Author: Gianfranco Berardi

Categories
Marketing/Business

16 Rules Poster Available from GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons

Bob Parsons has a famous set of 16 Rules. Many CEOs and leaders have a few principles or rules to live by, but Bob Parsons has made his rules into a poster.

I generally like to print out various sayings or lists and hang them around my office, whether at my day job or at home. The 16 Rules poster comes in a few sizes, but I think that it has a nice design as well.

Depending on the day, I find one or another set of rules applicable to my own situations. One of my favorites, however, is:

14. Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”

In other words, quit your whining, and do.

Categories
Game Development General Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: November 27th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 227.75 / 1000
Game Ideas: 501 / 1000

Target: 924

I went out of town on Wednesday, and so I have only spent a few minutes here or there writing down some notes for the Space Invaders clone I will be working on. Well, that’s pretty much it.

Oh, and I signed up for the Supreme Commander Beta. B-)

I also found that when I am away from my computer for a few days, I can get almost 1,000 spam emails and hundreds of comment spam. Lovely.

Categories
General Marketing/Business

Happy Curmudgeon Day!

Many people call today Black Friday because it is the day that most companies make all of their revenues from Christmas shopping, putting them back in the black. Stores open with lines long enough to rival a next-gen console launch due to just 6 hours in which almost all products are incredibly discounted. I didn’t know about this holiday many years ago, and I accidentally walked into a store during the middle of the sale. I figured it was just busy due to the fact that it was the first day of Christmas shopping. I picked up a copy of the Starcraft battle chest because it was only $15. When I finally made it to the register, I found out that it was $7. Good deal!

Since then, however, I have avoided Black Friday. Not because I don’t like sales, but because I don’t like the hassle of standing in a line that is snaking around the store just to buy one or two small products at a discount. Express lanes don’t count on Black Friday. My time is worth more than some discount.

And for the past few years, I have participated in the ritual of Baking. My girlfriend’s family spends the week after Thanksgiving baking cookies, brownies, and other sweets. My favorite have been buckeyes, which are peanut-butter balls dipped in chocolate. Multiple ovens are being used at once, egg timers ring almost every few minutes, and the smell of baked goods permeates the air. While there are still lots of people around, it is definitely better to be baking than it is to be standing in line to spend money.

And, of course, someone has to have a game console or two. I have played games such as Halo 2, Super Mario Strikers, and others due to my girlfriend’s cousin being a big gamer.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Categories
Game Development Games General

Indie Game Developers Thankful for…

While Thanksgiving is an American holiday, I figure that this post might appeal to a few of you international readers as well. What are you thankful for as an independent game developer?

I can name a few things:

  • Quick and easy access to information on the world wide web covering a range of topics from game design to programming to marketing to personal development.
  • Inexpensive or freely available game development tools, such as compilers, game engines, 2D/3D art creation applications, and even operating systems.
  • Ease of distribution of digital data.
  • Personal contacts made through various forums, including the Indie Gamer forums and ASP newsgroups
  • Love…of roller coasters.
  • The people in #gamedevelopers on irc.starchat.net
  • Compound interest.
  • Qatfish.
  • The knowledge that I am capable of much more and that I haven’t done anything compared to what I have the potential to do.
  • My blog readers, who sometimes act as my conscience and keep me accountable to my goals.

Happy thanksgiving!

Categories
Geek / Technical General Politics/Government

How Well Do You Know GNU?

Recently the Free Software Foundation put forth a call for volunteers to help answer licensing questions about the GPL, LGPL, and Free Software licenses in general.

The Compliance Lab does do one job which is very public: we answer licensing questions from the free software community. When people want to learn how they can mix code under different terms, or what license would be best for their program, we try to help them so they can spend less time worrying about legal nitty-gritty and more time hacking. It’s not the most glamorous job, but it’s a unique way to help out.

If you are interested in volunteering, or even if you just want to see how well you understand the GPL, take the Free Software licensing quiz.

The questions can be tricky, especially if you are not at all familiar with the GPL or LGPL. Some things might surprise you. I answered four or five answers correctly, which shows that I have a few things to learn. Even if you don’t want to volunteer, the quiz is informative, so go ahead and see how well you do.

Categories
Marketing/Business Personal Development

A Bad Decision is Worth More Than No Decision

Some indie game developers will tell you about the importance of NOW, and I thought the following article might illustrate the idea even more.

Why You Should Stop Planning Now tells you that while planning is nice, you eventually have to DO something.

You can prepare, plan, and document everything you are going to do, but unless you actually do something, all you have is a book of plans.

All the planning in the world won’t build your great business.

Making quick decisions will. Even making bad decisions drives you to learn more about your situation — and adapt accordingly.

I remember reading an article by Steve Pavlina in which he describes his decision making process. He would start a timer for 60 seconds, and then he would make a decision within those 60 seconds. Making a decision should be quick so that you can get to the actual work. Otherwise, you can agonize over details that may not be relevant. After all, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

If you find that you have made a bad decision, you can always change it. Be adaptable. The important thing is that you are moving forward.

Now, I don’t think plans are useless. The process of planning is good since it gives you insight into what might be coming. Just don’t spend all of your time making plans!

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical

Automating Build and Test Systems

Years ago, I read Automating the Build Process at Gamasutra, which documented an automated build process for the game Creatures 3. The advantages for implementing an automated build process include better reliability, reduced time, and reduced risk.

A few weeks ago, a new article has appeared called
Automated Build and Test Systems for Games, which outlines what Nihilistic Software does when developing their own games. Once again, time savings are emphasized.

In both articles, it seemed that some customization was needed, but you should be able to find a way to automate the process for your own games. One tool I found is BuildBot, which mentions among its users id, which uses it for Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

The overall goal is to reduce tree breakage and provide a platform to run tests or code-quality checks that are too annoying or pedantic for any human to waste their time with. Developers get immediate (and potentially public) feedback about their changes, encouraging them to be more careful about testing before checkin.

Any time you can use a computer to automate a repetitive task, you’ll find consistency in quality and speed as well as fewer headaches related to the meta-work of making a game. While I believe that having it automatically build everytime a change is made would be overkill for a one-indie shop, having it delegated to a button-press would definitely help.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical General

Are Games Art Chat Log Available at Manifesto Games

Sometime back Gamasutra posted a news item regardinga discussion about games as art held at Manifesto Games.

Are games art? If not, why not? And if so, why? Is thinking of games as art useful or actually a hindrance for game developers? If games are art, what should our aspirations for the form be?

MIT’s Henry Jenkins, video game theory professor Jesper Juul, game designer Santiago Siri and gameLab’s Eric Zimmerman were invited to argue whether or not games could be considered art and who gets to define it as such. It was a playful discussion, with comments ranging from the humorous to the serious. While nothing definitive was decided, it did show that labeling video games as a form of art is difficult, but it is not because they are inherently not artistic, as Roger Ebert would claim.

The complete chat log can be found at Manifesto Games.

Categories
Games Politics/Government

German School Shooting Blamed on Video Games

ZDNet featured a news story titled Violent games blamed for German school attack. A man stormed his school, wounded 27 people, and then committed suicide. Due to this fascination with war simulation and video games, government officials are now calling for a ban on “killer games”. GamePolitics.com has also covered this news story.

Apparently it extends beyond video games. Banning paint ball and laser tag is also under consideration.

One official, however, seems to have a more rational opionion:

The opposition Greens warned against banning violent computer and war games.

Volker Beck, a leading Greens member of parliament, said it would be better to focus the debate on the proper use of computers and not jump to conclusions before it was clear what motivated [the killer].

Not jumping to conclusions? I wonder how many people will oppose this time around.

Categories
Game Development Games General Marketing/Business

Want to be an Indie Game Developer?

Yesterday at 4PM GMT, a number of people were asked to write on the topic of the independent game industry. If you read many game development blogs, you would have noticed that a number of them had the same title: “So you want to be an Indie Developer?”

Among the writers were Dan Marshall of Gibbage fame, Tom Arundel of Introversion Software, Juuso Hietalahti of GameProducer.net, and Cliff Harris of Positech Games. The complete list of links is below:

I believe everyone will agree that Lemmy and Blinky’s post was the funniest. Paul Timson, aka Sharpfish, has some sage advice for indie developers who might not realize what can happen if you don’t take advantage of “RIGHT NOW”. You can’t just wait for someone else to give you your dreams and accomplished goals.