Wed 30 Dec 2009
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.
Sun 27 Dec 2009
My busiest travel year yet, despite moving on from the IGDA. I’ve seen no shortage of demand to speak at conferences (actually turning down more than I can accept), and some client related travel. Here’s where I was over the past year:
Without question, the travel highlight of the year was Rio. Wow! It’s beyond words… Hitting DICE for the first time was nice. The Miami trip had a lot of impact on me… Doing the commencement speech at DigiPen for students, moms and grandmas was truly an honor. Frankfurt was cool, but too quick. Ditto for New Orleans, though the humidity was insanely overwhelming. Also, finally nice to make it down to Austin - so much action, but I had never been previously. Anyway, each trip is special/different and I always make the most of the opportunity - both from a work and personal point of view.
2010 is starting out with a bang, with a client trip to Rome the first week of January. Then another client trip to Lima, Peru in mid-February. And, of course, San Francisco for GDC as usual.
Tue 22 Dec 2009
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
Leadership
Business/Economics
Self-Help/Culture/Etc
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!
Wed 9 Dec 2009
The big news in the UK dev scene is how the government snubbed the game industry by not including any tax breaks to support game development in the next budget. In part citing that the case made by industry for a tax break was unconvincing, as well as the overall tough economic climate.
While industry reps are in rage, they should not be overly surprised as they themselves claimed it would “never happen”. On a panel at Develop in Brighton, they stated it was an impossible task, but on principle they had to fight the fight.
It is the same panel that I got into a bit of a shouting match, blaming them for using the tax break fight as a distraction from doing real (hard) work on things they could effect and could have an impact on the UK industry.
I also made the bold claim that if a tax break did happen, it would have literally no impact on the UK situation. Meaning, a tax break is not some kind of all-in-one solution that would all of a sudden resolve all the challenges the UK community is facing.
As an example of progress, at roughly the same time, it was announced that £10million is being invested in the game industry to support education and the development of prototypes and original IP. Similar initiatives are popping up across the country.
Now we’re talking. Now we’re getting somewhere. This approach speaks more to the ecosystem nature of the industry and working to build things out and support efforts at a more organic level. Though, this gets marginal coverage/attention versus the tax debate…
Even Canada, with all its national and provincial aids, is at risk. Blamed for “buying the video game industry“, Canada needs to build a more holistic strategy to foster the community from top to bottom - not just chasing down big publishers to set up shop…
PS: Does anyone have details on the UK “brain drain” to Canada. UK reps continuously claim that they are losing their talent to Canada. But, I’ve never seen any real data or research. Is this a valid claim? Or, mainly based on anecdotes and really, all the UK talent is just shifting to some other sector in the UK?
