Here at Sifteo, we’ve been enjoying the first couple weeks of the New Year.

The pace has slowed enough for us to catch our breath after the busy holiday season, San Francisco weather has been unseasonably warm, and we’ve just outfitted the lobby with some brand new bike racks.

With a few sun-coated, blissed-out January moments, the engineers tinker. The game designers doodle. Our minds wander and we often find ourselves wondering about the Sifteo customers we’ve connected with over the past several weeks. How did they spend the holidays? What’s new for them in 2012? Do they like their Sifteo cubes? Are they out there somewhere playing a Sifteo game right now, at this very minute?? Trippy.

Every so often, a few answers come to us from out of the blue—an event that causes all respective thought bubbles to burst and all activities to cease. We become very excited!

That’s what happened yesterday when we received the following note and photos from a Sifteo customer. We thought we’d share them here for posterity:

“Cool Uncle Matt gave Sifteo cubes to my kids for Christmas this year. The photo is from New Year’s Eve as my kids were showing their friends all of the games on Sifteo.  My kids are 10, 7 and 4 years old and each found a favorite way to play with the cubes, whether it was code-breaking in Peano’s Vault, competing in math quizzes using Mount Brainiac, or solving puzzles in Chroma.  The favorite app for all the kids was Mount Brainiac, because regardless of difficulty level, the kids could try and beat their own high score, or compete against their friends.   The Sifteo cubes are intuitive (no parenting necessary other than the initial set-up), addicting and fun.  Congrats on creating a very unique and engaging game.” – P.C.

Thanks for the kind words, P.C.! We couldn’t be happier to hear them. Hoping you and yours continue to enjoy Sifteo and have a terrific new year.

Hi All,

If you are or you know a smart, relentless coder with C# / C++ gameplay experience, Sifteo wants to hear from you!

Please send resumes in PDF only to jobs@sifteo.com with subject “contract game programmer”, and see below for more info.

We have AWESOME stuff in store for 2012. Come join us!

Contract Gameplay Programmers Wanted for Q1-Q2 2012

Sifteo is seeking contract gameplay programmers for Q1-Q2 of 2012 (possibly beyond). We are looking for someone who has proven expertise in building gameplay systems and tools, works well with designers and artists, is passionate about games, and is excited about building quality games for our innovative gaming platform. If you’ve admired what we do but aren’t looking to commit to a longterm position, this could be a perfect opportunity to be involved in crafting building the future of gaming!

Our team is fun, smart, and relentless. So are you.

You’ll be working with a small team on a single game for our Sifteo cubes (wireless blocks with full color screens that interact with each other and respond to motion to unleash a whole new world of play and learning applications). The technology was spun out of the MIT Media Lab and has been featured on the Science and Discovery channels, presented at the TED conference, and showcased by The New York Times (David Pogue review), Time Magazine, CNN, Wired, Engadget and more. Adults love it! And kids love it, big time! For more information about our product, see https://sifteo.com/.

What we’re looking for:

• 3+ years of professional experience as a gameplay programmer
• BS or equivalent in computer science or a related field
• mastery of multiple programming languages, including: C/C++, C#, Python, Java, etc. (C/C++ especially)
• comfortable working in a fast paced, start-up environment in a small team
• pro-active, detailed, communicative and organized – you take pride in your work
• good taste, culturally savvy, loves games
• can tell when a mechanic isn’t quite right, a color is off, a response time is weird: and you get in there and fix it
• excited about Sifteo cubes, and ready to work hard with us
• Bay Area preferred, but remote is fine too – you’ll probably be about 50%-100% time on the game during your contract, depending on factors like your own speed, scope, and project calendar

Responsibilities:

• implement games based on direction from game designers
• pro-actively identify broken mechanics and suggest improvements to overall game design
• collaborate as needed with product development team and staff gameplay programmers to expand the SDK and tools
• ensure quality in your game by building unit and system tests
• debug patiently, document efficiently, refactor smartly, and iterate, iterate, iterate

Bonus points for:

• experience with web development
• experience with embedded systems programming

A lot of brainpower goes into the development of any single Sifteo game. In fact, we generally believe the more brains the better, and try to welcome as much collaboration as possible. Since many of our users have great ideas about what games they’d like to play and how our system can better suit their imaginations, we like to reach out and connect with them, too.

But most people don’t realize that many of the minds at work on our games are very young. And I’m not talking start-up, Silicon Valley young, but like, elementary school young. At Sifteo, kids are taken very seriously as critics of our work. After all, they’re usually the most enthusiastic and active game players out there!

Some of us are lucky enough to have nieces, nephews, or kids of our own who are eager to test out the latest Sifteo games in development. But most of the very young people we work with hang out at the Innovation Lab of the Children’s Creativity Museum, where children get a hands-on experience with new technology, talk with tech professionals about their jobs, and experiment with the latest innovations.

We really appreciate this opportunity to work with Sifteo’s biggest fans. With the right kind of exposure to technology, we’ve seen students become inspired to pursue a curriculum that could eventually lead to a career in computer science or engineering. And of course, the insights of children at play in the Innovation Lab are tremendously helpful to our game developers, who are in turn inspired by the imaginations of even our youngest users.

“I didn’t intend for Matchination to be playable with 2 cubes; I thought it’d be too simple,” Sifteo Game Developer, Eric Liao, explains. “But I’d forgotten to restrict the game to 3 cubes or more, and then noted that a lot of our younger play testers at the Children’s Creativity Museum were having a blast with 2 cubes. Their engagement really helped me understand what works for different age levels. I immediately made 2-cube play one of the options in Matchination.”

Another Developer, Josh Lee, describes group dynamics in Sifteo game play. “During one of our earliest play tests, I put a set of three cubes down on a table in front of three girls. Each girl took a cube and claimed it as her own. I thought this would make the games unplayable—they were designed with a single player in mind! But the girls naturally cooperated and brought their cubes together to play Chroma Shuffle and Mount Brainiac like a boss (a three-headed, six-handed boss). It really opened my eyes to different forms of collaborative play.”

On the games development team, we’re excited by this congruity of values in our work and play—we have more success and more fun when we work together.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in having your children participate in the Sifteo PlayLab, please fill out our survey or contact emily@sifteo.com. In the meantime, feel check out ABC 7’s coverage of play time in the Children’s Creativity Museum!

14 of the Year’s Best Ideas in Interface Design

Sifteo was featured in Fast Company for great interface design!

“All of the designs profiled here share an ease of use–the hallmark of good UIs. But a new theme has surfaced: wondrous fun. From generative music and art apps to cubes that develop your spatial skills, many of these products combine the UIs more common to video games with mind-challenging play. Yep, some of this year’s best designs trick you into learning–lending credence to the value of gaming as an educational tool. ”

“These little [Sifteo] cubes turn 2-D gaming into 3-D motion-aware blocks that can be tilted, jostled, rotated, and clicked to play a variety of games–all in the service of intelligent play.”

Thanks Fast Company! See full article.

We want your holidays to be as happy as possible, so the Sifteo Support Team is on call this weekend! Call us at 855-367-7438 between 11am and 5pm (Pacific Time) on Saturday, December 24 or Sunday, December 25 and we’ll help you get set up. You can also email us at support@sifteo.com.

We have plenty of resources at support.sifteo.com to guide you through the Sifteo universe. Take a look!

Also, check out the video that Emily made to guide you through the set-up process:

Setting up your cubes from Emily Sun on Vimeo.

Thanks for the shout out We think you’re pretty great, too!

We’re sorry! Our pop-up store location has changed. If you are in the Bay Area and were planning to come by Mint Plaza to check out our store, please reroute to 2475 3rd St. #252. We’re still doing demos, selling Sifteo cubes, and giving away freet-shirts and gift wrapping.

Also, thanks so much to everyone who visited us in Mint Plaza! We had a great time playing games and getting to know you a bit. Please feel free to stay in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter–we’d love to hear from you!

Having done a survey among my friends and acquaintances (thanks, everyone!), I’ve compiled a list of holiday expressions in an assortment of foreign languages.  While this is not an all-in-one guide to international holiday greetings, some of these phrases may come in handy at a gathering in the coming weeks.

Just for fun, consider learning one new expression – especially if you know you’ll run into a friend or colleague from abroad. As some of these expressions are tongue-twisters, I’ve included a pronunciation guide with each list. However, don’t let some of these long words intimidate you – your acquaintance will probably be pleased (and/or amused) that you’re making an effort.

Merry Christmas

 

Teach yourself how to say "Merry Christmas" in many languages using Creativity Kit!

Language	Word	How to say it
French	Joyeaux	-eaux rhymes with tough
German	Weihnachten	VIE-nak-ten
Hungarian	Karácsonyt	kuh-RAH-chon-it
Welsh	Llawen	For the double L sound, either  position your tongue at the roof of your mouth and blow pronounce the LL as HL
Polish	Wesołych	VES-oh-wihk
	Świąt	SHVY-unt

 

"Merry Christmas" in Welsh

Happy New Year

Learn to say "Happy New Year" in many different languages with Creativity Kit.

Toasting

Use Creativity Kit to teach yourself how to say "cheers" in many languages!

"Cheers" in Klingon