Categories
Marketing/Business

Change Your Mindset

Thomas Warfield reposted a 2004 article called Why Pyrogon Failed. You can read the original postmortem by Brian Hook as well.

Warfield boiled it down to failures in marketing and long-term planning. It is interesting that the About Us page makes it sound like the company is supposed to be independent, but the postmortem makes it sound like it was really supposed be a way to procure funding for a more mainstream company. In any case, it sounded like the mindset of the main people didn’t make the needed change to go from mainstream game developers to independent game developers and publishers.

When you work for a company, you have one job, and you do that job. You don’t need to worry about accounting, marketing, sales, distribution, or legal. You do your job, you get paid, and you do it again. “Safety” and “security” are the most important things to you.

When you run a company, you now have to worry about such details. Cashflow, marketing, and sales are not just meta-work. They ARE the work of the business. Product development is still important, but it is only a portion of what is needed.

Being an employee requires a certain mindset, but running a business requires another. You can hire help, but you can’t outsource marketing and sales and still expect to become successful.

If you want someone else to control your company’s destiny, you might as well be an employee. If you’re running your own business, you should want to control as much of its motion as you can. That isn’t to say that you should personally do everything, of course. It just means that you shouldn’t make business decisions that gives responsibility for your success to someone else.

Some time ago, $100 for membership in the IGDA seemed costly. I opted for the student membership at the time since it was so much cheaper. The Association of Shareware Professionals is another organization I have since joined, and at $100, it also seemed intimidating. On top of it all, there were magazine subscriptions and books to buy. I didn’t want to spend so much money that I could put towards a good couple of books!

Then I realized that I needed to change my mindset. Until then, I was looking at $100 and thinking, “That’s a lot of money.” I don’t spend $100 all at once very often. I had vague thoughts about how it could be a bad investment or that I might be throwing away $100. I realized, however, that I wanted to take my business seriously. I shouldn’t be so concerned about $100 because I should intend to make more than that easily. Heck, I made over $100 easily within a week during my regular job, so I would only be out a few hours of my time. The potential benefits sounded amazing, though. I could meet with other people doing the same thing I am doing, learn from them, and actually help dictate how the industry moves. $100 for all of that? It then sounded like a great deal.

If you aren’t satisfied with how your indie game business, or any business for that matter, is working out, you might want to double-check the mindset you’re in. Does it match your expectations? Do you have clear expectations to begin with?

Categories
Game Development Personal Development

The Thousander Club

Scott Hsu-Storaker of Low Ply Cooperative has created a challenge for indie game artists and developers by creating the Thousander Club. The inspiration for it came from the idea that to become an expert, you need to practice. A lot.

The challenge: work for 1000 hours on your project this year. It comes out to 20 hours a week, which is almost three hours a day if you include weekends or four hours a day if you don’t.

Right now, the Thousander Club is a club of one — just me. But, I would love to have some company. C’mon, join up with me, there’s a certain comfort in doing things together. Pledge to devote yourself to working on your own project for 1000 hours this year. Keep track, I will. Give progress reports, I will . In a year, we can all look back and count ourselves as experienced experts. Think of the Christmas present you will be giving yourself in 2006 — confident assurance that your skills can take you where you want to go.

There are some specific challenges for the Low Poly community, but I think it sounds like a great “club” to join this year. Can you always dedicate 3-4 hours a day? I know that I was thinking, “Yeah, I could probably do it, but at what cost?” Then I thought vague thoughts about how difficult it would be, and almost put it out of my mind. Then I remembered the law of inertia. So I asked a specific question to help dispel any fears I had: if I didn’t join this club and try to dedicate myself to 1000 hours, what would I be doing instead? Would I be working on game development as haphazardly as I did the previous year? That idea didn’t sound too good. I wanted to improve.

I was thinking that I might try something smaller. What about 500 hours? That seemed a bit more doable. That’s about two hours a day. How about 100 hours? 100 hours still helps, according to my post. At this point, I realized I was wavering again. Tony Robbins talked about taking massive action. The idea is that if you want to improve yourself from being mediocre to being great, massive action helps you get there much more quickly than small steps. I know that I have been getting impatient with how slow I’ve been gaining game development experience. Doing it purposely slow, even if I was more focused than I was last year, didn’t seem nearly as attractive.

Now, obviously I will not be creating art for the Low Poly Cooperative since I am not trying to be an artist. I am dedicating 1000 hours to game development this year. It’s aggressive, and even if I fail, I know that the push this year will result in a huge improvement for myself. Can I still join your club, Scott? B-)

Categories
Game Development

January Chicago Indie Game Developer Meeting

I posted the date of the next Chicago Indie Game Developer Meeting on the Indiegamer forums:

Where: The Starbucks at
Streets of Woodfield
601 North Martingale Road
Schaumburg IL, 60173

When: Tuesday, January 17th, at 7PM.

This post is just to provide a little over a week’s notice to those who can make it to the meeting. We’ll alternate between Chicago and the western suburbs each month, so February’s meeting will be in Chicago.

I was also experimenting with an About Us item:

The Chicago Indie Game Developer Club is an informal group of indie game developers who meet every month to talk shop with likeminded people. It’s generally good to keep in touch with your industry; no one wants to become obsolete. This club is just one way to make and keep contacts, learn about developments in the industry, and provide personal feedback to other developers.

It’s one way to help improve the CIGDC. I think a dedicated domain and website would be another. These are some of the things I would like to discuss at the meeting.

Categories
General

Packing for Move

I’ve been doing some packing for the move to the new apartment. Among the things I’ll be bringing:

  • Atari 2600 + games
  • NES + games
  • SNES + games
  • N64 + games
  • Gamecube + games
  • Gameboy + games
  • Computers + games

Oh, and some clothes and books. And a toothbrush. I think I’m ready.

I haven’t determined what ISPs are available yet, so I will be offline for some time. Heck, I don’t know if I’ll even have a desk for my computer usage! If your comment has been approved in the past, it will automatically be approved. Otherwise, your comment will have to wait until I get a chance to approve it. Hey, you should have posted sooner.

Also, I should really get a PS2. Nintendo is great and all, but I’ve been missing out on some great gaming. Dreamcasts are still cheap, right?

Categories
Games Geek / Technical

Gaming Over Christmas Vacation

Christmas Eve is a big deal in my family, and so after dinner, my girlfriend and I traveled from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio to spend the week with her family, where Christmas Day was more important. We drove through a huge bank of fog, otherwise known as Indiana. Loads of fun, that fog. Luckily, I played a number of games during that week.

Her cousin is a huge gamer, and so we played Super Mario Strikers among other Gamecube games. Playing with four people was definitely a lot of fun, and kicking explosives at soccer players made it feel like European soccer. B-)

I also brought my Gameboy from the 80s. Yes, the big, clunky one that was pocket-sized fun that didn’t actually fit in your pocket yet. It had Tetris, which helped pass the time when my girlfriend was driving. I still haven’t gotten the huge rocket, but then I didn’t play it as much as my sister or mother. I had other games to occupy my time…games that I still haven’t completed. B-(

I played more games of Sorry! in two days than I think I have ever played in my life. My girlfriend’s nephew really liked playing the game. I also played Lunch Money, which is a fun card game about school yard bullying. I haven’t participated in a LAN party in some time, but I managed to keep up with my trash talking abilities.

My girlfriend’s nephew and I also played on the computer a bit. He wanted to go to Nick.com to play Nickelodeon-related games. The games weren’t all that compelling, but for a six-year-old, they would be perfectly fine; however, what the heck was up with all of the ads? Everytime we clicked on a new game, we had to sit through the same Lucky Charms ad. Over and over. I get it! He gets the cereal! Can we assume that I’ve seen this ad?!? I would even have accepted a different ad, but no ads would have been preferred.

After I got fed up with the ads, I took him over to check out Puppy Invaders over at PuppyGames.net. It’s a cool Space Invaders clone, and it is playable on the homepage. He really liked this game, and it was fun since I controlled movement while he shot at the enemies. He also really liked the smart bombs, even though they didn’t do anything more than end the current level. We had good, old-fashioned quality fun. No stupidly repetitive ads here.

But there was still a lot of Sorry!.

Categories
Games General

Happy Winter-een-mas!

I was catching up on my webcomics since I’ve been away, and I read that we’re already in the middle of the Winter-een-mas season! Just like Christmas, it has snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking.

From the FAQ:

What is Winter-een-mas?

Winter-een-mas is a holiday of sorts. More specifically, it is a celebration of video games and the people that play them. Video games allow us to do things, go places, see stuff, that we couldn’t do in real life. They can be an escape from reality, a release after a long day, a fun activity with friends, or just an enjoyable way to pass time. They give us a lot of entertainment. So why shouldn’t they be celebrated?

WEMas takes place during the last week of January. I think a LAN party is in order…

Categories
Personal Development

Do Quick Tasks Now

Over at GameProducer.net, 1-Minute Solution to Getting Things Done gives the advice that if you have something to do that can be completed within a minute, then do it. David Allen would use two minutes as the time limit.

The point, of course, is that there is no reason why such a small task should remain uncompleted for too long. Maybe you need to put it off to handle something more important, but you must have some moments during your day when you could take care of a small task.

It won’t take me more than a couple of minutes to pay off a parking ticket, but I’ve been putting it off. Two days have come and gone, and I still have an unpaid parking ticket in my bag. I could pay it online easily, but I decided not to do so. Maybe the idea of taking out my wallet and getting my credit card number is too painful, especially right after Christmas? I don’t know.

What I do know is that it is easy to find other things to do instead, but at the end of two days, I had plenty of time to handle this task. So what did I do with that time? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. Essentially, I’ve lost that time. Otherwise, I would be able to say, “See? At this time I was busy doing something more important.”

I’ll handle that parking ticket now. Or maybe when I get home…

It is definitely too easy to put things off. Quick tasks can be done now. Who knows? It might even give you momentum. B-)

Categories
Personal Development

The First Law of Motion

Newton’s first law of motion is also called the Law of Intertia:

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

Everyone’s heard it before as it applies to physics, but it applies to your personal life as well.

I recently created a small list of things that I fear. Under each topic, I listed the things about it that might make me afraid of it. It was a great exercise that helped me identify my fears as well as why they scare me. I’ve found that most of the time, fear is the result of not knowing. Getting a new job. Moving out of my parents’ home into an apartment. Starting a business. They’re all scary because they all involve unknowns.

Getting a new job is scary because I don’t know what it will be like or what it will entail. What if I find I can’t do what is expected of me? What if I end up working a lot of overtime? Staying in my current job is easier. Moving out is scary because I don’t know how much money I’ll need for certain expenses. I’ll need to actually start doing my own laundry and cooking my own meals and shopping for my own groceries and paying my own utilities. All of these take up money and time I didn’t need to worry about before. Staying at home is easier. Starting a business is scary because I could be entering into a world of legal trouble. I don’t know what legal obligations I have. Maybe there is an obscure tax I missed? I could get into a lot of trouble. Not going to into business is just easier.

So fear really is the “little death that brings total obliteration”. Fear makes it more appealing to stick with the familiar. After all, you are already there, so why change? Change seems difficult. Deal with the devil you know rather than the one you don’t.

Of course, if I let fear get the better of me, I’d never do anything. I’d stay at home, stay in a boring and unfullfilling job, and never start my business. I’d be stuck in a rut. Once I started to analyze what it is that makes these things scary, I found that it was just due to my lack of questions. That is, I had vague reasons for why something was causing me fear, and those reasons would have been vanquished easily had I asked the correct question.

For example, while I might not know what a new job would entail, I also have to remember that I didn’t know exactly what my current job would entail before I applied for it. Besides, if the new job turns out to be wrong for me, I can always just stop. I can put in my two weeks’ notice, and find a new job. Until I consciously thought about it, I had some vague idea that a new job would be overwhelming. Focusing on those vague thoughts helped me to clarify them, and I found that it was mostly just fear of something different that I didn’t know well at all.

What does it all have to do with the first law of motion? One of the things I noticed was that it is very easy to stick with what you know. Fear makes the choice easier for you. I can stay in my current job or at least until the company fires me. To change jobs, it would involve updating my resume, sending it in to companies, going in for interviews, sending cover letters and thank you letters, and it all seems like a lot of work. Until I do something different, my intertia keeps me where I am. I continue on the path that I’m on.

The other part of the law of intertia? Once I submitted my resume and made a call, I found that I was being called in for an interview. Now what? Well, it’s a lot easier to keep going once I’m going. It isn’t a huge ordeal to get my suit cleaned and go in for the interview. If there is a second interview, I can easily go to that one too. My path would be on the way to a new job, and once I start, it is a lot easier to keep going.

Finding an apartment was a vague idea a month ago. Then one day I went in to an apartment hunting service, and shortly after looking at a couple of places I had put down the deposit. Within the week, the first month’s rent was due. At the end of this week, I’ll be moving in. I wasn’t getting an apartment, and then all of a sudden I had one.

I’ll be forming GBGames into an LLC this month. I’ve been talking about it for a few months, and I was vaguely thinking about starting a business for a couple of years. If the law of intertia holds, I’m sure that I’ll be surprised by the quickness of progress I’ll be making…which by definition means that it shouldn’t be surprising, so I’m not sure how that makes sense.

Anyway, the point is that there are two important aspects of the law of intertia. One, you should check to see if you are doing anything just because it is what you have always been doing. “It’s what we’ve always done” isn’t a good enough excuse. You should know that what you are doing is exactly what you want to be doing. Two, you should make sure to start doing what you aren’t doing yet. If you think you should be moving along a certain path and aren’t, then start moving down that path. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll make progress. Once you make some progress, it will be easier to make more progress. One foot in front of the other eventually completes the 1,000 mile journey.

Categories
General

Cleanup, Recovery, and Preparation

I had Monday off because I work for a company involved in the financial markets, which were closed. I slept in way too late.

I spent the rest of the day recovering from vacation. Being out of town for a week resulted in a lot of email, snail mail, and other paperwork to pile up. I spent a couple of hours just going through my inbox and shredding junk or sensitive information. I have a few magazines to read now as well as some calls to make.

Sometime between New Year’s Eve and Monday, the power went out in my basement, resulting in a computer that wouldn’t boot properly. I had to do the equivalent of scandisk on it about five times before it would finally boot cleanly. I also upgraded a number of packages I had installed. My machine is ready for the new year. Hopefully.

I also cleaned my room a bit. I had books and papers on nightstands and chairs. I finally read something I had printed out in October!

At the end of the week, I’ll be moving out into a new apartment. I’ll probably end up recovering and preparing again at that time, only I won’t have the benefits of Internet access yet. I’ve been without net access before, and it is amazing how painfully boring your computer can be on its own.

It’s going to be an interesting year.

Categories
Personal Development

Resolutions for 2006

Happy New Year!

I’ve never taken New Year’s resolutions seriously before, but since I’ve been making more conscious decisions this past year, I think it might be appropriate to do so this time.

What I would like to see accomplished in 2006:

  • The improvement of the Chicago Indie Game Developers Club (details to follow)
  • The formation of GBGames, LLC by the end of the second week of January
  • The completion of Oracle’s Eye by the end of March
  • The creation of an actual web storefront for GBGames.

What I would like to improve about myself:

  • I would like to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand. I find that I am too easily distracted and will waste time that I can’t afford to lose. When you work in your spare time, you have to be able to guard it.
  • I would like to be able to play more video games. I have talked about the importance of playing more games in order to improve my game making abilities, but last year didn’t see much of an improvement. I intend to schedule regular “game research” times during the week/month. I’ll also track the games I’ve played since it is much harder to measure change without knowing what I needed to improve.
  • I want to read more. I almost made my books reading goal last year, but this year I am focused on reading one book per week from the start.
  • I would like to live a bit more consciously. This past year I realized that while I am taking more control of my own life away from blind circumstance and random influences, I still perform actions that were on a whim rather than purposeful.
  • I intend to take a more active role in the Association of Shareware Professionals. The more I put in, the more helpful it becomes as a resource, and the more contacts I can make.

I’ll think of these resolutions as my personal goals. I’ll also create a plan to accompany them. Of course, the great thing about plans is that they can change. If this plan turns out to be too ambitious, I can update it. I think I will check over this plan again at the end of March to see how I’m doing.

What are you resolving to do this coming year?