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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

This is the first day since I started daily on the blog when, honestly, I had no desire to write. I am kinda tired, a combination of waking earlier than I’m used to and a lot of work at the office, so all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

Anyway, this didn’t happen and I have to thank the frame of mind set by the 30 days challenges I set myself every month. I’ve written a little bit more about it a month ago.

After 30 days of writing daily (which is proving to be 2 month now), the second 30 days challenge was to not drink any kind of Cola drink because they keep me up at night. Well, I am glad to be able to say that I’ve done it :)

It’s been 30 days since I’ve drank my last glass of Coca Cola Zero. And, man, was it hard. Especially in the first 2 weeks. But now I am ok with it and look forward for my next challenge.

The thing is I’ve started my third challenge while the other one was still running: I’ve decided that every morning shower would be a cold one. The advantages behind it can be found here or here, but I am also ahead of the trend, since the people at the Bucharest town hall announced that we might not get hot water during the night (communism more?). The most important gain for me is that I am not cold in the mornings anymore (I am actually quite alright).

I have one more challenge running right now, but that is still in its first 2 weeks, so I will talk about it a little bit later.

Still, I have to say that for me, the concept of 30 days challenge works. And it’s great.

Photo from Shutterstock

Today was a full day. Both at work and in terms of events. Radu Georgescu [romanian], the first official advisor MavenHut has, just announced he sold Avangate, the biggest company he sold. The price is not public, but I bet it was good for Radu :)

I’m thrilled to announce we have just closed a very strategic transaction with Francisco Partners. With this transaction, Francisco is acquiring Avangate and investing additional capital to further accelerate our already impressive growth. Francisco Partners is one of the most respected private equity firms in the world with over $7 Billion under management and we are extremely pleased to find an investment partner who shares our vision of Customer Centric Commerce. Even more importantly, the capital investment will help us further scale up our operations, deliver expanded platform capabilities, and better serve and support you, our customers.

More information on it here.

The other thing that happened today (not as big, obviously) was that How To Web published a short interview with me, as a prequel to the talk I will be having (along with my co-founder, Cristi) at the event this year.

1. What are the main skills it takes to build an engaging game for social media nowadays?
Looking back to the last two years, the most important skill we had was understanding the metrics and acting on the lessons from them. Of course, understanding what metrics to follow and what to A/B test is another skill you should have (or, at least, cultivate).

I’ve attended tonight the Mobile User Acquisition meetup at TechHub Bucharest. I am very interested in mobile right now, so I took some notes I think you might find interesting. Actually, that’s me, in red, in the picture above.

Here are my notes, exactly as I wrote them on my phone, with some explanations next to them (though you can watch the entire meetup here)

— idevice.ro (Andrei marinescu recommended it as a good blog to get a review from if you have an app targeted for the Romanian market)
— admob (good platform to do paid user acquisition)
— flurry (good platform to do paid user acquisition)
— FB ads per install – great tool to drive paid acquisition if you know how to use it
— jump start on Appscend apps – guys at Appscend use their existing apps to promote the new ones, thus getting some jump start for them
— don’t buy reviews? Andrei Marinescu said you shouldn’t buy reviews on blogs that do reviews since you will not get good results
— iOS users use zonga for more time than the Android users (Sergiu Biris said this)
— you can reply to user comments in Google Play (Sergiu Biris)
— android users more critical, iOS offers better monetization
— more Android users from South Korea (I think Andrei Blaj said this)
— more translations (Andrei Blaj)
— Don’t Panic Mobile Developer’s Guide to the Galaxy (free PDF mentioned by Andrei Marinescu – Thanks!)

—- not to do
— app must work from day 1 (so do not go on the store with an app that doesn’t work)
— get good ratings from the start (better not to have ratings rather than have bad ones)
— don’t overuse push notifications (or you might get abysmal usage)
— simplify app as much as possible (do not overcomplicate things)

Photo from TechHub Bucharest

I usually like working during bad weather (as long as I don’t have to go somewhere or anything similar). In my experience, I am among few that are not affected by bad weather.

If I think about it, a lot has changed in that aspect in my 3 months in Dublin. I mean, I’ve been there since January till June. If you do not work in bad weather, you will not work in Dublin. Or anywhere in Ireland for that matter. Or, closer to the truth, you will only work about 5 minutes per day, in the summer, in between clouds :D

OK, I love Ireland, so don’t be too upset if you are Irish and you think it’s the sunniest place in the world.

Here are some tips to start your day when it’s raining outside (or it’s just a dark fall day).

Take a cold shower in the morning

I know, it’s awful. Trust me, I know. On the other hand, though, if you can make this (or, at least, change the water to cold in the last 30 seconds at the end of your shower), you will feel a surge of energy in about 10 minutes, after you stop shaking. That surge of energy is present in your body for the rest of the day.

Try to work on more tedious tasks

While I don’t have a problem with working during bad weather days, I find it really difficult to focus on creative tasks. So I try to do the least amount possible of creative work, while grinding away on the tasks I avoid normally. This way, even if my productivity is not the best, I still do some work.

Dress appropriately

This goes without saying, but if you are not dressed well, the cold will get in your bones and it will stay there. And it will be really difficult to shake the feeling of coldness.

Walk for several minutes outside

OK, if it pours, try not to. But if it’s not the worst rain ever and I walk for several minutes (even by parking the car a little bit further from the office) I feel a lot better once I get inside where, usually, it is warmer.

Some of the tips above might seem suicidal (really, cold showers??), but they work for me. If you have more suggestions, fire away in the comments section.

Rain from Shutterstock