Cribbage Game Interview

Jocelyn Dubé from Cribbage.ca has produced his own cribbage game for you to download and play at your leisure.

Jocelyn has been coding games for a long time and we are honored to have him answer a few questions for us. We appreciate him taking the time out of his busy schedule for us. Thank you Jocelyn.

Hi Robin and thank you for the interest and letting your visitors know about my site and games. I'm a French Canadian living close to Montreal, Quebec. I worked in different fields, but mostly in the computer arena.

At one point, I decided to try to make and sell my own games. Later, I realized that my main problem would be to rank my website in the search engines like google. I had to learn all I could about making my website in order to rank and then be able to sell my games. I now almost only have time to work on my websites.

2. I think it’s fascinating that you produce your own games, Cribbage, Hilo-poker,, and Word-Fit, plus the crossword puzzle maker, which can all be found on your website. Do you enjoy creating games and do you plan to create more games in the future?

I took this game making as a challenge and as a possible way to make a living. Coding is fun, but the testing part is a long process that quickly becomes a task.

Since my games don't really have all the colourful bells and whistles the big games maker can produce, being a team, most wouldn't buy them, so I decided to simply give the games away for free. Since making a game is more a write-off than an added income on my part, it's something I do when I feel like it... kind of a spontaneous decision to make a change in my routine.

3. Your knowledge about the cribbage game is wonderful; everything a person needs to play cribbage, and more, is on your site. In your opinion, what is it about your website that makes it so popular?

It used to be more popular, with 3-4 times the visits it now gets. I guess the price is right, for some small games, and some of the rules might be useful. Since a lot of download sites have my games in their list, it must also help to it's visibility. If one person likes the game, they must also let other players know about it.

4. I know you have 2 other websites, http://www.chateauguay.org/, and http://www.howdo.ca/. Do you find it hard to maintain all 3 sites plus your life offline?

Those are my English/bilingual sites. I also have a few French only sites that I build and maintain. I do not use blogs or forums, so I don't have too much maintenance and follow-up. Of course some of my sites will not get as much updates and new content as other more popular ones... as time allows.

5. I know you are located in Quebec, Canada. I think it’s great that your site is in both English and French. Do you think you receive more guests because Cribbage.ca is in both languages?

Well, I get traffic for both languages; it's just for different things on the site. The problem is often that one language will get more guests; giving the feeling the other language is more a waste of time. I get more French visitors. Since English is a second language for me, it's more time consuming, so I do more work on my French sites, but still work on both ones if the site is bilingual.

6. Jocelyn, thank you so much for doing this interview with us today and we wish you continued success. For this last question, please tell us, when did you start Cribbage.ca and what drove you to specialize in that niche? Are you a master at the cribbage game?

I always played and coded on computers since they were available to the public, my first one was an MC-10 from Radio-Shack. I started coding it beginning of 2002, because there were not many cribbage games around, and figured I'd have a chance to get a piece of the market.

I do play a hard game, but I'm not a master at it. Knowing the rules and how to play, I was simply able to code the logic a computer should use to try to win, or at least give a challenge, to a human opponent. I was also lucky to have a mom that liked to play the game and criticized it so I make it better (laugh).

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