Reality Panic

I got a brief glimpse of Limbo at GDC, but didn’t get a chance to try it out. Similarly, at the Nordic Game Conference, I had the pleasure of hanging out with ever-dapper Dino Patti (Playdead’s CEO) and others from the Limbo team, but still, no hands on time with the game.

Finally, over the weekend, I downloaded and played through Limbo to much delight. Despite a 1000+ deaths, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment in solving some of those dastardly difficult puzzles was real brain candy. And, the aesthetics were quite engaging/enthralling, despite their simplicity.

Great to see the universal acclaim for the game, and the commercial success (300k downloads and counting).

I always had to track my time while working at the IGDA. Both as a way to better understand where my limited time was being spent, and for tax reporting reasons (ie, my salary was allocated across different line items (admin vs. programs vs. marketing, etc)).

This habit has come in handy now that I’m a freelance consultant. I not only track time spent on specific projects/clients, but also my overall work related activities. This chart graphs time percentages since I became freelance in April 2009 to the end of the year.

A few comments:

• Wow, so little time is actually spent on client work (aka “billable hours”). Not sure what the norm is…
• A lot of things overlap, like speaking at a conference and writing an article could also count towards business development and/or marketing.
• Feels like I don’t spend enough time doing business development, and way too little time on marketing/communications…
• Happy that “email” is not too high. My email time at IGDA was nearly 50%. FYI, this is random email and time spent clearing my inbox. Any project specific email would count as consulting time, for example.
• Sad to lose 13% of my time to travel, though that is when I do most of my reading…
• I still co-chair the IGDA-Montreal chapter. I always treated that as volunteer effort, even when I was working for IGDA proper. 5% feels right/realistic to me…
• Good to see “admin” stuff is not distracting me much.

Alright, will be interesting to see how the numbers play out in 2010 as I attempt to do more bizdev+marcom.

I’ve been enjoying some Borderlands action over the holidays. My son (who just recently turned 7) caught a glimpse of me taking mission briefings from a Claptrap unit. So enamored by the charming little robot, he whipped up this drawing:

Not too shabby considering the limited exposure he had (see vs in-game image). This is part of is ongoing game series: see his Assassin’s Creed tower and Castle Crashers knight drawings.

As is tradition, here is my list of books I read over the past year. Sadly, I didn’t quite hit my self-imposed two books per month “quota”, but I got close (21 total)… All non-fiction, as usual.

Games-related

• Agile Game Development with SCRUM (draft)
• The Ethics of Computer Games

Leadership

• Get Back In the Box - Innovation From the Inside Out
• Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
• Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators - From Idea to Execution
• The Designful Company - How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation
• Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us

Business/Economics

• Arts, Inc. - How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
• Creative Industries - Contracts Between Art and Commerce
• Deep Economy - The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
• Free - The Future of a Radical Price
• Globility - Competing With Everyone From Everywhere For Everything
• Patronizing the Arts
• Who’s Your City - How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
• Word of Mouth Marketing - How Smart Companies Get People Talking

Self-Help/Culture/Etc

• Awake At Work - 35 Practical Buddhist Principles for Discovering Clarity and Balance in the Midst of Work’s Chaos
• Do Good Design - How Designers Can Change the World
• Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
• Outliers - The Story of Success
• Relationship Economics - Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts into Personal and Professional Success
• Super Crunchers - Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

Of the bunch, the Lincoln bio-book, Team of Rivals, was particularly inspiring. It was a whopping 900 pages, but every page was dripping with insight.

In terms of actually doing innovation Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators was surprisingly pragmatic - and I could see it help many traditional game studios that are trying to make the transition to emerging markets and business models. Ditto for Super Crunchers, which was given out as sponsored swag (appropriately by EEDAR) during DICE last year. There were many aha! moments during both of these books.

The bulk of the business/economics books are my attempt to beef up my knowledge as it pertains to my cluster/economic development consulting efforts. Free was an awesome read, and another one that everyone on the biz side of games should read. Ditto for Word of Mouth Marketing, especially given the recent research on WoM’s impact on game sales.

Awake at Work, recommended by Intel’s Scott Crabtree at last year’s IGDA Leadership Forum, was my first foray into Buddhist influenced reading. Was deep and inspiring. Influence was awesome. I need to study it more, mwhouahaha!

So, I’m sitting in the reception area of Ubisoft Montreal’s monstrous studio, waiting for my lunch meeting. I see the latest issue of Game Developer magazine featuring a postmortem of the awesomely awesome Scribblenauts.

I pick it up and start thumbing through.

I get to the “The Game Developer 50″ article and think to myself, This is cool, I always like to see who’s on these important people lists, fun. Then I hit the Evangelism category and boom, there I am. Nice. Here’s the blurb:

As the executive director of the IGDA from 2000 through early 2009, Della Rocca has played a key role in advocating for game developers and the games industry in general on a multitude of issues. His strong leadership on elements such as quality of life issues and game crediting was important in growing the IGDA by a massive factor during his tenure. While his departure — to run a consultancy devoted to counseling local and national governments on attracting game talent — was surprising, his selfless work deserves both mentioning and honoring here.

I had no clue. Figured I got all my pats-on-the-back with the Ambassador Award, but certainly nice to get some post-IGDA kudos as well.

Great to read about the success of RedLynx’s Trials HD. Way more of a physics-based puzzle game than an actual racing game, it’s a nifty little diversion I pulled down on XBLA. So yes, I count myself as one of the 300,000 folks who forked over points for it.

Interestingly enough, I had no clue about the game originally.  However, a couple of the RedLynx boys let me share a cab ride over to the party at the Nordic Game Conference a few months back. They filled me in about their latest efforts, and I was hooked.

Doesn’t hurt that the easier levels are simple enough for my 6-year-old son to play (and medal in). Never mind that I’m totally stuck on the last two extreme levels. Grrr…