Humility

Humility

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Humility isn’t about doing crazy acts of self-deprecation, self-abuse, having low self-esteem, or believing you are fundamentally bad/terrible/worthless. We often see this hyperbole in movies and TV that features an often unstable person consumed by ‘religion’.  Sometimes read that kind of language from the saints, but they did not believe their soul was actually worthless or they were valueless and unloved. Quite the contrary – they took refuge in knowing that God loved them infinitely. Instead, they meant that when we see ourselves clearly, we recognize just how broken we are. It’s like an athlete that realizes just how often they don’t train with their full effort, or a person on a diet that cheats all too often, or a spouse that realizes they’ve neglected their partner. Except for them and us, it’s the painful realization we so often do not love as we ought. Because of that lack of love, we are robbed of happiness and feel the pain they caused the God they loved so ardently. Some go further and recognized that besides the wrongs we know about, even our best efforts are often tainted with laziness/vanity of how we want others to see us/errors in judgment. In that way, they really just state the basic brokenness that we so often do things we know we shouldn’t. It’s original sin – the state of this broken world that each of us is born into. But none of this is humility.

Humility is about stopping thinking it’s all about us. It’s really about truly being free. In our modern world, we believe freedom is the ability to do whatever thing we want. This idea isn’t true freedom. Instead, when we become free of thinking everything is related/about us and our desires, we become free to have other motives for our actions. This is why many saints lived very ascetic lives. These practices helped them strip away the desires for comfort and ease that make us weak to our desires. This is absolutely no different that Olympic athletes that deny themselves all kinds of things and train 7 days a week/8+ hours a day for years. Many ambitious professionals forgo bar nights, sleeping in, friendships, fun activities, travel, marriage, or many other pleasurable things to reach their professional goals. But just like athletes, we need to look at our ascetic practices carefully. It’s easy to put on great shackles of self-denial – but if they are not producing good fruits – then they are worthless or perhaps even just injure us. As the exercises of a marathoner are tracked to see if they produce better times, our ascetic practices should be tracked/reflected on to see if they are producing greater compassion, forgiveness, love, and the ability to deny our unhelpful desires.

So humility is really a path to freedom. As we grow in the ability to look beyond our desires, it means we can abandon ourselves more and more to do the things that are good. For Christians, it allows us to quietly reflect on and do the will of God – putting ourselves at the service of him and others. Our faith teaches us that by doing this, we learn what true love is. This is what is meant when one says we live the cross. By the painful nails of turning away from our desires, our selfishness and lack of humility are stripped away until we become free of ourselves. We are able to embrace childlike, self-giving love that empties itself for others and make us Christ for the world. Or as St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) notes when reflecting about the centurion that regarded himself as unworthy to receive the Lord into his house: “Humility was the door through which the Lord entered to take full possession of one whom he already possessed.”

Talks by John E Williamson – PAX West 2016

Talks by John E Williamson – PAX West 2016

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John Williamson posted his PAX West and PAX Dev presentations online. You can download them here.

Hollywood Narrative Tricks and Shortcuts
http://bit.ly/PAXDEV_Williamson

Family Game Night With A Twist: Make Your Own Video Game
http://bit.ly/PAX_2016_FamilyGameNight

Appjunkies Live – PAX West 2016

Appjunkies Live – PAX West 2016

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This is the list of apps they showed this year (all iPhone). I might have missed one or two towards the end

  • Fluffing kitty
  • Elephant Drop
  • Happy Racer
  • Run Murugun
  • Brick Splits
  • Tronald Dump
  • Patience Race
  • Eject
  • Giant Boots
  • Toupee Catch
  • Lane Dasher
  • Leg shaking
  • Man only now
  • Strike match
  • Glucosamine
  • Gas out
  • Daemon Chubb
  • Mountain Tourist Drive-up
  • Pee in the Dark
  • Chair Pull
  • Cat Food Hoarder
  • Last Hair
  • Hold Me Tight
  • Patimemo Lite
  • Trump Roulette
  • Yolo Granny Run
  • Boxer Vs Arm Wrestler
  • Hag(i)
  • Ass Duke
  • Cat Monsters
  • Toilet Simulator
  • Noodle Cat
  • Stop Kim
Kickstarter, Patreon, and Fig: How to fund your Indie Game – PAX 2016

Kickstarter, Patreon, and Fig: How to fund your Indie Game – PAX 2016

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Kickstarter:

  • The key to success is community building. Goal is to have the community, marketing, and everything in place and primed so you can email them all for donations on the first day of fundraising and get a big pop.
  • Project must be both cool and attractive. Easy fruit is now picked.
  • 20-40% of funding usually comes from donations the first day, but 75% of successful projects don’t fund the first day. Really goes back to community and press coverage you were working. Forces should be arrayed for a big day 1. Kickstarter robots recognize the pop and automatically promote you.
  • It’s not true that big fundraisers ‘suck the money’ away from smaller projects. Big fundraising efforts like Exploding Kittens help smaller projects. 80% of contributors to big projects turned around and then gave to the smaller ones too.
  • Tabletop games/gamers are the most rabid backers – 2x what others give. Surpassed even video games in total funds raised. Exploding Kittens card game was their biggest fundraiser to date.
  • The money will come and go, but the people that back you will stay with you across projects if you do it right.
  • Growth of crowdfunding is slowing/plateauing. New stuff is coming up and revitalizes the environment regularly though.
  • Biggest change is that the larger/$1000+ donations are disappearing.
  • Feels like a maturing in giving. Much like MMO’s, they see people play a lot, leave, then come back.
  • Sees video game funding fatigue setting in. It’s getting harder for those projects.
  • Pattern of giving breaks into 1/3rds. First day pop, middle trough, end push. 1/3 at end is getting smaller. Sees fatigue coming in at that point more.

Pateon:

  • Subscription based funding is starting to catch on, but not huge yet. A few notable luminaries are making big money. Many make decent, but not livable money.
  • You promise funders deliveries each month of art/content/etc.
  • Very popular with artists.
  • Typical successful artist earns over $1000/month.
  • Average patron gives $8-$10/mo
  • All about community building. Ask what they want and make it. Use polls on their page, make it easy for patrons to contact and interact with you. Take their input/feedback.
  • They see growing amounts of people trying their platform and growing numbers of subscriptions.

Fig:

  • New investment/rewards platform that has just now become possible due to changes in investment law.
  • Found that projects often do not calculate their budgets well – often underestimated the actual costs of development badly.
  • Budgets of their projects are from $100k – $2M, but some only want $50k with partners and publishers picking up the rest.
  • Projects go through a formal green light process with an experienced advisory board.
  • 80% new IP, 20% existing IP. New ideas are coming from crowdfunding.
  • You are limited to 10% of your annual income for investing in the Fig model by FCC regulation.

All:

  • Aug/Sept are perfect times for launching. Avoid any holidays. Do NOT put first day on a major US holiday – even if overseas. This alone has caused failures of otherwise successful campaigns.
Digipen Panel – PAX 2016

Digipen Panel – PAX 2016

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A group of folks from Digipen reflected back on their time there and tips for getting into the game industry. Besides the very specific Digipen ones, there’s some general ones that I found to be good tips.

  • There is no real way to keep up with outside friends or family. You will be that busy. Few parties – social circles shrink dramatically if you want to get things done to the high quality you desire. Most didn’t even date.
  • School at Digipen was much harder than traditional college (some had done both).
    • You will not have a social life outside of school – and many breakups occurred.
    • If married, make sure you make the decision together – with all the realities of time explained. Huge – or you’ll likely be filing divorce.
    • All this mirrors what occurs in the game industry after college too. You’re going to spend most of your time with these people you work with. Especially during crunch.
  • You can’t hold a job while at school (Digipen) – one gal quit the job after the first week of classes. Working while at Digipen is not realistic despite the debt you’ll accumulate (which is substantial).
  • You’ll lose most of your social life outside the few friends you make inside Digipen. Even that is tough to maintain. Likely won’t be playing many games anymore – won’t have time.
  • Cross-discipline interaction is really good for you. You have exposure to the language of other areas: artists, programmers, developers, project leads, etc – even if you don’t study it directly. Helps you understand why/what is most important to those other areas and really helps you succeed.
  • Always act professionally. Conventions, planes, bars, etc. You never know who is listening in – high probability that someone will know someone. Especially when heading to conferences – odds are high a good portion of the people on your flights, buses, etc are all going too. Don’t alienate yourself to others by being rude, dismissive, or offensive. The industry is far too small and you’ll get a reputation that can make you unhirable.
  • You’ll work with people that have different opinions. If it doesn’t impact your work, then let it go. Did we mention never burning bridges?
  • Find ways to keep motivated even when things don’t go as you expect. Many times you’ll get stuck working on something you don’t want to. You need a way to stay motivated, working quickly, and with high quality output so you will be recognized and be able to move to the next good thing.
  • 3 keys to a good hire: be personable, do good work, work quickly. Make everything presentable in as best way possible. Being personable trumps the others. You can be the smartest, fastest person around – but if you’re hard to get along with – nobody will want you.
  • For art reels, show your best stuff. A demo reel should be 1-2 minutes of your best work. It’s only as good as the weakest piece. Constantly update it and show new stuff.
  • For designers, show quantity of output.
  • For programmer, it’s about communicating your work/talking skills. You need to be able to narrate how your design works, thought process, and algorithms.
  • Start personal branding very soon. One fellow started 2 years before graduation and it made all the hard work you need to do much easier. Branding includes websites, collected pictures of work, demo reels, posting your work on sites like Polygon Count, etc. All takes lots of time to collect and get presentable. Don’t try to do it at the end – because you can’t and it will show.
  • As soon as you get an assignment and read through it, open a notepad and put ideas in there to start with. Don’t wait because often you’ll get so busy that all you have the day before it’s due is the idea(s) you put in there first. Don’t get yourself into a last-minute corner.
  • Network as much as you can everywhere you can. Every conference, meetup, professional group, etc. That is where your jobs come from.
  • People don’t want to work with someone that is just good – they also want someone they’ll like working with since you’re going to spend so much time together.