Misc

Romanian Game Developers Association is something I’ve heard of about 2-3 months for the first time. Two guys (Andrei and Cristi, the co-founders), came to MavenHut’s offices to tell us about their idea: allow game developers meet and talk about their ideas, about the obstacles they face, learn from each other.

When we first started MavenHut the gaming ecosystem in Romania was almost non-existant. Yes, there are some great companies here, studios and local (from EA, Ubisoft and Gameloft to King, eRepublik or Revo Solutions), but people don’t really meet in a more formal environment. We were looking for workshops, for people to motivate and inspire us. And, step by step, we met a lot of great people in gaming. And it took us 18 months.

RGDA says it’s the right tool to help freelance gaming developers, small and medium gaming developers in Romania. If they live up to their promises, they will help the industry a lot. And there is a lot of interest in this. I’ve seen more than 100 people participating on a meetup about gaming, as well as about 40 people present at the launch of RGDA, last Tuesday. To show just how much people around the industry need this, Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, met 3 people that were building a Snake version, without knowing about each other.

Finally, we need to get together. Andrei and Cristi helped us with the first step, now it’s a lot up to us :)

If you are a game developer, artist or anything like this, go to RGDA’s site. And don’t forget to also contact us, at MavenHut, we are always looking for great people to work with!

Some years ago I’ve read for the first time that, in order for something to become a habit, you need to do that specific thing for 30 days, constantly, every day.

I’ve tried several times to do this, but I’ve never got to the 30 days limit :) Until recently, when I decided I wanted to write for 30 days on my blog. And I keep doing it, 30 days after that. It kinda worked: last Saturday I remembered I didn’t write at about 10pm, so I actually stopped doing what I was doing and I wrote a blog post.

Since it seems like a good idea, I am actually trying to do 30 days challenges every month from now for the next 3 months (small steps, ok?). What I’ve noticed is it’s better for me to have simpler tasks (not “write a great article, 3000 words long, daily, on your blog, for a month”, but “write a 200 words article daily”). So I am not trying to move mountains yet, a thing that will hopefully change after several completed 30 days challenges.

My next challenge is to stop drinking Cola. Any kind of: Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Cola Zero, Pepsi Light or anything similar. The reason? I don’t drink coffee so any caffeinated drink is too strong for me and I can’t sleep.

I’ve started a week ago, I am still good. I’ve replaced Cola with light sparkling water (I need to compensate the feeling of the bubbles in the back of your throat more than the taste of the drink).

I’ll keep you updated if anything important happens (like… drinking Cola, for example).

If you like the idea and you think you might do something similar, read here the motivations behind the idea and write down in the comments your challenge (maybe you also give me some ideas this way). Also, I’ve found an interesting TED presentation from Matt Cutts (the head of Anti Spam division at Google) talking about exactly this.

Photo from Shutterstock

I’ve had the opportunity to see Phil Libin live on stage last year at How To Web (btw, How To Web 2013 is close by, don’t forget to be there, I will also be talking :D ).

Anyway, back to Phil Libin. He is the founder of Evernote, the “dump your memory in” app that I use every day. He is interesting though because he is not interesting in selling his company (he is not interested in an exit). Even more interesting, he recently got some investors in just so he was able to pay the early investors, that wanted faster results, so he may be able to focus on long term results, without feeling the need to do an IPO.

Below you’ll find the most interesting and complete interview I’ve found with him: This week in Startups, with Jason Calacanis. The video is about an hour and a half, while you can also read the transcript here.

I am design challenged. I can look at great design and admire it, but I can’t really point what makes that design great.

Because of this, I always looked up to those that seem to just create great design, like it’s a native feature (and maybe it is). Looking at our designer at MavenHut while he creates different things for us to take into consideration I see that design is more than just putting colors and lines on a screen or piece of paper, though.

And, of course, I am thinking of digital design (web, mobile, tablet, whatever). Functional design, the design helps you get more work done, doesn’t get in the way of the fun of games, just great design that you absolutely don’t notice. And I don’t mean it in a bad way :)

Good design is invisible.
You don’t notice air conditioning when it’s set just right, only when it’s too hot or too cold. We don’t notice good design.

Read more about the concept of “good design, invisible design” here or here (on UI). Quote from here.

Just a Thursday evening epiphany.

Image from ShutterStock

I used to play online poker. Like almost anybody I know that had a business online, as a matter of fact. I wasn’t the best player, though. I never had enough time to actually understand the mathematics behind. Or, better yet, I never had time to apply the mathematics I knew.

Don’t get me wrong, I still like playing poker, I just don’t feel I have the time to afford playing 8-10-12 hours in a tournament (if you got in the late stages). Especially since MavenHut became such an integral part of my life.

Still, I always follow the World Series of Poker, I follow Daniel Negreanu on twitter (he is one of the best players in the World, Canadian of Romanian origin), I play with my friends from time to time. Not as much as I would like, anyway.

One thing I noticed when I started to play poker is that it is a lot like business.

First of all, you need some luck in poker. Yes, almost everybody thinks you need a LOT of luck in poker, but that is not true, otherwise there would be no “good players”, just “lucky players”. And those players that win tens of tournaments can’t be THAT lucky. Still, there is an element of luck. You can play the perfect game, but your opponent might hit a “miracle hand” (like a royal flush, a hand that comes up once every 649,740 hands). Nevermind, though, you will be good at poker just by understanding the game and the mathematics behind it and putting in the time to play. So work and effort will help you win. Luck is important, but not that important. It helps, though, even in business.

Moreover, as a poker player you learn not to put the blame on somebody else. Yes, bad poker players always say the other ones got lucky when they lose. Not the good ones. The good ones improve. And the same is true in business.

There are more things to say about poker and business (I once wrote about poker and life), but nothing is as important as making the +EV decisions. EV means Expected Value. And it is one of the most difficult concepts to understand in poker. Because it makes you make decisions that may seem completely nuts. While they’re not.

A while ago I’ve found online an article about how to make +EV decisions in business (and life). And it also explains a lot better than I could what EV actually means. I forgot about it until last week.

Many +EV spots seem risky at first glance, and that’s a big reason why they’re +EV in the first place. Most people are avoiding these opportunities, which often means the price for some of them is lower than it should be because so many people are afraid of short term variance.

Read the full article here (it’s a pretty long read) and also read, from the same blog, How to buy a Ferrari for $20,000

Photo from Shutterstock

A month ago I read an article on a friend’s blog (here, in Romanian) in which he was saying he wrote daily on his blog for the last 3 years. And he started from a post I’ve written 4 years ago on my Romanian blog.

And I remembered that I loved writing on the blog. Until I didn’t. The reasons are different and unimportant right now.

Anyway, last month I had an epiphany. I remembered I loved writing and I remembered having fun writing. So I decided to start writing again. This time, though, in English. I wanted to improve my English and blogging seemed as good a way to improve as any.

Still, it’s not the first time I thought of writing again. I’ve always found reasons not to, though: it takes a lot of time, I don’t have what to write, should I write long or short articles? The reasons not to do it are so many, I will stop here.

And then, I just started to write. I wrote one day, the second day, then I decided to write daily for a month. And that was a month ago. Now I want to write daily for another month. And so on.

It wasn’t easy. Finding time was the most difficult of all. Especially finding an hour or so, as it took me initially. Then I decided on 30 minutes. If an article is not ready in 30 minutes, I publish it as it is.

Then finding a subject to write about. This had become easier now, since I know I will write articles on the blog and, actually, I had plenty of ideas, I just forget them easily. So I write them down (I send myself an email, most of the times). And it’s easier.

Finally, the 30 minutes are almost up (I still need to find a photo for the article). I am just glad I’ve been able to find 30 minutes to write every day. Now I need to find an hour to do some sports :)

Photo credit: Doug Wheller

Here is a link to the meetup I moderated yesterday on “Creating Killer Games”.

Start looking at the video starting with minute 42 or something like this, until the there’s just a placeholder.

I hope you enjoy it, the panel was really great and the questions afterwards were even better :)

We talked about starting a career in gaming (entrepreneur from the start or go through the ranks in another company first), about the process of Acquisition – Retention – Monetization, about copycats, financing and more.

Later today I will moderate a great gaming panel: Mihai Sfrijan, Head of Studio in Bucharest for King, George Lemnaru, founder of Green Horse Games and last, but not least, my co-founder at MavenHut, Cristi Badea.

The thing is, I need to prepare some questions for the 40 minutes of panel talk.

Some ideas are:
– how do you analyze metrics in your company
– what are the most important metrics that a game creator should follow initially
– how much should you force the monetization, where do you stop?
– how do you react to players revolt (it happens!)
– what are some numbers that define a good game
– what is the most important element in acquisition-retention-monetization process?
– some suggestions on acquisition, both free and paid?
– some suggestions on retention?
– suggestions on monetization?
– how expensive is to create a hit game?
– how big should the team be? is it possible to do it by yourself, with a small team? who should be in the team, what skills should be there no matter what?

OK, it should be enough for 40 minutes, but do you have some questions of your own? If so, the comments below are at your disposal :)

P.S.: if you want to come, the event is today, 6:30, at TechHub in Bucharest.

We work hard at MavenHut. We really do. The culture of the company is to work hard and have fun about it. Cristi is the one taking care of this when it comes to MavenHut (to be sure that everyone in the team understands what is expected of them) and you can feel it: people really try hard to do their part.

Still, we are also trying to relax from time to time and the team is actually happy to join in.

Several weeks ago, we had a lot of fun at karting (and I missed my first ever medal in internal competitions by 4 hundreds of a second!!!). In the photo below there’s a heated moment between me and Cristi on the race track:

Then we went to see Jobs at a cinema VIP room. You can read more about the movie here. The certain thing is that I’ve never seen so many people not wanting to leave their chairs at the end of the movie and actually sitting in through the entire credits.

But these one-off events are nothing compared to the massage we receive at the office. Not all the time, of course, but we have someone coming constantly to give us 15 minutes massages. And it’s great, as you can see below, when I was almost falling asleep in the chair :D

Finally, the XBox hooked to the video projector makes games like FIFA and Mortal Kombat a totally different experience.

Work is good, you need perfection in everything you do and that’s not easy. But fun is also good. From time to time :))

So don’t forget about it. It makes work a lot easier and more productive.

Photos by Elvis, Cristi and me.