced new powerful anti-cheating tricks (that’s right, you dirty ubiquitous-multiple-personalities out there, we are watching you) but we won’t go in details about that since that would be too much of a hint, isn’t it?

That’s all folks, but just for a while. We are already back on track and working on new improvements... some spoilers for that would be customized mission and challenges, parallel worlds to be in, localized resources and leaderboards! Wow!

Ok that’s it... Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a brand new challenge.

For more info contact us at customer@playgowar.com or through our facebook or twitter official pages.

See Ya, 

The GoWar Team 

Ok guys, it is official: Christmas is getting closer and now we can proudly say that our Android app is almost ready to go live. 

Many of you guys were asking about an official app for your Android device; we worked hard, we solved problems, we fighted against the code and now we can announce a great app available for Christmas. Nice present, isn't it?

Thanks to the patient and enthusiasm of our Android Beta Soldiers we succed on developing this app. From Christmas you can give a hard time to iOS users by having, even you, an official app with all the featuers you need to do an  awesome virtual war! 

So, stay tuned for the big date and in the mean time keep going on conquering the world with the beta!! 

Cheers, 

The GoWar Team 

Hi there, 

are you ready for the 1.1.4 version? Today we released it with some updates that will be much appreciated. Our game is getting better and better, little by little. Here's a brief summary of what's new: 

- Better interaction in the Attack form, with the introduction of a "recruit" button and some improvements in the "swipe view" 

- Useful interactive tutorial on "how to play"

- Credits view with a direct link to all our social channels and our support mail service  

- New Facebook SDK integration with SSO

Does not seem much? Do not worry, we have been listening to your feedback and are about to release a much bigger update about it. We are proud of our beta tester, and of their contant support: keep on going, guys!

IMPORTANT NOTE: we hereby annouce that when upgrading to 1.2.0, in the future, some of the oldest versions will be disabled due to changes in the game structure. If you have not updated to the latest version you are then to do so.

In the meantime, hope you find these new functions useful and nice. If you have any questions don't esitate to contact us easily via Facebook and Twitter, or privately via mail by writing, as usual, at customer@playgowar.com 

We wish you a lovely virtual war! 

The GoWar Team

Aloha Soldiers,

last weekend we were in Milan at the beautiful event called Mind the Bridge, a non-profit initiative whose the ultimate goal is to "foster a sustainable Italian entrepreneurial ecosystem, spur more innovative ideas, and reinvigorate the complex new venture economy, providing Italian entrepreneurs with direct exposure to potential venture capital investors from the most experienced, entrepreneurial ecosystem in the world — Silicon Valley."

Well, it was great. We feel as a very small part of a big change in Italy and we are proud of that, really!

Every year Mind the Bridge "select the best innovative business idea among all the talented Italian applicants and the selected startups are admitted to the Mind the Bridge Gym, a Silicon Valley-based mentoring and coaching program located in San Francisco." Not bad, ah? 

Saturday, GoWar did its pitch, together with other 14 italian Startup and we are running to win the final prize: Mind the Bridge Gym. In 5 days we'll know the winners. Tic, tac, tic ,tac…

The weekend was also full on interesting interviews and debates. The sensation is that something is happening in Italy, we have a lot of work to do and this kind of events are pure oxygen for people like us who's trying to do something different. 

We thank all the MtB Team who did a perfect job, Corriere della Sera and all the Startuppers who believe like us in the future! 

Cheers,

GoWar Team 

Aloha Soldiers,

as we announced in the September 26th post, the Leaderboard is going to change right…

NOW!

We want to remind you how will works:

When you conquer a place you'll get real value from that place and not anymore the double value. In other words, each user's fame will be re-calculated based only on his empire and acquired badges, missions and challenges, therefore don't worry if you see some changes in the Leaderboard suddenly.

By doing so, we believe the Leaderboard will be more realistic and the game more fun for everyone.

Here the top 3 positions just a moment before the Leaderboard change:

1° Davide Pagani

2° Fulvio Martino 

3° Simone Piovan

Congratulation guys, you just won our official GoWar T-Shirt! 

Ok Soldiers, keep going on conquering the world and have fun! 

The GoWar Team