Finally focusing on my own stuff!!

I’ve been making a lot of awesome milestones this year… and it’s only been two months! Even though I only report the good things, there have been some slumps here and there. The short of it is that I get into these depressive spells where I feel unaccomplished no matter how much I’ve done. It’s taken me some time to realize that these shitty feels are probably coming from my own lack of production. I talk about how I want to be a writer, but I don’t write nearly enough. Similarly, I talk about how I want to make my own games, but I have yet to do that. To that, I say NO MORE!

Two weeks ago, I got so incredibly sick of hearing myself complain that I resolved to write at least 100 words per day until infinity. My rules are that the writing can be either fiction or a blog post. Whichever it is though, it has to be my own thing. (i.e. Blog posts written for GoPrezzo do not count.) The whole point of keep the word count low is to shame myself into embarrassment if I can’t even find 15 mins to bang out 100 words. I’m proud to say that yesterday was the end of my second week! The lazy days have been under 200. The best day was a bit over 600. That’s 4,121 words I probably wouldn't have written otherwise. Quality is something else that’s left to be desired. In the end though, I’m writing and that’s what counts.

In similar vein, I just came up with an idea for a game! (Yes, while on the plane to Taiwan.) It’s nothing particularly novel, but I’ve been looking for a long time for an idea that’s small enough to complete on my own and that will help me get acquainted with the technical aspects of actually making a game. It’s a mesh of two of my favorite genres: puzzles and visual novels. Let’s see how this goes!

All that to say that, I’m happily still feeling very good!

NY Game Makers and Shear Panic

I had an amazingly game-filled day today! This is evidenced by the fact that I got barely 3 hours of sleep and am still incredibly WIRED and STOKED. ;D

I attended the NY Game Makers meetup for the first time today. It's a series of workshops taught by Jesse Freeman that focuses on designing and making a game in a month. For the beginner workshop, we learned about sprites and I made my first one today with Aseprite! I'm very proud of how my Tardis came out, especially the first frame. Admittedly, the other frames could use some more work. But not bad for a first try! (The sprite is actually 16x16, but is blown up for blog purposes.)

If you're a doctor, why does your box say "police"?

For the advanced workshop, we played around with Impact's level editor. I made my very first level! As you can tell from the screencap below, it's very shitty and uninteresting. In my defense, I was running late for a party and just wanted to slap something together to see if it would work. For the record, it did!!

Just go straight and don't die!

It was all super fun!! I gained a lot of XP, if I do say so myself! ;)

After the meetup, I went to a board game party and played Shear Panic for the first time. It's a cute and quirky tile-based(-ish) game by MayFair that I really enjoyed, despite the confusing rules.

It's the wrong trousers, Gromit!

I'm a tad too exhausted to go into detail, but I'll leave it at... I wouldn't mind playing it again.

And so ends my game-filled day! I'm super excited about all that I'm learning! Oh~ and I can't believe I forgot. I've also been having fun working on GoPrezzo's Facebook and Pinterest sites! Yesterday I launched my very first giveaway where players can win a Rubik's Cube Alarm Clock.

I'm putting this here just because I still have the image on my desktop. 

Crossing my fingers that it will generate some traffic!

Okies! For real this time, that's all I have to say for now. My flight to Taiwan is on Monday, so it will be a less-game-filled two weeks until I come back. Although, the flight and trip will be a good time to catch up on some of the games I've been meaning to play. ^^

GoPrezzo, IndieCade East, etc...

This is another update dump! It's been a busy week!

Picking up from the last post, I got the community manager internship at GoPrezzo!! They are a casual gaming tournament platform and I've been hired to help them build a community via social media, e.g. facebook, Pinterest, and twitter. This past week was my first week "on the job". (The quotes are to indicate that most of the work is done remotely, i.e. in my pajamas.) What excites me about the position is that they want me to be proactive and creative in helping them think of ways to utilize their social media sites. Much more interesting than gopher tasks and monkey work.

This week, I also volunteered to help out for IndieCade East, an indie games festival which was held this weekend and just ended today. I met a lot of really cool people! Talking to people has made a huge difference in my outlook. Every now and then, I get into these mental slumps where all I can think is WTFFF-am-I-doing??-I-don't-even-know!! But meeting people in the game industry pulls me out (which is a very good thing!).

So there's my brief rundown! I'm ending here because I'm super tired (barely more than 3 hours of sleep last night!) and still have work to do. Will hopefully have more energy to post more soon!

One year in the making!

This is an overdue update. I completely forgot that Monday was the anniversary of my gaming dream in the making! Now seems like a good time to recap the past year and talk a bit about what I've been up to.

Last year this time, I was still finishing my dissertation. I knew I didn't want to stay in academia, but I didn't know what I wanted to do after. Or more, after having a heart-to-heart conversation with my sister-in-law... I did know what I wanted to do. I was just too afraid to go after it. After some hippie-dippie inner reflection, I realized that I wanted to make own games. It's something that I've always known. But I never took the dream (or myself!) seriously enough to do anything beyond wishful thinking.

After admitting what I wanted to do, I was faced with a very real problem. I knew nothing about the game industry, let alone how to make an actual game. There's still a lot I don't know and still a lot I'm learning. But I'm proud to have gone from nothing to a little bit of something in terms of knowledge.

With enough time on the internet, you can dig up a fair amount of information about any topic that was previously unknown to you. I soon realized that reading was only going to get me so far. For me, it's been a huge accomplishment talking to people and going to events hosted by the New York Gaming Meetup. In December, I went to my first demo night where local developers present their games. January has been more active. New York Gaming Meetup started a Deep Dive series in which the presenter (typically an experienced member of the industry) talks in depth about a specific topic. The first Deep Dive was earlier in January on How to Successfully Pitch Your Game to Publishers and Portals. One thing I took away from this event was: Pitching your game is like writing a grant statement. Be clear. Be succinct. Show what you've done. Show what you will do. Focus on what they can gain from you. The second Deep Dive was How to Master Prototyping Your Game Idea on Paper. This event was particularly fun because we broke into groups and prototyped a game right there. (I even raised my hand and answered two questions! Go me!) What I took away from this event was to not be afraid of just making a game! Even a shitty game. It's just like with writing. I constantly need to remind myself that the iteration/editing process is just as important as the initial creation/writing process. i.e. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time!

I ended the month of January with the January demo night. A woman at the event announced that her company is hiring a community manager to handle their social media sites. (a) I'm proud of myself for having talked to her about the position. (b) I'm proud of myself for having subsequently emailed her about it. (c) I'm proud of myself for having met with her and her company's CEO about the position this past Monday and came out unscathed! (Monday was also exactly one year from the date of that fated conversation about my future with my sister-in-law.) I'm still waiting to hear back from them, which should be later this week. Either way, even if I don't get the position, I'm proud I chased the position as far as I have. Not to mention all the XP I've gained.

Looking ahead, next week is IndieCade East, a conference and exhibition on indie games. Not only am I attending the event, but I've signed up to volunteer and I.AM.STOKED!!

There you have it. Considering that last year I could barely dare to dream about switching career paths and attempt to get into games... I've come a long way. I haven't even rambled about all the personal journeys I've embarked on to get to this place where my head and my goals are clear. All that to say, YAY for Dr. Peng!