Interactive Entertainment

ICHEG Gets $500,000 Grant to Preserve Game History

 

In addition to my Game Design and development work at Daglow Entertainment, I also have served for the last two years as a Collections Development Consultant for the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, which is part of the Strong Museum complex in upstate New York.

For many years now I have been known to rant... er, speak out about the need to preserve both the public artifacts and the private working papers at the heart of our industry.  Just as the film industry has worked to preserve its history both as an industry and a craft, we have the same obligation to the future.

As a Collections Development Consultant I have the privilege of recommending to the staff at ICHEG what perishable materials we should be trying to preserve... which amounts to a long list in an industry that contains multiple sophisticated creative crafts.

So I was thrilled this week to see that Excellus BlueCross BlueShield had announced that they are awarding a $500,000 grant to ICHEG to continue and expand its work to preserve the history of electronic games.

This story has gotten coverage in Gamasutra and elsewhere in the games press, but coming on the heels of a $113,000 grant earlier this year I see multiple reasons to celebrate:

Major corporations annually earmark billions of dollars for charitable contributions, and are looking for important causes to support with that money.  The fact that the preservation of game history now qualifies for this kind of funding says we've reached real recognition as a creative medium.  

Over $600,000 in grants just this year means there's money to expand and innovate in the creation of programs to support the study of the history of our industry.  ICHEG houses collections donated by Microsoft, Ralph Baer, Will Wright, the family of Dani Bunten Berry and many others.  Offering fellowships and conference programs to advance the study of the medium IMHO gives far greater context and importance to those physical collections.

OK, it doesn't hurt that they have a huge modern facility with rotating exhibits and special archives with controlled humidity and temperature. But it's what people learn from the preservation of the materials that matters, not just the preservation itself.

So here's a "Bravo!" to all the people everywhere who are working to preserve the history of games and game development.  I think it's healthy for all of us to think "I wonder if the game I'm working on right now will be something people will still be talking about 20 years from now..."

Which reminds me that if I want our current game to be remembered I'd better get back to working on it!

Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday I talked about how watching the bike riders in Sausalito reminded me that we have to work at keeping our passion burning for our creative craft.

With the benefit of hindsight, here are some questions I've asked myself at times during my career... and that I wish I'd asked myself more often!

 

 

 

--  If I could personally add something great to our project and I knew it would be approved, what would it be?  

We can't always declare that we're adding our personal touch to a big game, but asking yourself the question lets your heart speak directly to your head about what you love to do.

--  If I could pitch a new idea to the company and know that they'd greenlight the project, what would it be?  

Why stop with adding features to the current project?  Great ideas have to come from somewhere -- maybe the next great game from your company will start with you.

And here's the most important question:

--  What do I keep saying to myself that stops me from sharing my ideas and participating in the creative process?  

We're good at talking ourselves out of stuff.

"I don't have time to do a real proposal -- I'll just work for a while, bog down and never finish."

"The VP's and Exec Producers decide what projects we'll do.  They won't listen to someone like me."

"I'm not Sid Meier or Will Wright.  People aren't out there dying to see my next idea, even if I work just as hard and care just as much as those guys!"

All too often, what we're really saying to ourselves is "I'm afraid I'll share my work with the world and no one will like it and I'll be humiliated."

That's why we talk ourselves out of lots of things.  It isn't a fear of failure.  It's a fear of reliving those feelings of being a total nerd we lived through back in middle school.

I don't know about you, but I was one of those nerds and remember the feeling vividly. It wasn't fun.

But the only way to engage your passion in your creative craft is to practice your creative craft.  That means overcoming our natural fear of having people criticize and denigrate our work and its creator. 

I was just another programmer at Intellivision when I pitched Utopia.

When I first pitched Neverwinter Nights I was the leader of a small company that had only released two online multiplayer text games.

And when I pitched our current project I had no team, no budget and had never shipped a Facebook game.

The one thing I did have in all those situations was a passion for what I was doing, a deep fear of being rejected and humiliated, and (from somewhere) the ability to overcome that fear in pursuit of my passion to build a game.

And that, as the headline says, is my take on Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators.

 

Do you disagree?  Use the comments box below to share your ideas.

Copyright (c) 2011, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Keeping Our Passion as Game Creators (Part 1 of 2)

I've been working very long hours for the last six weeks as we launch our new company.  And I've been having a wonderful time, working with people I admire on a project I love.

I was driving to the office this morning and the bike-riders on the road gave me a new perspective on how we have to work constantly to keep our passion as game developers

Here's what I was thinking:

 

Our offices in Sausalito are next to Marinship Park and Shoreline Park, so streams of bike riders and dog walkers parade past our windows each day.  On the weekends the town is filled with bikes.

Some ride in straight lines for speed and time, the way they do on TV in the Tour de France.  Unlike the people in the photo above (taken a few minutes south of where we work) they don't stop to appreciate the views.

Many are tourists who rent bikes in San Francisco to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.  Once they get here they walk around, admire the vistas, get a bite to eat, then take their bikes onto the Ferry and sail back to San Francisco.

It's the last group, the tourists, that got me thinking about keeping our passion in game development, a topic I covered in a series of talks at GDC from the 1990's all the way up to this year (mixed in with the ones about Teamwork and Console Wars).

Why do they ride bikes to Sausalito?  The tour companies have open-top buses, double-decker buses, a converted fire engine, and shuttles of every shape and size.

The visitors ride worn, upright-handlebar bikes unlike anything in the Tour de France. They veer and wobble in search of the balance they had when they were kids.

Why struggle when you can take the bus?

I think they ride their bikes -- unsteady as they are -- because it lets them feel the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito instead of merely traveling through them.

After years in the games business it's easy to feel you're driven from one title through another, sometimes taking a project you don't care about because you need the job.

It can feel like riding a bus through a creative craft you love, carried along by the momentum of the people around you to a destination driven by someone else "up front."

Even the best projects sometimes feel like the Tour de France, where the need to rush towards a deadline robs us of the real experience of building a game we're proud to say we created.

Tomorrow:  Questions I've asked myself in pursuit of that continued passion for my craft... and that I wish I'd asked myself more often!

 

Copyright (c) 2011, Don Daglow.  All Rights Reserved.

Links

Daglow Entertainment is looking for veterans of the Facebook wars to serve as Product Manager, QA Lead and Community Manager on our fully-funded major Facebook game.

We're also hiring 2D and 3D Artists, and are always open to talking to experienced Front-end and Back-end Engineers.

Here's the link to our Open Positions page, in case you have friends who'd be interested in applying.  

To my Subscribers:  I will be posting these kinds of employment links only very rarely, and will not be filling your inbox with these kinds of posts.  Thanks!

Exciting New Beginnings

I'll post more on this shortly, but my GDC presentation this year (Friday, March 4 at 11:00 AM) is "10 Lessons from 20 Years as An Entrepreneur."

It's a good time to revisit those lessons, because I've just founded the new game development studio Daglow Entertainment, LLC.  We're funded, and we started recruiting this week.

Our first title is an original Facebook game based on a top-tier license with a major high-profile publisher that has huge marketing power.  Later this year we'll be expanding our focus to other major online, portable and mobile platforms.  We're based in Sausalito, so we're close to both the San Francisco and the North Bay game communities.

We're hiring across all online game development disciplines.  If you know someone who's interested in shaping the future of social and online games, we'd like to talk to them. Please have them send their resume, along with a cover letter about the kinds of games that get them excited, to de.socialgames@gmail.com.