18 Best Highest Paying URL Shortener Sites to Make Money Online 2019

1. Short.am

   Short.am provides a big opportunity for earning money by shortening links. It is a rapidly growing URL Shortening Service. You simply need to sign up and start shrinking links. You can share the shortened links across the web, on your webpage, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Short.am provides detailed statistics and easy-to-use API.
   It even provides add-ons and plugins so that you can monetize your WordPress site. The minimum payout is $5 before you will be paid. It pays users via PayPal or Payoneer. It has the best market payout rates, offering unparalleled revenue. Short.am also run a referral program wherein you can earn 20% extra commission for life.
   

2. Oke.io

   Oke.io provides you an opportunity to earn money online by shortening URLs. Oke.io is a very friendly URL Shortener Service as it enables you to earn money by shortening and sharing URLs easily.
   Oke.io can pay you anywhere from $5 to $10 for your US, UK, and Canada visitors, whereas for the rest of the world the CPM will not be less than $2. You can sign up by using your email. The minimum payout is $5, and the payment is made via PayPal.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$7
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payout options-PayPal, Payza, Bitcoin and Skrill
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

3. Cut-win

   Cut-win is a new URL shortener website.It is paying at the time and you can trust it.You just have to sign up for an account and then you can shorten your URL and put that URL anywhere.You can paste it into your site, blog or even social media networking sites.It pays high CPM rate.
   You can earn $10 for 1000 views.You can earn 22% commission through the referral system.The most important thing is that you can withdraw your amount when it reaches $1.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$10
   • Minimum payout-$1
   • Referral commission-22%
   • Payment methods-PayPal, Payza, Bitcoin, Skrill, Western Union and Moneygram etc.
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

4. Short.pe

   Short.pe is one of the most trusted sites from our top 30 highest paying URL shorteners.It pays on time.intrusting thing is that same visitor can click on your shorten link multiple times.You can earn by sign up and shorten your long URL.You just have to paste that URL to somewhere.
   You can paste it into your website, blog, or social media networking sites.They offer $5 for every 1000 views.You can also earn 20% referral commission from this site.Their minimum payout amount is only $1.You can withdraw from Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$5
   • Minimum payout-$1
   • Referral commission-20% for lifetime
   • Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer
   • Payment time-on daily basis
   
   

5. CPMlink

   CPMlink is one of the most legit URL shortener sites.You can sign up for free.It works like other shortener sites.You just have to shorten your link and paste that link into the internet.When someone will click on your link.
   You will get some amount of that click.It pays around $5 for every 1000 views.They offer 10% commission as the referral program.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.The payment is then sent to your PayPal, Payza or Skrill account daily after requesting it.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$5
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-10%
   • Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

6. Fas.li

   Although Fas.li is relatively new URL Shortener Service, it has made its name and is regarded as one of the most trusted URL Shortener Company. It provides a wonderful opportunity for earning money online without spending even a single $. You can expect to earn up to $15 per 1000 views through Fas.li.
   You can start by registering a free account on Fas.li, shrink your important URLs, and share it with your fans and friends in blogs, forums, social media, etc. The minimum payout is $5, and the payment is made through PayPal or Payza on 1st or 15th of each month.
   Fas.li also run a referral program wherein you can earn a flat commission of 20% by referring for a lifetime. Moreover, Fas.li is not banned in anywhere so you can earn from those places where other URL Shortening Services are banned.
   

7. LINK.TL

   LINK.TL is one of the best and highest URL shortener website.It pays up to $16 for every 1000 views.You just have to sign up for free.You can earn by shortening your long URL into short and you can paste that URL into your website, blogs or social media networking sites, like facebook, twitter, and google plus etc.
   One of the best thing about this site is its referral system.They offer 10% referral commission.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.
   
   • Payout for 1000 views-$16
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-10%
   • Payout methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
   • Payment time-daily basis
   
   

8. Linkrex.net

   Linkrex.net is one of the new URL shortener sites.You can trust it.It is paying and is a legit site.It offers high CPM rate.You can earn money by sing up to linkrex and shorten your URL link and paste it anywhere.You can paste it in your website or blog.You can paste it into social media networking sites like facebook, twitter or google plus etc.
   You will be paid whenever anyone will click on that shorten a link.You can earn more than $15 for 1000 views.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.Another way of earning from this site is to refer other people.You can earn 25% as a referral commission.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$14
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-25%
   • Payment Options-Paypal,Bitcoin,Skrill and Paytm,etc
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

9. Dwindly

   Dwindly is one of the best URL Shorten to earn money online. It offers the opportunity to earn money for every person that views links you have created.
   Its working is simple. You need to create an account and then shorten any URLs with a click of a button. Go on to share your shortened URLs on the internet, including social media, YouTube, blogs, and websites. And finally, earn when any person clicks on your shortened URL.
   They offer the best environment to you for earning money from home. They have even come up with a referral system where you can invite people to Dwindly and earn as much as 20% of their income.
   It has built-in a unique system wherein you get the opportunity to increase your daily profits when you analyze your top traffic sources and detailed stats.
   Best of all, you get the highest payout rates. The scripts and the APIs allow you to earn through your websites efficiently.
   Last but not the least you get payments on time within four days.
   

10. Al.ly

    Al.ly is another very popular URL Shortening Service for earning money on short links without investing any single $. Al.ly will pay from $1 to $10 per 1000 views depending upon the different regions. Minimum withdrawal is only $1, and it pays through PayPal, Payoneer, or Payza. So, you have to earn only $1.00 to become eligible to get paid using Al.ly URL Shortening Service.
    Besides the short links, Al.ly also runs a referral program wherein you can earn 20% commission on referrals for a lifetime. The referral program is one of the best ways to earn even more money with your short links. Al.ly offers three different account subscriptions, including free option as well as premium options with advanced features.
    

11. Clk.sh

    Clk.sh is a newly launched trusted link shortener network, it is a sister site of shrinkearn.com. I like ClkSh because it accepts multiple views from same visitors. If any one searching for Top and best url shortener service then i recommend this url shortener to our users. Clk.sh accepts advertisers and publishers from all over the world. It offers an opportunity to all its publishers to earn money and advertisers will get their targeted audience for cheapest rate. While writing ClkSh was offering up to $8 per 1000 visits and its minimum cpm rate is $1.4. Like Shrinkearn, Shorte.st url shorteners Clk.sh also offers some best features to all its users, including Good customer support, multiple views counting, decent cpm rates, good referral rate, multiple tools, quick payments etc. ClkSh offers 30% referral commission to its publishers. It uses 6 payment methods to all its users.
    • Payout for 1000 Views: Upto $8
    • Minimum Withdrawal: $5
    • Referral Commission: 30%
    • Payment Methods: PayPal, Payza, Skrill etc.
    • Payment Time: Daily
    
    

12. Linkbucks

    Linkbucks is another best and one of the most popular sites for shortening URLs and earning money. It boasts of high Google Page Rank as well as very high Alexa rankings. Linkbucks is paying $0.5 to $7 per 1000 views, and it depends on country to country.
    The minimum payout is $10, and payment method is PayPal. It also provides the opportunity of referral earnings wherein you can earn 20% commission for a lifetime. Linkbucks runs advertising programs as well.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$3-9
    • Minimum payout-$10
    • Referral commission-20%
    • Payment options-PayPal,Payza,and Payoneer
    • Payment-on the daily basis
    
    

13. Shrinkearn.com

    Shrinkearn.com is one of the best and most trusted sites from our 30 highest paying URL shortener list.It is also one of the old URL shortener sites.You just have to sign up in the shrinkearn.com website. Then you can shorten your URL and can put that URL to your website, blog or any other social networking sites.
    Whenever any visitor will click your shortener URL link you will get some amount for that click.The payout rates from Shrinkearn.com is very high.You can earn $20 for 1000 views.Visitor has to stay only for 5 seconds on the publisher site and then can click on skip button to go to the requesting site.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views- up to $20
    • Minimum payout-$1
    • Referral commission-25%
    • Payment methods-PayPal
    • Payment date-10th day of every month
    
    

14. Adf.ly

    Adf.ly is the oldest and one of the most trusted URL Shortener Service for making money by shrinking your links. Adf.ly provides you an opportunity to earn up to $5 per 1000 views. However, the earnings depend upon the demographics of users who go on to click the shortened link by Adf.ly.
    It offers a very comprehensive reporting system for tracking the performance of your each shortened URL. The minimum payout is kept low, and it is $5. It pays on 10th of every month. You can receive your earnings via PayPal, Payza, or AlertPay. Adf.ly also runs a referral program wherein you can earn a flat 20% commission for each referral for a lifetime.
    

15. BIT-URL

    It is a new URL shortener website.Its CPM rate is good.You can sign up for free and shorten your URL and that shortener URL can be paste on your websites, blogs or social media networking sites.bit-url.com pays $8.10 for 1000 views.
    You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $3.bit-url.com offers 20% commission for your referral link.Payment methods are PayPal, Payza, Payeer, and Flexy etc.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$8.10
    • Minimum payout-$3
    • Referral commission-20%
    • Payment methods- Paypal, Payza, and Payeer
    • Payment time-daily
    
    

16. Ouo.io

    Ouo.io is one of the fastest growing URL Shortener Service. Its pretty domain name is helpful in generating more clicks than other URL Shortener Services, and so you get a good opportunity for earning more money out of your shortened link. Ouo.io comes with several advanced features as well as customization options.
    With Ouo.io you can earn up to $8 per 1000 views. It also counts multiple views from same IP or person. With Ouo.io is becomes easy to earn money using its URL Shortener Service. The minimum payout is $5. Your earnings are automatically credited to your PayPal or Payoneer account on 1st or 15th of the month.
    
    • Payout for every 1000 views-$5
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-20%
    • Payout time-1st and 15th date of the month
    • Payout options-PayPal and Payza
    
    

17. Bc.vc

    Bc.vc is another great URL Shortener Site. It provides you an opportunity to earn $4 to $10 per 1000 visits on your Shortened URL. The minimum withdrawal is $10, and the payment method used PayPal or Payoneer.
    Payments are made automatically on every seven days for earnings higher than $10.00. It also runs a referral system wherein the rate of referral earning is 10%.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$10
    • Minimum payout -$10
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payment method -Paypal
    • Payment time-daily
    
    

18. Wi.cr

    Wi.cr is also one of the 30 highest paying URL sites.You can earn through shortening links.When someone will click on your link.You will be paid.They offer $7 for 1000 views.Minimum payout is $5.
    You can earn through its referral program.When someone will open the account through your link you will get 10% commission.Payment option is PayPal.
    
    • Payout for 1000 views-$7
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payout method-Paypal
    • Payout time-daily
    
    

Fantasy, Gender, And Game Of Thrones

While I should not have been surprised about the new HBO series Game of Thrones turning into a referendum on fantasy, it has somehow turned into a huge discussion on gender in geek culture, which is somewhat more surprising.

The initial reason for this is that the highest-profile negative review, from the New York Times, specifically genders enjoyment of fantasy, calling it "boy fiction." This review's foolishness is well-documented (I took a few shots at it in my last post myself) and has led to a thriving mini-genre of female geek blog posts - see here.

However, as usual with gender, this is a multi-layered affair. Many of the writers who have treated Game of Thrones with the most disdain, and whose links are being passed around and mocked, and presumably have had their comments sections taken over by irate fans of the novels, have been female themselves. Myles McNutt, my co-AV Club writer, has documented and discussed this here, while my editor Todd Vanderwerff went into the subject a little bit deeper in the comments, citing both the male numerical dominance of online TV criticism, and even more interestingly, a masculine definition of what makes for a quality TV show.

This is without even getting into the text itself, where a gender analysis of the books, show, and the show compared to the books could all be fruitful. One consistent criticism of the show from people who haven't outright dismissed it for its genre has been an excessive amount of distracting boobage, which is also an issue I and others had with HBO's Boardwalk Empire. More subtly, I've heard suggestions that some of the impressive female characters from the novel are hard-done-by early on the show, since they don't have the internal, point-of-view monologue on-screen.

To sum up the different gender arguments, in case you're looking for a senior project, thesis, or dissertation topic:

• Treatment of gender in the A Game of Thrones novel
• Treatment of gender in the Game of Thrones series
• Comparing and contrasting gender in the book and the series
• Gender of reviewers responding to the show
• Gender of TV reviewers overall
• Gendered discussion of "quality television"
• Stereotypes about gender of Game of Thrones fans
• Stereotypes about gender of fantasy fans in general
• And, finally, the one that I haven't seen mentioned often: the gendered discussion of fantasy literature as a whole

You see, I've long had the impression that fantasy was gendered female, especially compared to its fraternal twin, science fiction. Science fiction is largely written by men, and the subgenre of "hard" science fiction focuses on rational concerns, extrapoliting current science out into time and space (and note the gendered terminology, hard=rational=masculine, soft=imaginative=feminine). Fantasy, on the other hand, is written by women as or more often than men, and is reliant on magic, an irrational flight of imagination. I even had a creative writing textbook once which said that science fiction was a good genre because it could say something about the world we lived in today, whereas fantasy was pure escapism and totally unserious.

My personal experience bears this out as well. In the 90s, I spent a lot of time on CompuServe's Science Fiction & Fantasy forums, and found that yes, the fantasy forum seemed to have a much better balance of male and female contributors, whereas the science fiction forum skewed much more male. Interestingly, I also talked about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in another subforum, and recall that being a primarily male forum.

To be fair: it is possible that, despite my possibly-accurate impression of the fantasy genre and its fans skewing female, A Game of Thrones is actually a more masculine-oriented novel, much as I found The Wheel of Time to be male. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the neverending fantasy series preferred by Jordan and Martin which fits in with masculine concepts, in the same way that Todd described "quality television" (usually serialized, dense, and overly serious) as seeming to have a masculine orientation. It could also be that by keeping magic largely on the sidelines, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, A Game of Thrones possesses a more historical, rational, and masculine appeal. On the other hand, one of the fantasy authors I would describe as the most "feminine" (despite his apparent male gender), Guy Gavriel Kay, also tends to write "fantistoricals." Or I'm theorizing excessively and this is all total nonsense.

Regardless, if I have a point here, it's that much like yesterday, it's hardly fair to attach qualities of gender to the Game of Thrones series in such a generalized, conclusive fashion. There are layers upon layers here, and as ever, I say it's more complicated than it may seem at first glance.

Niklas Pzr 4 F2 Render #4

#3

Graphics And Games Lecture Videos

This blog post archives all of my video lectures on computational graphics, virtual reality, and film and media studies topics. I will add to the post as more talks are digitized. Links are to project pages. Following the SIGGRAPH system, I'm rating these "Advanced," "Intermediate," and "Beginner" based on how much knowledge each lecture assumes about games and graphics from the audience.

Advanced

Peering Through a Glass, Darkly at the Future of Real-Time Transparency

(SIGGRAPH 2016 Invited Talk)

Phenomenological Transparency

(I3D 2016 Research Paper)

Intermediate 

The Augmented Artist: Computation and Content Creation

(I3D 2013 Invited Talk)

Introductory

Virtual Reality: The Actuality of Total Cinema

(Williams 2016 Faculty Lecture Series)

Creating Games

(Williams 2016 Alumni Talk)

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Morgan McGuire (@morgan3d) is a professor at Williams College, a researcher at NVIDIA, and a professional game developer. His most recent games are Project Rocket Golfing for iOS and Skylanders: Superchargers for consoles. He is the author of the Graphics Codex, an essential reference for computer graphics now available in iOS and Web Editions.

3Rd Year Student , Peter Dimitrov Makes His Mark.

Really well done to our third year Games Design student, @AnirnPeter for his passion and skill in completing the Feudal Japan 3D Game Environment Challenge on @ArtStationHQ 'The Shogunate'

https://www.artstation.com/contests/feudal-japan/challenges/51/submissions 

Peter has now completed this ArtStation challenge where his work is showcased amongst submissions of a very high standard alongside highly professional artists from industry.

In Japanese culture, as well as in lots of others, the animals Peter has depicted are a common feature. In Japan rabbits are thought to bring fertility, cranes were thought to be immortal and as such were considered secret. Frogs, some say, bring luck. This is all referenced in text on the walls of the Calligraphers building.

Some some screenshots here:

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi0vBi39h2g&t=5s

Missed Classic 65: Spellbreaker (1985) - Introduction

Written by Joe Pranevich

From the earliest days of the company, Infocom had one tradition: a new Zork title released every fall. After Zork III, the baton was passed to the Enchanter series which, as patient and dedicated readers know was just the second Zork trilogy. October of 1985 was no exception with the launch of Spellbreaker, the conclusion to the second Zork trilogy. But 1985 wasn't like previous years at Infocom. Layoffs had begun to stem the bleeding from Cornerstone's commercial flop. A Mind Forever Voyaging wasn't a commercial success and Fooblitzky had sold only five hundred copies by mail-order. I cannot imagine what the feelings were around the Infocom offices. Could this be the end?

Of course, we know it wasn't, but Spellbreaker does mark the end of one era. It is the last of the original six Zork games. Other than a 1997 marketing tie-in, it's the last Zork to be written by the original collaborators, Marc Blank or Dave Lebling. It's nearly (but not quite) the last game to be released by an independent Infocom. It's also one of the games that I have most looked forward to playing in this marathon.

What? No library book?

In some ways, Spellbreaker is a return to form for the Zork series. After handing off the reins to their flagship series to the ever-capable Steve Meretzky for Sorcerer (1984), Dave Lebling returned to tackle this game solo. Lebling has been one of the most prolific designers for Infocom with both a literary style and a penchant for strong puzzle design. In addition to co-writing the first four Zork games, he also wrote Starcross and received a co-credit for the story on The Witness. The development of Spellbreaker should have been a well-trodden path, but it did hit a few wrinkles.

The biggest issue was, strangely, the title. Lebling wanted the title to be Mage, a natural continuation (of a sort) from the previous two games. The title would represent the increasing maturity of the protagonist from a lowly "Enchanter" to a powerful "Sorcerer" and then to a presumably more powerful "Mage". While I understand the desire for theming, I agree with the push-back from the marketing folks. Those three terms do not represent (to me) anything like a progression and I wouldn't necessarily be able to say whether an Enchanter is any more or less powerful than a Mage-- and this comes from a deep love of fantasy literature since childhood. "Archmage" might have worked better for me, but that wasn't one of the suggestions. Lebling was quite put off by this marketing pushback and eventually even snuck a protest into the game: a very small portion of the time, the game's title screen will say Mage instead of Spellbreaker.

A second option that was explored and ultimately rejected was to add the Zork name back to the series: Zork VI: Spellbreaker. In my view with more than a little hindsight, that would have been the best approach. At this stage, the Zork name was still selling games like hotcakes. Zork I was the #2 selling Infocom game in 1985, behind only Hitchhiker's Guide. Zork II was #5, behind AMFV and Spellbreaker. I'll have more to say about this in an upcoming post, but the fact that Infocom wasn't embracing the one brand of their own that was still successful in the marketplace is crazy. Whatever's Lebling's artistic sensibilities were, he was senior enough in the organization that he should have understood the value in a brand. Thanks in part to a name that didn't click with consumers, Spellbreaker would actually have negative sales in 1986, as store returns for unsold inventory would offset otherwise strong sales in 1985. For my money, I am most concerned about the title because it is itself a spoiler (albeit a subtle one) for the game. Although I have not played this game more than a few minutes twenty years ago, I do know how it ends.

The cards are cute at least.

As in the previous games, there are a few includes "feelies" with the game. Most notably, the manual is augmented by the "Frobozz Magic Magic Equipment Catalog" for the year 966. Special crisis edition! In it is a number of advertisements for wands and magic carpets, some of which might be applicable in the game, but if so I don't see how yet. While the previous feelies had a good sense of humor about them, I cannot help but to find this included catalog as being tacky. Full-color glossy product photographs and low-rent model wizards with forced smiles just doesn't feel like Zork to me, although the series has always been a blend of fantasy and modern.

In addition to the catalog, the game comes with a series of wizard trading cards-- my bet is that they are this game's equivalent of the Infotator and will be required for copyright protection. Each card contains the picture of a notable wizard, a quote, and some random statistics including their Double Fanucci handicap. What is Double Fanucci? It's an in-universe card game, although I cannot recall if I know that because of previous games or if it's something that stuck with me from a later one.

Let's play the game!

---

No pompous title screens here!

The game begins in the middle of a magician's council. After our exploits in the previous games, we are now a guildmaster and attending a conference with the other buildmasters of the Empire. Magic, it appears, is failing. One by one, witnesses come forward to discuss their magical problems like pastry chefs that are forced to fold pastry by hand or brewers that rely on magic to brew their beers. One can't help but wonder if one of the issues isn't overuse? If magic is being used for all of these mundane things, is that draining the universe of its magical energy? I hope that doesn't turn out to be the problem, if I guessed it in the first screen,

Of course, I am playing an adventure game and so I'm taking notes as the townsmen are speaking. The baker uses the "gloth" spell to fold his pastry, for example, while the "fripple" spell keeps monsters away from the towns. I also take the time to check my inventory: I have a burin for writing magical things like scrolls, a knife, and my trusty spellbook. My spellbook in specific seems to have been drained since the last game as once again I just have a small number of spells. There's a brief in-game explanation that many of the spells that I once knew no longer work due to the crisis.

The ones I have left include:

• yomin - mind probe
• rezrov - open locked doors
• frotz - give off light
• gnusto - write a spell into our spell book
• malyon - animate
• jindak - detect magic
• lesoch - gust of wind

Of those, we have our stalwarts "rezrov", "frotz", and "gnusto" that have appeared in all three games. "Yomin" and "malyon" were added in Sorcerer, while "jindak" and "lesoch" are brand new to this game.

Ribbit?

While I was listening to the townspeople rant about their problems, a shadowy figure snuck into the back of the room and transformed everyone into frogs! Everyone except me, that is. Why was I spared? Was it deliberate or an accident? I chase the assailant south out of the guildhouse and into Belwit Square, but he's able to cast some sort of smokescreen and teleport away. I use the new "lesoch" spell to clear the smoke-- I have to do it twice because it failed the first time-- but he is long gone. Only a featureless white cube remains where the figure once was.

I grab it and head back into the guildhall. As I ran past before, I didn't see some bread and fish on the table and I grab those now. I hope that doesn't mean we have an eating mechanic in this game. It's been a while since we've had one of those! I try to "yomin" the frogs to read their minds, maybe get some wisdom from my fellow elders, but all they are thinking about now is flies.

Borphee awaits, but my explorations are in vain as the city is more or less an illusion. East and west just end up having me get turned around and we end up right back where we started. South of the square is the Manse where the Mayors of the city live and work, but it's locked and guarded. Whatever I need to do isn't that way. Fortunately, it doesn't take me more than a few moments to figure out what I can do: in my spellbook is a new spell which I have never seen before: "blorple", to explore mystic connections. With no better ideas, I cast "blorple" on the cube and am transported to a dark room.

Our adventure begins!

Time played: 30 min
Inventory: rye bread, smoked fish, magic burin, knife, spellbook
Spell Book Contains: yomin, rezrov, frotz, gnusto, malyon, jindak, lesoch, blorple

---

Since this is an Introduction post, it's time to guess the score! The current average score for an Infocom game is 38 points. Lebling's previous eight games are slightly above that, averaging 39 points: mainframe Zork (41 points), Zork I (35), Zork II (32), Zork III (42), Starcross (37), The Witness (50), Enchanter (37), and Suspect (38). Of those, Lebling was co-designer on the Zork games and Enchanter, while only provided some story guidance on The Witness. Lebling appears to be quite consistent in his scores and I have a feeling we'll have a number of guesses in that range.

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Interview: Jeff Ronne, Tron Deadly Discs

Greetings and welcome to my hopefully new feature, interview episodes! First up is Jeff Ronne, who was the programmer for Tron Deadly Discs from M Network. I really enjoyed talking with him and I am grateful to him for his time. He's an interesting guy and also one of the few programmers at that time who programmed games for multiple systems. If you have any comments, you can email them to me at 2600gamebygame@comcast.net, or leave them on the Facebook or Twitter pages. Thanks so much for listening!


Jeff Ronne on Quora
Takeover on Intellivision Lives
Tron Deadly Discs on Intellivision Lives
Tron Deadly Discs episode

No News Is No News

A year ago my manager at work started a game hour on Thursdays for our small group of 5. Between the 2 of us we brought in new games every week for several months that could be played for 5 non-gamers. My manager up and left us last week, but I hope to continue the gaming. Only now we are going to get between 7 and 10 each week. Which makes it more challenging, unless I just bring in 2 copies of Codenames (1 Hebrew and 1 English) each week. That will be the default option.

Meanwhile I haven't touched my book. But I went to South Africa and came back. Pictures on Facebook. I usually tell a travelogue on my blog, and I may still do that. I didn't play much on the trip.

There is something to say about my game It's Alive, which I will say when I can say it.

Algorithms That Select Which Algorithm Should Play Which Game

This was meant to be a short post announcing some new papers of ours, but it grew. So what you get is a post announcing some new papers, with plenty of context.

Video games are possibly the best way of testing artificial intelligence algorithms. At least I've argued this (at some length) before. One of the things that video games offer that for example robot problems don't offer, is to easily and quickly test the same algorithm on a large number of games. That is one of the guiding principles of General Video Game AI Competition (GVGAI), which has certain advantages over other game-based AI testbeds.

Some games implemented in General Video Game AI Framework.

Now in practice we don't yet have any algorithm that can play all different video games well. (If we had, we would pretty much have solved AI. Really. Remember that "video games" is a very broad category, including Sokoban and Zork as well as Witcher 3 and Ikaruga. The GVGAI competition is more limited, but still covers a broad range of games.) For some games, we have no algorithms that can play the game well at all. For other games, we have algorithms that can play those games at human level, or sometimes even better. But an algorithm which can play Space Invaders well might not be very good at Boulder Dash, and suck completely at all a puzzle game such as A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. Conversely, a good snowman-building AI might not be very adept at fending off invading space aliens. We like to say that game-playing performance is intransitive.

But what we want is a single algorithm that can play any game well. Because intelligence is not about being able to perform a single task, but to perform all (or most) tasks (from within some reasonably general domain) well. Given that what we have are different algorithms that can each only perform some minority of tasks well, how do we get there?

One answer is to build an algorithm that includes a number of different game-playing algorithms, the "champions" of each type of game. When faced with new game, it would choose one of its constituent algorithms to play the game. If for each game the algorithm selects the best sub-algorithm to play that game, it would perform much better than any one algorithm on its own. Ex pluribus unum, stronger together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and all that. The question then is of course how to select the right algorithm for each game.

How well a number of different algorithms play different games in the GVGAI framework. Lighter=better. Several different categories or clusters of games appear based on the performance of the algorithms.

Luckily, people have studied the problem of how to automatically select algorithms to solve problems for some time under the names algorithm selection (obviously) and hyper-heuristics (less obviously). Various methods for selecting which algorithms (or heuristics, which means the same in this context) have been explored. But not for video games. Only for more abstract and... I can't say boring, can I? Whatever. Hyper-heuristics and algorithm selection techniques have mostly been applied to more abstract (and perhaps boring) problems such as satisfiability and combinatorial optimization. These are important problems for sure, but they are not all there is. In terms of problems that map to relevant challenges for human intelligence, general video game playing is arguably more important.

My coworkers and I therefore set out investigate how hyper-heuristics can be applied to video games, more specifically video games in the GVGAI framework. Our first result is a paper published in the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games this September - read it here. We show that using simple features easily available to the agent, we can predict which of several algorithms will play an unseen game best with relatively high accuracy. This allows us to build an agent based on a handful of those agents that did best in the 2014 and 2015 GVGAI competitions, and verify that by cleverly choosing which one of these to use for each new game it can outperform all of them on games that it has not been trained on. The classifier at the heart of this agent is a simple decision tree, which also allows us to inspect on what basis it selects certain agents over others.

A decision tree used in one of our hyper-heuristic agents. Based on features of the game, it decides which algorithm to use to play it.

However, we felt that these results were not enough - ideally, the agent should select the best-performing algorithm for a new game every time, not just most of the time. Maybe we could find better features to feed our algorithm selection algorithm, or maybe train it differently?

In our next paper, which will be presented at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, we set out to investigate this question in more depth. Read the paper here. To begin with, we tested the performance of a very broad range of algorithms on all known GVGAI games. We identified a number of groups of games where particular algorithms do well. We also investigated a broader set of features for selecting algorithms, hoping to find better ways of identifying classes of games that would be susceptible to specific types of game-playing algorithms. One idea we had was that those classes would somehow correspond to game genres as identified by humans (e.g. some algorithms would be better at shooters, others at puzzle games etc). While we still don't have enough features to reliably classify games into genres as seen by humans, some results support this notion. In particular we found that we could divide games into four different classes, where different algorithms play well, by looking only at two features: whether the avatar in the game can shoot, and whether it can die.

This decision tree looks only at whether the avatar can shoot and whether it can die.

Of course, there's a lot of research left to do here. We still need better algorithm selection methods, and trying to (automatically?) construct features is a promising direction here. We could also probably do better if we learn to switch algorithms during gameplay - maybe some algorithm is more useful in the initial phases of a game, and another algorithm is more useful for the endgame? And let's not forget that we have many games which no existing algorithm plays well.

Google Mobile Developer Day At Game Developers Conference 2019

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play & Android

We're excited to host the Google Mobile Developer Day at Game Developers Conference 2019. We are taking this opportunity to share best practices and our plans to help your games businesses, which are fuelling incredible growth in the global mobile games market. According to Newzoo, mobile games revenue is projected to account for nearly 60% of global games revenue by 2021. The drivers of this growth come in many forms, including more developers building great games, new game styles blurring the lines of traditional genres, and the explosion of gaming in emerging markets - most notably in India.

Image Source: GamesIndustry.biz

To support your growth, Google is focused on improving the game development experience on Android. We are investing in tools to give you better insights into what is happening on devices, as well as in people and teams to address your feedback about the development process, graphics, multiplayer experiences, and more.

We have some great updates and new tools to improve game discovery and monetization on Google Play, which we also shared today during our Mobile Developer Day:

Pre-registration now in general availability

Starting today, we are launching pre-registration for general availability. Set up a pre-registration campaign in the Google Play Console and start marketing your games to build awareness before launch. Users who pre-register receive a notification at launch, which helps increase day one installs.

Google Play Instant gaining adoption

We have seen strong adoption of Google Play Instant with 3x growth in the number of instant games and 5x growth in the number of instant sessions over the last six months. Instant experiences allow players to tap the 'Try Now' button on your store listing page and go straight to a demo experience in a matter of seconds, without installing. Now, they're even easier to build with Cocos and Unity plug-ins and an expanded implementation partner program. Discover the latest updates on Google Play Instant.

Android App Bundles momentum and new large download size threshold

Over 60K apps and games on Google Play are now using the Android App Bundle publishing format, which is supported in Android Studio, Unity, and Cocos Creator. The app bundle uses Google Play's Dynamic Delivery to deliver a smaller, optimized APK containing only the resources needed for a specific device.

To better support high quality game experiences and reflect improved devices, we've also increased the size limit for APKs generated from app bundles to 150MB and raised the threshold for large download user warnings on the Google Play Store to 150MB, from 100MB.

Improved tools in the Google Play Console

Store listing experiments let you A/B test changes to your store listing on actual Play Store visitors. We recently rolled out improvements, introducing two new metrics - first time installers and D1 retained users - to more accurately reflect the performance of your store listings. These two new metrics are now reported with hourly intervals and are available via email notifications, letting you see results faster and track performance better.

Country targeted store listings allow you to tailor your app's store listing to appeal to users in different countries. You can customize the app title, icon, descriptions and graphic assets, allowing you to better appeal to users in specific target markets. For example, you can now tailor your store listing with different versions of the English language for users in India versus the United States.

Rewarded ads give players the choice to watch an advertisement in exchange for in-app items. With rewarded ads in Google Play, you can now create and manage rewarded ads through the Google Play Console. No additional SDK integrations are required.

We hope you try some of these new tools and keep sharing ideas so we can make Android and Google Play a better place to grow your business. We are committed to continue improving the platform and building tools that better serve the gaming community.

Get started today by visiting two new resources, a hub for developers interested in creating games on Android and games.withgoogle.com, for developers looking to connect and scale their business across Google. Many of these updates and resources come from community suggestions, so sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay informed.

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Google Releases Source Code Of Santa Tracker For Android 2018

Posted by Chris Banes, Chief Elf of Android Engineering

Today, we pushed the source code for Google's Santa Tracker 2018 Android app at google/santa-tracker-android, including its 17 mini-games, Santa tracking feature, Wear app and more!

Visually the app looks much the same this year, but underneath the hood the app has gone on a massive size reduction exercise to make the download from Google Play as small as possible. When a user downloads the app the initial download is now just 9.2MB, compared to last year's app which was 60MB. That's a 85% reduction! 🗜️

Android App Bundle

We achieved that reduction by migrating the app over to using an Android App Bundle. The main benefit is that Google Play can now serve dynamically optimized APKs to users' devices. Moreover, we were also able to separate out all of the games into their own dynamic feature modules, downloaded on demand. This is why you might have seen a progress bar when you first opened a game, we are actually downloading the game from Google Play before starting the game:

The progress bar shown while a game is fetched from Google Play

You can read more about our journey migrating over to App Bundle in a small blog series, starting with our 'Moving to Android App Bundle' post.

Gboard stickers

One of the new features we added this year was a Gboard sticker pack, allowing users to share stickers to their friends. You might even notice some of the characters from the games in the stickers!

'Santa Dunk' is one of the 20 available stickers

We use Firebase App Indexing to publish our stickers to the local index on the device, where the Gboard keyboard app picks them up, allowing the user to share them in apps. You can see the source code here.

The sticker pack being used in a very important conversation

Lots of code improvements

Aside from the things mentioned above, we've also completed a number of code health improvements. We have increased the minimum SDK version to Lollipop (21), migrated from the Support Library to AndroidX, reduced the file size of our game assets by switching to modern formats, and lots of other small improvements! Phew 😅.

Go explore the code

If you're interested go checkout the code and let us know what you think. If you have any questions or issues, please let us know via the issue tracker.

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