Here lies the Skill City blog. It's creator attempted to start a game company and nearly grasped it, but things were set against him and his dream now lies mashed to bits on the jagged rocks.
Good thing about dreams though... you only need to fall asleep to get a new one.
Sorry I just can't do this anymore.
I have tried to make time for it but I'm so over the video game thing I think I'm just gonna focus on something else for a while and let this blog die. My mind wanders to new and more attractive shores.
I'm sure I'll be back eventually. Until then, so long, and thanks for all the fish. Keep those indie games coming, you gotta start somewhere.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Friday, December 7, 2007
She'll blow apart!
Ok I really would like to post more than once a week here but I honestly don't think I will be able to.
My new day job is with a company that is in a sorry state, and as the new golden child of the IT department (that means I have the Scotty Syndrome) I find it hard to write in my blog after working 12 hours a day on Linux administration and other arcane hardware stuff.
Wait wait... you don't know what Scotty Syndrome is? Ever watched Star Trek? The old ones with the campy pained ladies and the stupid styrofoam bad guys... yeah that one. Scotty would never tell the captain or crew what was really going on, instead he would just say "It will take more time than we have." or "I don't have the power." but in the end he would do it anyway. Eventually he told LaForge "How do you expect people to think you are a miracle worker if you tell them how long it will really take?"
I haven't had to lie about timelines to anybody yet, at this job or at any other game development task in the past. I just get things done that fast... and with the glut of slow untalented morons on the market it is easy to appear to be amazing.
Perhaps my musing on that subject has indeed turned in to some more sound advice for game developers, and many other people in many industries too.
You see, people are in a rush. The game biz is very much similar to movies and film of all kinds. Once you get that big idea, you have to sprint to the market because the odds are good that somebody else has the same idea and they are working on the same product.
Didn't you ever wonder why the movies Comet, Meteor, and Armageddon all came out the same month? Most of it is called "me too!" by those of us who took marketing 101 back in college and learned that term. They try to ride off the hype and buzz created by one, but they are also often similar ideas that blooming in different minds at the same time.
Maybe the universe shoots ideas out in a linear fashion and while your head may get in the way and thus receive this celestial knowledge, like a gamma ray the idea beam continues onward and strikes some other guy's head too. This explains why people with good ideas often go insane, or are awkward at parties.
The game business is young, it has that youthful energy and hyperactive exuberance that screams to get everything done now in a rage worthy of Veruca Salt. I'm often amazed at how long it can take somebody to cement a deal when all around people are trading signatures on contracts using a chair as their table. This really actually happened to me TWICE at Casual Connect.
I eavesdropped too, hey it was my booth space they were encroaching on I had a right. The game design was awful. It made the guy a few grand. Kudos to him!
Why?
Probably because he had a reputation already as being a guy who says "It will be done in 3 months" and then delivers in 2. I bet he also delivers stuff that is solid and works.
This is a statement on how to succeed. The market loves a superstar, but most often is easy to impress just by being slightly better than mediocre because of the huge amount of talentless hacks that everybody considers "normal". Check out coding horror someday and read their article on how many people fail a fizz-buzz test that call themselves programmers. You have met people like this. You might even be a person like that...
So regardless of the fact that it takes me 30 seconds to setup the CEOs Treo 650 and it took their old admin 3 days, I am still very busy pulling my new company out of it's suicidal nose dive perpetrated by about 5 years of terrible administrators.
I'll write more on game design as I can, and share some of the ones burning a hole in my notebook.
By the way, I would like to get you involved more in this blog. Yeah, you, the 18 to 35 year old male with a PC or Mac computer and more than just a passing interest in video games.
Where do you do your best design work? What environment do you find you get the most ideas in?
For me it's airports and planes. Seriously. I look back at my little red notebook with my ideas and designs poorly scrawled all over the pages and I can recall the smell of the recycled air as I wrote those words on a flight to somewhere.
Why is that?
For me I think its because that space is dead, there is no distraction or sound or motion, I can just sit there in a void of activity and let my mind wander around and create in itself a game that would be fun to play. Then the creation of the idea itself becomes a game a I try to balance rules, systems, interaction, and then encase it all in a story so that you aren't just scalded in the eyes with raw math when you load my game.
There-in lies a new game: Eye Scalder! Throw boiling hot Math at your players in a game so horrific it feels more like a time share seminar than entertainment!
Now you answer. Where is your idea place? Why?
My new day job is with a company that is in a sorry state, and as the new golden child of the IT department (that means I have the Scotty Syndrome) I find it hard to write in my blog after working 12 hours a day on Linux administration and other arcane hardware stuff.
Wait wait... you don't know what Scotty Syndrome is? Ever watched Star Trek? The old ones with the campy pained ladies and the stupid styrofoam bad guys... yeah that one. Scotty would never tell the captain or crew what was really going on, instead he would just say "It will take more time than we have." or "I don't have the power." but in the end he would do it anyway. Eventually he told LaForge "How do you expect people to think you are a miracle worker if you tell them how long it will really take?"
I haven't had to lie about timelines to anybody yet, at this job or at any other game development task in the past. I just get things done that fast... and with the glut of slow untalented morons on the market it is easy to appear to be amazing.
Perhaps my musing on that subject has indeed turned in to some more sound advice for game developers, and many other people in many industries too.
You see, people are in a rush. The game biz is very much similar to movies and film of all kinds. Once you get that big idea, you have to sprint to the market because the odds are good that somebody else has the same idea and they are working on the same product.
Didn't you ever wonder why the movies Comet, Meteor, and Armageddon all came out the same month? Most of it is called "me too!" by those of us who took marketing 101 back in college and learned that term. They try to ride off the hype and buzz created by one, but they are also often similar ideas that blooming in different minds at the same time.
Maybe the universe shoots ideas out in a linear fashion and while your head may get in the way and thus receive this celestial knowledge, like a gamma ray the idea beam continues onward and strikes some other guy's head too. This explains why people with good ideas often go insane, or are awkward at parties.
The game business is young, it has that youthful energy and hyperactive exuberance that screams to get everything done now in a rage worthy of Veruca Salt. I'm often amazed at how long it can take somebody to cement a deal when all around people are trading signatures on contracts using a chair as their table. This really actually happened to me TWICE at Casual Connect.
I eavesdropped too, hey it was my booth space they were encroaching on I had a right. The game design was awful. It made the guy a few grand. Kudos to him!
Why?
Probably because he had a reputation already as being a guy who says "It will be done in 3 months" and then delivers in 2. I bet he also delivers stuff that is solid and works.
This is a statement on how to succeed. The market loves a superstar, but most often is easy to impress just by being slightly better than mediocre because of the huge amount of talentless hacks that everybody considers "normal". Check out coding horror someday and read their article on how many people fail a fizz-buzz test that call themselves programmers. You have met people like this. You might even be a person like that...
So regardless of the fact that it takes me 30 seconds to setup the CEOs Treo 650 and it took their old admin 3 days, I am still very busy pulling my new company out of it's suicidal nose dive perpetrated by about 5 years of terrible administrators.
I'll write more on game design as I can, and share some of the ones burning a hole in my notebook.
By the way, I would like to get you involved more in this blog. Yeah, you, the 18 to 35 year old male with a PC or Mac computer and more than just a passing interest in video games.
Where do you do your best design work? What environment do you find you get the most ideas in?
For me it's airports and planes. Seriously. I look back at my little red notebook with my ideas and designs poorly scrawled all over the pages and I can recall the smell of the recycled air as I wrote those words on a flight to somewhere.
Why is that?
For me I think its because that space is dead, there is no distraction or sound or motion, I can just sit there in a void of activity and let my mind wander around and create in itself a game that would be fun to play. Then the creation of the idea itself becomes a game a I try to balance rules, systems, interaction, and then encase it all in a story so that you aren't just scalded in the eyes with raw math when you load my game.
There-in lies a new game: Eye Scalder! Throw boiling hot Math at your players in a game so horrific it feels more like a time share seminar than entertainment!
Now you answer. Where is your idea place? Why?
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
What should I do?
Well... as I work a day as a linux admin I keep having all sorts of fun ideas for something that would make a great game.
Then there is of course all the games that I designed that will never see the light of day.
I was wondering, what should I do with this blog?
1. Leave it here to get bit-rot, the knowledge it contains is worth something but without constant updates it is worthless.
2. Post your game designs so that all 5 to 10 of us can read them and either steal them for our own or by our collective might finesse them in to something truly amazing that nobody will ever program unless they steal the idea off this public forum.
3. Go back to flexing my imagination at http://www.sect.net/ instead. "Nathan, your insight and clever wit were fun for a while but you just don't have the stuff to be in the game biz."
4. Stop talking to myself, nobody reads this anyway.
Then there is of course all the games that I designed that will never see the light of day.
I was wondering, what should I do with this blog?
1. Leave it here to get bit-rot, the knowledge it contains is worth something but without constant updates it is worthless.
2. Post your game designs so that all 5 to 10 of us can read them and either steal them for our own or by our collective might finesse them in to something truly amazing that nobody will ever program unless they steal the idea off this public forum.
3. Go back to flexing my imagination at http://www.sect.net/ instead. "Nathan, your insight and clever wit were fun for a while but you just don't have the stuff to be in the game biz."
4. Stop talking to myself, nobody reads this anyway.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Thoughts on keeping things the same.
I left my position at Skill City feeling a bit downtrodden that I was departing what was basically, at it's root, my dream job.
I had left a position of comfort and power (and paycheck) to start Skill City, or at least to chase some unformed dream that during my resignation I hadn't yet named.
It is nice to know that the responsibilities I held at Skill City were not totally wasted. I earned quite an education working there.
I walked away from it with the sense that I needed to go find work right away to pay my bills, and to pay the bills of the now dead Skill City Inc. because it was about 900 bucks overdrawn. I said was, because I paid that now.
I also walked away from that endeavor having gained a sense of command of my own destiny. I wasn't just being buffeted by the winds of chance any more, my own personal success or failure was totally up to me. Even the people I rely on because I lack skills they have, I am still responsible for hiring them or keeping them on.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and hopefully I can shore up the limb with some boards... maybe some bits of string and tin foil.
I think failing at a startup business taught me more than being successful. I got to learn all about the negative side of the business world. Some people say "Well my boss is jerk, I know all about the negative side" but they are stupid because they aren't running a company, they don't know the real despair you can feel.
I entered a new job, but I still had that empowerment that I found by working at my own business and falling flat on my face. At times I think I felt a little like a drug addict who has hit Rock Bottom and realizes they have nowhere else to go but up, or dead. I met death once, and he was wearing expensive shoes.
I climbed up and got myself that new job but I see it through a different lens, and I know that it is just a waystation on my climb upward to try chasing a dream again. I will chase it with much greater care this time, and attention to all the spiky bits that tear at skin along the way.
To that end I saw my new job in a state that was similar to me, I sensed that decay that was setting in here like it was at Skill City, only this was a slower doom here at my new job. I went to the CEO and shared with him my thoughts and perspective and was amazed at the response I got. He agreed, 100%, and now I'm the manager of the IT department here.
I honestly think that without the wisdom gained from Skill City imploding, I wouldn't have had that meeting, and I certainly wouldn't be the department manager after only having worked here for 3 weeks. Some perspective for you, my co-admins have been here for years, one of them for over 5 years.
So I have carved out a little niche of happy again, and when I am not gloomy I tend to think of ways to entertain people with games. Ideas for systems of rules and colored things start to fill up my brain. I even had another dream last night about a puzzle game.
Ok because it was a dream I was actually IN the puzzle game... and that was kinda freaky and unpleasant but I still woke up feeling quite good about it.
I wonder if I should just start posting game design docs here and do something like give away all my game designs to the public. Just to see if anybody makes them.
/me goes to find the GPL rules on releasing IP to the public...
I had left a position of comfort and power (and paycheck) to start Skill City, or at least to chase some unformed dream that during my resignation I hadn't yet named.
It is nice to know that the responsibilities I held at Skill City were not totally wasted. I earned quite an education working there.
I walked away from it with the sense that I needed to go find work right away to pay my bills, and to pay the bills of the now dead Skill City Inc. because it was about 900 bucks overdrawn. I said was, because I paid that now.
I also walked away from that endeavor having gained a sense of command of my own destiny. I wasn't just being buffeted by the winds of chance any more, my own personal success or failure was totally up to me. Even the people I rely on because I lack skills they have, I am still responsible for hiring them or keeping them on.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and hopefully I can shore up the limb with some boards... maybe some bits of string and tin foil.
I think failing at a startup business taught me more than being successful. I got to learn all about the negative side of the business world. Some people say "Well my boss is jerk, I know all about the negative side" but they are stupid because they aren't running a company, they don't know the real despair you can feel.
I entered a new job, but I still had that empowerment that I found by working at my own business and falling flat on my face. At times I think I felt a little like a drug addict who has hit Rock Bottom and realizes they have nowhere else to go but up, or dead. I met death once, and he was wearing expensive shoes.
I climbed up and got myself that new job but I see it through a different lens, and I know that it is just a waystation on my climb upward to try chasing a dream again. I will chase it with much greater care this time, and attention to all the spiky bits that tear at skin along the way.
To that end I saw my new job in a state that was similar to me, I sensed that decay that was setting in here like it was at Skill City, only this was a slower doom here at my new job. I went to the CEO and shared with him my thoughts and perspective and was amazed at the response I got. He agreed, 100%, and now I'm the manager of the IT department here.
I honestly think that without the wisdom gained from Skill City imploding, I wouldn't have had that meeting, and I certainly wouldn't be the department manager after only having worked here for 3 weeks. Some perspective for you, my co-admins have been here for years, one of them for over 5 years.
So I have carved out a little niche of happy again, and when I am not gloomy I tend to think of ways to entertain people with games. Ideas for systems of rules and colored things start to fill up my brain. I even had another dream last night about a puzzle game.
Ok because it was a dream I was actually IN the puzzle game... and that was kinda freaky and unpleasant but I still woke up feeling quite good about it.
I wonder if I should just start posting game design docs here and do something like give away all my game designs to the public. Just to see if anybody makes them.
/me goes to find the GPL rules on releasing IP to the public...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Need a job?
My friends over at Gameshastra appear to be hiring. I thought I would do my part and spread the word out anybody interested. It's a really good chance to get in to the game biz with a company that won't treat you like dirt.
You would end up working with some of the coolest and smartest game developers I have had the pleasure of knowing.
Company: Gameshastra
Job Title: (1) Technical Lead - Console Games and (2) Technical Lead - PC and Casual Games
Description: To apply: Please email your cover letter, resume and comp requirements to devjobs@gameshastra.com
=======================
Job listing (1)
Department: Game Development
Position: Technical Lead – Console Development
=======================
Gameshastra is currently looking for one additional Technical Lead with a focus on Console Development for our US and India game development operations. In addition to being a brilliant senior coder on AAA titles, the ideal candidate will have several years experience as a Senior Developer for “current-gen and next-gen console hardware” in a midsized or major development studio, ideally with a recent specialization in Xbox 360 and/or Nintendo Wii development.
Showing expertise in a broad range of development areas – such as understanding console specific hardware issues, memory optimization, managing PC-to-console downsizing and porting issues, expertly wringing the most out of console rendering and graphics pipelines, physics expertise, AI knowledge and most importantly – having the ability to communicate efficiently with your team members – all will be key to your success in this position.
Job Responsibilities:
• Manage all key technical decisions in one or more 10-20 person development teams, each working on different aspects of various titles for different publishers.
• Have the ability to communicate clear standards and provide direct coaching and mentoring to individual developers as well as to large engineering teams.
• Solve the peskiest problems when they show up in the game development pipeline – no matter what they may be.
Qualifications:
• Expert C/C++ developer and problem solver (7 or more years of professional C++ experience preferred)
• Uncanny ability to find problem in other people’s code – and the grace to communicate these discoveries efficiently, and to turn every one of these instances into a learning opportunity.
• Ability to lead, manage and direct technical development teams full of strong minded and creative development personalities.
• Very deep console hardware system programming experience.
• Game physics expertise
• Rendering and 3D API mastery (D3D and OGL) across all kinds of hardware.
• Infinite patience with everyone in the team.
=======================
Job listing (2)
Department: Game Development
Position: Senior Developer or Technical Lead – PC, Mac, Casual and Mid-Core games
=======================
Job Responsibilities:
• Manage all key technical decisions for each "mid-core" or episodic title that we bring to market – including engine decisions, development and OO architecture approaches, and the ability to these decisions through to the final delivery.
• Have the ability to communicate clear standards and provide direct coaching and mentoring to individual developers as well as to large engineering teams.
• Solve the peskiest problems when they show up in the game development pipeline – no matter what they may be.
Qualifications:
• Expert C/C++ developer and problem solver with 5 years of C/C++ experience.
• Extensive experience with at least one major game engine (UE, GameBryo, Tringy etc.)
• Exposure to Casual C++ game development frameworks (PopCap, HGE, PlayGround etc.)
• Some exposure to online casual games (AS2, AS3, Lingo etc.) is also a plus
• Knowledge of various server side technologies (.NET/PHP/Ruby) can be helpful
• Game physics, AI and Networking/Sockets experince strongly desired
• A clear understanding of graphics rendering pipelines and 3D APIs (D3D and OGL)
• Ability to lead, manage and direct technical development teams full of strong minded and creative development personalities.
• Infinite patience and a good attitude.
If you are interested then you can email me for the contact info. This way I can screen out the evil time wasting headhunters who will see this listing and then call people claiming to be a rep of the company just so they can extort a finders fee once you get hired.
I fucking hate recruiters. I have never in my life gotten a job through one, or hired any of the dross they bring me when I am hiring. I don't know why they even exist any more, with the prevalence of do it yourself job hunting tools on the internet nobody needs these people to get in the middle and charge fees for no real value added.
Recruiters are the spammers of HR. Shun them.
Anyway these jobs for Gameshastra are located in El Segundo (thats near Los Angeles for those out of town) and requires a lot of travel to their HQ in India (which is freakin awesome).
You would end up working with some of the coolest and smartest game developers I have had the pleasure of knowing.
Company: Gameshastra
Job Title: (1) Technical Lead - Console Games and (2) Technical Lead - PC and Casual Games
Description: To apply: Please email your cover letter, resume and comp requirements to devjobs@gameshastra.com
=======================
Job listing (1)
Department: Game Development
Position: Technical Lead – Console Development
=======================
Gameshastra is currently looking for one additional Technical Lead with a focus on Console Development for our US and India game development operations. In addition to being a brilliant senior coder on AAA titles, the ideal candidate will have several years experience as a Senior Developer for “current-gen and next-gen console hardware” in a midsized or major development studio, ideally with a recent specialization in Xbox 360 and/or Nintendo Wii development.
Showing expertise in a broad range of development areas – such as understanding console specific hardware issues, memory optimization, managing PC-to-console downsizing and porting issues, expertly wringing the most out of console rendering and graphics pipelines, physics expertise, AI knowledge and most importantly – having the ability to communicate efficiently with your team members – all will be key to your success in this position.
Job Responsibilities:
• Manage all key technical decisions in one or more 10-20 person development teams, each working on different aspects of various titles for different publishers.
• Have the ability to communicate clear standards and provide direct coaching and mentoring to individual developers as well as to large engineering teams.
• Solve the peskiest problems when they show up in the game development pipeline – no matter what they may be.
Qualifications:
• Expert C/C++ developer and problem solver (7 or more years of professional C++ experience preferred)
• Uncanny ability to find problem in other people’s code – and the grace to communicate these discoveries efficiently, and to turn every one of these instances into a learning opportunity.
• Ability to lead, manage and direct technical development teams full of strong minded and creative development personalities.
• Very deep console hardware system programming experience.
• Game physics expertise
• Rendering and 3D API mastery (D3D and OGL) across all kinds of hardware.
• Infinite patience with everyone in the team.
=======================
Job listing (2)
Department: Game Development
Position: Senior Developer or Technical Lead – PC, Mac, Casual and Mid-Core games
=======================
Job Responsibilities:
• Manage all key technical decisions for each "mid-core" or episodic title that we bring to market – including engine decisions, development and OO architecture approaches, and the ability to these decisions through to the final delivery.
• Have the ability to communicate clear standards and provide direct coaching and mentoring to individual developers as well as to large engineering teams.
• Solve the peskiest problems when they show up in the game development pipeline – no matter what they may be.
Qualifications:
• Expert C/C++ developer and problem solver with 5 years of C/C++ experience.
• Extensive experience with at least one major game engine (UE, GameBryo, Tringy etc.)
• Exposure to Casual C++ game development frameworks (PopCap, HGE, PlayGround etc.)
• Some exposure to online casual games (AS2, AS3, Lingo etc.) is also a plus
• Knowledge of various server side technologies (.NET/PHP/Ruby) can be helpful
• Game physics, AI and Networking/Sockets experince strongly desired
• A clear understanding of graphics rendering pipelines and 3D APIs (D3D and OGL)
• Ability to lead, manage and direct technical development teams full of strong minded and creative development personalities.
• Infinite patience and a good attitude.
If you are interested then you can email me for the contact info. This way I can screen out the evil time wasting headhunters who will see this listing and then call people claiming to be a rep of the company just so they can extort a finders fee once you get hired.
I fucking hate recruiters. I have never in my life gotten a job through one, or hired any of the dross they bring me when I am hiring. I don't know why they even exist any more, with the prevalence of do it yourself job hunting tools on the internet nobody needs these people to get in the middle and charge fees for no real value added.
Recruiters are the spammers of HR. Shun them.
Anyway these jobs for Gameshastra are located in El Segundo (thats near Los Angeles for those out of town) and requires a lot of travel to their HQ in India (which is freakin awesome).
Thursday, November 8, 2007
We are back!!! ok not really.
Well sorta.
Drew has taken the machine that was at one time my workstation and set up the Skill City game servers on it, and the database, and the dispatching server, and the chatting and world and banking servers...
You'll have to be a little bit forgiving if the machine seems slow. It is anything but idle now that it's thread cup runneth over.
Oh did I mention its running the games on a cable modem? Yeah ultra slow. You got some lag issues before when we were on a t3, just you wait.
But the good thing is that Skill City actually runs again. You can like, login and play Explodinator again, which is honestly something I have been thinking about a lot lately and not just because I want to explodinate a lot of the idiots I work with at my new job.
I thought about all the "I'll share more reasons why Skill City died" promises I made to you, all 15 of my readers, and then I decided to just let that lion sleep. It is over.
However I will say this: Do you have marketable skills? DON'T GO IN TO VIDEO GAMES
Drew put it to me one day when he said "I'm not doing this for the fun of it, I'm doing this for the money." I was mostly in it for the fun of it, honestly I was having a blast, but I also could move at my own pace.
I look at job postings that places like Big Fish post and decide that being a professional producer is actually a shit load of work (omfg I cussed). The thing is, you would expect that to come with a big salary to make up for it right?
Not so. The video game industry is very very lop sided. Nobody makes phat salary, the hours are long, and often your product is forgotten as soon as something else shiny wanders across the vapid gaze of your target consumer.
I went back to being a Linux administrator and once again realize that not only am I good at this job which makes it tolerable and often simply easy for me, but it pays really really ridiculously well. Like six figures well if you are keeping track at home.
Nobody in the game industry makes a salary like that unless you are the CEO of something doing crazy well. A small games studio, even a medium one, won't be paying anybody salaries that big.
It's ok though, you aren't in it for the money. Just pay your rent with what you make, walk or bike to work, and gaze through my window at night wishing you too were drinking an obscenely tall glass of very expensive bourbon. All your friends will be jealous because you "make video games" and thats good enough for those 12 hour days you work.
Then you will turn 30 and realize the best years of your life are gone, you have no money, and you are ultimately replaceable by any high school kid willing to work 80 hours a week for peanuts just because he wants to "make games."
Yeah I know, I'm so harsh.
I'm also the only person who is telling you the truth.
Drew has taken the machine that was at one time my workstation and set up the Skill City game servers on it, and the database, and the dispatching server, and the chatting and world and banking servers...
You'll have to be a little bit forgiving if the machine seems slow. It is anything but idle now that it's thread cup runneth over.
Oh did I mention its running the games on a cable modem? Yeah ultra slow. You got some lag issues before when we were on a t3, just you wait.
But the good thing is that Skill City actually runs again. You can like, login and play Explodinator again, which is honestly something I have been thinking about a lot lately and not just because I want to explodinate a lot of the idiots I work with at my new job.
I thought about all the "I'll share more reasons why Skill City died" promises I made to you, all 15 of my readers, and then I decided to just let that lion sleep. It is over.
However I will say this: Do you have marketable skills? DON'T GO IN TO VIDEO GAMES
Drew put it to me one day when he said "I'm not doing this for the fun of it, I'm doing this for the money." I was mostly in it for the fun of it, honestly I was having a blast, but I also could move at my own pace.
I look at job postings that places like Big Fish post and decide that being a professional producer is actually a shit load of work (omfg I cussed). The thing is, you would expect that to come with a big salary to make up for it right?
Not so. The video game industry is very very lop sided. Nobody makes phat salary, the hours are long, and often your product is forgotten as soon as something else shiny wanders across the vapid gaze of your target consumer.
I went back to being a Linux administrator and once again realize that not only am I good at this job which makes it tolerable and often simply easy for me, but it pays really really ridiculously well. Like six figures well if you are keeping track at home.
Nobody in the game industry makes a salary like that unless you are the CEO of something doing crazy well. A small games studio, even a medium one, won't be paying anybody salaries that big.
It's ok though, you aren't in it for the money. Just pay your rent with what you make, walk or bike to work, and gaze through my window at night wishing you too were drinking an obscenely tall glass of very expensive bourbon. All your friends will be jealous because you "make video games" and thats good enough for those 12 hour days you work.
Then you will turn 30 and realize the best years of your life are gone, you have no money, and you are ultimately replaceable by any high school kid willing to work 80 hours a week for peanuts just because he wants to "make games."
Yeah I know, I'm so harsh.
I'm also the only person who is telling you the truth.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dutch interview.
Click here to see the full text of an interview that Bashers did with me.
They asked some good questions, I think I have given them the best answers I could.
I find it a little bit ironic that after I shut down Skill City and basically throw in the towel that now I am getting more interest in our technology and product than before.
Is the lesson to be learned that people like bad news more than good? It looks like the best marketing Skill City ever got was from its own demise.
Speaking of, I sort of went off on the coders in the last two entries. I tried to balance that ire by at least stressing it wasn't anything they did wrong, it was just bad circumstance and personality issues.
Anyway you probably want to know what the rest of the circumstances leading to our eventual shut down were, and so I will share those.
But right now I have a meeting to go to so I'll have to share that tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon.
Needless to say it will probably have a very clever metaphor like "Man who wears too many hats eventually gets a broken neck."
I'm fond of that one.
They asked some good questions, I think I have given them the best answers I could.
I find it a little bit ironic that after I shut down Skill City and basically throw in the towel that now I am getting more interest in our technology and product than before.
Is the lesson to be learned that people like bad news more than good? It looks like the best marketing Skill City ever got was from its own demise.
Speaking of, I sort of went off on the coders in the last two entries. I tried to balance that ire by at least stressing it wasn't anything they did wrong, it was just bad circumstance and personality issues.
Anyway you probably want to know what the rest of the circumstances leading to our eventual shut down were, and so I will share those.
But right now I have a meeting to go to so I'll have to share that tomorrow, or maybe this afternoon.
Needless to say it will probably have a very clever metaphor like "Man who wears too many hats eventually gets a broken neck."
I'm fond of that one.
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