IGDA Wisconsin Chapter Meeting, 3/26/2011

We had a fun time at the Midwest Gaming Classic this past Saturday. We went over the results of the IGDA Board elections and talked about some of the high points of the candidate statements. Jason Compton, Patrick Miller, and Matt Ciarlante helped out immensely with a "Year in review" panel highlighting memorable events from 2010. We also heard from Robin Harbron, who visited us all the way from Thunder Bay, Ontario to talk about iOS development. Oh, and amongst sweeping claims of voter fraud we announced the new president for our chapter. Hey, democracy only works if you work for democracy, people. Or something like that.

One point was raised but not resolved -- what to do for chapter communication going forward. Do we jump on the Facebook bandwagon, resort to old-school email lists, or what? For my part, I plan on communicating with other chapter leaders to see what's been working for them.

Next meeting is June 23, location TBD.

GDC Recovery nearly at 100%

I didn't even throw wild parties until all hours of the day and night like some people and I'm still having to recover  from last week in San Francisco. Not normally being an overtly social person, GDC can be rather exhausting.

I'd say the conference was fantastic, but that would be misleading. I'm sure the conference was fantastic, but I missed most of it. For me, the people were fantastic. I spent most of my time meeting folks in person that I had previously only known electronically. And, of course, I tried to meet as many new people as I could. As I recommended to a few people, if you have to choose between socializing and attending a session at GDC, do the socializing. You can always grab slides or watch shakycam footage on Youtube later, but adding someone to your network or just plain interacting with another professional on a personal level is something you really shouldn't pass up.

I did get to learn some neat things at a few sessions. Onlive continues to impress me as a service, so much so that I'm surprised they don't have noteworthy competition in that space yet. Imagine needing to have a new license for Motion Builder but you only need it for a few weeks. Rent a license for a few days where the app itself is running on a server somewhere and you're just interacting with it locally. Costs a fraction of the full price and you don't need a powerful machine because the horsepower is cloud-based. That's not available yet, but I bet it's coming.

Chuck Hoover delivered such an intriguing talk on Faulty Thinking that I'm no longer sure of much of anything. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks a lot.

The annual IGDA meeting was engaging but lightly attended (get on the stick next year, members). The board members put actions behind their words by instigating the formation of a Freelancers SIG during the meeting. Elapsed time from someone broaching the topic to SIG creation: approximately 4 minutes. If you're not sure why you should join the IGDA or what it does for you as a member, ping me.

I'll plug it better with a full post later, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Scrum Master certification course I attended on Monday and Tuesday. Pardon my use of the vernacular, but Clinton Keith is the fecal matter. I apologize to my more erudite readers for going all guttersnipe on your posterior, yo.

To all my friends and colleagues, new and otherwise, thanks for taking the time to meet up. I'm still powering through my stack of business cards, so if you haven't received an email from me yet, you will. Just give me a few days.

Production Survey -- Please Participate!

I'm asking studio production folks throughout the industry to take part in a brief, anonymous survey about production practices at your company. I'll post an initial analysis of the results on Gamasutra so everyone has access to my findings.  Just click the big green button at www.fullergameproduction.com to participate.

I've also included an incentive (see below) to spark as much participation as possible. I'm inviting you to not only participate but also to pass along the invitation to anyone else you can think of in the industry. If they're in production at any level at a company of 4 or 400, I want their voice to be heard.

Incentive!

Just for completing the survey, you have the option to enter your studio for a chance to win a free visit and production analysis from Fuller Game Production. The details would be worked out to meet the winner's needs, but I'm prepared to offer at no charge:

• ·         A 2-day visit with your studio during which I'd meet with developers, production staff, and studio management to understand your processes and learn about your company's needs and challenges.
• ·         A written analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the studio's production practices along with recommendations for improvement -- concrete steps based on experience, not just theory. This analysis would address all levels of the organization: frontline contributors, production, and leadership.
• ·         A discount on any future training, consulting service, or solution implementation from Fuller Game Production.

There are some stipulations, e.g. limit on travel expenses -- I can't eat the total cost of visiting you if your studio is on the moon. I will pay for my own accommodations once I get there, though.

The winning company will be receiving the benefits of 13 years of AAA dev experience and the knowledge of a credentialed PMP for free. I normally charge infinitely more than zero, so that's quite a deal.

Feel free to pass this along to friends and colleagues throughout the industry. The survey will close at midnight CST on March 13. If you have any questions please send them to survey@fullergameproduction.com.

Thank you!

Wolf Diary -- November 30

All of these diary entries were written so long ago that it's as much a surprise for me as it is for anyone else when I first open them.

Something that is not surprising in today's entry, however, is that I skipped work to take my daughters to Menard's. For those of you who don't habla Midwestern home improvement stores, Menard's is analogous to Home Depot or Lowe's. As a sign of my own personal growth since I worked on Wolfenstein, my new favorite store is REI.

Wolf Diary -- November 29

In which Keith skillfully navigates the labyrinthine channels of communication and very nearly accomplishes something.

Also, Djordje left for Weta. *sniff*


Thanks to @kungfusquirrel for reminding me this story isn't over yet.

God Bless Mark Cerny

For someone whose name commands attention to speak up in favor of learning our craft and becoming more efficient -- God bless Mark Cerny.

I can halfway understand spending tens of millions of dollars on development of a game that will generate $1 billion in sales. On paper, the ROI is clearly amazing. But it's still the case that those tens of millions are being spent unwisely in so many ways.

There are organizations that are bogged down with middle management such that true development is slowed by the cooks/kitchen ratio. There are studios where experienced developers could be making great games twice as fast but they're held back by publisher-side decisions that stunt or even reverse the progress of iterative creativity. And then there's the rampant inability to mesh wise business decisions with the reality of the R&D nature of making something fun.

It's not as though the industry faces a dearth of examples to learn from. We just seem to have a top-down unwillingness to learn from them.

IGDA Wisconsin Chapter Meeting 2/3/2011

This meeting was held the day after an enormous blizzard so attendance was a fraction of November's meeting. The hardy souls that did make it out were treated to an excellent presentation from Jason Compton comparing several aspects of TV game shows with video games. He made a number of intriguing comparisons such as how a seemingly tangential feature can sometimes have significant impact on the enjoyment of the game/show. He also noted several good examples of how an attempt to modernize or improve a show can actively detract from the enjoyment thereof, not unlike with video games. The only way Jason could have improved the presentation was by including the infamous William-Shatner-completely-loses-his-cool-and-throws-furniture clip from $20,000 Pyramid. Jason excluded it from his deck due to the poor quality of the video, but I have no such compunctions.


Aside from Jason's talk, we also had some discussion on the importance of tax credits for game developers in Wisconsin. It's a topic that has come up in the past, especially in light of the tax credits provided for film producers in the state. Making Wisconsin more attractive to game development studios and other areas of technical innovation is clearly of great importance, not just to a state that has been heavily invested in manufacturing but more specifically to the wide array of students participating in the various games-related fields of study throughout Wisconsin's schools. As an IGDA chapter I hope we're able to further our involvement in this issue.


As per usual, the meeting adjourned to Friday's for rampant socializing and exorbitantly overpriced burgers. In and amongst other discussions I was pleased to meet (hope I get the names right) Matt, Phil, Cat, and Patrick, a group of indie-devs-with-day-jobs who drove down nearly from Green Bay. That's quite a haul, you guys. I'm glad you made it.


And a quick shout out to my homies at Raven -- Andre Dusette*, Eric McDaniel, Brian White, and Nathan Rausch. Good to see you guys, as always.


*word to the wise: Don't play this guy in Cutthroat Caverns. He cheats. Not as much as Vondrak, but it's still pretty egregious.