The Stoner's Handbook and Fortune Ganja Creator Talks Shop With Big Buds

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (4 votes)
The Stoner's Handbook and Fortune Ganja Creator Talks Shop With Big Buds

Click to enlarge

" The Stoner's Handbook on the other hand was not accepted, due to it's marijuana related information. After much stress of urging them to allow it in the market, it still was not allowed in. "

Fortune Ganja is an Andoid App created by Steven DeArmond, a young, self-taught developer who now runs Fallacy Studios, a programming and gaming company that has a host of medically marijuana-related Apps (and some not so medically-marijuana inspired ones). The concept is simple: A medical marijuana nugget that, when opened, tells your fortune. In spite of rejections from iPhone content managers, DeArmond continues to create apps and games that are fun for bud enthusiasts and gamers alike.

BIG BUDS: Tell me a bit about yourself?

Steven DeArmond: I'm an easy going guy. I just like to hang out with my fiancé and or friends. I like to go out and do things. I played baseball most of my life and into college. I'm just now finishing up college after this next semester. I may play ball again for one last semester. This upcoming summer I'll be married. Other than that there isn't much to me that I can think of.

BB: How did you get into App making and start Fallacy Studios?

SD: While I was in college trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I was talking to my brother who is in high school trying to help him figure out what he wanted to do. I figured since he was good at math and loved games that maybe a game programmer might be a good route for him. After trying to give him some motivation, I actually realized that I would like to do game design. It had always been an interest of mine. Apps became a stepping stone in the right direction for me and it was something I didn't need to hire people to make for me. I would just learn it myself and it didn't require a team of people to do.

BB: Why did you make medical marijuana-related apps?

SD: While I was making the first app, I was surfing the Android market place trying to come up with other potential apps and I stumbled across some medical marijuana apps. I noticed that they had very few apps out, and the ones that were out did not cover much about it. So I thought to myself, why don't I make an app that encompasses a lot more and try to touch base on as much as I can.

BB: What are the medical marijuana Apps you've made for Android?

SD: I spent the next week slowly constructing the Stoner's Handbook, researching information about marijuana that I didn't already know, contacting sites that might be interested in having me backlink to them, if they allowed me to use some of their information or pictures. One of my friends had helped me build some of the original graphics for the app as well. After a week of working on it, it was finally done.

Since it was doing so well, I decided since the marijuana app market seemed to receive this app that it might be a good idea to strike with a few more marijuana apps. It's always best to strike while the iron is hot if you will. I toyed around with making a few other apps prior to coming to this realization and none took off like the Stoner's Handbook did. So roughly a month or so later, I started and finished a few other marijuana apps such as Fortune Ganja and PotHead Games.

Fortune Ganja was an idea I came up with one night while eating Chinese food. Opened up a fortune cookie and thought it would be a funny idea if when you opened up a bud if a fortune related to medical marijuana were to be there. So I turned it into an app. As for PotHead Games, I had already made a few games in the Stoner's Handbook that people seemed to like, so I went ahead and made more games specific for marijuana users. I took ideas from drinking games and just added a small twist to them to make them relate to smoking instead of drinking. That app turned out to do pretty well itself.

BB: What were the responses for your App?

SD: The Stoner's Handbook was released into the Android market and within days it began to take off. Quite fast actually. With both a paid and free version, sales and downloads were taking off. The free version started getting more than 1,000 downloads a day. I believe at one point it was getting more than 5,000 a day. It also helped that a few blogs wrote about it as well.

BB: What are the challenges you faced because you made Apps with this content?

SD: I continued to make Android apps and eventually I knew that I needed to get these over to iPhone as soon as I could. A few months ago I started teaching myself how to program iPhone. I didn't really know anything about Obj C or even C++. Just what I knew from programming Android with Java. After spending a few days studying up on it, I was able to associate much of what I knew about Android programming into programming iPhone.

I started with creating my first app on Android, SpeedClock, which I had made in just a few days. Then in less than a week from knowing virtually nothing about programming iPhone I had created both SpeedClock and the Stoner's Handbook for iPhone. After about a week of waiting for review SpeedClock was accepted into the Apple market. The Stoner's Handbook on the other hand was not accepted, due to it's marijuana related information. After much stress of urging them to allow it in the market, it still was not allowed in. I continued making small tweaks to try and get it in and finally I was able to get it in with the name changed to Marijuana Handbook. I wanted to keep the same name because it was already a well known name on the Android market, but there isn't much I can do about that.

During the time I was waiting for the Stoner's Handbook to go into review with iPhone I had already created Fortune Ganja and PotHead Games for iPhone (prior to knowing that they would reject the Handbook). As you would assume they were both denied entrance into the iPhone market. Still to this day, they are rejected. I've tried on a few other occasions to make changes and get them accepted, but they still have not made it in.

BB: What do you have coming out next?

SD: My goal from the very beginning was to create games. Not so much to be a programmer of games, but more to design them. I find the intricacy of creating a well developed game that is balanced, works properly, and is fun very intriguing and fun to do. Lately I have been focusing more on developing real games for the iPhone and Android. I am looking forward to the release of my new game that I have been working very hard on which will hopefully be in both those markets early in Jan. (assuming it can get through review). It's called Survive and it is a zombie shooter that I think has a very promising game play. If you have ever enjoyed side scrolling shooters like Metal Slug than Survive might be up your alley.


Article by Laura Vladimirova, on Jan. 3rd 2012

Related articles

The Straight "Dope"

Medical Marijuana Tracking

Stay Legal With Seed-To-Sale Tracking

 

© Copyright 2011 - bigbudsmag.com - All rights reserved
BigBudsMag.com is a registered trademark. All item pricing and availability is subject to change.
All images are copyrighted by their respective publishers. They are presented here for evaluation only. It is illegal to use these images for any other purpose.