Honey Brook’s Conner Haines is a young man who has not hesitated in tapping into his potential. The eleven-year-old has a love for computers and games, particularly the popular
programs known as ‘apps’ (short for applications) which are found on smartphones and tablet devices such as the iPhone and iPad. His tech savvy is such that he decided to undertake learning how to create apps of his own, and his heart is such that he has chosen to use his ability at creating apps to raise money to help kids with cancer.

Conner and his mother, Dawn Haines, have begun this process by laying the groundwork for the creation of Conner’s non-profit organization, BElieve, which encourages 5-12 year old cancer patients to send their ideas for apps to Conner for development. In turn, Conner will sell these apps through Apple and donate the money raised to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The only caveat, according to Conner’s Web site, www.flipflopgames.com, is “Please make sure the idea of the game is not too hard for me to develop. I’m only 11 years old, thanks.”

BElieve participants think of a game idea and then draw up their design on a template which Conner had designed. The process of creating the game would take approximately two to three months, Conner said, but once a game is complete it will appear on iTunes and a promotional Web site which Conner will build. He added that kids can choose whether they want to charge for the app or give it away for free. If they choose do charge for the game, all of the profits will go to Make-A-Wish.

The idea for BElieve came from the Haines family’s own encounter with cancer, as 14-year-old Lauren Haines battled against Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia – a form of cancer which forms in blood – when she was just two-and-a-half years old.

“It is a cancer of the blood which is common to children,” explained Dawn, “about 80 – 85 percent of those who get it are completely cured – today that number may be 90 percent due to advances in technology and medicine.”

Conner and his mother plan on getting BElieve started at two locations – the Hershey Medical Center, where Lauren was treated for her cancer, and the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, where Lauren’s cancer was diagnosed.

“I would like to go and visit the kids in CHOP and Hershey and talk to them about (BElieve),” Conner told Berks-Mont News.

Conner said that he always wanted to make games, and had first planned to learn the process through a $900 video game development camp for kids. When he had attempted to enroll in the camp, however, he discovered that the registration date had already passed. Undeterred, he learned the name of the program the camp was using to build the games – a program called GameSalad – and then learned how to make games with GameSalad on his own time by trial and error and with support from members of the GameSalad online community.

“Once I understood the basics I was able to make my own mini-games,” said Conner, “and I even made an e-book for my one of my sisters.”

Before he began designing games, Conner said that he played around with a lot of apps, such as the popular Angry Birds series. Now he has four of his own applications published through Apple’s online store, iTunes. He started making apps in mid-October, and had completed his first app in two weeks.

“Now I could build the same thing in just a couple hours,” he said.

Having his apps added to iTunes required that he first pay $100 for a developer’s license. He has named his design studio Flip Flop Games, a moniker which comes from Conner’s fondness for flip flops and dislike for shoes.

“He hates shoes!” his sister confirmed vehemently.

“I also picked the name because my games will be different from any other games out there,” added Conner.

His most popular application is ‘That Chipmunk Bob’, which has surpassed 1,400 downloads. Conner describes ‘That Chipmunk Bob’ is an app in which an invisible chipmunk (invisible expect for his eyes, which are constantly shifting around on the screen) offers a series of comical monologues in different episodes. Released on November 23, ‘That Chipmunk Bob’ features the voices of Conner and (in certain episodes) his sister, with a chipmunk special-effect added to them.

“I decided to start by making a simple app. I planned it in my room. I thought it would be fun to do a chipmunk with different episodes,” he said.

He currently has three versions of ‘That Chipmunk Bob’ available – a free version with two episodes, a version with ten episodes that costs 99 cents, and a free Christmas version with five episodes. His fourth app is clock app called ‘Kids Time Clock’.

Conner has two other apps in development: ‘Rain Drops Forever’ is a game where players have to pop the raindrops before time runs out; and ‘Take Me Back’ is a complex game where a player must go through the adventure of taking a character back home after he was lost in space.

“He got blasted into space,” Conner said of his ‘Take Me Back’ protagonist, “the game should be finished in 2013.”

Part of the app development process is getting feedback from those who have download your games, and Conner has had people from all over the world both download and review his apps. While the large majority of his reviews have been positive, there has been an occasional critic, but Conner’s mother thinks that the criticism helps teach her son an important lesson.

“It is good for his perseverance, because it shows him that he has to maintain what he has done,” she said.

Conner definitely takes Flip Flop Games very seriously. He uses Apple services to study the sales trends of his apps, and he often “clears his schedule” so that he can listen to Apple’s keynote addresses online. Going forward he said that he will eventually come to learn more advanced programming methods, such as writing the code which creates the programs. Yet for now, all he wants to do is focus on getting BElieve up and running so that he can help others.

Source – Berks-Mont News