Interactive Entertainment

Chase Your Dreams Till They’re Too Tired to Keep Running Away

Chase Your Dreams Till They’re Too Tired to Keep Running Away

There are rare cases when you get to witness your beliefs in action in Real Life.  I had one of those moments at the awards for the Indie Games Challenge this year.

Ten games were finalists for the $100,000 prize.  (That's not a typo.  It's $100K.)  One by one the group leaders came up to the stage and were interviewed by Adam Sessler. Many of the conversations ran like this:

Adam:  "So tell me, how long have you been working on this game?"

Team Leader:  "2 years," or "3 years," or "4 years" and "In between other projects, when we had time."

We live in an era of TV ads for game programs where a cute, spunky producer says to two guys, "When you're done playtesting I have three new games for you to work on!" Nothing could be further from the reality of either Indie or AAA game development.

Many of these IGC Finalist teams followed my dictum of "Chase Your Dreams Till They're Too Tired to Keep Running Away."  They created first versions of their games that ran anywhere from seriously flawed to pretty good.  

They believed in their games at that first draft stage, so they kept working.  Expanding, tuning, trimming, sometimes even ravaging the current version or completely starting over.  No one was giving them money or trophies, because they were not yet really good games.

99.9% of all people who start building a game quit at this point.  One way to quit is to forget about it and stop working.

Another way to quit is to ship something that is only pretty good and say you're done.

That's not what these teams did.  If they published early versions to get feedback they took that feedback and kept revising.  If they weren't ready they waited till they were.

Do all teams that work on their dream projects for years find success?  Obviously, the answer is no.

But over and over again I am struck about how often those people who do succeed had to follow this mantra in order to do so.

Sometimes we get up in the morning and we're tired of chasing our dreams.

The encouraging part is that our dreams get even more tired of running away.  If we persist there's a good chance we'll catch them.

Just ask the winners at IGC.

 

 

 

 

"The Art of Video Games" Opens at the Smithsonian March 16

 

After many long months of work by Chris Melissinos, Georgina Bath Goodlander and many others, the Smithsonian's "Art of Video Games" exhibit will open in Washington D.C. on March 16 at the Smithsonian Art Museum.

I'm thrilled that my game "Utopia" for Intellivision is one of the titles being shown at the Smithsonian, after being chosen in an online survey last year.  The game has had recognition ranging from Video Game Hall of Fame honors to The Guinness Book of World Records, but this exhibit in particular means a lot to me.

Here's the trailer for the exhibition:

 

 

GameFest is March 16-18 at the Smithsonian Art Museum

 

I'll be speaking at GameFest at the Smithsonian Art Museum in Washington D.C. on Friday, March 16 at 3:00 PM, on a panel looking back at the development of video games.  

Also on the panel will be pioneering game engineer RJ Mical, long-time industry creative executive Mike Mika, Myst co-creator Rand Miller, and Keith Robinson, Intellivision programmer and President of Intellivision Lives!

Indie Games Challenge 2012 Recognizes More Great Games

 

I had the chance to attend the awards ceremony for the Indie Games Challenge again this year, an event held at the end of the DICE Conference.  The competition is sponsored by GameStop, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and the Guildhall at SMU.  Unlike some Indie competitions, this one involves more than pride and recognition: there's a $100,000 first prize and smaller category prizes.

As he has each year, G4's Adam Sessler did a great job as Master of Ceremonies interviewing the contest winners.  I got special joy out of the category wins bySymphony from Empty Clip Studios, whose creators Matt Shores and Francois Bertrand were (a great) part of our team at Stormfront.

Congrats to all the finalists:

Blendo Games - Atom Zombie Smasher

Eyebrow Interactive - Closure

Zeroscale – Demolition, Inc.

Team Nitronic - Nitronic Rush

Paradox Shift - Paradox Shift

Empty Clip Studios, Inc. - Symphony

Ty Taylor and Mario Castaneda - The Bridge

Team Dream - The Dream Machine

The Fourth Team - The Fourth Wall

Facepalm Games - The Swapper

Dutch Games Association "DGA Day" is January 19

I'm honored to be keynoting the "DGA Day 2012" conference at the Dutch Games Association in Hilversum, the Netherlands, on January 19.

I'll be talking about issues in entrepreneuring, and there will be two separate sessions.  One, with students, will focus on the Indie game development side of entrepreneuring.  The other, with professionals, will talk about issues faced in more mature organizations.

I've heard great things about the DGA for many years, and looking forward to the conference.

 

Follow up:  I had a wonderful time at DGA Day.  In addition to getting to interact with many thoughtful professionals and students, I also had the chance to see many of the projects that students at HKU have been working on this year.  The creativity and original thought displayed by several of the teams was really impressive. Though it's not well known in the US, the Dutch game community has actually been active and successful in the industry for many years, and this was a very interesting and fulfilling conference.