Jusso over at gameproducer.net posted this:
Creating games has many beneficial things in life whether or not you plan to sell any games: team work, social skills, organizing work, creativity, writing, networking skills… and tons of more.
And asked “what you’ve got from this thing we call ‘game dev’?” so I thought I would have a stab at it.
Every day of the last ten years I worked with people passionate about what they do. Almost every one of them could earn more money and work more family friendly hours in another industry but they don’t. I always find their passion for what they do inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »
If you mix great people, passion, initiative, risk and a little bit of crazy; anything is possible.
I started this blog a little over six months ago and have posted over 80 times on various topics surrounding the middleware space. In all that time I have only mentioned Emergent once in passing.
Some have read into this that I want to put my time with Emergent behind me or that I don’t think they are worthy of mention. In fact neither assumption is close to accurate.
I sense the last 6 months have been hard for Emergent. They have stared into the abyss; have had to let good people go and have looked very hard at who they are and what they value.
This struggle to define themselves has in truth been going on for a few years and the lack of progress was one of the reasons I left but from my job interview in 2007 to today I believe in the people and their passion for video games.
Today was therefore a great day! Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last few weeks (with a crunch in the last three days thus no posts) I have been working on revitalizing the go-to-market strategy for an old product.
Regular readers will know I am a big believer in brands and products that embrace what truly makes them special. Products that focus on pleasing some of the people all of the time, not all of the people some of the time.
As always, it’s been a fun exercise and one every product owners should be going through as they look to grasp the opportunities every downturn creates.
So having finished the first iteration I thought I would outline my five simple steps to revitalizing a go-to-market strategy. Read the rest of this entry »
In the Truman Show Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank lives in a world where everything he does is watched by millions. The good, the bad and the embarrassing.
As a company leader this probably sounds familiar.
As individuals you can still defend some privacy (for now), some of you don’t have blogs, facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles or tweet.
But as company leaders there is no escaping transparency. Everything you do is visible to the world. Every mistake is global gossip archived by Google; every victory is an unread press release.
I was listening to a recent interview with Jeffrey Kindler, CEO of the Pfizer corporation. In it he pointed out that trust was at an all time low; we don’t trust politicians, priests, baseball players, doctors, lawyers, bankers or corporations. He believes that building trust in this new transparent world is the key to good leadership and commercial success. Read the rest of this entry »
Passion and a sense of humor are key aspects of good brand. People remember you if you can make them smile, they will only be passionate about your product if you are. But so many companies hide how excited they are about their own products because they are trying to brand themselves “Serious, mission critical, trust.. Bla, Bla Bla”.
At NxN we sold trust. The products adoption relied 100% on the artist’s ability to trust the system with their assets. If we got the sale but not the trust our life expectancy in a game studio was measured in months.
NxN’s Alienbrain product was originally called MediaStation, Alienbrain was the internal code name for an R&D project that never saw the light of day (unfortunately).
At a corporate retreat in a deserted summer castle in the German Alps (think “The Shining” hotel and you are there) the 15 outward facing people in the company (sales, marketing, field engineers & product managers) got together to talk about many things, one of them re-branding the product. Read the rest of this entry »
