Misc

Just to let you know: these days, the guys at GOG.com sell lots of things at insanely reduced prices. The games weren’t expensive to begin with, but now they are even cheaper. I bought Neverwinter Nights 2, Planescape: Torment (again, since I already had it) at $1.99 and so on.

Go ahead, they are going through the same cycle and you can still buy (or even get for free) some great games of the past :)

I am a gamer, so I think this blog is perfect for my girlfriend :D

This is just a rant. You’ve been warned!

The thing I hate most about not being in the States is the time difference.

Since MavenHut has a global target and most of the users we have are on the American continent, I need to talk to people there all the time. And that means that I have calls at 8pm, the earliest. Or, at 2am, sometimes.

This means I get home and all I want to do is get a hot bath and sleep.

Just a 11:44pm rant, on a Friday night :))

Photo: caucasian man stressed by jet lag with time zone clock background from Shutterstock

A good friend of mine just got accepted to the Startup Spotlight competition for How To Web 2013. His startup is growing, he’s done all the “meet your customer, sell to your customer before writing one line of code” process and now he’s private testing the first version of his app.

I am not telling you who he is, I don’t want to put more pressure on him as it’s already difficult to present your idea in front of several hundred people :)

Anyway, Startup Spotlight is a great place to showcase your project (we’ve earned Best Pitch in 2012) since the audience is full of like-minded people and possible mentors.

Some interesting starups that will present on the stage of Startup Spotlight are (and this is my opinion based on just one line of description, all right?):

Daisy Pi, GameMatch, GloriaFood, KOLOS, Monitor Backlinks, Sportwavez.

Read more about the 32 startups involved in Startup Spotlight here, since you might find something else that interests you.

A little bit of disclaimer: while I am not interested in link building, Monitor Backlinks is backed by SOSventures, the same investors that backed our seed round and I am really interested in their evolution, since the grew quite a little bit since their early round.

Yesterday I got caught in a football (soccer) match and in Apple’s conference and I forgot to blog. Yes, almost 90 days after starting to write daily, I forgot to blog. It’s obvious, I need a 22 o’clock alarm to let me know I should not forget.

Anyway, back to the matter at question: iPad Mini.

I bought an iPad since it first launched (back problems forced me to run away from the chair and the desk, so I bought it to be able to stay in bed and read or browse the Internet). I bought the second one, also, but I got no interest in the subsequent ones. The Retina display was not something I was interested in particular, and I felt that a smaller tablet would be a lot better. And I would’ve bought the Google Nexus, though I am not an Android user.

Luckily, by the time I decided to buy the Nexus 7, I heard that Apple is gonna launch the Mini. So I waited and went and bought it the moment it came out in Romania.

The result? I am using the iPad mini more than ever, while the bigger form ones were given away to people close to me, because they were gathering dust somewhere around the house. Even though I have a MacBook Air 11′ at home, which is in no way big, I barely touch it, unless I have work to do.

The mini form factor is great: it’s light so we can use it with one hand (which, if you read a lot on it, it’s really helpful) and it is still in the Apple ecosystem, where I have the applications I already use and I am comfortable with. Talking about the weight, my two devices (the iPad Mini and MacBook) weight, together, 1.4kgs. That’s crazy, right?

Another interesting thing (especially because of what I do) is the fact that I play a lot more games. Again, the smaller form factor allows me to hold the device with one hand while using the other hand to play.

I’ve written this article because yesterday Apple launched the new iPad Mini, with Retina screen. I wouldn’t normally buy it, there’s nothing I want from it in particular, but the new processor and graphics will make the gaming experience a much better one. And I understood how important the device became for my daily browsing and reading habits. Actually, because it became so important, for the first time since I started to use Apple products I am gonna buy a 32 or 64GB one. Probably 32, I don’t want to spend too much money, though. And that is all because I find myself consuming so much content on it (especially games).

Conclusion: you should try a smaller tablet (iOS or Android, after taste). YOu will be amazed how much more than you expect you are gonna use it. And it will help you become more productive, because the back pain from staying over your desk will not be as present as it is when using the laptop.

P.S.: I know Apple launched the iPad Air, also, but I really don’t care about it, even if it’s just 500grams (as compared to the 350 for Mini).

Photo from Apple

I’ve always looked for ways to improve my productivity (not to work more and more, but work less and do more :D ).

One of the best things I’ve found is to get routines in your life: things that you do the same time every time. This frees up a lot of energy that you need during the day to make important decisions. Obviously, put routine in low level decisions. I walk to the office on the same route, I do the same things in the mornings, in the same order, at the same time. And it pays off: it’s easier for me to not eat after 6pm or take a better decision in a particular situation.

Two people that are known for doing this (they dress or used to dress pretty much the same way every time so that they don’t need to make a decision about it) are Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

You can read more about it in this book (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength) or, shorter, read about Decision Fatique in New York Times.

So, what things do you do all the time can be put into a routine?

P.S.: it might sound that you do not allow “passion” and “spark” come into your life, that you become a boring person. Well, if you define not boring by the order you brush your teeth or take your shower…

Photo from Shutterstock

Yesterday I moderated a panel called “Making Games: The Indie Way“. The panel was really interesting and you should watch it here (unfortunately the sound is not the best, being quite low from time to time).

I want to talk about something else. Both members of this panel and members of the Social Gaming panel I moderated some time ago mentioned at some point that they were lucky at some point in their developing games life. And not only once, but several times.

This gives you the impression that developing successful games is a lot of luck, most of the time. Actually, a good friend said that she got the impression building games sounds more like magic than a proper industry.

I just want to tell you that I don’t think luck is that important, though. It doesn’t matter what you do, I just think that luck is just the result of your work, of your efforts and of the opportunities you create for yourself. We were “lucky” to get into Startup Bootcamp, but that is luck only if you take out of the equation all the years before when we build different businesses and games.

Thomas Jefferson said “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” I totally agree with it.

Photo from Shutterstock

If you’ve been through Romania recently you’ve probably seen the “We hire!” signs by King (especially in Vama Veche, nice move!). The studio in Bucharest has been in a hiring spree in the last year or so and I assume it’s not really easy to find good people. And it’s not related to King as a company (they are one of the gaming company I really admire), but I think it’s related to the availability of talent in Romania.

While there are some great gaming companies in Romania, I really don’t think there’s enough workforce in the country right now with the right skills, at the right level to be hired in the gaming companies. Anybody that wants to create a team that’s bigger than 10 people has to train juniors at some point to get all the skills it needs (I might be wrong, but this is my feeling as someone deeply involved with the industry for the last year and a half).

And I remember meeting someone at the Hamburg Casual Connect earlier this year that was the Dean of the Gaming studies at a university in Hamburg. I mean, they have a curricular, you can actually choose gaming as a career and use the 4 years of college to get prepared for that.

I wonder, what should be done to do something similar in Romania? I have no idea right now, frankly, but I was thinking about it as I saw that a dental company in Romania (Dentestet) decided to create a school of dental technicians just because they need the skills in their company (link here in Romanian, and translation in English).

MavenHut is still a small company, but we might actually try to do this in the years to follow: create our own courses just to train new possible hires (you see the plans for MavenHut, right? :D ).

On the other hand, why wouldn’t art universities had a course of gaming art? Or the tech universities have a course of gaming programming? Or, even more surprising, economics universities should have gaming project management courses (and every studio head in Romania cringes right now).

I am not proposing something (at least not yet), as it’s something I was thinking about and I wish I knew what your opinion on the subject is.

Later edit: apparently, “the Ion Mincu Architecture University in Bucharest has a course on Level Design for several years now”, so it can be done (thanks, Claudiu, for the tip)

Later later edit: a good thing with this post was that I found more on the subject, like the class on Game Design at the Ion Mincu Architecture University.

P.S.: in the meanwhile, later tonight (Thursday, October 10th) you can attend a great panel on indie game at TechHub (how to create them, how to promote them, what results can you expect aso). Maybe these meetups are the seeds we need to get to the Gaming University of Romania. I would love to attend some classes there :D

Photo from Shutterstock