˙pǝbuɐɥɔ pɐɥ buıɥʇou ˙pǝʞɹoʍ ʇ,upɐɥ ʇı ˙pǝɥbıs ǝɥ 'ɹoʇɐɹǝuǝb ǝןoɥɯɹoʍ ʎbɹǝuǝ-ǝʌıʇɐbǝu ǝɥʇ ɟɟo buıuɹnʇ ‬‬#TBSFA

If you’re wondering what this is all about, it’s a competition being held by the British Sci-Fi Association. The goal? Write sci-fi stories in 140 characters or less. (Well, less, because you need room for “ #TBSFA” at the end ).

Give it a go. It’s fun.

More rules & info here: http://www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-news/tweetfiction-tweetstream-tbsfa/

There was a big debate on a videogame industry board I inhabit recently about night-owl vs. lark types (also known as chronotypes). This is a debate I’ve had with many people over the years, over and over again, and it typically takes this shape:

Why can’t you get to work at 10am? I:

• Have no problem waking up at 4am every morning, fit as a fiddle… or…
• Am a night-owl myself, and have trained myself to get up every morning – deal with it

… or many variations of the above.

So I did some research (and others did some research), and the upshot is that – as I expected – quite a large number of people in the video game industry are night owls if you do the right rigorous questionnaire and answer truthfully. Larger than the normal population by about 10%, in fact. And if you include the mostly night-owlish people with the extreme night-owls, that number goes up even higher.

(more...)

(this is a local copy of the blog post It’s Not Rocket Surgery – Managing Teams Across Disciplines and Under Pressure – which you can find on #AltDevBlogADay)

Howdy folks;

First an apology – I’ve been meaning to write an entire series of follow up posts to my previous one on #AltDevBlogADay ($10,000 is the Magic Number), but I’ve not had the time – yet. I intend to fix that, so stay tuned.

In the mean time, I recently had the pleasure of presenting a talk at GDC 2012 in the Producer Boot Camp tutorials track on how to be a producer in the games industry. Well, that and the kinds of issues you’ll see as teams grow and evolve over time.

I’ve got the slides up online now, so even though you can’t hear my dulcet tones, you should be able to imagine Morgan Freeman narrating for you as you read the accompanying speaker notes. Except this should be a weird English/American Morgan Freeman, who isn’t half as sexy. (more...)

Idly musing here...

How many people would find an "It's not rocket surgery" book useful?

It'd be way extended from the talk, of course, and would have anecdotes from producers I've known and loved, and sections on hiring, firing, care and feeding of programmers, scheduling, pitching and more.

Talk delivered to a full room of producery types, and I feel really good It went down surprisingly well.

Producers! You are my people! (That’s why I married the best one I could find )