Digital Dave

Over the past few months I have been getting my mind, and environment, oriented for what was to come. My prior studio ended up closing it’s doors in December after Disney made the decision earlier in the year to shut it down. As much as I love the bay area it just is not in the cards for now. My wife and I loaded everything up to move back to Kansas.

As it stands the Wichita area is not exactly a technology hub. Sure, there are technology needs, but I have little desire to work in COBAL… Kidding, of course. The type of work in this area is not interesting by any stretch. The Kansas City area is pretty solid (with Garmin and Cerner for example), but we decided that if we moved away from the bay area it would be so we could be closer to family. In addition, I would spend the time to build my own stuff.

I’ve always wanted to do my own thing and/or be part of something fresh at a startup.

So here we are. I plan to knock out some contracts while continuing to build upon iGotIt Games. At this point, all doors are open. You might even see me work on building a web-based company or even a furniture store… Who knows!

I decided that with my future projects I would NOT play the do-it-all guy.  I needed an artist and refused to release something without one.

Well finding an artist to work with us took an extremely long time — somewhere around 2 months?

A lot, and I mean a lot of artists do not like working on a project without earning a high $/hr and many artists completely misunderstand the independent nature of being an independent game developer.  Taking the time to spot someone with that passion is absolutely critical.  If you bring on an artist and they can’t rattle off an independent game, or even a game, that they’ve enjoyed recently they are not the right person.  The core problem I envision is someone bailing midway through the project, which would really, really suck.  It also helps having someone who understands games and how they can create an interactive experience with their artwork.

I find it very interesting to be around creative people, but for whatever reason I have yet to make a lot of contact with artists whom are interested in game development.  It’s the common dilemma surrounding coders.  I could rattle off quite a few coders I know.  Artists? Not so much.

I started this adventure to find an artist by taking advantage of my current environment.  I work with 300+ artists of varying degree at the visual effects studio I work with.  I had a surprisingly small amount of people interested in collaborating.  I say surprisingly, mainly, because I see quite a lot of independent things going around the studio.  So I know people are doing things outside of work.  We even have quite a few folks that are from the game industry.

During the time above, I listed something on a freelance website for an iPad project I will be doing after the current one.  My experience was pretty lackluster.  The artist had a great reputation/portfolio, but it has taken a long time to get anything out of them.

I then moved into some of the independent forums and craigslist.  Craigslist, by far, was where I gained a tremendous amount of traction.  You can skip paying $75 (bay area) listing fee by posting in gigs.  Within that first evening I had over 20 responses.

What is really interesting here is that I specifically tried to narrow down the responses immediately by asking a simple question within my listing.

What was a game you recently played that may have inspired you artistically?

This question was aimed to gauge if the person had any knowledge of games (bonus if they mention independent games) and also served as a way to filter submissions that were merely spam.  I was very shocked here.  Only 5 – 10% of my responses answered the question.  From there, maybe 2% actually put an effort into answering the question.

Yet, people wonder why they can’t find work?  You need to show some passion and some interest into what you’re responding to!

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Moving through a project will present unforeseeable challenges. The key is learning from those challenges and passing them on to everyone involved with the development of the project. Most likely the challenges that occur in one project will rise in another project and if you can present these to a group of developers before a project is in full motion maybe you can save yourself a headache or two.

But let’s not focus soley on what went wrong. It is very easy to nitpick and critize everything we do or didn’t do. What did we do right?

Writing a post mortem is about uncovering these key challenges so we can learn from them, but also our highest acomplishments so we can teach others. Even as a independent developer I reflect on what I did wrong and what I did right when I complete a project. I write these down so later I can revisit these documents to reflect. That reflection will influence my direction and hopefully help me create a better product in the future.

So I take a couple sheets of paper and answer two deceivingly easy questions -

1. List your top 5 items you feel went right with the project?
2. List your top 5 items you feel went wrong with the project?

From there I look at each technology I ended up using and making a note of my biggest challenge with that particular tech. This will give me a heads up in the future in case I mysteriously forgot that ‘thing’ that took me a week to implement.

That’s the key. Once you fire up a new project look back at your post mortems so you can refresh your mind on what you have done right or wrong in the past.

So I had an absolutely horrible experience today with a couple employees at a local gas station, Kwik Shop, here in Valley Center, KS.

I drove up to the pump, inserted my plus card (-2 cents per gallon), and then my debit card. The prompt read, “Please See Cashier.” I stroll on inside to tell them what had happened, and they just told me to give them my drivers license, which would authorize me to pump gas. So I did. I went outside, pumped the ~$25.00 gas purchase, and things started to spiral downhill from there.

I went inside to the clerk taking my debit card, talking to another employee, and then promptly letting me know that the systems were down. No cash, no checks, no nothing, but my debit card in hand. I was curious to know where this would lead. If this had happened at McDonald’s, they would wave the transaction and then notify their next customer that the systems were down. If this had happened at another fast food place here in town, they would likely just write your information down to be processed later. If this had happened at Starbucks, I would have had my drinks waved, and likely would have had a free drink ticket.  There were many positive actions that could have been taken…

Now, wonder for a minute, if you will, why a company would want to do all that. Why spark a confrontation in your store, with other customers, and ruining your relationship with that customer? Why kill that customers experience, which will lead to the loss of, not only their business, but the business of their friends and family (or anybody else listening in)? Oh, and don’t forget the internet, because I am now blogging this prime example of bad business practices all to educate any readers that MIGHT not be thinking about the customer.  The customer should always be #1.

This is how my experience ended…

The clerk asked if I had a check to pay with. Which I didn’t, because I handed her a debit card…

This clerk shows me the ATM and told me that I could withdrawal the money from an ATM, submitting to a $1.50 service fee… Which would be crazy. WHY would I pay MORE for gas because of their problem?

The clerk then told me that she would allow me to leave, pending that I gave her my drivers license, to go get money from an ATM a mile away at my bank. So, I should walk to go get this money? Without that license, that looks like what I’d be doing… Not a very promising idea.

The clerk then told me that she couldn’t do anything and that she has no control over the systems. I nodded my head and said, “Look, I work with computers all day and everyday. I understand the problems with the system. What I am concerned about is that you don’t seem to be thinking about how this is ruining my experience.”

LUCKILY, My girlfriend ended up driving up to the gas station right then. Or else my ass would have been walking to the bank to get money for the gas.

So we drove over to the bank to get the money, and I came back to pay.

I had absolutely no problem paying for the gas. The problem that I did have was that their system went down, and they went through this YESTERDAY (of the 2 employees, 1 had worked yesterday). So they should have known that if a customer was at the pump, trying to use their card, and was told to see the cashier, their systems were messed up. But, they didn’t. And the fact that they told me to use an ATM with a service charge, or wanting to take my drivers license so I could walk to the bank, is ludicrous.

So, case in point: I’m done with that company. Not only have they served me for 5 years, they’ve served my family for much longer. Goodbye to that business, we’re going to another company. Considering how much money that we will not be spending there anymore, I hope they find that $25 worth it.

This is a prime example of why you should take care of your customer. If something happens to your company, it isn’t YOUR fault, it is your companies fault. Treat your customer to the best of your ability, and then YOU bring the issue up with your company. Don’t pawn it off on the customer, you’ll be much happier knowing you kept somebodies business.