Posts Tagged musings
What a difference…
… a day makes.
Yesterday I had two things confirmed: my redundancy payment (yay!) and my last day at NCsoft (boo!). What I didn’t have was any immediate work coming in and not much to keep me busy.
Today I got hired for a month-long freelance job, and offered potential consulting work for a to-be-specified period as well. So I know now what I’ll be doing come Monday morning, and it’s not lying around in bed. (I won’t spoil it yet either, but it is games related, it does involve an event… but it’s nothing to do with NCsoft. Puzzle that out.)
I’m relieved, obviously; there will now be money coming in where previously there would just be savings getting depleted. However, I won’t be getting complacent. The search for the next challenge goes on.
At the same time, as things wind down at work, and people make their final choice of whether to stay or go, I’m trying my best to keep spirits up, to advise where I can – and to help people exit with dignity and grace. They deserve that much.
Beyond that; Saturday’s coming together. You’re advised to get to Brighton early. Say 2pm or so. It’s going to be a large one.
Things that are tough
Posted by Rockjaw in MMO-related on June 2nd, 2008
1. Presentations
Work on my Staffordshire University talk – which I’m giving on Thursday – is proceeding slowly, despite a lot of caffeine and what I feel is a pretty good basic structure.
The subject of of ‘breaking into games’ is a bit elusive, though, to be honest. It’s a bit like asking Tom Cruise how to be a movie star. (I am not, in any way, comparing myself to Tom Cruise. I’m taller, for one thing.) The point is, it’s kind of hard to tell anyone about how to achieve something as nebulous as a career goal. But since I doubt anyone would want me to just stand up on Thursday, shrug my shoulders and go “I dunno!” for 45 minutes on Thursday, I’ll keep working on it.
Doesn’t help that I insist on trying to make every presentation I do better than the last.
2. Judging
Related to the above, I’m helping to judge a competition for the students there. It’s split into various categories for things like Games Environments, Modelling/Animation and so on. Those categories were easy enough to pin down, but Game Design – where I’m looking at trailers and pitches for full games, or mods – man, that’s tough.
Tough because I’m trying to figure out if what I’m seeing would really be a good game, or whether it’s just a good trailer; tough because while some of the ideas are original, their presentation is weak (and vice versa) and just tough, really, because it’s so damn judgemental. Of course, that’s what you deal with when you’re a judge, so….
3. Casting
As I think I’ve mentioned before. We’ve got over 200 applicants for our two roles, now… I’ll be back on that by the end of the week, I expect. It’s not getting any easier. If I feel bad judging student’s games, imagine how I feel rejecting people for having a funny looking nose.
Ah well, back to it.
Iron Man and a grand theft of your time
Posted by Rockjaw in Gamey, MMO-related on May 5th, 2008
I found it interesting to read more than a few worried comments last week from movie commentators and analysts that Grand Theft Auto IV might actually affect the box office performance of Iron Man, given that GTA IV came out a few days ahead of Iron Man’s release, and that both of them are ostensibly aimed at the same audience.
With a nice round $100m opening weekend for Marvel’s first self-financed blockbuster, it’s fair to say that those predictions were absolutely bogus, although I never thought for a minute that GTA IV would do Iron Man any damage – and nor did the vice chairman of the studio releasing Iron Man, either:
”It’s crazy to think that young males can’t carve out two hours for Iron Man. It’s going to be a great week to be a young guy.”
Or even, erm, a not-so-young guy; this week has been a riot of new entertainment for me, between queuing for GTA IV outside Woolworths on Tuesday (Yep, there was a queue!) and sitting with my over-excited colleagues during Iron Man’s opening night. The idea that any of us were going to miss Iron Man to sit at home and play GTA IV was insane, even though I’m pretty sure every single one of us who saw the movie that night went home and played GTA IV afterwards. Read the rest of this entry »
All work and no play, etc
Posted by Rockjaw in MMO-related, Too Much Information on April 1st, 2008
For the (very) few of you who’ve been reading for a while, you might have noticed the lack of ‘Day Today’ posts recently. (For those who are new, check the archive; I’ll wait.)
All back? Good. Just wanted to say I still want to do those, but time has been against me this week. In fact, work has been preventing me from blogging about work! Ah, the irony. (Or is that just sarcasm? DAMN YOU, Alanis, for confusing me forever!!)
Anyway, I spent a large part of tonight answering interview questions for a certain site, so that’s eaten up blogging time; as for work, it’s been a combination of “Oh, I’m back after my rest, this is good” and “Oh, I have loads of stuff to still clean up after the event” and “Oh, I have loads to do before I go on holiday and no time to do it oh crap oh crap”.
So that’s nice. Anyway. I’m still gonna do the MiniCon Sunday and Monday wrap-up posts, verily – even if they doth slay me, and… eh, I’m not promising anything else.
Leave me a comment. Tell me what you want to know so I can talk about something else, and not mistakenly talk about something you want to know.
The gold bar theory of community
Posted by Rockjaw in Community, MMO-related on March 30th, 2008
Thinking about this today for reasons that might become apparent, might not.
A community manager once told me this theory he had about MMO communities, which I often quote when we’re left scratching our heads at the fact that despite our best efforts, a game’s community (or some part of it) is still screaming for our blood – even though we’re firmly of the opinion that surely, this time, we’ve given them all they want.
The theory goes as follows. (This works best when you think of a US context, by the way – where a mailbox can often be a short walk from someone’s house.)
If you mailed a solid gold bar to every player of your MMO game… they would complain that it was too heavy to carry back to their house from the mailbox.
In other words, you can please some of the people some of the time; but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Or if you’re being more blunt… people will always find a reason to bitch about something, no matter what you do.
You said what?