Deceptikong

The internet of Everything (There's an app for that is a broken model?)

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:07:35 +0800

The internet of Everything (There's an app for that is a broken model?):

I had been thinking about the internet of things (i.e. your own personal cloud of all your things, phones, TVs, cars, lightbulbs, etc…) and this blog post seems to encapsulate pretty much all the half-formed thoughts that I had about the subject, saving me the time to write it down. Handy!

adam brault: I quit Twitter for a month and it completely changed my thinking about mostly everything.

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:50:39 +0800

adam brault: I quit Twitter for a month and it completely changed my thinking about mostly everything.:

adambrault:

I surprised some people when I said I was taking November off Twitter.

I’ve been using Twitter since July 2006 (user #1568!) with almost completely unbroken usage since late 2007, so that reaction is understandable—most especially from those in my life who consider me addicted to my iPhone.

…

Video

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:08:06 +0800

I picked up a copy of James Gurney’s Color and Light which...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:59:37 +0800

I picked up a copy of James Gurney’s Color and Light which has inspired me to do some painting studies.

I’ve been mentoring a young graphic designer on how to use...

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:13:40 +0800

I’ve been mentoring a young graphic designer on how to use photoshop for rendering and this is one of the short renders using his bottle that was on the table. This got me back into a painting mood and reminded me how long it had been prior to that since I had done a proper painting. Maybe for next time :)

Eadweard Muybridge's Fantastic Reference for Artists

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:58:00 +0800

Eadweard Muybridge's Fantastic Reference for Artists:

click on the title for the link!

Informative video on the most common mistakes when developing...

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:57:57 +0800

Informative video on the most common mistakes when developing your first F2P by David Edery, part of the guys behind great titles such as Triple Town and Steambirds.

jasongreen: Dieter Rams “Cold War Modern” Dieter Rams, one of...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:40:10 +0800

jasongreen:

Dieter Rams “Cold War Modern”

Dieter Rams, one of the godfathers of 20th century Design gives us an insight into how he almost single-handedly revolutionised the look and functionality of Braun’s electronics, and how that has been vicariously passed down to contemporary Apple designer Jonathan Ive.

On Free2Play and Angry Birds

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:39:29 +0800

On Free2Play and Angry Birds:

Interesting article on Free 2 play and the “Fall of Angry Birds”, can be found by clicking on the title!

On Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and its mission

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:59:27 +0800

On Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and its mission:

If you’re one of the many who, like me, watched the movie The Social Network, then I think this is a worthwhile read. What is it? It’s simply a deconstruction of the letter that Mark Zuckerberg sent to shareholders when the company went public and had its IPO (definition). What it highlights is that firstly, people don’t read the fine print enough and that secondly, Facebook and it’s founder may not be as evil as people may think. Alternatively, if FB is indeed evil, then at least this is the yardstick by which we will measure the company according to what it portends to achieve as opposed to what it will achieve in the near future.

Either way, I found it to be a great and inspirational read and here’s a slight quote from Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to shareholders:

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximising profits.

By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term - and this is turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services.

Now that Facebook has told us what they want to achieve, we can and will measure their progress and how far away they may stray from their path.

I recently came across the Old Spice commercials again and at...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:54:23 +0800

I recently came across the Old Spice commercials again and at the bottom of the image is possibly one of the best comments on Youtube.

Some behind-the-scenes footage of the animatronics of the T-Rex...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:02:14 +0800

Some behind-the-scenes footage of the animatronics of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. Gives you a bit of the chills :)

Midas by Wanderlands

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:59:00 +0800

Midas by Wanderlands:

A beautiful little game made in 72hrs for ludum dare 22 by the guys over at Wanderlands. Check it out by clicking here!

Money Supply White Paper

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:53:50 +0800

An interesting article on online economies and money supply. This is specially relevant to me since I seem to have hit the ceiling in Diablo 3 Inferno Act II. Between the exponential difficulty curve of monsters and maintenance of gear when you die, I am now broke and unable to buy any gear that would allow me to survive longer or kill more monsters and having to resort to ‘farming’ previous Acts and ‘trolling’ the auction house to progress any further.

I have a long list of things I dislike about d3 but I shall keep them for another post.

IDEO’s Tom Hulme on visualizing your business model A nice...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:53:06 +0800

IDEO’s Tom Hulme on visualizing your business model

A nice comprehensive model for business models, well worth the watch.

"Finding a full-time job IS a full-time job"

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:30:48 +0800

“Finding a full-time job IS a full-time job”

- From my own thoughts, having spent the last 2-3weeks actively re-doing my portfolio, looking for and applying for jobs.

The Oatmeal: "Operation BearLove Good Cancer Bad"

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:49:11 +0800

How the Oatmeal deals with internet piracy using the internet and raising 100k, a nice read over here.

99% : Tony Faddell on Setting Constraints, Ignoring Experts and Embracing Self-Doubt

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:03:00 +0800

”(…)You don’t need everything in your first product, it’s usually too complicated (…) so you need to make sure that you set those milestones, set those constraints so that you can actually ship… because you must ship. Why must you ship? You must ship because the people on your team need to put something on their resume. They need to that result. What happens if you never ship? Or you never ship something that everyone believes in? They go to their next job and they try to find it and they go what did you do the last two years? Well we kinda f*cked around…”

Tony Fadell is the founder and CEO of Nest Labs, Inc., the company that developed the Nest Learning Thermostat. Prior to Nest, Tony served as senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division, reporting to Steve Jobs. He was responsible for creating the first 18 generations of the iPod digital music player and the first three generations of the iPhone.

This rings quite true when I think about the work I accomplished at Interzone. I think it’s important as a team leader to have results that people can look at and say “yep I did that!”

The Pyramid of Sugary Goodness

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 14:55:27 +0800

The Pyramid of Sugary Goodness

5 Reasons I Think You Should Share Your Ideas

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:36:09 +0800

So, last week was Let’s Make Games 2012 edition of What’s Up Pitches?! over at Spacecubed. WUP is an evening of lightning talks where members of the community have 3 minutes to pitch their game-related ideas to their peers. The event is fully free to attend and to participate and we also had a live stream of the presenters broadcast over the internet.

I was personally on the organising committee and in the buildup to the event, we received quite a few questions from people afraid that their ideas might be stolen if they decided to pitch. After all, if you’ve watched the movie The Social Network, the threat of stolen ideas and millions of dollars of potential loss is probably enough to make most people cringe at the idea of willingly and freely sharing their ideas with members of the public without a single Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in sight.

Now, before I go any further, I would like to state that this post reflects my opinion only and not that of Let’s Make Games as an organisation. I am also no lawyer, nor am I a serial entrepreneur with dozens of startups behind me or am I swimming in money from my ideas. I only have my own experience and that which has been shared with me but I hope to share it with you so that we both may know a little more about the topic. I have however been a graphic designer for 4 years now, worked at a games company for 2, launched my own iOS game with some friends and partners, been involved with quite a number of other creative projects and frequently read a lot of articles on game design, creativity, inspiration and productivity.

So now that I have my disclaimer out of the way, here’s a few reasons why I think you should be sharing your ideas a lot more freely than you might originally think:

1. Some ideas benefit more from being out in the open than staying in your mind. This is true for ideas that may require a critical mass to happen. That can be anything from getting people excited about a starting a new game, a games appreciation club or organising large-scale events. Some of these ideas may only live in the right ecosystem and letting people in on the idea may be the only way to start that ecosystem. I do think though that you should develop your idea a bit before throwing it out to the lions. An idea shared too early might end up with just confused looks while one shared at the right time should end up giving you a lot clearer perception of what people actually want or would be willing to do, thereby possibly saving you lots of time and energy.

2. Copyright does not protect your idea. You can only ever copyright the form of an idea, not the idea itself. What it really comes down to is the implementation of that idea. Facebook, Google+, mySpace, etc.. are all social networks, but they are also quite distinct in their own ways, possessing slightly different appeals and features. It’s more about the details and the philosophy behind the supporting ideas that surround your core one. You don’t have to give away all your implementation of your ideas in your pitches, you just need to give enough away that you might gauge people’s interest about specific parts. An interesting read semi-related to the idea of success being in the details can be found from iOS pictionary game Depict’s Post-Mortem where they also mention Charadium (another pictionary-style game) and keeping in mind the millions of dollars offered to OMGPop for Draw Something.

3. Creative development is 1% inspiration and 99% hard work! While you may think that this one idea you have is worth millions of dollars, it is worth nothing until you act on it. If you don’t have the drive to see your idea through then it does not really matter. Tim Colwill mentioned recently at our Indie Games Marketing Course that you will usually reap way more benefits in terms of exposure and feedback by letting people contribute in the early stages of development. You just have to be confident that it was your idea to start with and that you possess the vision to drive it to success better than someone else who might attempt to copy your idea. What you do with that 99% is really what will shape your idea to success, not the original 1%.

4. If you keep all your ideas to yourself, you’re slowly draining your stash of ideas. We all have a certain amount of ideas in our heads and sometimes we need to find some new inspiration from somewhere. If you don’t share your ideas and thoughts with other people, you are missing out on other people sharing their stash of ideas with you. You’ll be surprised at how many people will in fact be very happy to help you achieve your vision. Jay Wilson (Director of Diablo 3) had an interesting article recently describing how he viewed the designer’s role with respect to the team’s contribution.

5. Sharing ideas makes you accountable for them. As described in this article in the 99%, sharing your ideas may force you to take responsibility for them. To own them and refine them when people will inevitably find the flaws and drawbacks.

To close off this post, I will add that as with all philosophies, there is a reverse side of the coin. Not every idea should be shared with everyone. If your idea is very simple and easily replicated, you should get a headstart before pitching your idea to people. If you already have a strong internal team bouncing ideas around, you may not need outside opinions until your product is a bit more developed. Each project may be worth pitching at different stages of development, it’s up to your wisdom and experience to know when is a good time for a particular project.

Feel free to leave some comments if you agree or disagree :)